just friday

September 7

Even with the fresh Atlantic air, I'm not sleeping well in the Chevy Venture. The week-old juice boxes barely taste orange. The Salter Path showers are dingy and the water cold. I’m recycling clothes since I’ll change them throughout the day; I throw on yesterday morning’s shorts and t-shirt. Brian is back down on the beach, watching three guys catch and clean fish on the spot, among sand-holstered poles that stand up all along the waterline. I’ve never seen this sort of fishing, but now I’m the one ready to move on to whatever's next. From the top of the stairs I wheedle him to the van and point us southwest.

            Under the cresting sun we say goodbye to the Outer Banks, crossing back onto the mainland through Camp Lejeune Marine Corps Base, which looks like a jungle and makes me nervous with its TANK XING signs and sniper towers poking out of the trees. An hour later, Highway 17 still smells coastal, but suburbs now stand between us and the ocean. When the road rises and writhes into clover-leafs, I suggest a detour, before we get trapped in another version of the Winston-Salem traffic jam and risk that hiccup wrecking the day.

“Sounds good; we can find some coffee. And something that's not a Hostess muffin.”

Brian follows my directions and turns towards the waterfront town of Wilmington—birch-lined avenues, manicured lawns and square brick buildings. The white letters on black iron describe libraries where confederate generals secretly strategized, churches converted to triage hospitals and back again. One plaque says that the first (official) African American MD had his practice here in Wilmington. Another marks Fort Anderson, evacuated in February of 1865 after a fierce Union attack, resulting in the fall of the town. These curb-side memorials have become proverbial, but I still photograph most of them while we idle at stoplights between pickups and Volvos on their way to work. TGIF.

When the full aroma of sea salt returns, the traffic thins out, leaving us on a wide cobblestone road which dead-ends in a wharf. A battered black battleship is parked here: the USS North Carolina. No one is paying any attention to it. Its neighbors, the shacks along the Cape Fear River, each look like the chowder house on Tom Sawyer Island. In its younger years this port was a Confederate blockade base of operations, and later a stronghold of racial hostilities. But this morning it is tranquil. We’ve arrived just in time for the café owners to unlock their glass doors and sweep off their sidewalks. 

We park and go into the bakery with a rainbow of community event posters cluttering the walls. Coming out with our hands full of lattes and bagel-egg sandwiches, we are approached by a woman in Birkenstocks and a flowing patchwork skirt. She is distributing flyers for her haunted tour of the town. The first is at noon, but naturally she recommends waiting for the candlelit walk at ten tonight. While Brian tells her thanks, we’re just in town for breakfast, wonder bubbles with the caffeine in my belly. 

The flyer describes how my guide will lead me through the streets in search of several notorious ghosts, telling tales of brothels, taverns and the old county jail, where colonial life often met violent ends. I am practically guaranteed to hear the wail of a forsaken mistress, or the metallic scrape of a drunken sailor dragging behind him the rapier with which he slew his rival. I’m captivated. At the same time, though, the reiteration of recent days flashes in my mind—adventure golf, swimwear superstores, White Castles and Waffle Houses. I think ahead to Savannah and New Orleans, towns truly famous for their undead, and I’m sure that this is another Southern novelty bound to repeat itself. I know we won’t take a haunted walk here, but later it will be a mystery how we did not manage to take one anywhere.

A flea market temps us from an alley warehouse. Inside it’s a maze of crafty junk spread over rickety tables, and the humidity has muffled both sound and color, but we are detained by the characters. We recognize more women in the style of she who offered the ghost tour, as well as white-haired old ladies in long shorts and short nylons gathered around quilts, and adolescent Native Americans with whittled fish and dream catchers. There’s a gnarled geezer propped on a stool beside the back door, like the ancient mariner outside the wedding, reciting something softly but purposefully. He turns his head—though not his eyes—as we pass, and increases his volume. What he says is garble, but my sweat turns cold. That's it for Wilmington.

There is plenty more to be found—Wrightsville Beach and Screen Gems Studios, arboretums and museums, historic homes and battlefields of course, marinas where sea turtles flip through the surf. But we don’t give it a chance to make a galvanizing impression because we only have eyes for today’s final destination: Myrtle Beach, where a free Friday hotel room awaits, a perk of Brian’s business travel.

On the way there, we find more manageable detours down dusty historic plantation lanes, where blue and gold butterflies flit everywhere and thick tree roots ripple along the ground—splendid diversions in which we find ourselves utterly alone. In front of another antebellum museum, my captain parks and swirls his bare feet in the dirt beside the van while calling to check in at home. I wander through a topiary yard with brick pathways and stone benches set back in the ferns. I dream of having my own such yard, and enjoy having ten minutes to myself in it, but return to the van to hear the end of some trouble between Brian’s sister and the cat we have left her to feed. She doesn't like me, the sister, that is. After four years I am still an interloper, and it's not surprising that she's found some bone to pick with care-taking my house and my pet for two weeks. I have no stomach for such domestic minutia, which I have ridden 1200 miles to escape, so I don’t ask for a report after the call.

"The cat's fine," he says.

"Cool. Let's get back to the highway."

Once there, to keep steering clear of potential tension, I engage Brian in a race to find all the letters of the alphabet on billboards. It’s not a fair game, because as the passenger I have a wider field of vision to draw from, but he doesn't seem impeded and it passes the time. In the early afternoon, he gets his T and U out of smiling faces, beautiful places under Welcome to South Carolina, where I get my W. To inaugurate our new state we stop at The Cherry Company, where they offer “a taste of the low country.” The specialty is handcrafted cider, of which we pack out a half dozen bottles of the cherry and pear variety, and then roll on.

The nearly hundred mile strip of South Carolina coast called The Grand Strand begins in the spirit of Atlantic Beach: kitschy structures bursting elaborately from the grass. More golf, aquariums, and swim stores. It gets denser as we near the heart of town, passing the Alabama Theater, Carolina Opry, convention center, a massive fitness facility, and many malls. The deep sidewalks are rapidly filling with assorted pedestrians, and a fleet of trolley cars swoop into the traffic every few blocks. There's so much stimuli that I have difficulty deciding what to focus on. Through my frantic camera lens, the commerce eventually makes way for the lodging, and the only thing between the road and the ocean becomes a line of generic high-rise hotels. The reflection across the street is cheerless: crumbling motels named Sea Gypsy, Sea Oat and Wayfarer, with blotchy leaf-filled pools behind chain link, guys in white undershirts sitting on crates outside, between coke machines and honey buckets shoved against the walls.

I'm not sure why I’d anticipated something more cosmopolitan for Myrtle Beach, but I find myself for the umpteenth trying to fix an emotion between stunned and disappointed. I’m also trying to discern what might be wrong with the beach itself, because all the action is on the opposite side of the street, behind and between the budget motels. Water parks, game pavilions, all-age clubs and carnival rides suffocate each other and ooze streams of people from every opening. Pigeon Forge for the coastal crowd; Santa Cruz on the brown acid.

In the midst of it we reach the Sheraton Four Points Hotel, on the beach side. Only now does it hit me that we are sleeping in a room tonight. Unshackled from the confines of the vehicle, it suddenly does feel like Friday—the celebration of a week’s hard work. The van is abandoned at the valet. After a hasty check-in, we rush for the elevator, duffle bags bursting and swinging. We’re joined by a man wearing a toupee and a caftan, his lady in a gold bikini and black towel, and what must be The Girl From Ipanema on the elevator speaker. Suppressing giggles, we tumble out at the 6th floor, down a mauve hall to our mauve room (“crazy rat pack vibe,” observes Brian) and onto the scratchy plum-colored coverlet for the king-size bed. I gulp the air conditioning and make a pillow fort around my head. I’m asleep directly, and two hours later I rise refreshed, ready to make sense of this town.

I find the city map and trolley schedule next to the TV and sit on the bathroom counter consulting them while Brian showers. 

“We don’t want to drive anywhere,” I confirm.

“Definitely not.” he calls over the water.

“Do you feel like walking?”

“Sure.”

“How much?  I mean, I don't know if there's anything great very close to here. Do you want to eat and stuff in all that carnival action across the street, or should we go into town, wherever that is? I don’t want to just start walking and end up going for miles and miles until we're starved. You know?”

“Okaaaay.”  In his drawing out of the word, I recognize the slippery moment where we are apt to stumble. But we have followed our instincts into consecutive flawless evenings; I'm determined that this venue will provide another one. I will not get overwhelmed. I will find just the thing for us.

“There’s this place,” I double check the colorful map, “not on the strand but in town a couple miles, called Broadway at the Beach. Looks like it might have a little bit of everything, definitely restaurants, shops and…I don't know, it just sounds interesting. Like, self-contained. We could take a trolley right to it and then see…whatever happens on the way back.”  

“When’s the trolley?” He turns off the water and I pass him a towel around the curtain.

“Every fifteen minutes, half a block from the hotel.”

We agree it's a plan, then take our time deciding on outfits appropriate for “whatever happens.” On the street we are reminded that the only thing outfits need to be on this trip is breathable. A vigorous wind is rising which serves only to push the heat from one bare shoulder to the other. The minutes waiting in the broken shade of one sad palm tree are long.

“Are you sure you read the schedule right?”

I nod.

“And the map?" I nod, and get rescued by a wood-framed trolley with red seats and etched glass above the open sides. The thing moves pretty quickly and the motion makes the wind cooler. We lurch along the strand, picking up and dropping off passengers who carry shopping bags and work shoes in their arms.

A bunch of other people exit the trolley with us on the north side of Broadway at the Beach—which is an open-air mall around a man-made lake. Wouldn't you know, there’s a Hard Rock Café. Also ceramic zoo animals with sun-peeled paint, and animatronic pirates popping out of treasure chests in front of a salt water taffy shop. The next restaurant is Gilley’s Texas Cafe, a spin-off of the honky-tonk owned by country crooner Mickey Gilley (whose cousins include Jerry Lee Lewis and Jimmy Swaggart). I remember it as the setting for the film Urban Cowboy, and its contentious mechanical bull, and I wonder what in the world else Texas and Myrtle Beach could have in common. Then I notice that the walkway we're on is called Celebrity Circle, and further down it, statues of movie icons mark the entrance to every store.

What kind of adventurers go to a place that's a replica collection of other places, celluloid places even? We've ended up in a vortex for locals trying to escape where they live. This mall is a slice of Hollywood Boulevard (or I suppose Broadway) which makes it seem to me like the Ripley’s Aquarium in the Smokey Mountains: out of its element. Yet this is where my instinct led me, "just the thing for us," for our night in Myrtle Beach. Remember, Brian and I supposedly can't bear to be "tourists;" we want to assimilate. Even if this is a replica, its a Southern replica; there's no Gilley's in LA or New York.

Anyway we are just in time for happy hour, which has a complimentary appetizer buffet. We are pleased, as is the conglomeration of AARP members that descend on the bar right behind us. They all know each other, and they all know the happy hour deal at Gilley’s; everyone orders margaritas in frosty mugs and crowds around the catering trays, loading up on a meal's worth of free quesadillas, buffalo wings and carrot sticks. These older people make more sense of the place for me. I assume they are retirees and golfers, who live for the summer somewhere beyond the strand and carpool here for a Friday night party. Their presence is soothing, and the affection of older couples always promotes my own affection, I guess to ensure that I will grow gray with someone by my side. I grab Brian’s hand under the table, order a second frosty margarita, and savor it until the sun sets and the temperature outside mellows.

Then we make the circuit around the rest of the mall. I linger at a Gone With the Wind kiosk until I realize Brian has left me. He is sliding nickels into a gumball machine at the railing of the lake. Instead of gum, though, the machine deposits musty pellets into his waiting palm, to then be flung at the dozens of ducks and carp in the water. I lean over the rail as his pellets hit the surface, and then yank back my head as the ugliest fish in the world swarm up with their big-whiskered mouths lapping crudely, putting off even the ducks. The fish are unsightly in a way that matches the strand motels, and the paint peeling off the statues in this mall. The whole roughly orchestrated space is instructive; the wear and tear renders the harsh reality of a permanent vacation. Brian takes my hand and leads me away.

“Let’s go to a movie,” he says.

What better way to assimilate on a Friday night? And the mall's Grauman's-style theater has a movie we want to see on one of its two dozen screens. At the end of the movie—Rock Star—an 80's metal-weary Mark Wahlberg is reborn in the dawn of Grunge, reuniting with coffee shop ingénue Jennifer Anniston in drizzly Pike Place Market. Home. It's disorienting when we exit the theater. The idea of wandering back to the hotel on foot, through the mayhem of the strand, is discarded. We automatically get back on a trolley full of worn-out locals, lovebirds, and drunks.

The Strand is sluggish with traffic and the night sky is dark (it always seems darker over here), but lights spin frantically from the sidewalk—red, white, blue, and yellow among the roller coasters and bumper boat ponds. The wind is charged with club music and elated shrieks. Out of the glaring sun, the spectacle makes more sense. The Southeast has a lot of Vegas going on. I need to accept it, take it in stride with the heartier history. There is great communal affirmation in all the graveyards and memorial plaques and mix of people on porches; there's legacy. But equally affirming to my own little life-spark is the warm wind in the street and the electricity of artificial light and sound in the salty night. Out here on The Strand is where the young people are. And Brian and I are young. I wish I'd had more faith in this fact six hours ago. I want to get off the trolley every time it stops, but I keep yawning instead. Do I need more air? We are almost back to the hotel.

“I missed the carnival rides,” I whine, “and this must be the last stop for carnival rides.”

“Georgia will have them.”

“I don’t think so.”

 “We can go, if you wanna go.”

I have no response. Living with him for longer than I ever lived alone has trapped me in the need to be taken care of. I can direct us through a plan on paper, as long as he drives. I rely on him to read my mind, navigate its disorder, and get it right. Maybe he does the same thing. When the trolley discards us at the Sheraton we are definitely not satisfied, so we get a table in Kokomo’s Lounge, the hotel patio bar. We are back on the beach, and the layout of this one, the texture of the sand even, is more familiar than Cape Hatteras or Salter Path. 

“Does this remind you of Acapulco?”

“Yeah.” He shakes out a cigarette.

Past the palms and pebble walkways that shackle the hotels, the few people at water’s edge teeter and whoop in the dark like spring-breakers. In Mexico, at the start of our own affair, this view was endearing. We reminisce, order screwdrivers and spend considerable effort getting our cigarettes lit in the gale, and then getting an ashtray—the bar is devoid of both patrons and servers. That vigorous wind has taken over the night, and the full impression of a hurricane becomes feasible to me. After the screwdrivers, we try fifty paces of a walk on the sand, but are thwarted by my whipping hair and teenagers attempting sex against a tree.

Brian says, “Let’s take advantage of our balcony,” which has a 6th-floor view on the relatively wind-proof north side of the building.

“Great idea.” Brian stops at the van to grab two Coronas which we open in the elevator (all ours this time) and take out to our plastic balcony chairs. Once we are settled in relative peace and privacy, we discover a plump moon slung low in the sky, and then a giant cockroach in the corner of the concrete, which sends me scampering back into the room. I slam the sliding door behind me.

“It was only a matter of time,” Brian says through the screen, leaning back in his chair and trying to mask his own aversion. "There’s roaches down here, Honey; there’ll be more.”

“Well, they’re gonna have to stay outside.” I give up on the night. Put on pajamas and slide between the crisp bed sheets.
            Minutes later I hear a Sizzle, a Pow! and a “Wow!” and I jump back up, not wanting to be left out. I put on socks for placebo roach protection and step carefully back onto the balcony. Our neighbors, sitting on their own six stories of balconies in the hotel next door, tip their wine glasses and beer bottles towards the ocean. Emerald and amethyst sparks fall into the waves, and Brian gestures me to his lap.

“Come watch the fireworks.”

I resist looking for the roach as I take the seat, lean my head on his chest, and give up again, give in to the delight of the big roman candles someone's lighting off in the sand in front of the Sheraton. Perhaps the young lovers by the tree. Music blares from the street behind us.

“Is it Cinco de Mayo?”

“Nope, just Friday.”