Running the Bulls Page 8
—Jake Barnes, to Robert Cohn, The Sun Also Rises
The Holiday Inn was on the corner of Fifth and Rayburn streets, but smelled as though it should have been sitting next to the Bixley dump. Tobacco smoke twenty years old was now embedded in the tattered carpeting, which had so many small, black craters burned into it by careless cigarettes that at first Howard thought the round spots a part of the original design. As he waited for the receptionist to appear from wherever the hell she was, he glanced around the front lobby. Two artificial indoor trees stood faded and haggard in their plastic pots. A coffee urn sat on a table in one corner, beneath a sign that said Help Yourself Complimentary Breakfast, 7 to 9 a.m.
In its heyday, the Holiday Inn had been a magnificent idea when it arrived in town, flaunting itself like some big-city showgirl. It had its very own lounge, one that sported plush sofas and chairs, and was considered a fine place for white-collar folks to gather for a happy hour drink. Many of the teachers from Bixley Community College, as well as from the high school, could be seen there often, munching on microwave egg rolls and little weenies floating in some sort of reddish sauce. And, of course, listening to Larry “Mr. Mellow” Ferguson play the piano and sing songs by everyone from Sinatra to Captain & Tennille and John Denver. At least, it used to be like that. But these days Larry was belting out “Like a Virgin” by Madonna; and a couple of Waspish and horrible renditions of rap songs; and “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” the Guns N’ Roses version. “Hey, at least it was originally by Dylan,” Larry always leaned into the microphone and informed his small crowd of listeners when the manager wasn’t around. This manager, a tense young woman sent by the home office to save what was left of the floundering establishment, was perpetually on the cusp of firing Larry Ferguson, or Mr. Time Warp, as she had personally nicknamed him. Wally, the bartender, had shared this tidbit with the regulars who sat at his bar. “She told Larry he has to catch up with the times,” Wally whispered to Howard and Pete, during one happy hour a few days earlier when the two had stopped in for a cold one after a game of golf. “Or Larry’s ass is spring grass.” It seemed as if everyone was whispering at the Holiday Inn now, as if in fear that the very rafters—probably rotted to the core with years of steam from countless weenies—would come crashing down on their heads otherwise. But Larry himself had been confessing the problem to his audience. On those Friday and Saturday nights when the tables would be a third full, and the piano man perspiring more than ever, he would lean close to the microphone. “If I don’t bring in a younger crowd,” Larry would whisper to his retired and semiretired listeners, the sweat beading up on his brow and catching the bluish spotlight that seemed to come from some hole in the roof, “my ass is spring grass.” Then, peering over his shoulder for Eva Braun, his own nickname for the manager, he’d defy her by launching into “Crocodile Rock,” in honor of the good ole days. This always brought Ellen and Howard and the other schoolteachers to their feet. You could jive to Elton John, just as if he were Bill Haley, and Larry Ferguson knew it.
The Holiday Inn had been a part of Howard’s life for a long time. Once a year, for years, Howie and Ellen had penned a song request on a napkin and then asked the waitress to take it up to Larry. And once a year, for years, Larry had feigned surprise at reading the request. “Let’s see,” Larry would say, the sweat beads on his forehead shaping themselves into a thin, blue-gemmed tiara under the spotlight. “This is another anniversary night for Howard and Ellen Woods. Now, what could they possibly want to hear?” Then, he would pretend to read on the napkin: “Somebody please help me, I’m trapped! And it’s signed, Howard Woods!” The crowd would snicker in appreciation, and Howard would wave a hand at Larry, pretending to be embarrassed by the whole thing, and the waitress would bring the celebrating couple a drink on the house. And then, Larry would finally play “It’s All in the Game” by Tommy Edwards, knowing the words well. Many a tear has to fall but it’s all in the game. Larry had played that song on their anniversary for almost twenty years, ever since the Holiday Inn had opened its doors. The first notes on the piano would be Howard’s cue to whisk Ellen to her feet and waltz her onto the little dance floor. It used to be you could go to the Holiday Inn, eat egg rolls and weenies on a real glass plate, drink a good martini, and feel like a million bucks. But after Eva Braun arrived, there were no more complimentary drinks, no matter how regular the regulars had been over the years, and no matter what the occasion. Expenses were being cut back, or so she had informed the piano man, the bartender, and the waitresses. “And no more free drinks for you between sets,” she’d told Larry, who by then had learned to guard his ass as though it were a piece of his front lawn. The same went for Wally. “Only water is free. Everything else you people pay for.”
“We got two rooms left, a double and a king,” Howard heard someone say. He turned and saw that the receptionist had finally materialized behind the reception desk, where she was supposed to be all along. She smelled of smoke, and Howard realized that she must have sneaked into some back area for a cigarette. He stared at the No Smoking sign over her head. Why do people who smoke think they can fool people who don’t smoke? Howard had always wondered. “You want one?” she asked, her breath finally reaching him with its sour tobacco odor. At first he thought she had meant a Winston or a Marlboro, until he remembered where he was.
“Well, now that you mention it, I am here for a room,” Howard said. What had happened with civility? With good manners? With a business treating its customers as though they were, well, important to the company? Maybe politeness was being cut back these days, too. After all, it takes less time to be rude. “Is one of those rooms nonsmoking, by any chance?” The receptionist banged a few keys on her computer board and stared at the monitor as though she were looking into some crystal ball. Or maybe she envisioned herself on the Enterprise, gazing forth into other worlds. The new Holiday Inn just starting up on Mars, perhaps. A moon of Jupiter. It was just a matter of time, after all. Howard rocked on the balls of his feet while he waited for a reply.
“Yup,” she finally said. “The room with the king, right next to the ice machine. What credit card will you be using?”
***
Howard had no doubt that room seventeen, next to the ice machine at the front of the building, and with a king-size bed that looked more like a sad shrimp boat, might be considered a nonsmoking room by a heavy smoker. He, however, smelled the aftermath of countless cigarettes the moment he opened the door. Smoke clung to the curtains, the thin towels, the worn bedspread, to every fiber of the shoddy rug. He saw nothing that reminded him of the welcoming room that had been there in 1978, when he and Ellen spent one of their anniversaries in a king-size bed. It had been a splendid room, he remembered, not fancy but brightly new and still proud of itself. A bucket of champagne had been sent ahead and was waiting for them, Compliments of Larry, Wally, and the Gang in the Lounge. And there was a vase of flowers on the desk, from the Holiday Inn itself. And a coupon for a complimentary breakfast in the dining room, two free drinks in the lounge, all part of the big Getaway Weekend offered by the motel.
Howard stood in the doorway of the small bathroom and stared down at the single bottle of shampoo and conditioner, two chunks of manna in one. Next to it lay the fragile shoe-shine cloth, the ubiquitous plastic-shower-cap-in-a-box. Did anyone really use those caps? Howard picked the box up and studied it. Place on your head before showering, the instructions advised. Had confused Japanese businessmen used them as condoms, thus necessitating instructions? He lifted the cover of the commode and saw that the seat was protected by a narrow strip of paper that a mosquito could break if it sat its ass down. Two large chunks of the white enamel around the inner lid had been chipped away, leaving dark blotches that hinted of seagull droppings. Maybe it was not the very same room with the king-size bed in which he and Ellen had celebrated their silver anniversary, the big twenty-fifth, when he had given her a small diamond necklace. But it was cert
ainly one like it. And therefore, it was symbolic as hell. As Howard Woods situated his suitcase on the floor beneath the clothes rack—he took note of his own ironing board and iron—he knew in his retired heart that he had come full circle.
***
At four o’clock Howard left his room and walked down the corridor, with its shabby rug and dizzying design, to the big double door that said Lounge. It being a Sunday, only a few diehards were in the place, most likely travelers passing through town, since Howard saw no one familiar. He slid onto a stool at the end of the bar and waited for Wally to discover him there. The red seats of the chairs and sofas, so plush in their heyday they were like plopping down on fat strawberries at the end of a weary week, were now threadbare from all those white-collar rear ends: bankers, salesmen, lawyers, nurses, postal workers. Howard stared down the row of empty bar stools. The upholstery had grown so thin that the cheap bluish fabric beneath was now exposed, like painful nerve endings. And, adding insult to injury, the stools had grown lopsided, causing all those white-collar butts to now tilt, even slide a bit from left to right. Before, the plushness had whispered subliminally to the customer that perhaps he should stay awhile. Nowadays, the slanted stools only seemed to shout, Hey, buddy, let’s down that drink and keep moving! Even the decor of the bar—Howard had once thought it Far Eastern and alluring—had grown sickly, too much gilded effect for the approaching millennium. The help-yourself weenies and egg rolls had given way to salsa and tortilla chips, which one could eat from a community bowl with one’s own hands.
Some things hadn’t changed, simply aged, and those were the pictures and signs behind the bar. One was a black and white 8×10 of William Cohen, Maine’s own son, now Secretary of Defense in Washington. Back in Bill’s hungry days he had walked from one end of Maine to another, a regular vagabond, stopping in to shake hands with Wally and sign a photo for the wall. Next to Bill Cohen was a yellowing publicity shot of Lola Falana. To Wally, Thanks for coming, it said. Love, Lola. Wally had gotten it while at a club in New York City, but unless a customer asked, it appeared as if Lola had sat on one of the plump strawberry-red stools right there at the Holiday Inn in Bixley. Wally liked it that way. “She was the Queen of Las Vegas,” he always said. “It’s good for business.” Wally said this long after only his most sincere regulars could remember who the hell Lola was.
Next to Lola’s picture was Wally’s handmade sign: Home of the World’s Best Martini! It was pretty damn close to being true, too. At least, as Howard saw it, no one north of Boston could outsmart Wally on the semantics of a perfectly executed martini. This fame had prompted Wally to outdo himself, perpetually, so that he had become a walking encyclopedia on the history of the drink, so much so that he, too, was in danger of losing his job. Eva Braun had forbidden him to fraternize any more than was necessary with the regulars.
“She told me that while I’m talking to customers, they’re not drinking,” Wally whispered to Howard, as he put a martini in front of him. Howard shook his head with sympathetic understanding.
“What a bitch,” he said.
“She said she’d rather see the customers drinking double scotches than martinis, since they don’t take as long to make,” Wally added, a worried glance tossed over his shoulder. Howard shook his head again.
“There’s no courtesy left for customers anymore,” Howard said. He wondered if he should inform Wally about his own induction into the Corporate Hall of Lies and Rudeness, thanks to the Ford Motor Company. But just then Wally shot him a swift look of terror before he fled to the other end of the bar where he began digging in the beer cooler. Howard looked up to see a slightly built woman in a crisp business suit standing in the doorway and peering into the lounge. Seeing Wally hard at work, she disappeared.
As Howard sat munching on tortilla chips and sipping his martini, he remembered the grand opening of the Holiday Inn, back in 1976, a splendid thing for Bixley. He and Ellen had been pleased to finally have an uptown place to come to for drinks and dancing. Before the Holiday Inn had pranced into town with its big green letters and its little red weenies, the white-collar teaching crowd had had to find comfort in the local and noisy taverns. The Holiday Inn had been an answer to their social prayers. As Howard waved for a second martini, he remembered that he and Ellen had even shared a drink there, during one happy hour, with Ben Collins and his mousy little wife. What had been her name? Sheila? Sharon? Susan? He wondered now if Wifey had known all along, if Ben’s own conscience had pulled him awake at night, pulled him from his own toasty marriage bed. Or maybe she’d found out all by herself: a gas receipt from that trip to Buffalo, a motel bill, a smear of red lipstick around that damned white collar. Howard felt anger rising in him again at just the thought of Buffalo. He turned on his lopsided stool and stared at the room before him. The same table was there, a couple of matchbooks crammed under two of the legs, hoping for some kind of equilibrium. The chairs pulled up to it were shoddy. Even from the bar Howard could see the small, telltale black craters on the rug. He wondered if one of those cigarette burns had been caused by Ben’s little mouse of a wife, that very night all four had sat around that table listening to Mr. Mellow. Did she smoke? Was she pretty? Did she drink too much? Were her breasts large or small? In truth, Howard couldn’t remember her particulars at all, and yet they’d been compatriots and hadn’t known it. They’d been foot soldiers in the same war. They had spent time together, on a social afternoon now more than twenty years old. Did Ben and Ellen pity the two of them, the Mole and the Mouse, for their ignorance? Had they kicked feet beneath the table, telling each other to look at the idiots? Funny, but Howard could remember that it was snowing that day, fat flakes covering the sidewalk as they parked their cars in the Holiday Inn lot and then made their way through an inch of fresh white, toward the smell of egg rolls and weenies. He had even balled up a handful of thick, wet snow and tossed the ball of it at Ben Collins. What the mind recalls in times of stress! And Ben had tossed a snowball back—the dirty bastard—and then they’d all gone inside, stomping snow from their boots, their laughter crisp and clear on the chilly air, the Holiday Inn itself still a virgin. They thought they’d be teachers in their prime forever, didn’t they? Thought they’d be looked upon with reverence from students passing them in the long, drab hallways. Forever. Students meeting up with them in grocery stores, red-faced to learn that their professors actually ate food, which meant they must shit now and then. Students who were running to plump middle age themselves. Howard had always imagined that he and Ellen would remain in their prime, perpetually teaching literature and history. Why spend all that time in college seeking an advanced degree otherwise, if it was just to be wrested from you one day? Forever. Like some image on a vase that Keats could write his odes around. Forever and ever. But Howard knew the truth. Regardless of how well the teaching world had treated Ben and his Mouse, or how well it had treated Howard and Ellen, all four horses’ heads had finally sprinted past retirement. They were, as the Belle of Amherst knew so well, now pointing toward eternity.
Shit.
“Hey,” Pete said, as he slid onto the stool beside Howard. “Did you get a tee time for tomorrow?” Howard nodded. Nine thirty. Plenty of time for him to satiate himself at the Help Yourself Complimentary Breakfast Bar—which probably meant peeling back the paper cup of a stale bran muffin and shuffling some cornflakes into a Styrofoam bowl—before he would drive out to the Bixley Golf Range and join Pete for tee off. Howard shoved the basket of chips and bowl of salsa over to Pete.
“Where’s the weenies?” Pete asked. He looked back over his shoulder in the general direction of the buffet bar, where the little blue flame had risen up under the miniature hot dogs for all those years.
“There haven’t been any weenies in here for almost a year,” said Howard. “You been hanging out at Red’s Tavern too much.”
“No more egg rolls?” Pete seemed about to cry. Howard shook his head.
“Nada,” he said. Pete fingered through the broken chips in the basket.
“What’d you do?” he asked. “Eat all the unbroken ones?” Howard nodded.
“That’s the general idea,” he said. “The company that makes those bags of chips counts on you throwing out the broken ones so that you’ll have to buy more. They probably had a meeting with their chip designers over that. Make sure half of ’em break, boys.”
Pete smiled.
“So you’re still on that corporate America is ruining us stuff?” he asked.
“Well, it is,” said Howard.
Wally appeared with Pete’s martini and put it in front of him. He was gone just as quickly. Pete stared after the bartender, astonished.
“What lit the fire in his pants?” he asked. Howard looked down the bar at Wally, who was cowering behind the draft beer dispenser. Before he could answer—and, yes, the answer itself would include corporate America—Pete Morton held his delicate glass aloft and aimed it at Wally, who pretended not to see.
“Oh, perhaps it’s made of whiskey,” Pete chanted loudly. “And perhaps it’s made of gin. Perhaps there’s orange bitters and a lemon peel within. Perhaps it’s called martini, and perhaps it’s called, again, the name that spread Manhattan’s fame among the sons of men.” Pete waited, a wide smile on his face, for Wally to respond. Nothing. Bottles clinked from Wally’s end of the bar, indicating that he was very, very busy.
“Pete,” said Howard, hoping to stop him. But Pete was on a roll. After all, Wally Davis had been making Pete Morton martinis for over twenty years, had taught him every damn poem, every song, every shanty that saw fit to mention the talents of the martini. This is what had made Wally the “Martini King” in the first place. But, sadly, as Wally had come to know all too well, the trouble with being king is that you’re always in danger of a good beheading.