Midnight Champagne

Valentine's Day. Mid-afternoon. A crossroads thirty miles north of the Illinois state line, each highway straight as a stickpin holding fast a tidy seam. Who can't describe the American heartland, those glorious patchwork quilts of corn and wheat But this is deep winter, the sun pale as ice. The winter fields are the featureless white of amnesia, of terror or forgiveness. Fence posts and wind breaks divide them like the clear, clean lines of desire. And right smack in the middle of it all, unexpected as a gold tooth in a child's ivory smile, sits the Great Lakes Chapel and Hideaway Lodge, mired in a pool of ploughed asphalt.

At a glance, the Chapel doesn't look so bad: big-shouldered old house with twin dormers overlooking the parking lot, redbrick chimney, lace curtains thick as cobwebs in the windows. After checking in at the lobby, guests zig and zag along an asphalt path until they reach the Hideaway Lodge, a long, low structure housing thirty-six suites--some with peekaboo views of Lake Michigan--divided by a shotgun hall. All are decorated according to theme: Caribbean Holiday, Night in Tunisia, Mountain Vista, Paradise. But locals still remember the Chapel and Lodge as the notorious dance hall and roadhouse it once was, operating without censure until 1959 when its proprietress, a woman named Gretel Fame, was murdered by a jealous lover. People who spend the night here are usually from Milwaukee and Chicago: tourists looking for a little local flavor, adulterers with pre-rehearsed alibis, couples lugging the weight of their marriages between them like so many stickered steamer trunks. Couples who get married here are generally those (so the saying goes) too young to know or old enough to know better: the brides' beauty spelled out in eyeliner and whipped-topping hair; the grooms sporting ruddy, alcoholic noses and flashing too much cash.

What else about this crossroads catches the eye Not much. A stretch of struggling businesses known as Bittner's Plaza. A few houses, no more than a dozen, spaced as neatly as buttons. A billboard advertising the Great Lakes Chapel and Hideaway Lodge's Fabulous Hot Tub Suites: a handsome man and woman smile in a lazy, self-satisfied way, the woman's breasts caressed by a succulent burst of steam. Every few years, crossroads residents join forces with various church groups, perhaps an aspiring politician or two, and present Ralph Bamberger -- owner of the Chapel -- with a petition regarding that billboard. Bamberger files these and other petitions in the circular file. Opposition is the nature of business; he doesn't let it bother him too much. A man can't expect that everybody will throw flowers at his feet all the time. What yanks his bobber is how often bullet holes have scarred the billboard couple's complexions like a mysterious rash. Each time, he pays good money to have everything repaired. What else can he do Bullet holes don't make the right impression on potential clients. Bullet holes don't fit with the storybook wedding Bamberger helps them imagine when they all sit down together in his posh planning parlor off the lobby: the bride- and groom-to-be, sometimes their parents, more likely their grown children, and all of their wallets fat as plums. His daughter and partner, Emily, takes notes as Bamberger explains the options. Marriage is a challenge, that's a fact, he'll say. So you might as well start things off on the right foot.