The Road to Amazing (2 page)

Inside the Amazing Inn, Christie
turned on the lights, and it was just as great as I remembered. The
house wasn't new exactly, but still modern. It was all one floor,
with lots of angles and lines, and sunken steps, and huge picture
windows that looked out over the water — up toward Blake Island to
the north and down toward Point Richmond on the opposite side of
Puget Sound. Somehow the house was bold and interesting, but
unobtrusive, a beautiful picture frame outlining the sweeping water
view. Just outside, the house also had a massive wrap-around
deck.

The main room was by far the biggest,
with a high ceiling and open area that flowed into the kitchen and
the dining room, off to one side. The plan was for our wedding
ceremony to take place out on the deck, which was (hopefully) big
enough for sixty-seven people, but we also had this large inside
room in case it rained.

We couldn't afford a honeymoon, it's
true, but we'd managed to find a pretty fantastic wedding venue.
That made me happy, and Kevin was smiling too.

Christie had shown us the house once
before, months earlier, but now she went over the basics: what not
to put down the garbage disposal, where the extra toilet paper was
stored, stuff like that.

When she was showing us the gas fire
pit out on the deck, she stopped and said, "Oh, I'm sorry, I hope I
didn't forget to ask. There aren't any kids staying this weekend,
are there?"

"No," Kevin said. "No
kids."

Was it my imagination or did Kevin
sound kind of wistful?

Honestly, this was another
thing about the wedding, sort of a disagreement between us.
Remember what I said before about gay guys all wanting to get
married? Well, a lot of gay guys don't just want to get married —
they want to
get
married
. They want the whole kit and
caboodle. (Does anyone say "kit and caboodle" anymore? Did
anyone
ever
say
"kit and caboodle"?).

They want to cuddle in
front of the TV, hate-watching
American
Horror Story
. They want Thursday game
nights, and Saturday dinner parties, and Sunday trips to Costco.
They want a dog, and a late-night health club, and a house with a
yard (but not a house in the suburbs, because, come on, gay guys
aren't
crazy
).

And kids. It suddenly seemed like
every gay guy I'd ever met was talking about having
kids.

I don't want kids.

Some people say, "Never say never! You
never know!"

But I'll say it:

I. Will. Never. Want. Kids.

I don't want to offend anyone, so I'll
leave aside all the talk about how kids are shrill and stinky, and
how most parents talk about nothing except how amazing their shrill
and stinky kids are (and how, thanks to their kids, they never get
enough sleep).

The point is, I had all these plans
for my life, things I wanted to do, that would simply have been
impossible with kids in the picture.

I was never shy about this opinion
with Kevin. He was pretty clear with his feelings too: that he
didn't know for sure, but yeah, he probably wanted kids someday. So
before we planned the wedding, we sat down and talked it all out.
Basically, I said, "I'm never going to want kids. Are you okay with
that?" Because kids aren't really something you can compromise
on.

In the end, Kevin had said, "Russel,
it's fine. Being with you is more important than having kids. Kids
weren't that big a deal to me anyway."

It was great to hear, but even now,
months after we'd had that conversation, I wondered if it was
really true.

* * *

Later, Kevin stayed in the house
unpacking, and I walked Christie to her car.

"Thanks for everything," I said. "This
place really is amazing."

"Oh, that's not why we call it the
Amazing Inn."

"What?"

"It's named after the town. Amazing,
Washington."

"Yeah?" I'd lived in Washington State
most of my life, and I'd never heard that name before. "Where's
Amazing?"

"Well, it doesn't exist anymore. But
it did, years ago. Right here."

"Wow," I said, only mildly curious. I
wanted to get back inside the house and check out the Jacuzzi tub
in the master bedroom.

"Sorry, not
here
exactly." She
gestured toward some trees on the opposite side of the road.
"There. You can see ruins and everything."

I looked over my shoulder.

It turns out I'd been wrong: the road
hadn't ended where I thought. Just up from the parking area,
another dirt road headed off into the forest. But it was so
overgrown that I'd missed it, or maybe I'd assumed it was only
another driveway.

"Ruins?" I said.

"Well, not ruins-ruins. Just some
foundations and an abandoned well. I'm sorry, did I ask you if
there are going to be any kids staying here this
weekend?"

"Yes," I said. "And no, no kids.
Absolutely no kids!"

"Oh, I'm sorry," Christie said, and I
felt bad I'd sort of snapped at her.

"When was all this?" I said, lowering
my voice. "When was there a town here?"

"Turn of the last century. Amazing was
one of the stops on the Mosquito Fleet. Just a small place,
really."

Puget Sound was a long, complicated
series of bays and waterways, and back before they built good roads
to connect all the cities and towns on the sound, people used boats
to get around. There had even been this circuit of private
steamboats that ran up and down Puget Sound, stopping at each dock.
Because this was the main source of transportation, towns grew
around those docks. Later, the roads got better, and people started
driving cars, so the Mosquito Fleet was replaced by the Washington
State Ferry System, which had boats big enough to carry cars. But
it wasn't the same thing. The Washington State ferries only stopped
at ferry landings, and there was usually only one landing per
island.

"So Amazing disappeared when the
Mosquito Fleet faded away, huh?" I said, feeling a little pleased
with myself that I knew as much as I did about local
history.

But Christie shook her head. "No. It
was years before that."

"Yeah? What happened?"

"No one knows."

I looked at her
skeptically.

"It's true!" she said. "Apparently,
one day the whole town simply vanished. The people, I mean, not the
buildings. There were only twenty-six people total. One day they
were here, and the next day when the steamboat arrived, they were
all gone."

"That's crazy. Someone must know where
they went."

Assuming it's even true
that the people vanished in the first place,
I thought.

"No," she said. "People
have studied it. Every few years, a reporter writes an article
about it for the
Seattle
Times
, or does a piece
for one of the local TV stations. A team of historians came out
here once — stayed at the inn almost two weeks. Everyone thinks
they can solve the mystery of Amazing, Washington, but no one ever
does." Christie fumbled for her keys.

I looked back over toward the road to
Amazing. It still wasn't completely dark outside, but it was funny
how quickly the road disappeared into the trees. I swear I couldn't
see more than five feet down it.

I'd been bored with her story at
first, but I wasn't anymore. I mean, come on, who doesn't love a
mystery?

"What do
you
think happened?" I
asked.

She found the keys in her purse and
looked up at me. "What?"

"To the people of Amazing."

She looked over at the road, even as
she seemed to draw in on herself, like a vole ducking out of sight
from a raptor.

"What?" I said.

"Nothing."

"No, seriously. I want to
know."

Clutching her keys, she stared at
me.

"Aliens," she said at last.

I laughed before I realized that she
hadn't been kidding.

"Really?" I said.

She nodded at me with wide
eyes. Then she lowered her voice, as if someone was going to hear
us way out in the woods of Vashon Island, or cared about alien
conspiracies anyway. "This guy came and stayed here once, and he
told me all about it. They look for places like Amazing — remote,
isolated towns. And they
observe
, sometimes for years. Then
one day it happens: the people disappear! Aliens did the same thing
to that colony on Roanoke Island in Virginia back in the sixteenth
century."

At this point, I was
thinking:
Have Kevin and I really rented a
house for the weekend from a crazy person?
What if this wasn't even her house? Maybe her angel-guide had
told her she had permission to start renting out the neighbor's
house as her own.

"Some people think the aliens build
re-creations of these remote little towns on their spaceships," she
went on, "so when they're finally abducted, the people don't even
know it! The people of Amazing might still exist, their descendants
anyway, living on some alien spacecraft!"

I was back to being bored with
Christie, and also a little nervous that she might suddenly pull a
knife on me, so I said, "That's really interesting. Anyway, well,
thanks for everything! We'll leave the key where you told
us."

I think she heard the dismissive,
freaked-out tone in my voice, and I felt guilty again. I mean, I'd
been the one to drag it out of her. Who was I to make fun of her
beliefs?

But she got my message. She
exaggerated a nod and starting climbing into her car.

Now I felt like I sort of
owed
her
an
apology.

"I mean, maybe
there
are
aliens," I said. "Who knows?"

She slammed the door in my face,
intentionally or not, and I watched her pull out and drive away.
Her headlights swept across sword ferns coated with dust from the
gravel road.

Oh,
well
, I thought.

I didn't go back to the
Amazing Inn right away. Instead, I drifted over to the start of the
dirt road to Amazing. But night was falling fast, and I still
couldn't see any farther into the shadows. I wanted to walk down it
a bit, to see if there was anything
to
see, but I hadn't brought a
flashlight. Besides, I didn't want to leave Kevin to do the
unpacking alone.

* * *

I carried another load of supplies
into the house, and found Kevin in the hallway peering into one of
the bedrooms.

"What are you doing?" I
asked.

"Trying to decide who should get which
room," he said. "I don't want anyone upset with us. I mean, come
on, we have some pretty quirky friends."

I nodded toward the kitchen. "Come on,
help me unpack."

"But—"

"It'll be fine."

He hesitated for a second, then he
laughed. "Yeah, I'm being stupid."

Out in the front room, we both sort of
stopped and looked around, taking in the awesomeness of the house,
and the fact that we'd been able to rent something so cool. I was
twenty-five years old, and I'd long ago stopped thinking of myself
as a kid, but I didn't really think of myself as an adult either.
Seeing this great house, knowing we'd somehow managed to get it for
our wedding, was making me feel more grown up than a checking
account or a credit card ever had.

"It's really happening," I said,
feeling a little dizzy. "We're really doing this."

"I know," he said. "Can you believe
it?"

By the way, I don't think I described
Kevin. Basically, he was Zac Efron hot, with dark hair and a cute,
impish grin. He was clean-cut and sensitive, and he wore contacts,
and sometimes black-rimmed glasses, which I always said made him
look like a hot TV nerd. None of this was the reason I was marrying
him, but let's face it, it sure didn't hurt.

Kevin stepped up in front of me — he
was a little taller than I was. I put down the groceries I was
carrying, and he took me in his arms. He bent his head down,
nuzzling his face in my neck.

"Mmmm," he said, "you smell like
Russel."

"You smell like Kevin," I said, and he
really did: clean and masculine.

"I love you."

"I love you too."

Then we kissed, and I
thought to myself,
I am the luckiest
person alive
. I definitely didn't feel
dizzy anymore.

You're skeptical, aren't you? You're
thinking back over all the things I mentioned in this chapter — my
reluctance to mention the wedding at first, the little moments of
tension between Kevin and me, our disagreement over having kids —
and you're thinking, "Something's going on. There's something he
isn't saying."