“We’re in danger of being swept away, at any time!” Coach Bob said, and Ronda Ray came swishing back and forth between Bob and the Dairy parents poised at their well-fastened seats; she was passing out the coasters, and the cocktail napkins again, and flicking a damp towel over the edges of the tables. Frank peeked in from the door to the hall; Mother and the Uricks seemed paralyzed in the kitchen doorway; Father had lost none of the glitter he absorbed from the bar mirror, but he stared at his father, old Iowa Bob, as if he feared that the retired coach was about to say something crazy.
“Of course the chairs are screwed down!” Bob said, sweeping his arm toward the sky, as if he were giving his last halftime speech—and this were the game of his life. “At the Hotel New Hampshire,” said Iowa Bob, “when the shit hits the fan, nobody gets blown away!”
“Ya-hoo!” the Texan cried again, but everyone else seemed to have stopped breathing.
“Just hold on to your seats!” said Coach Bob. “And nothing will ever hurt you here.”
“Ya-hoo! Thank God the chairs are screwed down!” the big-hearted Texan cried. “Let’s all drink to that!”
The wife of the man from Connecticut gave an audible sigh of relief.
“Well, I guess, we’ll just have to speak up if we’re all going to be friends and talk to each other!” the Texan said.
“Yes!” said the New Jersey woman, a little breathlessly.
Father was still staring at Iowa Bob, but Bob was just fine—he turned and winked at Frank in the hall doorway, and bowed to Mother and the Uricks, and Ronda Ray came through the room again and gave the old coach a saucy stroke across his cheek, and the Texan watched Ronda as if he’d forgotten all about chairs—screwed down or not screwed down. Who cares if the chairs can’t be moved? he was thinking to himself—because Ronda Ray had more moves than Harold Swallow, and she was into the spirit of opening night, like everyone else.
“Ya-hoo,” Franny whispered in my ear, but I sat at the bar watching Father make the drinks. He looked more concentrated with energy than I had ever seen him before, and the gradual volume of voices came over me—and always would: I will remember that restaurant and bar, in that Hotel New Hampshire, as a place that was always so loud with talk, even if there weren’t many people there. Like the Texan said, everyone had to speak up if they were going to sit so far apart.
And even after the Hotel New Hampshire, had been open long enough so that we recognized many of our customers, from the town, as “regulars”—those who were at the bar every night until closing time, just before which old Iowa Bob would appear for a nightcap before he turned in—even during those familiar evenings, with those familiar few, Bob could still pull his favourite trick. “Hey, pull up your chair,” he’d say to someone, and someone would always be fooled. For a moment, forgetting where he or she was, someone would give a little lift, a little grunt, a little perplexed strain would pass across a face, and Iowa Bob would laugh and cry out, “Nothing moves at the Hotel New Hampshire! We’re screwed down here—for life!”
That opening night, after the bar and restaurant was closed and everyone had gone to bed, Franny and Frank and I met at the switchboard and did a bed check on each of the rooms with the unique squawk-box system. We could hear who slept soundly, and who snored; we could detect who was still up (reading), and we were surprised (and disappointed) to discover no couples were talking, or making love.
Iowa Bob slept like a subway, rumbling miles and miles underground. Mrs. Urick had left a stockpot simmering, and Max was playing his usual static. The New Jersey couple was reading, or one of them was: the slow turning of pages, the short breaths of the nonsleeper. The Connecticut pair wheezed and whinnied and whooped in their sleep; their room was a boiler room of sound. Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, New York, and Maine all gave off the sounds of their various habits of repose.
Then we switched on the Texan. “Ya-hoo,” I said to Franny.
“Whoo-pee,” she whispered back.
We expected to hear his cowboy boots striking the floor; we expected to hear him drinking out of his hat, or sleeping like a horse—his long legs cantering under the covers, his big hands, strangling the bed. But we heard nothing.
“He’s dead!” Frank said, making Franny and me jump.
“Jesus, Frank,” Franny said. “Maybe he’s just out of his room.”
“He’s had a heart attack,” Frank said. “He’s overweight and he drank too much.”
We listened. Nothing. No horse. No creaking of boots. Not a breath.
Franny switched the Texan’s room from Receiving to Broadcasting. “Ya-hoo?” she whispered.
And then it came to us—all three of us (even Frank) seemed to grasp it. It took Franny about one second to switch to Ronda Ray’s “dayroom.”
“You want to know what a dayroom is, Frank?” she asked.
And on came the unforgettable sound.
As Iowa Bob said, we are on a big cruise, across the world, and we’re in danger of being swept away, at any time.
Frank and Franny and I gripped our chairs.
“Oooooooooo!” gasped Ronda Ray.
“Hoo, hoo, hoo!” the Texan cried.
And later he said, “I sure appreciate this.”
“Phooey,” Ronda said.
“No, I do, I really do,” he said. We heard him peeing—like a horse, it went on forever. “You don’t know how hard it is for me to hit that little bitty toilet up on the fourth floor,” he said. “It’s so far down,” the Texan said, “I have to take aim before I shoot.”
“Ha!” cried Ronda Ray.
“Ya-hoo!” the Texan said.
“Disgust ing,” Frank said, and went to bed, but Franny and I stayed up until the only sounds on the squawk box were the sounds of sleep.
In the morning it was raining, and I made a point of holding my breath every time I ran by the second-floor landing—not wanting to disturb Ronda, and knowing what she thought of my “breathing.”
Blue in the face, I passed the Texan climbing between three and four.
“Ya-Hoo!” I said.
“Morning! Morning!” he cried. “Staying in shape, huh?” he said. “Good for you! Your body’s got to last you all your life, you know.”
“Yessir,” I said, and ran up and down some more.
About the thirtieth trip I was beginning to bring back the Black Arm of the Law, and the sight of Franny’s missing fingernail—how so much pain seemed focused at this bleeding tip of her hand, and perhaps distracted her from the rest of her body—when Ronda Ray blocked my way on the second-floor landing.
“Whoa, boy,” she said, and I stopped. She was wearing one of her nightgowns, and if the sun had been shining, the light would have shot right through the material and lit her up for me—but it was a gloomy light, that morning, and the dim stairwell revealed very little of her. Just her moves, and her absorbing odour.
“Good morning,” I said. “Ya-hoo!”
“Ya-hoo to you, John-O,” she said. I smiled and ran in place.
“You’re breathing again,” Ronda told me.
“I was trying to hold my breath for you,” I panted, “but I got too tired.”
“I can hear your fucking heart,” she said.
“It’s good for me,” I said.
“It’s not good for me,” Ronda said. She put her hand on my chest, as if she were reading my heartbeat. I stopped running in place; I needed to spit.
“John-O,” said Ronda Ray, “if you like to breathe this hard and make your heart pound, you should come see me the next time it rains.”