Years before, Buddy had devised his own mendacious obituary. After his death, this was printed in the Advertiser exactly as he wrote it. From the outside he seemed a clown, a fool, an incompetent, but deep down he was very serious, often weeping on the inside. He was proud of his ability to fix anything that was broken. He was proudest of being able to mend a broken heart. .
Pinky presided over the funeral, which was a mockery of the pointless pantomime we had rehearsed when Buddy had vanished for the sake of a practical joke. Bula pronounced a eulogy: "He a people person.
He real nurturing. He like talk story. He a communicator. He a class act. He break down barriers. He so rich."
Hearing this, Peewee began to sob. His whole body shook. He covered his face and said sorrowfully, "Buddy go dancing."
As Buddy's friend and manager of his hotel I had been asked to say a few words. Peewee's sobbing embarrassed people, so I tried to strike a lighthearted note.
"Who was Buddy?" I said. "He was the man in the baseball hat who always sat in front of you in the movies, his head blocking the screen. The man who laughed out loud when an accident happened. The man who stopped to stare at horrible car crashes. Who spilled his drink in his lap and yelled, 'I'm not housetrained!' Who pushed the shopping cart too fast at Foodland, saying, 'Beep! Beep!' Who held up the line to tease the checkout clerk. Who shouted into his cell phone in the elevator. Who always wanted extra whipped cream and four sugars and extra cheese. Who argued with the man passing out leaflets. Who was the first to buy the newest gizmo, and the first to break it. Who hated the government and never voted, and maintained he was a good American. Who was always unconsciously auditioning for a part in a novel."
A stillness had settled over the ceremony. My eulogy had fallen flat. I sensed they felt I was being disrespectful, and yet that was what Buddy loved most — insult and anarchy.
Lamely, hoping to satisfy the mourners, I added, "Buddy was a man who never failed to pick up a hitchhiker, or loan money, or take in waifs and strays. I was one of those."
Buddy's ashes were scattered offshore, within sight of his beachfront estate. That same afternoon Pinky ordered everyone out of the house, for the day she became an American citizen, she had also become, as Buddy's widow, his heiress. In his fury, months before, when he moved into the Owner's Suite to escape his quarreling family, Buddy had cut everyone out of his will, leaving Pinky as his sole beneficiary. The sorry document was something even Jimmerson could not mend. Buddy had intended to rectify that, but he died before he could banish Pinky and make a new will. So Pinky had his millions; she had the Hotel Honolulu and the North Shore house; she had everything.
79 New Management
Pinky even had me — at least she thought she did. She believed that I came with the hotel. The day after Buddy died, she installed Uncle Tony on the North Shore with Evie and Bing and Auntie Mariel. And she took charge of the Hotel Honolulu, which meant she had charge of me.
"Peek thee rebbish," she said, snapping her skinny fingers. She meant the flowers, the leis and garlands and bouquets that had been strewn in the hotel lobby in Buddy's memory.
The finger-snapping was new to me. I hated it. She also rapped her knuckles on my desk. That was worse. The only pleasure I had these days was in hearing her call herself "Mrs. Hamster."
She ordered me to get the locks changed on the North Shore house. She demanded that I hand over all the keys. She opened a bank account in her own name, bought new clothes and shoes. She appointed Keola her driver, and since driving was easier than being a janitor, he transferred his loyalty from me to Pinky.
"She want see all the accounts," Keola said. He was her messenger, too. Her patronage gave him power.
"I see you got a promotion."
"I been kick upstairs. Next stop, Guess Services Associate."
She made me wait in the corridor outside her suite when I was summoned to discuss the accounts. And she received me seated, like an empress. Her orders were that I was to stop distributing the tips indicated on credit card receipts.
"There'll be trouble," I said.
"I give Christmas bonus."
The "I" was interesting. Overnight, she became the hotel, the house, the business, the bank account, everything Buddy had left. There was no "we."
Of course there was trouble. The waiters raged. Trey resigned, so did Wilnice and Fishlow. Before he left, Trey said to me, "Any time you need some stories to write, I could tell you billions, from the times I dropped acid." Tran threatened to go; as a poorly paid Vietnamese barman, he depended on his tips more than the others. But he hung on.
Pinky did not respond to any of the complaints. She said very little. I began to understand the nature of silence in the use of power. Instead of arguments and shouting there were various manifestations of silence, and a sort of subtle sulking, which had to be analyzed and interpreted, like the snapping of her fingers, or even the manner in which she walked away.
Sensing that I was being uncooperative, she sent for me again. She was propped on her bed, pillows at her back, stiffly dressed and imperious. She demanded that I rearrange her closet — all her newly bought shoes.
"Put them over here, all them."
I went to the closet, not to survey her footwear, but to reflect on my role here. This was not right. My lips were forming the words "I quit" when, behind me, I heard Pinky sob in her sinuses, like the whinnying of a little child.
"I no know what for do," she said, her eyes glistening.
This new American, a small, skinny, inarticulate woman, hardly thirty, with hairy arms and big teeth protruding in her narrow face, had the whole hotel in her bony fingers. Yet here she was, a millionairess looking like a waif, trembling at the edge of her big bed, her shoulders up around her ears.
"Please, you help me."
She looked so helpless I went over and, against all the rules, sat on her bed and tried to comfort her. Her hand was hard and scaly, like a chicken foot.
"Daddy," she said, beseeching me.
"What's wrong?"
She whispered, "I bad girl," sounding insane.
"I think you're unhappy because you miss Buddy," I said. "We all miss Buddy. He was a friend."
"He like spank me. He make me kneel down and eat him. Then he lock me in dark closet."
The look of shock on my face made her smile. She became playful and babyish again.
"I like too much," she said, curling her lips so I could see her purple
gums.
I wasn't pure, yet I did not have it in me to engage in this game, which I could clearly envision, from the charade of my mistreating her and sexually abusing her, to locking her up somewhere in the Owner's Suite. If I treated her the way she demanded to be treated, however badly, it would be an enactment of her perverse power over me. She used her chicken- foot fingers to tug an answer from me.
"Sorry. You got the wrong guy," I said, standing up.
Her face tightened. Her eyes were scummy with hatred. "Get out for my suite."
She said shweet. The poor little thing was crazy. I knew my days were numbered. And after that she became an unambiguous tyrant. Tran resigned. Chen was miserable and so was Peewee. In their misery they became incompetent. The women in Housekeeping just wept. For the first time since being hired, I found the hotel impossible to manage, for I needed these people. I wanted to explain this to Pinky, but she kept to her room, the scene of her rejection. She was frightened, enigmatic, rude. Her new wealth had given her a sort of doom-laden quality, like a lottery winner trapped by the windfall and slowly self-destructing. And I was taken by surprise, too. Why had I not seen that all Buddy's foolery, his flatulence,