smelling the Cow

There's something very soothing about that three and a half hour drive back and forth from V-----. Somewhere along the course of all these back and forths, hour after hour of staring at blank road and adjusting my location based on the taillights of the car in front, I've learned a whole zen thing that's only infrequently interrupted by my religious practice of the three-second rule.

Does everybody know the three-second rule? It's where you time the distance between your car and the car in front by an interval of three seconds. You watch the car in front pass something, and then start counting -- "One Mississippi, Two Mississippi, Three Mississippi" -- and right about the time you start saying "Four Mississippi," the front of your car should pass the same thing. This is how we avoid tailgating, which is a party foul practiced by people with glass eyes and no conception of personal space. On long drives, when the three second rule starts to get tedious, you increase the number of seconds between your car and the car in front and, get this, hold your breath while you count, just for kicks.

So, back to Zen.

When I first started doing this trip, I would go to the library and rent (yes, I know it's really supposed to be "check-out" and not "rent," but we have to be realistic here) whatever books on tape were available. I planned ahead, motivated by the dread of that 3-1/2 hour drive. If I had to leave on a Sunday, by Wednesday I already had my recordings. If I planned on renting a car, I'd pick up books on tape and books on CD, just in case the auto I got didn't have a CD player. In fact, one day I actually rented a car with only a tape deck. For the occasion, I forced the Guy to hunt through his apartment until he found a CD-to-tape converter, so I could be certain not to run out of stuff to listen to while on the road.

Somewhere during the course of these trips though, I discovered that there's a certain amount of peace to be found zipping along the long highways without any distractions buzzing in the ear. The road is mostly flat, with only a small break of hills partway through.

The San Joaquin hills, which I used to think were annoying and ugly, turn out to be beautifully scenic when seen in the light of day. Unlike Central Valley, which is strictly regimented under the type of tyranny only agriculture can exert, the hills are erratically green, without that manicure of human intervention. Usually, I drive through them at night. Three trips ago, I managed to leave V---- early, and so encountered them in the late afternoon. "Gorgeous," I thought when I saw them. That sentiment lasted for all of half a minute, after which "Great Big Leprechaun Laundry" inevitably came to mind. The San Joaquin hills are not so much 'rolling' as they are 'crumpled.'

With their one exception, which always inspires in me an atavistic dread of curves and cliffs, I'm mostly free to indulge in my absent-minded thoughts and go miles before I blink and wonder exactly where I am. It's on those long roads when I work on my short story, figuring out phrases and plot turns, personalities and relationships. It's also when I work on my week's schedule, and write out my list of things I want to accomplish before the next weekend. That's what I was doing Friday before last on my way home from V-----. Thinking. Getting my groove on. Becoming one with the universe.

Meanwhile, the word was going out to every morose, suicidal bug in the Central Valley. "Yuhri's driving by! Tora! Tora! Tora!"

It was the irregular SPLUT-SPLUT, SPLUT, SPLAT, THUD that attracted my attention to this bizarre phenomenon taking place on my windowshield. At first, I thought it was mud; there was a truck in front of me, after all, and there had been rain in some parts of the Valley. I ran my windshield wipers and squirted fluid on the glass.

Mud, as it turns out, isn't normally green. Or yellow. Or combinations of the same. Small, insectile legs were splaying creative designs across my sight. SPLUT. SPLIT SPLAT. Ka-SPLUT. In a display of unreasonable optimism, I tried the washer fluid again. This time my windshield wipers actually crunched as they whined across the glass.

Zen was decidedly out. I hunched my shoulders and gritted my teeth. The local insect population, using that mysterious psychic friends network of theirs, instantly assembled massive parties for a Jonestownsian revelry to be held over Interstate 152.

Last week, as it turned out, V---- was playing host to a yearly event: an agricultural fair. As a result of this, despite the fact that I'd made my reservations two months beforehand, the John Jay Inn -- my usual home away from home where V---- is concerned -- was unable to accommodate my personal preferences.

"We had to put you in a smoking room," the receptionist said, guiltily, and stared at me with that don't-you-love-me-anymore? look that dogs get when they're hungry.

I have no way of knowing how much custom the John Jay sees during the normal course of the year. I know that the Agricultural Fair is by far the busiest season for them. On the other hand, people from my company have been staying at the John Jay every week for the last four months. By now, they've learned to recognize us when we drive into the lot, and have our registration cards filled out by the time we walk in the door so all we have to do is sign our names on the dotted line. Yesterday I called to make more reservations for me and a coworker. "I noticed she stopped smoking," the manager said. "Should I put her in a non-smoking room?" Which just goes to show you.

Thus, the receptionist's anxious apology about having to put me in a smoking room. I was tempted to say, "I'm allergic to cigarette smoke," but I didn't. Damn her look of contrition. Damn my Japanese genes, too.

"Oh," I said instead. "Sure."

Although, it turned out that it wasn't a smoking room, so much as it was a smoking floor. The entire third floor. If I tried hard enough, I could barely detect the smell of cigarette smoke under heavy air freshener, the same determinedly floral scent John Jay used in the lobby to fend off the stink of cow. It was when I opened the door to my room that the actual reality of a "smoking room" hit me. "Smoking room" apparently housed, at some point, "smoking people." Who -- and this will blow you away -- smoked. A lot.

It wouldn't be exaggeration to say that the sheer strength of the cigarette smoke made me reel, in much the same way the impact of cow in the face made me reel each morning. The smell of nicotine was beyond offensive; it was positively abusive. The same idiotic Japanese genes that made me agree to stay in a smoking room now refused to let me admit I was wrong and ask for a different room. Get this. It had pride.

I coughed most of that night, discovering entire new delightful worlds of phlegm and dry heaves. When I could stop hacking long enough to drowse, the smell permeated my dreams and I became convinced I was surrounded by chain-smoking Frenchmen. The next morning, my eyes were red-rimmed and itching. My throat, already raw from the previous week's training, was in a bad mood and threatening to rip out my tonsils.

I wheezed my way to the clinic, and talked out my issues in the car.

"Tonight, I'm going to tell them they have to move me," I decided as I pulled up to a red light. "I can't stay in a cigarette room."

"But--" began my Japanese genes.

"SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!!" I pounded on the steering wheel. By accident, I hit the horn. All around me, startled V----ians stared at me through their windows, and I slouched down in my seat, feeling like an ass.

It's possible -- in fact, probable, considering the uniform niceness of everybody I've met thus far in V---, that nobody has ever used a car horn within city limits. Ever.

As it turned out, the people at the John Jay, knowing I don't smoke, spent the time I was away doing what they could to make the room less painful to the nose. They opened the window. They sprinkled carpet freshener on the floor. And they put a giant wax tube of Winter Blossom air freshener by the sink at the entrance. It was, really, a very good effort and wonderfully well-intentioned.

Except that my room faced the front of the hotel, which was right across the street from the largest manure patch in the continental US. And it's possible the floral air freshener was designed by Imelda Marcos. I walked into the room that evening, having forgotten completely about asking to change rooms, and was baffled by the new arrangement of smells. Despite their best efforts, the cigarette stink was there to stay, and was just as strong as ever. On the other hand, there were other things floating around in the air to confuse the issue.

There was a bright side to this. My room no longer smelled like just an ashtray. It smelled like a depressed teenage chain-smoking cow wearing his mother's perfume, but it didn't smell like just an ashtray. In a bizarre way, it was an improvement. The combination of olfactory offenses served to distract from each other; in the end, they almost managed to cancel each other out. Not quite, but almost.

I stayed in the room. I left the window open, and continued to have odd dreams. The air freshener I moved next to my bed, to balance the strength of the cow and cigarette smells. By the end of my stay, I'd almost gotten used to it.

The cleaning staff had meant well. I left them a nice tip.