Abner Renta............Mortis

The deal was done and now there was no going back. Never in the history of people exchanging money for things, things large like houses, things small like Little Debbie Nutty Bars and things in-between like a full pallet of Little Debbie Nutty Bars, has there been a more immediate and intensely rueful case of buyer’s remorse than with our purchase of The Riverside Hotel, Bar & Restaurant from Mr. Abner Renta.

The ink on the deal hadn’t even thought about beginning to dry before we began discovering a treasure trove of ‘caveat emptors’, so many of so many varying degrees that if I didn’t already know the translation of caveat emptor, I would have thought for certain that it was Latin for "given any opportunity, Abner Renta will screw you".

Walking upstairs shortly after signing the deal, I discovered (all of this new since the quasi-mechanical inspection of the previous August – my last visit before the sale) a broken window pane in the John Lennon room, kind-of fixed in the most half-assed duct tape sort of fashion, with sub-zero air rushing in, two rooms with non-functional heaters, one room with a sink so stopped up that a stick of dynamite wouldn’t free it’s flow, the previously mentioned missing antique dressers, chairs and other pieces that gave the place but a little charm, and the coup de grace, a 10-gallon aluminum stockpot sitting in a back hallway, half full of water that had leaked from a massive gash in the roof, next to a wall so warped and misshapen by the leaking water that it bowed a good foot out of square at it’s center point.

I know for a fact that this was the exact hour that my body decided for me that, in spite of my previous good health and clean living, I would need consistent doses of blood pressure medicine to remain in good health from this point forward in my life, even as I rotted away in prison after having bludgeoned Abner to death with enthusiastic joy and a total lack of remorse.

Downstairs I went to the kitchen, my blood simmering at a steady temperature of 211oF; it wasn’t long before my temperature rose that significant extra degree. All of the commercial-sized pots, pans, serving trays and dishes were gone, left in their stead were a few small 10” frying pans, beat to absolute shit and in such an awful state that you would be embarrassed to offer them in a garage sale; a picker wouldn’t bother pulling them out of a trash can. In pre-sale discussions, I was promised by Abner and my realtor, who supposedly supervised Abner’s pre-sale packing of “a few personal effects”, that all of the commercial equipment would stay in the kitchen as a part of the sale. And then there was the commercial icemaker – silent, room temperature and totally barren of ice. This discovery made the cork officially pop.

I stormed out of the kitchen to the lobby, where Abner still sat in comfortable repose, still eating shrimp, still throwing the shrimp shells on the floor.

“Abner, where in the hell is all of the kitchen equipment… the pots, the pans? And what’s up with the ice maker? It’s not working?!?!”

“Oh” he said, quietly and coolly, not looking at me but casually examining his fingernails as if he’d just finished a manicure…”you noticed that, did you?”

It was at this precise point that a demon which had previously been unknown to exist in me, locked deep into the recesses of my inner most psyche, exploded out of my soul, through my mouth and into the lobby of The Riverside, making the famous chest-monster scene in ALIEN seem tedious.

I unleashed every sort of obscenity and invective that I could summon; the air in the room was searing and oppressive from my heated tirade as a continual stream of spittle flew from my rabid mouth, creating a fine mist that suspended in the atmosphere, all but afraid to find purchase on the floor below. This display was witnessed by my wife, my in-laws, the realtor and worst of all… my children, their eyes wide as pie pans as they had never heard me say anything harsher than the occasional ‘damn’, and only once a ‘shit’.

In response to this epic, Vesuvian explosion, Abner sat calmly, watching me in a fashion as wan and detached from reality as if he were watching a PBS special on fog. No doubt this wasn’t the first time that someone had dressed him down in such a manner. And really, what did he care? He had $690,000 nestled in his bank account, albeit for only a short while, and I held the keys to a 103-year old haunted, wooden, broken-down turd, permanently parked in the middle of a frozen, out-of-the-way hell hole.

His lack of a reaction only made me hotter, and it was at this point that my two brother-in-laws stepped in, both knowing that I was seconds away from diving at this lying, thieving pencil necked bastard and strangling him until his blood-shot bulging eyes popped from his sockets and rolled across the room; me laughing maniacally, gleefull as his face turned the color of Grape Fanta. They picked him up out of the chair, each grabbing an upper arm, and dragged him kicking and screaming across the floor of the lobby, through the front door of The Riverside, and literally threw him into the street.

Who would have imagined that this scene, this forceful ejection of Abner Renta from the pig in a poke that he had sold us, witnessed but one short hour after our purchase, would be my most joyful memory of Colorado, Hot Sulphur Springs and our ownership of The Riverside Hotel, Bar & Restaurant?

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The large brown gasped in the cool evening air, choking, retching, silently screaming for air….all new reactions never before experienced in his prior province. In spite of his confused state, he was aware that he had just taken a step that would forever doom him; he now wished for a swift, sudden and peaceful end to this suffering. But the pain and the suffering endured for what seemed an eternity, so long that he began to accept this state of agony as the dominant part of his new existence.

And then as swiftly and unexpectedly as he had crossed over this final threshold, the pain subsided and then vanished completely.

At long last, he found his final peace.