That helped. Now he could prop clipboard against crossed knee, push his glasses up his nose with his thumb.
“One-forty a.m. Subjects left Oleander Room.” He looked up. “They stood by the vending machines talking for ten minutes.”
“They? Who were they?”
“Miss Lucy.” Miss Lucy? He had never called her that. I saw that he felt a need to put a distance between himself and this business (though he was also proud of what he had done). In his nervousness he had put the greatest distance he could think of: he had retreated to being an old-time servant.
“Go ahead.”
“One-fifty. Miss Lucy and Miss Margot to room 115, Miss Raine’s room.”
“Never mind the Misters and Misses.”
“Okay. Troy Dana to room 118, his room. Merlin to 226, Jacoby to 145.
“Two-twelve a.m. Miss Margot leave 115 and go to 226.” For Margot he still needed the Miss.
“Merlin’s room?”
“Yes, sir. Two-twenty-five. Troy Dana leave 118 and go to 115.”
“Raine’s room. That puts Troy, Lucy, and Raine in 115.”
“Yes, sir. Two-fifty-one a.m. Miss Margot leave” (leave not leaves: he was nervous) “226 and go to 145.”
“Jacoby’s room?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Go on.”
“Five-oh-four a.m. Lucy leave 115 in a hurry, running like, go out. To her car.”
“Yes?”
“Five-fourteen. Troy Dana also leaves 115, goes to 118, his room.” Leaves. He was calmer.
“Okay.”
“Five-twenty-four. Miss Margot leaves 145, goes out. To her car. Oh, I forgot. Three-five. Jacoby went out for a glass of water.” He looked up. “I think Miss Margot was sick.”
“Yes?”
“That’s all.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes, sir. You told me to leave at daylight.” Feeling better, he shoved up the bridge of his glasses with his thumb. I could imagine his students years later, taking him off, doing a school skit imitating his doing this.
Ha. Maybe she was sick!
I remember thinking how odd Elgin was, switching back and forth from house nigger to young professor.
“Okay. That does it. Very good. Thanks, Elgin.”
Relieved, he swiftly got to his feet.
“No, wait.” I had already known what I was going to do. And how I was going to deal with it, time coming at me and ten billion cells tingling, waiting.
He sat down slowly. I picked up the telephone and called my cousin Laughlin at the Holiday Inn. Elgin, simply curious now, watched me.
“Lock, I need a favor.” I could ask. I had loaned him the money, Margot’s money, to build the motel.
“Sho, Lance. Just you ask.”
He was too quick and ingratiating. Gratitude, as well it might, made him uneasy. I could see him sitting at his desk: his clean short-sleeved shirt, neat receding hair turning brown-gray, Masonic ring on finger, hand on socks with clocks, short body just slightly fat, a simple shape like a balloon blown up just enough to smooth the wrinkles. He looked like the president of the Optimists Club, which in fact he was. A doomed optimist. The only difference between Laughlin and me was that Laughlin had not even had his youthful moment of glory. Instead he had had twenty or thirty jobs in the past twenty or thirty years, at each of which he had not exactly failed (for he was earnest and if he was stupid it was in some mysterious self-defeating way which not even he was aware of) but rather completed what he set out to do. He lost interest, the job ran out, the company went out of business, people stopped buying bicycles, sugar tripled in price and ruined his Nabisco distributorship. Now he answered too quickly. Two things made him nervous: one, that he owed me a favor; the other, that he was succeeding. Success terrified him.
“Just you ask, Lance,” he said, gaining confidence from my hesitation.
“I want you to close the motel for a few days.”
“What’s that again?” he asked quickly.
“Just say they’re going to cut your gas off temporarily as in fact they might. As you know, most of our gas has got to go to New England.”
“I know but — close the motel? Why?”
“I’ll pay you full occupancy even though you’re only half full. It should be for two or three days.”
“But tomorrow’s Tuesday.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“Rotary.”
“I mean the rooms. Go ahead and have Rotary.”
“Why do you want to close the rooms?”
I fell silent. Four boys on the levee were tilting up a tall shorn willow like the Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima. Elgin was watching me, the old Elgin now, big-eyed and unmindful of himself.
“I want all those film people out. They’re almost finished. If they leave there, they’ll have to get out.”
“Oh.” Oh, I see, he meant. I was counting on his misapprehension and let it stand. “I don’t blame you.”
“For what?”
He trod carefully. “For wanting to keep an eye on ’em. I’ve seen a lot of things in this business.” He’d managed a motel in the French Quarter for a year. “You talk about humbug! But—”
“But what?”
“As long as they don’t tear up the furniture or burn the beds or stink up the place with pot, I don’t care who does what to who. You wouldn’t believe some of the things — college kids are the worst.”
He was either stupid or tactful and I do believe it was the latter. We talked easily, deplored college kids and the vicissitudes of the motel business.
“Okay, Lock?”
“Let’s see. It’s three-thirty. Too late to close today. But I’ll put a notice in each box to be out by check-out time tomorrow.” He warmed up to it. “As a matter of fact, they’ve been talking about cutting off my gas. How do you like that! New York City is going to get our gas! And that means no heat or air conditioning in the rooms. Don’t worry about a thing.” For once, his mournful gratitude gave way to good cheer. It was as if he had repaid his loan. “I don’t even care. I’m changing to propane. Do you know what my gas bill was last month?”
“Thank you, Lock.”
Elgin watched me as I hung up. Something had given him leave to relax and be himself.
“Elgin, there are some other things you and only you can do for me.”
“I’ll do them.”
In my new freedom I remember thinking: If one knows what he wants to do, others will not only not stand in the way but will lend a hand from simple curiosity and amazement.
“Okay. You recall the other day we were speaking about the chimney hole and the dumbwaiter?”
“Yes.” All ears now.
“All right. Look.” Taking his log from the clipboard, I turned it over and began to draw a floor plan. “I’m making two assumptions. One is that they’ll move back into Belle Isle when they leave the motel tomorrow. There’s nowhere else to go.”
“Right.”
“Then I’m assuming they’ll move back into the same rooms at Belle Isle they had before.”
“Yes. They left their clothes there.”
“Merlin here on one side of the chimney, Jacoby here on the other. But Margot’s and Lucy’s, Dana’s and Raine’s rooms are across the hall. That presents a technical problem.”
“Technical problem?”
“Tell me something, Elgin. How would you like to make a movie?”
“Movie? What kind of movie?”
“A new kind of cinéma vérité.” I picked up the pencil. “Here’s where you can help me. There are a few technical problems.”
Christ, here’s my discovery. You have got hold of the wrong absolutes and infinities. God as absolute? God as infinity? I don’t even understand the words. I’ll tell you what’s absolute and infinite. Loving a woman. But how would you know? You see, your church knows what it’s doing: rule out one absolute so you have to look for another.