A Shrine to an Unknown God

FOREVER LOOKING IN

WE PASS OUT mid-jam-session sprawled out across the hotel bed and wake early the next morning. I'm taught how to use toothpaste and deodorant, and Marisol plays the album again. When "Voulez-Vous" comes on, we all scream, grab onto one another, and break out in our dance. After we've all gotten dressed—which, with all four of us vying for one bathroom, and the distraction of our Mamma Mia! dance party and sing-along, takes a considerable amount of time—we head down to the floor with the counter and the doors, which Dahlia tells me is called the lobby.

There's a new person behind the counter, a man with tired, drooping eyes. (I demand to know what happened to the perky girl. Dahlia drags me away before I get any answers.) Marisol lets him know that we're leaving and answers the questions that he asks. Then she joins us and lets us know that she called us an Uber to get to the airport. To my confused expression, she explains that it's basically a bus but smaller.

When it arrives, we go outside to find it: a mini black bus. The driver, a young woman, rolls down her window.

"Are you Marisol?"

Marisol nods and opens the first door, sliding into the mini bus. Dahlia opens the second door, gets inside, and I follow suit. Ezra gets in behind me and shuts the door.

"Antigone, you've gotta buckle your seatbelt, hun," Dahlia tells me, and then shows me how: grabbing hold of a thin silver rope, she brings it across her chest and inserts it into a small red-and-gray device. There's a small click. I do the same; the rope itches at my neck.

"So the airport, huh?" says the woman. "Where are you guys headed?"

Dahlia cups her chin into her hand. "Home."

"That's so cryptic. What the fuck."

"'Murica!" explains Ezra.

There's something to what they're saying, a nuance I do not understand. While nothing they have said is particularly interesting, they're all beside themselves with laughter, like it is an inside joke. It is frustrating to me, both to not understand and to feel like I'm on the outside of this conversation, forever looking in. What if it's always like this? What if there are always these nuances that go right over my head? What if I'm always an outsider?

"What's so funny?" I ask.

"I don't even know." The driver taps her long nails against the steering wheel. "So where in America are you guys from?"

"Florida," Marisol scoffs. "Dante's eighth level of hell. Like if you took a Waffle House, magicked into a swamp doomed to forever sink into the earth, and then populated it with retirees, racists, and tourists." The way she describes Florida makes it sound like Tartarus. And yet in her voice there's something akin to affection, like she's describing a misbehaving child.

I tap her on the shoulder. "What's a Waffle House?"