The Fat Innkeeper

by Alan Russell

  “I need air,” she said.

  Jimmy walked over to the sliding glass doors. He gave a mighty heave, but couldn’t get the door open. Surprise, surprise, he thought. Jimmy tried again, then apologetically turned to her. “Sometimes they stick,” he said. “I’ll have to get maintenance up here.” As if, he thought, they hadn’t been there already.

  The glass had a layer of grime, looked as if someone had been cooking bacon for a few years without bothering to clean. Through it, Cleo could barely make out the ocean. The vision taunted like a mirage.

  She walked out of the room to the hallway, Jimmy following her. Bradford would deal with this. He had made the reservation. Cleo looked around for him, saw him in the doorway of the next room. Only half of his body was visible. That was probably just as well. The half she could see had a woman’s hands embracing his buttocks.

  “Bradford!”

  He jumped a little, and the hands reluctantly released their hold. As he walked back toward their room, Bradford straightened his tie, then patted down his suit, especially the area around his hindquarters.

  “Getting rid of fingerprints?” asked Cleo.

  Bradford pretended he didn’t know what she was talking about. Jimmy was leaning on his cart, watching the scene with apparent pleasure. The preppie had been busted bigtime. Bradford didn’t like being scrutinized, especially by the peons. The staff certainly could use a course on propriety, he thought. They had crossed over that line between friendly and familiar. Hell, they acted as if they were intimates.

  He tossed the bellman two dollars. Implicit with the gesture was the unsaid word “Dismissed.” Bradford would explain the misunderstanding to Cleo, but in the privacy of their room. Missy was just a bit exuberant—that was all. He motioned for Cleo to go inside the room, but she wasn’t about to be herded. Her sudden independence might have bothered Bradford more if he hadn’t caught a whiff of something awful from inside the room. What is that smell? he wondered.

  Jimmy slowly uncrinkled the dollar bills, made a show of looking rather forlornly for more, though no one was paying any attention to him. It would have been smarter if he had hightailed it, but he liked watching his Cleopatra. The woman had gumption.

  Cleo’s eyes were on Bradford. He kept moving his nose around and sniffing. It annoyed Cleo that he wasn’t more concerned about what she had seen. “What was going on there?” she asked shrilly.

  Bradford kept sniffing. “Nothing,” he said. “Missy’s just rather high-spirited.”

  “Is that what you call it?” asked Cleo.

  “Yes,” said Bradford. “That’s what I’d call it.”

  The smell, he determined, was coming from inside their room. Bradford decided to investigate.

  Good time to leave, thought Jimmy. He was out of sight, but not earshot, when he heard a loud “What the hell?”

  Cleo hadn’t followed Bradford inside. She didn’t care about the room anymore. A woman’s hands had been clasped around her boyfriend’s butt. That was the issue. When he came storming out, she no longer shared his indignation.

  “Did you see… ?”

  She turned from him. His first impulse was to get mad at her. A flirtation was one thing, an assault to the senses quite another. But Bradford remembered that Cleo was a million bucks and then some. His million bucks. “Hey,” he said, “we shouldn’t be fighting.”

  At least not before we’re married, he thought.

  She turned back to him, very quickly, and started crying. He held her. Between sobs, Cleo said, “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” said Bradford. “I wanted everything to be perfect for you.”

  He hadn’t spent top dollar to get a room that would have put a flophouse to shame. “There’s been some mistake,” Bradford said, “but don’t worry, I’ll make things right.”

  Taking a breath of the outside air, Bradford plunged back inside the room. Tentatively, Cleo followed. She saw him pick up the phone. He knew she was watching, but even if she hadn’t been, Bradford still would have looked as if he were ready to chew off the mouthpiece. To his extreme disappointment, he didn’t even get the satisfaction of damaging a fellow human’s eardrum. The line was dead.

  He threw down the phone. He couldn’t break what was broken, but it gave him some slight satisfaction anyway. “I don’t believe this,” he said.

  Ohhhhhhh. Ohhhhhhh. Ohhhhhhh. The sound came from next door, along with a pounding on the wall. What was going on, murder? Ohhhhhh. Ohhhhhhh. Ohhhhhhh. If it was, the woman was taking a long time to die.

  Bradford and Cleo looked uncertainly at each other. What should they do?

  Ohhhhhhh. Ohhhhhhh. Ohhhhhhh. The screams were faster and louder.

  “Oh,” said Bradford and Cleo at the same time, but neither said “Jinx” and counted to ten.

  “I’m going to go to the front desk and get some satisfaction,” said Bradford, immediately regretting his choice of words. He had to speak loudly to be heard. Their neighbor’s lovemaking could have passed for a catfight.

  Cleo silently nodded. She felt intimidated by the vigorous lovemaking. Bradford was a bit nonplussed himself, though he pretended not to be. Missy’s cries followed him to the elevator. The echo stayed in his mind all the way to the lobby. Though he was still angry, his head of steam felt somewhat, well, diverted. At the sight of T.K., his righteous indignation returned. He was tired of being played for a fool.

  “I want to speak to the general manager,” demanded Bradford. “No one else will do.”

  There were other guests at the front desk. They could hear the tenor of his anger. Even the wiseass clerk, thought Bradford, knew better than to say anything back. He merely nodded deferentially, and said, “I’ll take you to him.”

  T.K. walked around the desk and out to the lobby. “This way, please,” he said. The two of them didn’t have far to go. They stopped in front of a shoe-shine stand.

  “Mr. Beck,” said T.K., “this is Mr. Toyota, our general manager.”

  The shoe-shine man nodded and smiled, then motioned Bradford into the chair. Somewhat bewildered, Bradford sat down. He had heard the Japanese were incredibly industrious, but wasn’t running a hotel and the shoe-shine concession a bit much?

  “Mr. Toyota’s English isn’t the best,” said T.K. “But his comprehension is good.”

  Felipe Valdez had worked as the Hotel’s shoe-shine man for over twenty years, and in that time had picked up amazingly little English. But his customers didn’t come to him for conversation, they came because he put a shine on shoes that captured a full moon in leather. Felipe started in on Bradford’s shoes.

  “He likes to shine and listen at the same time,” explained T.K.

  Probably some new Jap psychology, thought Bradford. By pretending he’s a servant, he actually puts me in his debt.

  “Mr. Toyota,” said Bradford.

  Felipe looked up from the shoe shine. “Toyota,” he said, smiling and nodding. They were good cars, he had heard, even though he preferred Chevys.

  “Toyota,” said Bradford, trying to pronounce it as the man had.

  The shoe-shine/general manager nodded.

  “I’ll leave you two,” said T.K.

  Bradford talked and Felipe shined, occasionally nodding. Bradford told him about the insolent front desk clerk, and the horrid condition of his room. Felipe might not know English, but he did know anguish.

  “Sorry,” he said to the man in his chair.

  The word made Bradford feel better. At least the manager cared. Bradford spoke on. Would Mr. Toyota see to another room assignment? Perhaps upgrade them to a suite for the indignities they had suffered? Or, at the least, would he have their room cleaned at light speed?

  “Okay,” said Felipe.

  “Okay,” said Bradford.

  Felipe helped him down from his chair. He smiled and said, “Five dollars.” He knew that much English at least.

  “Five dollars?” asked Bradford.

  “Five dollars,” said F
elipe.

  Smart, Bradford thought. The Japanese, more than anyone, knew time was money. The general manager could listen to problems, shine some shoes, and still make extra cash. Was that a new way of doing things? It seemed a little strange, though. You come with a complaint, someone shines your shoes, and then you pay money. It was definitely different.

  “Five dollars,” announced Bradford and Felipe at the same time.

  As if programmed, Bradford said, “Jinx, you owe me a suite, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.”

  “No ten,” said Felipe. “Five dollars.”

  Bradford gave him the five bucks, and the funny-looking Jap thanked him loudly. Shaking his hand, Bradford wondered what, if anything, Toyota was going to do for him. But he had said “Okay,” hadn’t he?

  As Bradford walked away, he couldn’t help but admire the shine the man had put on his shoes. His loafers looked better than new.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  It was the strangest prayer Am had ever heard, if indeed it was a prayer. In the good old days a prayer usually started with some invocation to God, and ended with an “amen.” These, apparently, were not the good old days.

  Brother Howard (he didn’t call himself the reverend, or father, or rabbi, or some of the more familiar religious titles) had offered his own unique liturgy. It was an invocation of sorts, although he never used the word “God.” Brother Howard relied upon euphemisms, referring to the Good Guide, the High Host, and the Supreme Conscience, to name but a few. Contextually, it was difficult figuring out if Brother Howard’s God was the embodiment of enlightened mankind, or a deity. The ambiguity bothered Am. Purported holy men who can’t say “God,” he thought, revealed quite a spiritual stutter.

  The theme of Brother Howard’s speech centered on listening to the dead. It wasn’t exactly the séance that Detective McHugh had presaged, but it was close enough.

  Brother Howard didn’t need the prophets to back up his observations. He called upon a patchwork philosophy, managed to draw in everything from the Tibetan Book of the Dead to the kind of quotes you find in Reader’s Digest. The world had but to open their ears, said Brother Howard, to hear the voices of the dead. These voices, apparently, were that much more accessible if you bought Brother Howard’s videotapes, audiotapes, and books.

  He didn’t wear a clerical collar but a black turtleneck, and sported an ankh instead of a cross. He was modern times, believed in an earring instead of a hair shirt. The mote in his eyes was the result of bright-blue contact lenses. He had a turquoise bracelet, and a large turquoise ring. Maybe that’s why he made so many “Great Spirit” references. Brother Howard was about forty-five, and knew the crowd’s preferences better than a Bible-thumper knows chapter and verse. He was of average height, and average weight, and he knew the averages. His hair was dark, save for a silver streak that ran from front to back. Am figured in the dark it probably glowed.

  “T.S. Eliot,” said Brother Howard, “wrote these words:

  What the dead had no speech for,

  when living,

  They can tell you, being dead: the

  communication

  Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the

  language of the living.”

  Eliot also wrote, remembered Am, “In the rooms the women come and go, talking of Michelangelo.” Given a choice, he would have preferred conversing about Michelangelo.

  “Why is it,” asked Brother Howard, “that the bards hear what we cannot? Let me read again: ‘The communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.’“

  He allowed for a literary moment, a silence to let everyone contemplate the words. “I don’t need to tell many of you who are here about the great outer reach (Brother Howard also preferred euphemisms for death). But I can teach you to listen, and hear what is being said. Listen now.”

  Brother Howard let an even longer silence build. “Did you hear anything?” he asked.

  No one replied.

  “Do you know how to listen?” he asked.

  Again, no one said anything.

  “Do you want to learn how to hear the dead?”

  This time the crowd responded. Many yelled. There was head-bobbing fever. Everyone, except Am, was enthusiastic. He thought it was a rare person that listened to the living, so why did everyone imagine the dead would so capture their attention?

  Brother Howard offered some “attuning” exercises. The dead apparently made themselves known in a number of ways. They didn’t exhibit themselves like poltergeists, he said, didn’t rattle or shake things, or fly around the room. The dead existed in another plane. They didn’t speak, at least not like the living, but anyone could develop an “inner ear” to sense their presence.

  And if you believe in Tinkerbell, thought Am, just clap your hands together.

  The UNDER attendees tried following Brother Howard’s advice. They closed their eyes and were instructed to “release their spirits and open themselves.” While everyone around him was trying to do just that, Am found himself thinking about the Fat Innkeeper. Hiroshi had talked about spirits, had even suggested you had to listen to them, and in some cases appease them. He wished he could close his eyes, and do as Detective McHugh had suggested, just ask Thomas Kingsbury some questions. But if the dead were talking, Am couldn’t hear what they were saying. There were only the echoes of Dr. Kingsbury’s last words, and those weren’t any help at all.

  Brother Howard’s listening session came to a close. An UNDER dinner banquet awaited. For those interested, he said, communing with the dead would continue after dinner. Brother Howard also mentioned he was available for private consultations, and, of course, his “exploration and listening guides” could be had in the dealer’s room. Words from the grave apparently didn’t come cheap. The dead were a much bigger business than Am had ever imagined.

  In any enterprise, there are the sincere, and those who attempt to exploit the sincere. Brother Howard spoke the New Age message well, but there was something about him that indicated the language was a new one to him. But if he was a wolf, thought Am, at least he knew to wear natural fibers.

  A familiar face passed by and awakened Am from his musing. “Clara,” he called. “Clara.”

  She chose not to hear him, tried to lose herself in the crowd. Am pursued her, finally caught up, and then blocked her path.

  “Oh,” she said. “Hello, Am.”

  He shook his head. “Clara, you know better.”

  Clara Appel tried to pretend she didn’t know what he was talking about. For years, she had been persona non grata at the Hotel. To look at her, you would have thought she was an honored guest. Clara’s clothing was always immaculate, her makeup impeccable. She was in her late fifties, to all appearances a well-heeled La Jollan. Once, she had been just that. But she’d been divorced a dozen years, and the settlement she had received was now spent. You can take the woman out of La Jolla, but not the La Jollan out of the woman. Clara had never been able to adjust to her new circumstances. The Hotel had always been her playground, her place to spa and dine. Even though she was destitute (she spent the year going from friend’s house to friend’s house, though never acknowledging her financial straits), Clara didn’t see any reason to give up the Hotel. She just “adopted” groups. Clara had participated in countless conventions, had sipped the choicest liqueurs at hosted bars, had dined on the finest banquet food, all at the expense of the group and/or Hotel. It was hard not feeling sorry for Clara. She didn’t attend the gatherings merely for the free eats and drinks. Clara was convinced that she would meet her future husband at a group function. In her fantasy, they would live happily ever after—in La Jolla, of course.

  “Let me walk you out, Clara.”

  “That’s kind of you, Am.”

  “Breeding” and appearances were important to Clara. If she was ever reduced to a shopping-cart existence, Clara would probably put a Mercedes medallion on the grille of the cart.

/>   The Hotel had tried to dissuade Clara’s frequent appearances, using tactics that ranged from psychological to confrontational. Everyone from the police to counselors had been brought in. Clara had been threatened and cajoled, had spent time in both jail and county mental health, but her brief incarcerations didn’t seem to bother her. She always returned to the Hotel. One manager had even tried bribing her, had offered Clara complimentary lunches on a periodic basis if only she wouldn’t keep crashing functions, but she couldn’t be bought off.

  When asked to leave, Clara never resisted, but that didn’t stop her from coming back the next day. Though the banquet staff would never admit it, many of them turned a blind eye to Clara’s presence. It was easier to ignore her, to treat her like the other conventioneers. She was a chameleon that fit into every group function, and was especially good at weddings. Am wondered how many times she had ended up in wedding albums, with the puzzled bride and groom both at a loss to figure out who the mystery woman was. “But I thought she was your Aunt Doris… ?”

  “Did you enjoy the talk tonight, Clara?”

  She offered Am a slight, regretful smile, and shook her head. “I am afraid I did not, Am.”

  That surprised him. Clara invariably expressed delight at all the gatherings she attended. It didn’t really matter what the event was. Clara had sat through more presentations than most figurehead royalty, had listened and happily mingled with gatherings of butchers, and bakers, and candlestick makers.

  “Why didn’t you like it?”

  “I didn’t care,” she said, with patrician dignity, “for Brother Howard.”

  Am nodded agreeably. Brother Howard certainly didn’t offer old-time religion. “His message was a little bit different,” he said.

  “His words didn’t bother me,” said Clara firmly. “It was the man himself.”

  Her vehemence was unusual. Clara’s conversations always tended toward the pleasant. She was invariably polite (even on the one occasion when the police had handcuffed her and led her off the Hotel grounds for trespassing, vagrancy, and violating a restraining order, as well as a few other charges that Melvin Carrelis had insisted upon).