Authors: Dianne Harman
"My wife and I need a room for tonight. Do you have anything?" Jeffrey asked.
"Sure. It ain't the best motel room in the world, but if yer tired, it'll be a good place to sleep. It's cheap, only $50.00 and it's clean," the old man said.
Maria knew how tired Jeffrey was and decided they would spend the night there no matter how bad the room was. It was that or risk an accident. She hadn't said anything to him, but she was sure he had nodded off a couple of times during the last half hour he'd been driving. Jeffrey filled out the guest registration form the old man gave them and paid for the room with his credit card. The old man handed them a key and told them to follow the walkway to room number 2.
The walkway cement had huge cracks and parts of it were just holes where once there had been cement. An old children's saying played in Maria's mind as they walked to their room, "Step on a crack, break your mother's back." She didn't know where that was coming from. Maybe it was the sense that she was a child again, not knowing what the future held.
While the room wasn't great, it was just as the old man had described, clean and cheap. Faded wallpaper peeled away from the wall under a heating vent over the bathroom door. The bathroom had no amenities other than a plunger standing guard next to the toilet. Maria hadn't had much experience with motel rooms, but even she knew that having a plunger on "standby" was not a good sign. She was glad that she had brought her own soap and shampoo. The blankets were thin and the towels were worn, but the room would do for the night. They ate the sandwiches she'd fixed earlier. Exhausted, they got in bed and immediately fell asleep.
When they awoke the next morning, the desert air was crisp and clean and the sky was a spectacular shade of blue. There was not a bit of city smog and you could easily see for twenty miles. It was as if they could reach out and touch the nearby Eagle and Coxcomo Mountains. Having no desire to stay at the motel any longer than necessary, they returned the room key to the old man. As they were walking away, he said, "By the way, if you know anyone who wants to buy this joint, I'd sell it real cheap. I'm getting too old to run it and my health has taken a turn for the worse thanks to those damn cancer sticks I'm always suckin' on," he said. They told him they'd keep it in mind, got in their car, and headed back towards the highway.
Maria and Jeffrey arrived in the Phoenix area just before noon. "Let's get some lunch. We haven't eaten anything since last night and it's too early to find a room." Maria said. "There's a restaurant in Phoenix I've read about that's supposed to have the best Mexican food in the world. I entered the name of it on my iPhone. I'll call them."
Several minutes later they were on their way to the restaurant after realizing they were just a short distance from its location. They pulled into the packed parking lot. Obviously, they weren't the only ones who had heard about it. The small building was painted in the colors of the Mexican flag, red, green, and white. A large handwritten menu was taped over a window where a man was taking orders. To his left was the kitchen where an old woman was hand forming and frying one tortilla after another on a hot griddle. The take-out style food that the small kitchen was turning out was mouthwatering. The only seating available was at small tables located under a large, white canvas awning. Maria and Jeffrey took their iced teas, found an empty wooden table, and waited for their number to be called.
They looked around. The tented room was filled with every type of desert cactus that could be grown in the Phoenix area, their spikey cactus blooms jutting out of the various shades of green in a myriad of colors. The review Maria had read in the magazine said the restaurant catered to a cross section of the Phoenix population. The review had been right. There were well-dressed men in suits sitting next to ranchers in cowboy hats. Students, medical personnel in their scrubs, and women who spared no expense in personal upkeep were all there. The food was the best Mexican food they'd ever had and Maria was pretty critical when it came to Mexican food. They shared chili rellenos, baked cheese, fresh tortillas with salsa, and an incredible pork stew. Stuffed, they walked out of the restaurant, feeling good for the first time in 24 hours.
"Well," Jeffrey said, "now what? Where do we go and what do we do? I'm absolutely lost."
"I've been thinking," Maria said. "You know how that old man back at the motel said it was for sale? Well, what if we bought it? Don't say no until you hear me out. It couldn't be too much money. I mean, how many buyers do you think he's going to have? It looked like there was a small house in the back where we could live and you've always talked about what you would like to have in a lab if you could build your own. Well, this is your chance. You could build your own lab just the way you want it and then conduct your experiments right on the premises where we live. You will have the best of both worlds. The place is remote and no one will be watching over your shoulder. You could sell any new discoveries you make to drug companies and since they'd be new discoveries, your past work with Moore Labs wouldn't be a problem. We have enough money. We could fix up the motel and make it inviting with a better welcoming sign along the highway.”
Jeffrey interrupted her. “Wait a minute. What are you talking about?”
Maria continued, "I bet we're not the only travelers who got tired on that long drive and there's nothing else for miles. We could get some better electricity and install Wi-Fi. Most importantly, we'd be together. If we buy that motel we can accomplish the two things that are most important to us, being together and continuing your research. I'd be fine being alone with you in the desert. We decided before we were married that we wouldn't have any children, so being far away from schools and city life really wouldn't be a problem for me. I love to cook and I could make things for travelers to eat, not a full service restaurant, but things they could heat up in a microwave. I could prepare casseroles at night and coffeecakes for in the morning. You wouldn't have to do anything concerning the day-to-day operation of the motel. I'll do it all. While I take care of the motel, you could continue your research full time. What do you think?"
Jeffrey was at a loss for words. He had promptly forgotten the conversation with the old man.
Just
idle
talk
, he thought. Clearly though, Maria had given it a lot of thought on the drive to Phoenix. At first, it seemed like the craziest thing he had ever heard, but as he thought more about it, he realized her idea had some merit. There were a number of new experiments he wanted to try. Some were only quasi-legal and he knew no bona fide scientific laboratory would allow him to do them. There were ideas he had that might work, but only if no one was around to monitor him while he conducted his research. If he lived at the motel, he would be totally alone with no one snooping around or asking dumb questions.
He liked the idea of complete privacy that the motel's location provided. If one of his projects didn't work out, no one would know and he could just go on to the next one. He knew where he could get the supplies and materials that he would need. Maria was probably right about the motel not being expensive. He couldn't imagine there would be a bidding war going on for a run-down motel in the middle of nowhere.
During the last year or so, another thought had come to him from time to time. Maria was taking the anti-aging hormone and clearly, she was not aging. If anything, she was more beautiful than ever. Jeffrey knew that some of the best scientific discoveries in history had been made by older scientists who were getting up in years. When he started work on his anti-aging hormone, he had decided he wouldn’t take it. That was before he met Maria. He had started to worry that as he aged, she would begin to look around for a more attractive man, one who was younger. There was a fourteen-year age difference between the two of them and while it didn't seem to matter now, later on it might.
Certainly every person who saw her was struck by her incomparable beauty. He was still completely mesmerized by her shimmering black hair, her high cheekbones, the large welcoming smile, the incredibly white teeth, and a female figure that could serve as a poster for every plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills. What people didn't know was that everything about Maria was natural with the exception of the anti-aging hormone, which kept her looking young. If they lived at the motel, he could keep her to himself. He knew she needed him for the hormone and he also knew she really loved him. The chances of her leaving him for a younger man might be dramatically reduced if he agreed to her proposal. Buying the motel might just be the answer to everything.
Jeffrey weighed the consequences of Maria's suggested course of action. He didn't want to ever see anyone from Moore Scientific Labs again. He didn't want to answer questions and he didn't want to discuss what had taken place in Sidney's office. He and Maria both loved to read and they enjoyed a quiet type of life, but could they live the rest of their lives alone in the desert with just an occasional traveler to talk to besides each other? He didn't know. But he was also pretty sure that he was looking at a menu of very limited choices.
"Jeffrey, let's go back to the motel. Let's take our time and really look at it. We need to think about what we could do to improve it. And just as importantly, we need to find out how much he wants for it. I know it sounds crazy, but it might work. We can't spend the rest of our lives running from place to place. The cost of improving it will probably be far more than what we'll pay for it. We could sell our condominium and the beauty of the motel’s location is that we'd still only be a few hours from our families. By the way, we need to think of something to tell them. If we bought the motel, we could just say you're suffering from burnout and we decided to do something totally different. It would work. I feel it."
A lot of what Maria said was true. He agreed to go back and look at the motel.
Good
God
,
this
is
nuts
, Jeffrey thought.
I'm
going
to
look
at
a
motel
in
the
middle
of
nowhere
with
the
idea
of
buying
it
,
fixing
it
up,
and
living
there
.
This
is
a
long
way
from
being
interviewed
for
winning
the
Nobel
Prize
,
but
what
the
hell
;
it
might
just
work
.
CHAPTER 14
Maria and Jeffrey were both quiet on the drive back to the motel, each lost in their own thoughts. Maria felt that the motel had "good bones" and they could begin with that. She knew it was going to take a lot of work, but the small desert town of Blythe wasn't far from the motel. There had to be some contractors in Blythe who probably needed work. She imagined there wasn't much work available, particularly in these tough economic times.
What she couldn't get in Blythe, she was sure she could get in Phoenix. She already knew that she would need new furniture, paint, and light fixtures, which was probably just the tip of the iceberg. When the motel was open, she could make one trip a week into Blythe for groceries and miscellaneous items. They had passed a UPS truck a while ago so she knew that she could order things from the Internet and have them delivered to the motel. She'd have to discuss the matter of Wi-Fi and electricity with the contractor, as she wasn't quite sure how all of that would work. She became lost in a world of colors and decorating ideas, making for a very short trip.
While Maria was absorbed in thoughts about decorating the motel, Jeffrey was thinking about the lab he would build. He knew he'd need a lot of electricity for some of his experiments and he would prefer not to draw attention to the motel by using such a large amount of electricity. What if he installed a number of solar panels to generate electricity? Jeffrey had been thinking for a long time about how to harness and store solar energy. He knew there was no present technology available for storing solar energy, but he wondered if he could build a big battery that would store the energy and then it could be used when there was no sunlight. Until he could get the solar power technology worked out, he knew he could always get electricity by using a gypsy line which would divert the energy that was coming through the high voltage wires he had seen last night near the highway that led to the motel. He began to make a mental list of what he would need.
Now that he was no longer employed by Moore Labs, he would have to get the ingredients for the hormone he was injecting into Maria from some new source. He knew where Moore Labs had purchased the materials and he was pretty sure he could do the same. It might cost a little more because they would have to be bought in smaller quantities, but he didn't have any choice. The basic ingredients came from extracts of plants that grew in the Amazon. It was illegal to bring them into the United States, but a laboratory in Mexico had been processing and selling the distilled products in the United States through a special trade agreement. He would have to make a trip to Mexico and find a way to get the raw materials he needed. They were an essential part of the monthly injection he was giving to Maria.
For many years, Maria had suffered from occasional bouts of depression. Jeffrey thought he could probably compound a drug that would help her, but he hadn't been able to do it while he was working at Moore Labs. He could always tell when one of her periods of despair was coming on. It began with her talking about feeling like she had "wet wool" in her brain. She would take a few days off from work, stay in the condo with the lights off, wear an old robe and slippers, and close the blinds. She had taken various drugs such as Xanax and Prozac, which helped her for a while, but then a few weeks or months later, the depression would always recur. Jeffrey was certain it was tied to her fear of aging, but he couldn't quite figure out what he could do to treat her. He decided when he went to Mexico to get the extracts for the anti-aging hormone; he would also get other supplies he felt could become part of a "feel-good" drug he was certain he could make.