Home Sweet Motel

by Chris Grabenstein

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Do you guys do this comedy routine every day?”

  “You bet. Rain or shine.”

  He nodded and talked to somebody on his cell. “You should definitely switch motels, Charlie. They got these free shows and stuff for the kids. It’s a nice amenity.”

  Then he handed me a twenty-dollar bill.

  What do you know?

  Grandpa and I just earned our first tip.

  If we kept this up, we’d have that bank loan paid off in, oh, a little over a decade.

  Apparently, Gloria Ortega had been watching our frog show from up on the second-floor balcony.

  She came down the stairs and handed me a dollar bill.

  “Add it to your tips,” she said.

  Sweet. Now we had twenty-one dollars.

  “You guys are good,” she said.

  “Thanks.”

  “You do this all the time?”

  “Well, my grandfather used to. I’m kind of new to it.”

  “Can I be honest with you…uh…” She hesitated because I’d never told her my name.

  “P.T.,” I said.

  “Petey?”

  “No. Pee. Tee.”

  “You’re kidding. Like P. T. Barnum? The showman, hoaxer, and all-around huckster who never said, ‘There’s a sucker born every minute,’ even though everybody thinks he said it? I did a report on him last year. He was a very smart businessman. Nailed the whole concept of personal branding before anybody else even called it that.”

  “That’s the guy,” I said. “He also started the Barnum and Bailey Circus. He’s kind of a hero to me and Grandpa.”

  “So your name is Phineas Taylor Wilkie?”

  “I prefer P.T.”

  “So would I. Speaking of suckers…”

  She bobbed her head toward the second floor. The six college kids were coming out of their rooms.

  “Lose the goofy striped jacket and hat,” said Gloria.

  “What?”

  “Trust me. It’s the wrong image if you want to appeal to the college-aged demographic. Not at all cool.”

  “Oh, really? Says who?”

  “Me. And anybody else with eyeballs. Hurry. You need to do a second show.”

  “How come?”

  “Because those college kids have friends, and you have rooms to fill.”

  “What? How do you—”

  “Motel capacity is extremely easy to monitor, Phineas. Your Vacancy sign is still lit. Whereas the ‘No’ neon is so dusty, if you ever did turn it on, no one would see it.”

  “Are you, like, a detective or something?”

  “No,” said Gloria. “Not to brag, but I’m a business wiz. And frankly, right now I’m also extremely bored. I wouldn’t mind investing in your roadside attraction start-up.”

  “You mean you’d give us money?”

  “Sure. I’d love to. But I don’t have any. I mean, I would if I played the stock market with real money instead of, you know, just pretend digits on paper. This morning, my portfolio was up fifteen percent. I’m a billionaire. Or, you know, I would be…”

  “If you had any real money.”

  “Right. But what I’ve got, P.T., is business smarts. Savvy. Acumen. The know-how you need to move on from the low-hanging fruit and start drinking water from a fire hydrant.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s business talk, P.T. Work with me. Now get your frog talking again. Better yet, let’s hear it sing. We need to hook those suckers—I mean, college kids.”

  “How about we do a little Croaky Karaoke?”

  Gloria snapped her fingers and shot me double-digit pistols. “I like it, I like it!”

  I grabbed the walkie-talkie out of the frog’s mouth.

  “You ready for round two, Grandpa?”

  “Roger that and ten-four, good buddy. This is fun. Like back in the day.”

  “Great. Do you know that song ‘Take Me to the River’? The one Big Mouth Billy Bass sings on TV?”

  “Know it? I have one of those fish hanging on the wall back here.”

  “Great. Wait for your cue. Gloria?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Stand by to sing along with Freddy.”

  “What?”

  “You’re my first pretend customer.”

  The college kids were headed toward the parking lot.

  “Here you go, little lady,” I said to Gloria through the bullhorn. “The megaphone is yours. Sing along with Froggy!”

  Grandpa started singing a very froggy version of Big Mouth Billy Bass’s greatest hit: “Take me to da river…”

  Gloria Ortega sang along: “Drop me in the water!”

  Then they destroyed the next verse and chorus.

  The college kids thought it was such a goof they forgot where they had wanted to go and paid ten dollars each to sing along with Freddy the Frog.

  So did some of the parents and little kids. Especially when Grandpa added new songs to Freddy’s repertoire: “Someday My Prince Will Come,” “Bein’ Green,” and something called “Froggy Went A-Courtin’ ” that only Grandpa and a college kid from New Jersey knew the words to.

  By the time we were done, we had over one hundred dollars stuffed inside a sand bucket that a six-year-old had let me borrow.

  And the college kids were texting all their friends, telling them to check out (and check in to) the Wonderland!

  Saturday evening, ten more of our rooms were booked.

  Most of the new guests asked Mom when “the next frog show” would be.

  Good thing I was there in the lobby.

  “All day, on the hour, starting at eleven. Croaky Karaoke starts at three.”

  Mom just sort of looked at me.

  When all the new paying customers were checked in, I explained what Grandpa, Gloria, and I were up to. I also gave Mom $117.49.

  “For the balloon payment,” I said. “Or you can just buy a bunch of balloons to decorate the lobby. Your choice.”

  She smiled. An actual tear welled up in the corner of one of her eyes. I think. Like I said, Mom never cries. But there was something moist glistening up there before she immediately wiped it away.

  “Thanks, P.T.,” she said. “Every little bit helps.”

  That night, Grandpa, Gloria, and I rigged up a better sound system for the frog.

  We installed a speaker (so I could cue Grandpa with the walkie-talkie), a microphone connected to an amp and a pair of headphones (so Grandpa could hear people without me repeating everything through my bullhorn), and an old video camera (so Freddy, aka Grandpa, could see people better and say things about their clothes, their hair, their lack of hair, their complete baldness—whatever).

  And, yes, it’s amazing how many shoe boxes jammed with electronic junk and cables Grandpa had stockpiled in that workshop of his.

  Fact: he has never thrown anything away.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong,” said Gloria when we were done rigging our gear, “but hasn’t your motel been half empty since forever?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “More or less.”

  “So why the sudden push to increase cash flow?”

  “Can I be totally honest with you?”

  “You better be. Especially if we’re going to be business partners.”

  “Are we?”

  “I think so. I’m bored, remember?”

  “Right. Okay. Five years ago, my grandpa took out a one-hundred-thousand-dollar loan on this motel, and now, all of a sudden, we have to pay off the whole thing in, like, twenty-nine more days.”

  Gloria nodded. “Your final balloon payment, so called because of its large size. You see, P.T., a balloon-payment mortgage is not fully amortized, or paid off, over the term of the note, thus there is a balance due at maturity.”

  Okay. That went right over my head. WHOOSH!

  “How could you possibly know that?” I asked. “You’re my age.”

  “You’re twelve?”

  I nodded.

  “C
ool. But it doesn’t matter how old I am, P.T. Like I told you: I love this stuff! I’m a marketing maven. And guess what?”

  “What?”

  “That’s exactly what you guys need.”

  On Sunday morning, Gloria Ortega was brimming with new ideas.

  “Merchandising, P.T. Marketing. These are things I learned about in J.A.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Junior Achievement. It’s a school club where you learn how to unleash your entrepreneurial spirit and run your own business.”

  “Like on that TV show Shark Tank?”

  “Sort of. See, we move around a lot. My dad’s working his way up the dial, hopping from one TV station to another all over the country, hoping to one day make it to the big league: ESPN.”

  “Wow. That would be awesome.”

  “Yeah. It might also be impossible. But, hey, it’s his dream. Anyway, whenever Dad needs to move to a new city, I always make sure the school where I’ll be going has a J.A. program. Makes the transition easier if, at least after school, I’m going into semi-familiar territory.”

  “So what would J.A. do with Freddy the Frog?”

  For an answer, Gloria dumped a shopping bag full of stuff she’d just bought from Dollar Bill’s Discount Barn, a bargain store up the boulevard in the strip mall: one hundred rubber frogs, a Sharpie pen, and a jumbo bottle of all-natural green food coloring.

  “The frogs were four for a dollar, or twenty-five cents each. We write the name ‘Freddy’ on the back with the marker and sell them for five dollars. Net profit? Four dollars and seventy-five cents per frog.”

  “Why would anybody pay five dollars for a twenty-five-cent toy frog?”

  “It’s not a toy frog, P.T. It’s a memory.”

  Seemed Gloria and Grandpa thought the same way: people came to Florida for sunshine and magic they could remember long after winter blew into town again.

  I had only one question for my new “business partner.”

  “And how much of that four-dollars-and-seventy-five-cents profit do you take home?”

  “Just give me back my twenty-five cents per frog.”

  “Seriously?”

  She shrugged. “Like I said, with no J.A. business to run until school starts, I’m extremely bored just sitting in my room making money on paper with my pretend stock portfolio. You know, I’d be a billionaire…”

  “If you had any real money.”

  “Exactly. Besides, your mom is awesome. She’s definitely role-model material.”

  “She is?”

  “Hey, she’s kept this old-school, retro motel running without ever flipping on the No Vacancy sign. That must’ve taken some kind of major money-shuffling miracle.”

  “Yep. According to Mom, that’s why we call it the Wonderland: ‘Because it’s a wonder we’re still open.’ ”

  “But, P.T., you are. And somehow, she did it. Plus, not to get all mushy or anything, I sort of like the wacky decorations. There’s a giant mouse nibbling sausage and cheese right outside my window.”

  “That’s Morty D. Mouse. He hails from Sheboygan, Wisconsin, where he used to work at Ye Olde Cheese Shoppe.”

  “Hmmm. Maybe we could sell cheese. No. Scratch that. Bad idea. Wisconsin is cheese; Florida is chocolate-covered coconut patties.”

  “And orange juice.”

  “Right. We can add the Florida angle later. Let’s stick with what we know is working: Freddy the Frog. Okay, big idea. Let me blue-sky it for you: We set up a digital camera and computer. Take ‘official’ photographs of folks posing with Freddy. Run them through my Print Shop app so we can add a ‘My Friend Freddy the Frog’ banner on the bottom. Then we email our customers the finished files. We could charge, I don’t know, ten bucks a shot.”

  “Ten bucks? Do you think people will pay that much when they could just take a selfie?”

  “They’re on vacation, P.T. Their brains are taking the week off, too.”

  Wow, I thought. Gloria’s good.

  And she got my wheels spinning.

  “We should print up copies of lyrics to all those songs Grandpa knows,” I suggested. “It’s easier to sing along with Freddy if you know the words.”

  “Perfect,” said Gloria. “Way to be proactive.”

  “So, what’s the bottle of green food coloring for?” I asked.

  Gloria gestured toward the self-serve ice-cream machine. “Is that thing really out of order?”

  “No. We just can’t afford to give away free ice cream anymore.”

  “I agree. But you could sell it. Say three dollars a cone? And, P.T.?”

  “Yeah?”

  “It isn’t ice cream.”

  “No?”

  “Nope.” She jiggled the jug of green food coloring. “It’s Freddy the Frog’s Frozen Green Pond Scum.”

  Who knew singing karaoke with a giant green frog could be such a huge hit?

  Especially with college girls.

  And wherever college girls go, college boys seem to follow.

  Sunday afternoon, our pool was mobbed. Suddenly, it was the place to be on St. Pete Beach. We were so busy once the texts and tweets started flying I had to call Pinky Nelligan, Kip Rand, Porter Malkiel, and Julie Scarboro to ask them to lend a hand selling souvenirs.

  They worked for free, too. All they wanted was a Frozen Green Pond Scum cone (and to watch all the big kids make fools of themselves).

  Johnny, our former pool boy, who’s a senior in high school, heard about all the college kids flocking to the Wonderland pool and begged Mom to give him his old job back.

  “I’ll take a pay cut,” he told her.

  Mom gave him exactly what he asked for.

  My job? Well, since I didn’t have to work up a sweat passing out towels anymore, I could concentrate on cooking up a story to make Freddy come alive.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, there is a reason why Freddy the Frog wants you to take him to the river and drop him in the water. He figures after he’s had a nice bath and splashed on a little cologne, he’ll smell good enough for one of you young ladies to pucker up and kiss him on his extremely thin frog lips.” I eyed some of the college guys. “And from the look of things, some of you ladies have had experience kissing frogs….”

  On one of our breaks, Grandpa came out of his workshop to beam at the crowd. His smile was so big he looked like one of those happy sun-head men wearing sunglasses you see all over Florida postcards. (I never figured out why the sun would need sunglasses, unless, I guess, he drifted past a mirror.)

  “This is how it used to be, P.T.,” he told me. “Never thought I’d see it again. Thanks, kiddo.”

  Then he tousled my hair.

  Fact: he’s the only one in America allowed to do that.

  Mom loved what we were up to, and not just because we were raking in fistfuls of cash.

  “This reminds me of when I was growing up here at the motel,” she told me when I nipped into the air-conditioned lobby between shows to rest my voice. “You’re a lot like your grandfather, P.T. He used to make up all sorts of outrageously ridiculous stories. And guess what. I loved every single wonderful one of ’em!”

  She leaned in and kissed me. SMACK! Right on the cheek.

  “Sorry,” I told her. “I didn’t turn out to be a prince, either.”

  She smiled.

  “Yes, you did, P.T. A long time ago.”

  “So…do I have to wear a crown and funny tights?”

  “No. Please. Don’t.”

  Mom took the money we’d collected so far into the office so she could lock it up in the safe.

  That first haul was nearly one thousand dollars.

  When the day was done, we’d raked in close to three!

  “Not bad,” said Gloria, my business partner and chief marketing advisor. “But, P.T.?”

  “Yeah?”

  “We need to do better. Much, much better.”

  The pool pretty much cleared out around five o’clock.

  Everybody was
heading off to grab something to eat.

  “Note to self,” Gloria said to her iPhone, which I think had one of those note-taking apps. Either that, or she was just seriously strange. “Work out a deal with nearest pizza parlor to deliver frog-themed pies. ‘Lily Pad’ for pepperoni. ‘Warts and All’ for a pizza supreme with everything on it. ‘Swamp Gas’ for green peppers, garlic, and onions.”

  Gloria Ortega had business ideas the way Grandpa and I have story ideas.

  “Why do you say we need to do ‘much, much better’?” I asked after Pinky and the gang headed home. “We made nearly three thousand dollars. We keep that up every day for a month, we’ll take in ninety thousand dollars. All the increased room bookings should bring in at least another ten thousand bucks. That means by the end of April, we’ll easily have the one hundred thousand dollars we need to pay off the banker.”

  “Your math is solid, P.T.,” said Gloria.

  “Thank you.”

  “But your logic stinks. How can we possibly keep doing this for a month?”

  “There are other attractions,” I told her. “If the singing frog bit becomes boring, we can move on to Dino the Dinosaur….”

  Gloria shook her head. “That’s not my point, P.T. We need to make one hundred thousand dollars this week. School’s back a week from tomorrow, remember? Spring Break will be over. Not just for us, but for most of these snowbirds and college kids, too.”

  “Well,” I said, “other colleges take the next week off. Other families, too.”

  “So, what? You’re going to play hooky for a month? Ask the nice police officers to do the voice of Dino the Dinosaur when they show up to haul your butt back to school?”

  She had a point. Mom wouldn’t let me skip classes for a whole month. It would look bad on my permanent record.

  “Well, what can we do?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Gloria. “But don’t worry. I’m working on it. Brainstorming a few notions that I hope to fast-track into concepts.”

  When we reached the office, Gloria’s dad was casually leaning on the front counter, chatting with Mom, who had a dreamy sort of look in her eyes I had never seen before. Plus, she had taken off her glasses. Something weird was definitely going on.