Going Native (14 page)

At 10:28 youngest daughter Ceryl shuffled in to relieve him for his regular 10:00 rounds. She stood before him and bit into the white meat of a green apple, daring him with her bold eyes to speak a word, any word. She herself had only begun talking again after a willful two-year hiatus of indeterminate cause. Emory should have known there'd be trouble later when, at ten, she insisted on trick-or-treating Halloween night in a white hockey mask, tattered work clothes, and brandishing a large plastic machete -- the renowned panoply of Jason, the
Friday the 13th
mass murderer. The family business had worried, gnawed, and sundered the family bond. We are guests in our own lives.

At the heart of the Yellowbird Motel behind an unmarked gray door beside the great throbbing Coke machine was the windowless cinder-block office of Mrs. Adaline Fyfe, housekeeper for more than three decades, an old and loyal friend of the original Mr. Carson's (her back rubs caused him to squeal like an animal), whose trust had been scrupulously handed on to each of his successors as if it were a rare heirloom. Her understanding of what was commonly meant by the phrase "ordinary people" had undergone considerable renovation during her years here on the front lines of human intimacy. But she refused to gossip about her guests, she divulged little of her own past, she was the woman who kept the secrets in an era that no longer believed there were any secrets worth keeping, each morning sending out her girls, none of them as innocent as they looked, to comb and collect the daily tidal wrack from under the beds, back of the closets, behind the toilets, the crumpled condoms, the soiled menstrual pads, stiff handkerchiefs, stained panties, spoiled food, damp bathing suits, lost dentures, toothbrushes, dildos, bodily fluids, their residue everywhere, the domestic staff armed now with surgical gloves in this new Age of Latex.

Mrs. Fyfe enjoyed her work, its petty concerns enough to distract her from the self she had only to confront at night in the twisted space between the extinguishment of the television and the wobbly flight of consciousness down the tunnels of sleep, that mummified self wrapped in the resinous linen of stale memories growing ever more distinct, more detailed, more frightening, under the paradoxically magnifying lens of the years. When she closed her eyes, she was falling. Sight was an anchor, sight and work that kept her from that other place. Her big Victorian house lately emptied of all companionship but that of her scolding cats, she was supplied by her job with an adequate measure of human commerce, mother to her girls (love lives of Byzantine complexity) and father confessor to two guilty and confused generations of the Chace family, whose nominal head arrived each day about this time, facetiously declaring his affection, begging for her hand, imploring her to make him a happy man.

"Good morning, Mr. Chace," she replied.

"All secure in the blockhouse?"

She rendered her daily report, the room tally, the damage, the theft, the latest update on the developing laundry crisis, withholding the information that she suspected Cherie of stealing toilet paper from the supply room, and Tad, the pool boy, of spiking her tea with chlorine. She checked his hands, relieved to see they were empty of the fresh pages he often rushed out to her for a breathless reading she found impossible to follow, having already heard so many versions of this damn movie, she had long ago lost track of whatever tenuous plot he had managed to concoct out of his numerous fears and delusions.

"I have to admit," Emory confessed, "walking out here, definitely I had a premonition, today was the day, I open the door and you're gone."

"Now, Mr. Chace, you know I wouldn't go without giving sufficient notice."

Emory laughed. "And you surely know that I would."

This quitting talk (who would be first to discover the other absconded) was a game Mrs. Fyfe played with him and with herself. News of his infamous screenplay she had been listening to for the last five years at least and its chances of soon seeing the light of day, let alone the light of a cinema screen, were about as good as her roaring off in the Accord with the packed suitcase that had been lying in wait in the trunk for most of a decade. The real joke, which Emory didn't know, was that neither the suitcase nor the clothes inside were hers but had belonged to Mr. Fyfe, and where he had gone no luggage was required.

Taped to the bricks over her desk, however, was the sole ornament of these Spartan quarters, a huge travel poster of Salisbury Plain, the famous trilithons not twenty kilometers from the village where she was born and to which she would indeed someday return. She was awaiting a sign. She would know.

"I got a letter from Philip yesterday," she said.

"Finally found a pen, huh? Where is he?"

"Naples. Then his ship moves on to Gibraltar, I think. Sometime later this month. He likes it. The officers are nicer on this one. I wouldn't have let him go if there was a war, but in that part of the world you can never be certain."

"No. Or in this one either."

Suddenly she turned away, bending over the ordered desk to make a neat notation on the top sheet of her clipboard. A massive ring of keys hung at her waist, jingling with every movement of her body. Philip was her eldest son, off seeing the world courtesy of the U.S. Navy in lieu of seeing the inside of the Cool Creek Jail. A basically good boy with nothing good to do. Boys, Emory often thought, he would have known how to handle. These prodigal girls drove him absolutely mad.

"I just remembered," Mrs. Fyfe said. "We had another complaint about the smell in room 23, so I thought I'd have Fingers run the Rugmaster through there one more time."

"Well," sighed Emory, "the tale of the rooms. So many locks, so many keys. I keep toying with the notion of advertising a suicide's special, half rate, a complimentary meal, and all the necessary plastic bags and drop cloths. One segregated suite. Like a smoker's room. Considering a Permanent Checkout? Plan on Checking in with Us."

"What's even scarier," said Mrs. Fyfe, "is that I can imagine you doing it."

"I'm a scary person, Mrs. Fyfe. Do you know why I didn't set my screenplay at the Yellowbird, a place, after all, that I know best, that I've considered from a dozen angles? Where I've seen myself as the mayor of a small town, the warden of a fairly well-behaved prison population, the captain of a ship, of course, the building itself as a living entity and the guests coming and going merely aspects of one grand personality of which I am the brain and a certain good-natured housekeeper the compassionate heart. We've got fascinating characters, romance, drama, and opportunities for sex, plenty of sex. But I've never been able to sustain my interest for more than a few pages because secretly, I think Hitchcock has said all there is to say commercially about the motel business."

"What did he say?"

"Never mind." For an instant his face seemed to undergo a change in size, an almost imperceptible contraction. He looked behind him, then said, "Has Lorena been out to talk to you lately?"

"Why, no, I thought she was ill."

"She's not paralyzed."

"No, I didn't say. . . How is Mrs. Chace?"

"Bearing up. You know this bug that's going around. This place is like a depot for 'em. Wonder we're not all sick all the time."

"I'm afraid I haven't seen Mrs. Chace in days."

"Well, she has had to stick close to the John. But, listen, should she happen to wander out here, seek consultation of any kind, you'd let me know, wouldn't you?"

"Of course, Mr. Chace."

"That's my gal."

The poor man had already lost his wife, his daughters, centuries ago. And she certainly wasn't going to tell him of room 37, the personal tidying up she did, with sterile gloves of course, after Mrs. Chace. Or of the discovery she had made earlier today in room 42, Fingers, the maintenance man, and Tad outside, their lascivious ears pressed to the door. A motel was no place to raise children, particularly girls.

"I'm a nervous soul, Mrs. Fyfe."

"Quite all right. So am I."

"I love you, Mrs. Fyfe."

"I love you, too, Mr. Chace."

The unattended television set in the living room was raking the lonely furniture with waves and particles. In the kitchen the afterscent of last night's dinner lingered on the close air, the dominant onion and garlic taste of a hasty meal the details of which eluded him at the moment as he stared dumbly into the abyss of the open refrigerator, shut the door, stared into the cupboard, shut its door.

Lorena was propped up in bed, leafing through the current issue of
L.A. Style.
She was also sipping a Coors and smoking a Camel Light.

"Excuse me. I thought you were sick."

She gazed upon him, regally indifferent. "I am. Beer settles my stomach, you know that, and cigarette smoke helps clear out my passages. You know that, too."

His eyes searched adjacent nightstand and nearby floor for soiled cups, bowls, dishes, evidence of a recent feeding. "What's for lunch?"

"Damned if I know." She took a long pull from the bottle. "Now, here's an article on hot young screenwriters, 'Nerds on a Run.' Doesn't paint a very encouraging picture."

"I read it."

"And you're not even young, anymore."

"What happened to those noodles in the blue bowl?"

"Aeryl ate them, I guess." She read from the magazine. " 'By the time Staci Arugula was eighteen, she had completed five screenplays, one of which went into turnaround at Paramount. "The secret to my success?" She laughs easily with the assurance of the seasoned pro. "The ability, I think, to sculpt my integrity into a pleasing shape." Lorena looked up for a response, but Emory was no longer in the room.

At the back of the second shelf of the refrigerator behind a rusty jar of pale gherkins he found a half brick of forgotten Velveeta, dark and tough on the outside, but with enough reasonably soft yellow center to spread between two slices of dry bread, slap onto a heavily buttered skillet, and proceed to reduce to a charred slab what should have been a nicely browned grilled cheese sandwich.

He was up on a chair in the middle of the room, struggling to extract a stuck battery from the screaming fire alarm, when Lorena, trailing tendrils of smoke herself, strolled in, demanding to know, "What the hell are you burning in here?"

Seizing the alarm in both fists, Emory yanked it from the ceiling by its screws, hurled the squawking disk into a corner where it caromed off the baseboard, creased the refrigerator, kissed a table leg, and slid to a dead stop at the foot of his chair, its bleating remains silenced at last by one decisive plastic-spewing stomp.

"Nineteen ninety-five at Kmart," commented Lorena dryly. "Blue-light special. Such testiness. I suppose this outburst has something to do with your precious movie." She glanced around at the pieces underfoot. "Aren't these devices radioactive or something, like there's this pellet of plutonium you're supposed to dispose of per instructions you've probably lost. Now the entire kitchen's contaminated. The place where we eat. We're dead."

Emory loaded the blackened square of bread and gummy cheese onto a plate, scored the last cold beer from the refrigerator, and arranged on the table before him the elements of his lunch and certain crucial pages of dialogue he planned to reread and revise during this precious interval in the day's noise.

Lorena remained where she was, unmoving, silent, until he was settled in. Then she spoke: "Was there ever in the whole warped universe of male weirdness a man as plain weird as you?"

"If you're going to hover while I'm trying to work, at least have the courtesy to refrain from kibitzing."

"Have you talked to Aeryl yet?"

"No." Was the dialogue honest, simple, and wise?
Caustic Camera
advised novice screenwriters to keep it brief. If the momentum flags, the conversation stalls, simply cut to another scene. "She's acting strange."

"Have you called the Action News Hot Line?"

"Why don't you talk to her for a change? Find out about this Laszlo character. She's sick of the sound of my nagging."

In the extended pause that followed, Emory realized he had dripped cheese onto the script.

"Well?" asked Lorena.

"All right. I said all right, isn't that enough." He rubbed at the stains with a paper towel. These sheets would all have to be retyped.

"Promise?"

"What do you want from me, a notarized declaration?"

"I want a promise kept. For a change."

Emory gathered up his papers and his lunch and carried them through the living room out to the office, where Ceryl was hastily cradling the phone receiver.

"Who was that?"

"Nobody." She could look directly into her father, through transparent skin and organs, and he let her.

"Nobody must be a comedian."

"Huh?"

"You were laughing."

"Wrong number," she explained. "He said I had a nice voice."

"Okay."

"What -- do you think I'm lying?" Her specialty: the aggrieved accusation.

"I said okay. Don't be so paranoid." His specialty: the backhanded rebound. "Tell your sister Aeryl I want to see her."

The basic problem, as ever, was holding it all together in his head -- the guests, the employees, the paperwork, the family -- as if he were this ludicrous white-faced buffoon balancing on a bulbous red nose a towering superstructure of tables and chairs while being pelted by gaily colored tennis balls and rich cream pies as a barking seal attempted to scale the teetering pyramid for the set of bicycle horns at its peak to peck out with glistening mammalian snout, for the edification and entertainment of the adoring upturned mob, a recognizable rendition of "Pop Goes the Weasel." Emory didn't need a shrink to tell him what the slippery seal represented.

Guests arrived, guests departed, in sundry states of unembarrassed kookiness, America on the road slightly more deranged than America at home, the phone trilled, the towel guy showed up with half their daily order, the snack guy informed Emory that one of the machines in the west wing had been jimmied, a domestic service person named Jan whom he persistently called Nan quit in tears after a quarrel with another person named Crystal whom he eyed in a special way he thought she understood, daughter Beryl appeared to vacuum the artifacts without once acknowledging his presence, a jittery man in a bad wig who couldn't seem to decide whether he wanted a room or not was mistaken by Emory for that fateful character he had been awaiting in a starkly lit concrete corner of the mind since first assuming his position behind the desk: the creep with the iron in his belt who could in an instant transform this familiar room into the duplicate space gained by viewing it through the navel of a loaded revolver, Lorena in a chartreuse Empire Lanes bowling shirt and torn jeans left in the Esprit for a doctor's appointment of indeterminate length, "I didn't recognize you," said the television hooker to the television detective, "You're a mess, you should lay off those candy bars," and the guests arrived, the guests departed, the phone trilled, erections rose, erections fell, and four hours and eighteen minutes late Aeryl burst through the beads. She was wearing a black cowboy hat, one jingling spur, and enough makeup for three faces.