They watched him drive through the meadow, and bump down off the track into the motel lot. They saw him stop outside the office. They saw Peter come out to greet him. They shook hands, and exchanged pleasantries. Peter gave him a key, and pointed. Room eleven. The absolute prime location. Significant in every way. Their bed and your bed were almost touching. Head to head. Symmetrical. Separated only by the width of a wall. Just a matter of inches. Room eleven was the VIP enclosure, no doubt about it. An honor not to be given lightly. But Mark had insisted. Demographics were important, he had said.
Robert clicked mice and tapped keyboards and arranged the screens so they could see just about everything at once, all around them on the walls, one picture overlapping the next, some of the angles different, like a clumsy attempt at virtual reality. They saw the Wall Street guy park his truck beyond the dead Honda. They saw him detour for a look in room ten’s window. Nothing doing. He walked back. He looked like Wall Street. Decent haircut, fit from the gym, tan from a lamp and weekends at his wife’s summer rental in the Hamptons. He was dressed well, even though they supposed he was trying not to be. To match the everyday truck. His closet had failed the challenge. His luggage was two hard cases and a soft nylon duffel, all of them dusty from the open bed.
Plus, last of all, from the passenger seat, a plastic bag from a New York deli, stuffed with what were either potatoes or rolls of money.
Meanwhile the first four arrivals were gathering close by, forming up, sliding from screen to screen, getting ready to talk, or try to, or at least to rock from foot to foot until someone said something. Male bonding. Sometimes a slow process. Robert turned up the sound. There were hidden microphones all up and down the length of the motel. Aided by what was painted to look like a TV dish, but was really a parabolic microphone, as sensitive as a bat’s ear, aimed down the row, at the patch of dirt outside room ten’s window. Where folks were likely to cluster. Overkill, electronically, but Mark had insisted. Consumer feedback was important, he said. The more raw and unfiltered the better. Best of all when they didn’t know anyone was listening.
They listened. The voices were tinny and a little distorted. There were guarded greetings, the same as before, and the same war stories from the road, about getting there on time and undetected, and the same description of Patty and Shorty themselves, as specimens, in terms of their health and strength and general appeal.
Then the consumer feedback turned a little negative. Mark looked away, disappointed. On the screens a small schism had opened up. There were two opposing factions, separated by one vital difference between them. Arrivals number one, two and three had actually seen Patty and Shorty through their window. Live and in the flesh. Right there. After their blind went up. Arrivals number four and five had not. By then Patty and Shorty were hiding in their bathroom. Which had no damn window. So theirs was a two-point complaint. If everyone was starting out equal, like they should, free country, level playing field, and so on and so forth, then wait until everyone had gotten there, surely, and then raise the damn blind like a ceremony. Like a special occasion. With everyone lined up to witness it. Or at least put a window in the damn bathroom. One thing or the other.
In the parlor Mark said to the others, “I don’t see how we could put a window in the bathroom. Not with plain glass, anyway. Too weird. But anything else wouldn’t work. You couldn’t see in.”
Steven said, “We could use a plastic sheet on the outside. Some kind of design on it. So it looked pebbled from the inside. Then we could peel it off when we’re ready.”
“You’re dodging the issue,” Robert said. “We screwed up with their blind. Simple as that. The guy is right. We should have left it down until everyone got here.”
Mark said, “Patty wanted to see the sunshine.”
“What are we now, social workers?”
“Her mood might prove critical.”
“How’s her mood now?”
“Relax,” Mark said. “Think outside the box. What’s done is done. And as it happens we did it at the exact halfway point. Three saw them, and three won’t. We could think of it as a reward for punctuality. Like a bonus threshold. Like we’re offering something. We could call it marketing.”
“Punctual means on time, not early. We should treat them all equally.”
“Too late.”
“Never too late to fix a mistake.”
“How?”
“You get on the mike with Patty and Shorty, and you remind them you warned them about this earlier, and you say but maybe they didn’t realize exactly what they were getting themselves into, so now for their own comfort we have taken a unilateral decision to close their blind again for them. And we do, right away. They’ll hear it. They’ll come out of the bathroom. Meanwhile we apologize to arrivals four and five, and we tell them we’ll have a proper ceremony later. After Patty and Shorty have calmed down again. When we’re all assembled. Maybe as the sky goes dark. We could suddenly raise the blind and light up the room both at the same time. I bet we would catch them right there on the bed. It would look like Saks Fifth Avenue on Christmas Day. People would come from miles around.”
“That doesn’t solve the problem,” Mark said. “All it means is three people will have seen them once and three people will have seen them twice. That’s not equal.”
“Best we can do,” Robert said. “As a gesture. Which could be important. We can’t let this become an issue. You know how they talk in the chat rooms. Word of mouth can make you or break you. We should be seen to go the extra mile to put this right.”
Mark was quiet a long moment.
Then he glanced at Steven.
Who said, “I guess.”
Mark nodded.
He said, “OK.”
Robert clicked a switch labeled Room Ten, Window Blind, Down.
His voice came out of the ceiling. Like before. In the bathroom it was just as loud as it had been in the main room. He said, “Guys, I apologize. Most sincerely. My fault entirely. I wasn’t clear enough when we spoke earlier. About the downside of seeing the view, I mean. So we put it right for you. The blind is down again now and will stay down as long as you want. I’m sure you’ll be more comfortable that way. Again, I apologize. I was thoughtless.”
Patty said, “What do you want with us? What’s going to happen to us?”
“We’ll discuss what we want with you before the end of the day.”
“You can’t keep us here forever.”
“We won’t,” Mark said. “I promise. You’ll see. Not forever.”
Then there was a small electronic pop and the ceiling went quiet again.
In the silence Shorty said, “Do you believe him?”
“About what?” Patty said.
“The blind being down again.”
She nodded.
“I heard it,” she said.
Shorty got up stiffly, from his spot on the floor, and he opened the door, just a crack. He knew right away. There was no bar of daylight. Just gloom.
“I’m going through,” he said. “It’s uncomfortable in here.”
“They’re going to raise it again.”
“When?”
“Probably when we least expect it.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re messing with us.”
“Soon?”
“Probably not. They’ll wait a while. They’ll want us to build up a sense of security.”
“So it’s safe for a spell. Right now. Then later we could nail up a sheet.”
“Could we?”
“Why not?” Shorty said.
In the past she would have objected purely on the grounds of good manners. Being Canadian. Both the sheet and the wall would be damaged, surely. But now all she said was, “Do you have nails and a hammer?”