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Date Night Inn
By Tara Hempstead
Our noses followed the restorative Monterey sea air, and we gazed out on a beautiful ocean that constantly refreshed itself with waves churning against the rocks. We closed the car trunk and hoisted our assortment of bags off the cement pavers and, for a moment, it felt like we arrived. Our smiles wilted slightly as we turned to take in the pastel pink monolith on the hill directly above.
Our bed and breakfast wore its centuries more like a president after a rough term, looking more like a disheveled community center, or sea-battered assisted living facility sagging on its oceanfront slope.
This impression turned factual as we climbed the terracotta stairs. You would likely recognize it in a portrait of its early days, only it would be perched more triumphantly, as stoic as the corseted women of the era; a mecca in the sky for the elite to flock over the masses.
A bare window is usually a voyeuristic thrill, but with all of the windows available for peering, it was less a cheeky tease of skin, and more like letting it all hang out. There was little life to glean from these panes:
The canvas-colored side of a thick curtain half-drawn. A solitary window askew. A table lamp, off, in a corner window.
Seagulls screamed into an overcast sky.
For whatever majesty it might have known, it now resigned itself to hospitality, and knew it was not our first-choice lodging. What a boondoggle first impressions are, when you’ve been around since the dawn of this nation and have forever to go.
—
The impenetrable door was like a puzzle to coax entry, littered in buttons, signage and Trip Advisor stickers (accolades seemed to peter off after 2018.) Through the warped glass, we saw the backs of heads bobbing with laughter in the dining room to the immediate left. Yet, they were unperturbed by our knocks, like we were audience members infringing on a perfectly choreographed scene.
We rang the doorbell, and a lady seemed to come out of the dark wooden walls, an apparition behind the glass.
Even once she was standing before us, splashed in early evening light and gingerly touching the sitting room piano, she was no more distinct.
The lady, I’ll call her Deb, wore the innkeeper hairstyle of the centuries: brushed white hair with the implication of a natural wave, secured in a low ponytail. She had a lilting lisp and moved like a shadow, in her dark, formless uniform.
—
She gave us her best impression of friendliness, though her profession had long muddied being friendly with being woefully familiar.
One of Deb’s first points in her welcome is sharing that the owner, Jack Marin, passed away a few months earlier. A Rembrandt-style painting instantly burned in my mind of Marin taking a tumultuous last breath, surrounded by his staff with downcast stares.
I shook this image away and did what is rarely done on your first moments of vacation, and offered my condolences.
Was Jack Marin’s death the vitality this institution was missing? If the place wasn’t haunted already, it had to be now, since his pristine vintage race cars are kept on the premises.
When Deb found out we drove from L.A., she lifted her tired eyebrows, not equipped for surprises like these.
I said we were visiting the aquarium. She nodded, appreciative to be back to familiar territory, but was baffled again when I added that we’re members of the aquarium, and love it there.
“You need a closer aquarium, huh?” She mustered in an off-script attempt that sounded more like ‘why are you here?’
I was eager to get past the threshold of where circumstance had landed us all, and see if the personality of the place had more redeemable traits than its welcome.
We took a brief tour. What the building lacked for in personality outside, it tried to make up for in every pattern and Victorian accoutrement imaginable inside. Like a vampire, Deb didn’t step into the rooms unless invited. These rooms of interest were the veranda with the ping-pong table, and our room.
Bed - The Monterey Room
She handed us the key to the Monterey Room, though the gold plate read “Monterez.”
It’s hard for any one thing to stand out in a blur of Victorian brouhaha, but the tiny plastic shower between us and the bed managed. Deb motioned to this tomb, enshrined in gold light and low lace curtains, and called this abomination a unique feature.
Our room defied logical explanation, so I changed the subject. I saw there was an Edith Head room and asked if she’d stayed. If this place was good enough for Old Hollywood’s most esteemed costume designer, it was good enough for me. But, no, it’s just Edith Head’s furniture, which Deb riffed with her own unnecessary editorial that she wasn’t even sure how they received it.
I was getting annoyed with how little interest this place had in having a claim to fame, or distinguishing itself other than just feeling like a mediocre museum to a well-worn yesteryear.
She told us to grab wine and cheese that was set out for the hour, as if it would be sacrilege to miss.
“You’ll have to stay with us longer next time,” she half-smiled, an embroidered threat.
Cheese with a View
We walked into the dining room which, for being the hub, is the most depressing room. The striped pink and green wallpaper, layers of crown molding, and tragic deep green tablecloths were in stark contrast with the boisterous guests.
All tables were lined to face the picture windows, giving the ocean beyond a wistful, theatrical quality. However, it was each of the guests trying to steal center stage, like Wine and Cheese hour was the Place to Be and Be Seen.
Eric and I crossed into their domain, where each guest clocked our entrance without addressing us. One couple sat at the corner table where they could see all sides of the room, the other couple hunched over the serving table. It wasn’t until we stepped toward the serving table that the older, retired couple confronted us on our path like wild hyenas and exclaimed, “We were just talking about you!”
Which is to say, they wondered if we would come claim our plate, but it felt strangely violating to already be inn gossip, with them not having laid eyes on us before this moment.
We picked our cling-wrapped plate and sat as far away from these social jackals as possible. Wine and Cheese hour was just that in conversation, and as hard to swallow as the club crackers. The lady in a visor in the corner tried to rouse sympathy for being a lawyer turned teacher, and diabetes was casually discussed.
However, I was grateful for conversation to ignore, over the silence Deb says sometimes happens during this hour when the guests are shy. There were binoculars to use, where we spotted many otters.
Nighttime falls
We exhausted all of our reasons to not be at the inn, or in our room, and finally closed the door of The Monterey Room for the night.
Similar to how we would feel 316 times our mass on Jupiter, the atmosphere of the room was heavy with its cumbersome furniture.
Dark wooden headboards and armoires nearly scraped the tall ceilings. Floral wallpaper rooted the walls into the dark carpet. A museum piece of a mirror moaned forward, taut on its string. Intricate furniture shouldered slabs of temperamental swirling granite. Even the cold water faucet bulb was weighed down by its own gravity, so that you could only wash your hands with the scalding water tap swung wide.
I felt small in the room, and like a giant in the bathroom: it’s low toilet, sink that sprayed water everywhere but down and, of course, the cramped, exposed shower. It felt like it was suited for an American Girl doll.
No surface existed without being fussed with. Pillow chocolates placed on a paper doily. Bar of soap encased in a crimped wrapping. It made the starkness of the mirror facing the bed uncanny, like with any glance you may not recognize what is staring back at you.
I covered the mirror with one of the terrycloth robes on offer, which still gave the impression of unwanted company, but I liked to imagine this floating robed torso as a protector, of sorts.
—
We drew the curtains, switched off the light, and the room was swallowed in the darkness of deep space. From our bed, humanity felt just as remote, the crevices of our surroundings felt just as infinite, and bed bugs seemed likely.
The only tangible feeling is contorting against the aggressively firm mattress, and… did something just brush my leg, or was that just a fold in the silken sheet?
Just when I believed I could sleep, the shower head spewed reserve water from its pipes and Eric gripped my thigh with a start.
It was unaccounted for anticipation, thinking about what the night could bring, that I couldn’t hold it simultaneously with my anticipation to be back at the aquarium the next day. I met in the middle, and just looked forward to leaving the inn, and returning to a world that makes just as little sense, but at least adheres to some rules.
& Breakfast
While bed sets you on a path toward debilitating back pain, breakfast is a ceremonious table setting worthy of celebrating seeing a new day. A soft-spoken, almost embarrassed young staff brought juice, coffee, and our picks from the breakfast menu. I wanted to ask them to blink twice if they needed help.
Peach crepes were the special, which really sounded lovely, but if I learned anything from the stay, I was beginning to appreciate simplicity.
We rang the bellhop bell to announce our departure, a brief interruption in the breakfast rush.
We stepped back into the sea air, and the door closed on its own behind us, echoing its old song.
"Reaching Through Time" (Fiction. This script was published on Underwater New York as the winner of their Brooklyn Book Festival writing competition.)
Andrew Tyson Interview (Originally published in GainesvilleScene, where I was their Art + Entertainment Editor)
Date Night Inn (Travel essay about romantic getaway turned want-to-get-away)