SOMEWHERE SPECIAL

by Salvatore Buttaci

It was supposed to be a getaway celebration, our 10^th wedding anniversary. Turns out the operative word here is “getaway,” so forget “celebration.” We got away all right, so far away we ended up lost.

“Why not go somewhere different this year,” my wife said, weary of the same old Rustic Lodge five minutes from our home, the motel where we had so far spent nine over-nighters since that first July 10when we were pronounced man and wife.

With the help of Mapquestᵎ™ and despite several wrong turns (I have a sense of direction worse than a broken compass), at last we found the Concord Manor Hotel two states away in Pennsylvania.

We were both in a less than good mood, nearly running out of gas, which Diana said was my fault since I was the driver, to which I defended myself by hurling back, “You're the damn navigator whose job is to keep an eye on the controls!”

So I paid for the suite, carried in two matching luggage pieces, sat on the king-size bed and remote-clicked the TV on.

“I'm hungry,” pouting Diana whines, “so don't get too comfortable because those sandwiches we ate in the car hours ago were nowhere enough.”

My question, “Can't we grab a bite at Burger King™ next door?” met with a squinting killer stare, so we hit the unfamiliar highways in search of a five-star steakhouse and, not finding one, got terribly lost, and drove in the darkness for three grueling hours before we miraculously found our way back to the Concord Manor.

“Happy Anniversary, Honey,” I said, but Diana, without turning from the half-wall mirror where she was brushing her teeth, raised her other hand and flipped me the bird.

BIO

Salvatore Buttaci is an obsessive-compulsive writer who writes everyday. His work has appeared widely. He was the 2007 recipient of the $500 Cyber-wit Poetry Award.

His collection of 164 short-fiction stories, Flashing My Shorts, is available from Amazon.comat http://tinyurl.com/26u8huk His upcoming book, 200 Shorts, will be released in mid-2011.

He lives with his wife Sharon in West Virginia.