975: We had . . .
Leaving Small’s Hotel, Chapter 33 begins
Chapter 33
October 12
101 Fascinating Electronics Projects
Don Fernando asked the captive to tell them the story of his life. . . . The captive replied . . . “pay attention and you shall hear a true tale which possibly cannot be matched by those fictitious ones that are composed with such cunning craftsmanship.” Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
WE HAD the busiest Saturday we had had in a very long time, and if I had not come to believe that every new guest was more money lost, I would have thought that we were making progress, but I had come around to that point of view. I understood our situation as Albertine understood it. I believed what she believed for the simple and sufficient reason that I saw the truth in it. I believed in the truth of our failure here, past, present, and future, but I had a little extra belief that, I thought and think, she did not, a bonus belief: I believed that it was all my fault. I had reached the point where the present seemed to be entirely the product of my past mistakes, large, medium, and small, right down to the level of a careless word spoken at a party after one drink too many. Even the new guests who would be arriving that afternoon, two more guests to put us a little further in the red, were almost certainly my fault, since they were probably coming to hear my readings. My fault. My fault.
THE WASHING-MACHINE REPAIRMAN returned: the same washing-machine repairman. Albertine and I stood in the entrance to the hotel watching him make his way up the path, trying to read in his walk and posture something that would tell us whether he had been told that we had tried to have him replaced.
“What do you think?” she asked.
“Can’t tell,” I said.
We stood there, watching and waiting, while he drew nearer, walking with his head down. When he was about twenty yards away, he stopped, set his toolbox down, and knelt on one knee to tie his shoelace. He looked up at us and we tried to read the look in his eyes.
“Well?” she asked.
“Hard to say,” I said. “It’s as if nothing that might be going on in his mind shows on his face.”
“Oh yeah?” she said. “I would say that what you see there is the look of a man who is going to wreck something and enjoy doing it. I think he’s scary, very scary. Let’s lock the door and pretend we’re not here.”
“He’s seen us,” I said.
“Maybe he’ll think it was just an illusion, a trick of the light. He’ll bang on the door for a while, and then he’ll give up and ask Tony T to take him back across the bay and he’ll never come out here and bother us again for the rest of our lives. He won’t even mind. It will make a good story for his friends back at the Sons of the Visigoths lodge.”
“Look,” I said. “Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but the look in his eyes is — well — I think, in his own way, he’s pleading.”
She looked at me incredulously.
“Everything is at stake for him here,” I said. “His pride, his professionalism, his job, his family, maybe. Let’s give him one more chance.”
She laughed, “Ha!” and said, “Okay,” shaking her head as she said it to show me that she thought we were making a mistake.
We sent him to the cellar, and there ensued ten minutes of crashing and banging, followed by a strong smell of smoke. Al and I went downstairs and stuck our heads around the corner of the laundry nook.
“What the hell is going on in there?” Al shouted.
He said, as nearly as we could make out, “Murhgah.”
“Is something burning?” she asked.
“Murhgah,” he said.
“Well that’s a relief,” she said, and she went back upstairs muttering “Murhgah.”
He came upstairs half an hour later, and the first thing he said was, “Your fault.”
I was on the point of saying, “I know, I know, and I’m sorry, profoundly sorry,” but Al snapped, “What the hell are you talking about?”
In answer, he held out a handful of viscous black glop. “Sand,” he said. “Lint. Salt air.” Then he grinned, slowly and added in a chiding tone, “Cheap detergent.” He squeezed the glop and some of it extruded between his fingers. “Gums up the works.” He wiped his hands on a rag, to little effect, and picked up his computer. Almost immediately, it printed a new bill.
“What’s this?” asked Albertine.
“Bill.”
“Why gimme bill?” she asked.
“Unrelated problem,” he claimed. “Your fault.”
He tucked his computer under his arm, picked up his toolbox, and started for the door.
“Could I just ask you something?” I said. He looked at me. “Do you have a wife — children — you know, a family?”
“Ya kiddin’?” he asked.
Albertine and I watched him walk toward the dock. There was a jolly quality to his walk, a lightness, that made me think he might launch his bulk into the air and click his heels.
When Albertine tried to use the washers, neither of them would fill with water. I think that Albertine might have gone right over the edge if her apprentice, Nancy, hadn’t worked up a schedule for Lou, Clark, and Tony T to make runs to the coin-operated laundry in Babbington.
[to be continued]
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