“Would you like to call Wag when we get to the room to tell him about your trip?” Mel said.
Will lit up.
Mel got two sets of keys and put his hand on Will’s shoulder as they walked through the lobby.
Outside, Spencer was showing Haveabud a picture in one of his books, telling him that it was drawn to scale and illustrating his point by holding up his thumb, like a painter testing perspective. In front of Spencer’s thumb was a carwash with a shopping center behind it. Mel gave Haveabud’s key to Will, who ran to give it to him. Haveabud called to Mel, asking if he wanted to go across the highway for ice cream.
“Aspirin,” Mel said, shaking his head no. He was relieved that the room was so close. He opened his suitcase before he even looked around, shook three aspirin out of the bottle, pulled the glass out of its plastic wrapper in the bathroom, filled it with tepid water, and drank.
“Aspirin,” Mel said again, aloud, hoping his body would realize that help was on the way and that the pounding would subside. He lay on the bed, flat out, and waited for Will. When Will did not appear after a few minutes, he struggled up, thinking he might not know which room was theirs, even though he had left the door ajar. He saw Haveabud, arms spread hawklike over Spencer’s and Will’s shoulders, steering them toward the highway.
When Will opened the door to the room he would share with Mel, he saw both of Mel’s shoes kicked off and felt the air conditioner’s strong, cold blast. Realizing he should not awaken Mel, he went next door to Haveabud’s, knocked, and was let in. He told Haveabud Mel was sleeping. He said nothing to Haveabud about the phone call, because when he mentioned Wag earlier, Haveabud had asked if Wag was his girlfriend. Will had frowned, thinking he was being teased. Wag was his best friend, and he was not a girl. His mother had said that Wag’s mother might get tired of Florida and come back to Virginia, but he wasn’t sure if his mother was just guessing about that, or if Mrs. Vickers had said something to her. Wag would know — if he ever got to see Wag.
Sulking, and feeling sorry for himself that the phone call would have to wait until Mel woke up, he curled into one of the chairs by the air conditioner and flipped through the coloring book he and Spencer would work on the next day. This one was about animals in the zoo, which meant that Spencer wouldn’t be very interested and that he would do most of the coloring. Spencer really only liked dinosaur coloring books.
While Haveabud showered, Will and Spencer watched TV. Commercial TV was but a paltry thing to Haveabud. He thought with appreciation of all the bars of soap wrapped in paper in motel bathrooms as he lathered up — those thin rectangles whose outer wrapping is always damp by the time you remember to take the cover off before you turn on the water. Everywhere, right now, people who had never met were spiritually united in scraping wet paper from bars of soap, reaching out to put the wad on the sink, or flicking the pieces onto the bathroom floor. All those things were downright ritualistic in America, yet one rarely paused to realize one’s own place in such domestic traditions.
Haveabud’s wife bought French milled soap at $7.50 a bar, $72.00 a box. Several dollars’ worth of free suds were the result of buying soap in groups of ten. The good thing about the soap his wife bought was that each bar was individually wrapped in pleated paper with a small silver seal at the top — a handy thing to throw into one’s pocket for a little gift during an afternoon rendezvous with one’s lover, and so much more appreciated than flowers. What woman would not blush carrying a bunch of flowers into a hotel? And if you brought flowers to a woman at home she inevitably had them, because she had thought of flowers along with anointing the bedside lamp with patchouli oil and spreading brand-new designer sheets on the bed. A bar of soap was perfect because it showed a woman that you were thinking of her body. There was no telling whether a woman wanted to smell of sea breezes or of muguet des bois, so perfume was a bad choice, but the bars of soap had a delicate scent that anyone would like. But ah! Those little bars of Camay in motel bathrooms! The gluey bars of Neutrogena, like dried honey. And the infrared bathroom lights as magnificently warm as the sun on a perfect day. The too-small towels the motel provided made you pat, not rub, so that it seemed you were commending every part of your body. Life was always an adventure if you adapted to circumstances. How sad it must be for all those travelers who wanted familiar smells, the mattress of optimal hardness, windows that opened onto their backyards, instead of parking lots where cars of all colors and shapes were lined up for your inspection and delight. You could find out under what circumstances your fellow human beings would brake; what puns and slogans moved them; whether they thought women should have control of their own bodies; what national parks they had visited. With careful inspection, you might be able to see which bumper sticker was applied first, so that their feelings about abortion could be understood as pre-Yellowstone or post-Yellowstone. Who would not be tempted to imagine a composite portrait of the driver who kept an eye out for falling rocks, while also asserting that gun laws were already too restrictive? Some car owners wore their hearts on their sleeves by sticking decals of peace signs and endangered species on their bumpers. Their vanity license plates were effusions of the soul, succinctly expressed; the cars’ colors the ones they loved but were too embarrassed to wear. Four-cylinder, six-cylinder, fuel-injected dreams, all lined up to educate and provoke and titillate, and what did people do but close the curtains and turn on the tube in order to hear Ed McMahon enthuse about Alpo and Johnny Carson reel off the list of the night’s guests.
A set designer could not have done a better job in assembling this particular motel room, Haveabud thought. Ochre shag carpeting stopped a foot short of the heating unit below the casement window, where a yellow-slatted Venetian blind dangled. The drawstring curtains were imprinted with fish and squid and what Haveabud took to be sand sharks, all in perfectly spaced configurations that would never be found in the ocean: tentacles like witches’ gnarled fingers dangling at regular intervals and, interspersed in the empty spaces, mysterious sperm-shaped bits of yellow that might have been millions of worms lost simultaneously from fishing poles, or simply abstract shapes whose own erratic pattern was meant to aesthetically unite enemies of the sea.
Haveabud had once read an article that said many motels deliberately offered something for everyone, and nothing to offend. That was the explanation for pole lamps, shag carpeting, sunburst clocks, laminated-wood wood, and desks (who had a desk at home?) with neatly placed blotters and a top drawer filled with postcards of the kidney-shaped pool. The bed linen was stretched as tightly as a tambourine; lotions and potions in the bathroom smelled vaguely of gardenias; the Sani-Wrapped drinking glasses and the toilet seat with the paper band would bring back memories of the Fourth of July as the sash was snapped away or the glass was pulled from its plastic wrapper like a crackerjack.
The more impersonal and immutable the room, the greater Haveabud’s pleasure: the walls that could be wiped clean if you stumbled with your drink; the carpet that always absorbed quickly; the red light that blinked silently on the telephone like the beacon from a lighthouse.