idisagreecompletely

It started out innocently enough.

My friends and I were coming back from our vacation. There were 10 of us and we had spent the previous week on a cruise. We had an early flight, so ended up being up most of the night before. We got to the airport on time, but the flight was cancelled.

We weren’t in the United States. There wasn’t another flight that day. We were told we might be able to catch the next one the following day. Maybe, maybe not. I looked at my friends, all 8 of them, and they were all thinking what I was thinking; we might have to spend the night in the airport and that’s not good.

One of my male friends tried to find out if there was a hotel we could stay at. He was told probably not since we were in the middle of summer and most of the hotels had been booked for months. He tried to reason with him, he tried to charm him and then he tried to get angry with him. The man never changed his expression.

I watched this for a few minutes and then looked over at my friend Jennifer. She was about 15 years younger than me, beautiful and smart. I didn’t have to say a word. She winked and we walked up to the skycap and smiled. He smiled back. We talked to him for a few minutes and suddenly, he knew of a place where there were some vacancies. We thanked him and walked back to the group.

“What the hell did you say to him?” my friend asked. He still looked pissed off.

“You don’t want to know,” was all Jennifer said. All we had done was smile, explain our situation and batted our eyes. He didn’t need to know that.

Soon we were at a hotel that was beautiful. We checked in. They had 3 rooms for us, all with double beds. Jennifer and I decided we would share a room and the rest of them could figure it out. While we were checking in, there was a man standing there. He was leering at us. I didn’t know who he was. Jennifer noticed also. He was making it very obvious what he was thinking and when I saw him lick his lips, I almost screamed.

After we got everything taken care of at the front desk, I almost ran away when the front desk handed the pervert our room key. He was our bellhop! Oh, this day was just getting worse and worse.

As we followed him to our room, Jennifer and I kept looking at each other. He kept looking back at us and smiling. We held each others hands and slowly followed. Visions of “Psycho” kept flashing through my mind. I didn’t want to end up like Jennifer Leigh.

We weren’t in Kansas anymore. My friends were getting their rooms, so it was just the three of us, walking down hallways, further and further away from the front of the hotel.

We got to our room. He opened the door and dragged our suitcases in. I saw him put our key in his pocket. I put my hand out for it and he smiled and looked me up and down. He licked his lips again. I kept my hand out and glared at him. He shrugged his shoulders and gave me the key.

“Where do you want me to put your daughter’s suitcase?” he asked me.

Jennifer choked. My daughter? Oh no, he did not just say that!

I pointed to the dresser and said nothing. He dragged it over there and left mine by the door. He held out his hand for a tip. I could not go near him. I needed a shower. Jennifer gave him a tip and he held onto her hand and wouldn’t let go. I walked over and looked at him. He suddenly lost the smile on his face and left. I locked the door behind him and put the chain on.

Jennifer fell down on the bed, laughing. “Oh, hey MOM!” she said. This got me laughing. We had now been up 36 hours and I think anything would have made us laugh.

I grabbed a few things and went into the bathroom to take a shower. It was filthy. I sighed, didn’t care anymore and pulled the shower curtain back.

Sitting there, just waiting for me, was a cockroach that looked to be a foot long. I think it hissed. There isn’t a person alive who hates and fears cockroaches as much as I do. I screamed and couldn’t stop. I turned to run out of the bathroom at the same moment Jennifer came in to see why I was screaming. I slammed into her and we both fell on our asses. I had fallen against the tub which caused the cockroach to hiss again.  More screaming ensued as I pushed myself away, crawled over Jennifer and out of the bathroom.

If it got in my hair, I would die.

I crawled as fast as I could across the floor and made it to the bed.  I was too scared to walk.

Jennifer still didn’t know why I was so terrified.

I climbed onto one of the beds. I yelled at her to shut the bathroom door and to never open it again. She did and came around the corner and saw me shivering on the bed.

“Ah, so Susan, what the hell? What happened? You OK?” she asked as she sat down.

I nodded. “There is a hissing cockroach the size of New York City in there. You either have to kill it or never open that door again. Do it for your Mom, will ya?”

Her eyes got huge and she shook her head. “No, I hate those things. What are we going to do?”

“We are going to get someone…” and then I remembered the bell hop. We were in a foreign country. There wasn’t a soul around for miles except for him, my friends and one or two other employees.

We were all going to die.

I called my friends to see where they were, but it was pointless. No cell phone service. They could be anywhere and I wasn’t about to leave the room and go wandering around looking for them. The place was too big and was getting creepier and creepier by the moment.

It was so late and we were so tired. “Let’s just go to sleep,” she said and pulled back the covers of her bed.

The sheets were stained and looked like they hadn’t been washed in months. She sighed.

“I have to pee and brush my teeth,” she said.

“Do it outside on the lawn or go kill that thing in…there,” I said as I pointed to the bathroom. I just knew it was still hissing at me and figuring out a way to get out and come get me.

Now I had to go to the bathroom and all because she said she had to. It was like a yawn – contagious. I looked at the time. We had to be up and out the door in five hours. I was determined to make it through the night without either one of us getting raped and butchered by the pervert or torn to shreds by “The Thing” in there, that was plotting to get us.

She collapsed on top of the bed and was instantly asleep.

I sat up all night, ready to kill anyone or anything that came near us. I did not sleep for one second and kept the lights on.

A few hours later, I woke her up. The sun was up, no one had attacked us and it was time to go. We grabbed our suitcases and as soon as we saw a bathroom, we ran.

We met up with our friends. They ended up having a wonderful time. They went swimming that night and having a party. They couldn’t get in touch with us either when they tried to invite us. They were laughing and talking about how much fun they had. They loved their rooms even though they didn’t sleep in them.

I hated them and so did Jennifer. Somehow she and I had ended up in another universe on some cosmic plane. We were taken to hell and they were taken to heaven.

Jennifer and I ended up in the last row of seats on the plane. I got stuck with the aisle seat. This meant I was one foot away from the bathroom and every time someone wanted to use it, they had to turn to open the door. This resulted in them shoving their butt in my face. So in order to avoid that happening, I had to sit up and lean over to the right and rest my shoulder on the guy next to me, who wasn’t very pleased with that arrangement. I think he had a phobia of women with big hair. Anytime I did doze off, he would shove me back.

By the time we hit Miami, I was a walking zombie. We had a layover of a few hours, so Jennifer and I found the nearest bar and started drinking, calling and texting people.  Two of my friends complained about being tired. Both Jennifer and I snapped at them to shut-up as we ordered another round of Margarita’s.

Boarding the next plane, we made two of our friends move and give us their seats. They had the best ones and there must have been something about the way we looked that they didn’t question us. I finally slept from Miami to Denver. Boarding the last plane home, they insisted on she and I having first pick. I slept from Denver to San Francisco.

Coming through my front door, I made my husband check the shower before I would go into the bathroom. He gave me a quizzical look but did it anyway. The coast was clear.

Fifteen years later, Jennifer still calls me Mom and introduces her kids as my grandchildren.

But I do smack her if she hisses at me.