Can someone wake the man in the corner ?

Detroit, or Ferndale, or Troy, or wherever the hell this place is.

All I know is we are doing about 90 miles per hour on the freeway in the
general direction of somewhere civilized while I try and make a hotel
reservation over the phone. However, as we have no real idea where we are
at present I'm playing a geographically oriented version of '20 Questions'
with the reservation agent :

"We have a hotel in Troy"

"How far is that from here ?"

"Where are you ?"

"Um, Plymouth. No. Northville. I think. We just passed the 96."

"Ok, let me look"

"Oh. No. We're actually on the 96. I think we passed the 275. We're
heading east..."

And on it went.

We were only doing this because all the hotels in Ann Arbor were full.
There was something interesting going on in town, but they wern't going
to tell us what it was and we weren't allowed to sleep there. So we had to
try our luck in the suburbs of Detroit.

Eventually we just cut our losses, got some hand waving directions from
the agent and, an indeterminate time later, checked into a motel in the
middle of nowhere and went to get something to eat.

That's when we found The Party.

Walking into the first most decent place we could find we decided that we
would just settle down for one drink and a nice meal. We were sitting in
what was, at the time, the quiet end of the bar area debating what to
eat when we noticed that it was getting increasingly more crowded. Almost
unpleasantly so. After we had moved our table about three feet and the
waitress had tried to squeeze her way past for the fourth time, we finally
bailed her up and asked what was going on.

Oh, yeah, sorry about that. You see tonight is kind of special"

"How so ?" I asked.

"Well, one of the regulars here died the other day.

"He died ?"

"Yes. He was a really nice guy. He used to come in all the time and would
always sit here at the end of the bar. He was often in my section.

"Really ?"

"He was like only 40 or something, it was really sudden. So all his
friends are here to, well, say good bye."

Now I was honestly curious, I had to ask.

"So, how did he die ?"

"Oh," She said. "Liver failure."

WTF ?

On the inside I know we were both screaming to say something like "What,
liver failure? Are you out of your minds ? Are you having any guilt
issues right now ?". But on the outside, we did our best to keep our
composure.

My sales guy nearly sprayed his drink all over the table and tried not to
laugh. I tried keep a straight face and change the subject as
quickly as possible. I think we ordered more water for the table just to
make her go away.

As I watched them order another round of tequilas, I wanted to be
incredibly cynical and ask something like if any of these guys were in a
gun club. I wanted to know if when someone accidentally killed themselves
did they celebrate by getting together and shooting each other
in the foot.

"This might have killed Frank, but look, I can still walk."

But I figured that might get me thrown out. Instead, we ate as quickly as
possible and got out of there before either of us said something
embarrassing or offensive.

I guess you just have to get back in the saddle.


Tags travel,detroit,hotel,restaurant