Yellowstone

The warmth from outside was felt in here, in the lounge. I was sitting at one of the tables, waiting for my drink to arrive. There were several tables and the bar itself was small. The tables were quite spread out, but the bar itself was crowded, even without customers. I think there was only one person at the bar. A couple was sitting at a nearby table, quietly making conversation with themselves.

Just then a woman approached the bar. She was wearing shorts and a short sleeved shirt. She looked as if she had been outside for a long time. She was dirty, sweaty, her skin glistening. Then she just passed out, and her body poured onto the floor. She lay on the floor while a couple of people, probably her party, came to her aid. The bartender picked up his phone at the bar and made a call.

The whole time I didn't move. I just watched the scene as if it were from a movie. And I was still waiting for my drink.

An attractive woman, I'd say her hair was reddish brown, walked into the bar area. She had a nice, slender figure, and her legs were as white as chalk, not surprisingly since she rarely wore shorts. Her mouth about hit the floor when she saw all of the people around the fallen woman. Then she came over towards me and sat at a table, by herself.

At this point, the bartender brought me my drink—I think it was a rum and Coke. The woman who just sat down saw this, and she smiled at me as if to say, you sure are enjoying yourself in all of this confusion. To be honest, I was, but I would have been much happier had the woman not passed out. It wasn't exactly noisy in the seating area, but there was a low murmur that was a little unsettling.

The trip up here was a good one, uneventful but good. We had stopped at a couple of different hotels. The first one was a casino in West Wendover, Nevada, which is on the Nevada-Utah border. We got there late at night, in fact. We left the casino hotel after lunch, and then we spent a few hours in Salt Lake City and afterwards headed north.

We spent a day and a night at a hotel in Idaho Falls. I liked this place. The room wasn't nearly as nice as the one at the casino, but this place had a great indoor pool. That's the best of America, an indoor pool in the middle of nowhere.

It also had a small gym enclosed with glass walls. I worked out and watched the families in that huge indoor pool. I would have been in the pool, but my girlfriend forgot her bathing suit, as usual. When I got back up to the room, she was watching tv, mad at me because I had left her alone in a small hotel room...

The rum and Coke was delicious. I felt that I should be enjoying myself now, and that made me happy. Other people would certainly think I was enjoying myself, if they bothered to notice me, and that made me happier still.

I could tell she wasn't too terribly mad at me as she was happily looking at postcards and other knick knacks that she had just purchased from the gift shop immediately next to the lounge, but I still didn't want to think about her right now. I was on vacation regardless of how she felt.

I had a great view of the fireplace, a two-sided, free-standing number in the center of the building. A large cylindrical copper hood graced it, and the stone ran the length of the flue all the way to the ceiling. The ceiling was vaulted and, directly above the fireplace, very high. In front of this side of the fireplace were a leather sofa and two large leather chairs. And even on a day like today, there was a fire. The lady who had collapsed had collapsed near the fireplace, and I watched as she was now taken away by paramedics, and at the same time, I wished I were sitting over by the fire.

Tonight we were planning on eating at the restaurant here, in this building. It was a fancy place to eat. But now, for lunch, I was going to get a hamburger in the building that housed the cheap food and the cheap touristy stuff, basically a convenience store with an old-fashioned burger place in the middle.