“Why?”
“To see the GD hotel, whaddya think?” Uncle Ander said.
“Yeah, okay. Where is it again?”
“St. John’s Pass off Boca Ciega Ave, it’s called the Boca Bay Motel.”
“Got it, see you there.”
I pressed ‘end.’ I called Nathan.
“Hey, Uncle Ander wants us to go look at the hotel with him.”
“Hmmm...what?” Nathan said.
“Uncle Ander’s hotel...you know.”
I heard a yelp. I think it was a girl.
“Was that a girl?” I asked. Something shuffled, maybe it was sheets. Maybe it wasn’t.
“Wait....” Nathan said.
He hung up.
I took three lefts, a right and then drove straight for 17 minutes. I crossed a bridge. Boca Ciega Avenue. I crossed the bridge. There was a sign on the grass by the bridge. It said, “Once you go Barack, you never go back.”
I found the Boca Bay Motel. The sign was cheap plastic over an electric light. I looked at the building. Three of the units had leaning rails on their balconies. The paint was sea green with patches of stucco white. Broken plastic chairs sat small patches of concrete, their function now to be derelict, to be broken and ill, to say WE NEED TO BE REPLACED, they drew attention because of their lack of function, not because of their function.
Uncle Ander was standing with Luis near the office. A plastic sign found at most non-chain hardware stores said "Office."
“There he is,” Uncle Ander said. “You remember Luis?”
“Hi Luis,” I said.
“Wallace, whaddya think?” Uncle Ander said.
“Not sure. Can we go inside?” I asked. Luis looked at me. He had nice eyebrows, perhaps professionally done.
"Well, if you want," Luis said.
Luis went into a guest room with Uncle Ander. I went into another room and shut the door behind me. The air conditioner units were surprisingly new, circa 1985. Thin gray carpet and thin flower-print bedspreads and a dead plant in the corner. I turned on the faucet. The faucet hacked and coughed and then found itself pouring out brown water that smelled like the ocean, brackish. I went into the bathroom. Brown non-fecal matter spots were on the toilet lid. Black muck on the shower door, the toilet floor had cream-colored foot grips.
The room felt like an abandoned tree house. I went into another and another. All the rooms were the same. Gray carpet, Wal-mart looking furniture from the 80s and console televisions. All of the bedspreads had flower prints.
“Console televisions?” I asked.
“There was a great, great deal at the time, you know?” Luis said.
“Do they still work?”
“Yes, very, very much so. Some customers prefer them,” Luis said.
“I’m sure they do,” I said. “Is anyone staying here?”
“No, no not right now. I shut it down for the time being you know?” Luis said.
“So you’re waiting on a buyer?”
“Yes, yes, very much so,” Luis said. “I”ve been talking to your Uncle Ander for several, several months about it.”
“What are the inspections like? Is it still good?”
“Yes, solid as a whistle,” Luis said. I did not tell him that made no sense.
“Good deal, I think Wallace," Uncle Ander said.
"I don't know, the carpet immediately needs to be replaced in the rooms I went into. And of course it needs a good cleaning."
"Of course, of course," Luis said. "But structurally, structurally it's sound," Luis said.
“What was your occupancy rate like?” I asked.
“Well, well...” Luis said.
“There’s no need to pry, Wallace,” Uncle Ander said.
“I think it’s a fair question if you or we or whomever is making an investment. This is a big deal for you,” I said.
“It’s true, very true,” Luis said. “This is a big, big commitment," Luis added. He looked at Uncle Ander. Those were good eyebrows.
XIX
“Do you have any songs” -- “how many songs do we need?” -- ”you have played the synth before?” -- “not really” -- “that’s cool, it’s kind of hard, it’s kind of not,” -- “what bands have you played drums in” -- “maybe, three four rock-metal things” “and you’re cool with the synth there, in the lead...”
Stand by Me to Karate Kid, and onto Hot Shots and Revenge of the Nerds and Jaws 3 and Ghostbusters, especially Ghostbusters and “The John Candy oeuvre has to be included,” Court pointed his pen -- the words and images flowing, our pens busy jotting, compiling, composing, “Let’s do cassette-only releases,” Court reasoned, “Well and digital downloads, and don’t forget about those Goldie Hawn movies -- Protocol and Wildcats the that one where her head spins around -- didn’t that come out in the early 90s?” “Death Becomes Her,” I remembered.
Nathan walked in, bangs over dirt creased face.
“Yes, exactly, National Lampoons…anything with Chevy Chase all those Saturday Night Live movies -- Day of the Dead!” Court continued triumphantly...
Nathan sits down. He is in front of a computer. He types. He opens browser windows.
Nathan says something about "MySpace" and "Bandcamp" and "profile pics."
Nathan goes into my room. He finds neon sunglasses. He finds two checked shirts. He finds a tank top with the words "MADEIRA" on them. There is paint on the shirt.
"Put these on," Nathan says. He hands me the sunglasses and the MADEIRA shirt. I take off my current shirt. Nathan buttons up one of the checked shirts. Court buttons up the other checked shirt. I slide the tank top on. I slide the sunglasses on.
Whatever 80s movies we wanted to include, our thoughts our feelings how moms and sisters responded to them, how they set us up for whatever we believed in about life and girls, especially -- “Better Off Dead, something about skiing and hanging at the same time” -- it was all utterly ridiculous, all utterly important, like looking at an aquarium of goldfish at Petco knowing that one of them will soon be called your own, like waiting to be approved for a new car loan, like reading a bad issue of Time before a job interview, dread and fear and wonder about the work of hands and minds and what those hands and minds really could create together, a look in Nathan’s eye and Court’s eye that some times the best creative ventures are haphazard and gimmicky at the same time, that this repurposing would be fun, could be fun, loaded with potential and possibility without over thinking any of it too much, nobody had a pen to write a mission statement down but we believed in it all the same, searing onto our frontal lobes, where the best and worst memories always reside.
Nathan walks back to the computer desk. He opens a drawer. He pulls out a camera. He props the camera up on the desk. He pushes a button. "You guys ready?'
Nathan walks over to where Court and I stand. The camera flashes and one, two, three the photo is taken. We will remember this. If we forget this, we have the photograph.
XX
Karate Kid is on when Mom calls.
“Uncle Ander...” The 3G network.
“What about Uncle Ander?”
“Do you know where he is?”
The Halloween scene, where Ralph Macchio is dressed as a shower and lures a young Elizabeth Shue behind his curtain.
“He’s sick, I think. I’ve called 5 times in the past hour.”
I think about Elizabeth Shue in Adventures in Babysitting. I think about Elizabeth Shue in Leaving Las Vegas. They are different movies.
“And he doesn’t pick up?”
“And he doesn’t pick up.”
“Why don’t you drive over there? You’re closer than me. He’s your brother.”
Ralph Macchiao is now taking a hose across the bathroom and putting in the stall where his archenemies are dressed in skeleton suits.
“Oh honey, maybe it’s man things.”
“Man things -- Mom, men don’t have things like women have things.”
“That male bonding thing
. Watch football or something.”
“Maybe he needs a girlfriend,” I said.
“Well, you may be right. I think he is lonely.”
“Whatever happened to Bingo?”
“That fight with Luis.”
“What happened? The hotel?”
Ralph Macchiao is being chased by the group of skeletons. Ralph jumps a chain-link fence. The skeletons are close behind.
“Ander says that Luis took his chips, which Luis of course says he didn’t, so Ander asks him if he wants to take it outside, and Luis says to ‘Where, the 7-11, you want a coke? What are we going to do outside?”
“Wait, what?”
“Which gets Ander even more upset and he throws hot coffee on Luis and then Dottie stops the game and Ralph, you know Ralph? He used to go to our church, Ralph is a security guard at the Bingo Hall and he asks Ander to leave.”
“Um, so that’s crazy. Can Uncle Ander go back?” I said.
“I don’t think so, or they don’t know yet. He’s suspended indefinitely.”
Ralph Macchiao gets a blackeye from the skeletons and one of them asks for mercy. “He’ll get mercy when I say he gets mercy,” says Ralph’s nemesis. In the background, we can see Mr. Miagi sneaking quietly over the fence.
“Will Luis still let him buy the hotel?”
“What are you talking about? What hotel?”
“Uh,” I said.
“Oh god,” Mom said. “Just go see him before I kill him.”
***
Walked outside, raining. I didn’t know anyone who wore rain jackets anymore. I ran to my car. It was locked. I tried to pull the key out of my pocket, but it was stuck and there was more rain and then some more. My hair was wet. I finally got the key out and opened the door.
In the car. I turned left then right, then another left. Near my house, there is a church on the corner.
"Jesus is the rizzle for the sizzle."
XXI
“Thought you might have friends help you move in, too you know,” Nathan said.
“All of them were coworkers. It’s kind of weird, they stay, you leave, that’s that,” I said.
The stuff in black trashbags, light knitted sweaters, old tshirts with lettering from flag football teams long disbanded, mismatched socks and broken spoons, blackened pots and books stuck in pizza boxes, Nathan picked it all up and threw it in the truck. Odds and ends, Dick and his Brothers Truck couldn’t get. Trail of multicolored dress socks in his wake, out of this cream colored room of this “urban living at its best” enclave, the restaurant next door, the girls with their lawyer boyfriends by the pool, this was mediated living at its finest, pre-approved and sanctioned by the grandest corporations of the nicest websites, attractive people but not beautiful people made us think WE ARE LIKE THEM, which we were though we didn’t want to acknowledge, all of us had too much in common to be comfortable.
“What will you miss about this place?” Nathan asked.
Maybe the loud delivery trucks, or the cover band in the restaurant lounge who went way beyond their slotted time, the couple upstairs having sex every night at 11pm, the ants crawling out of barren concrete floors searching for daylight only to find it was more disappointing on the other side of their burrowed holes.
“The simulacrum of the simulacrum,” I said.
***
Nathan had a dolly. He slid the metal plate under the washing machine.
Clang and clang, rusted steel against uneven aluminum, the hollow, empty mechanics howling -- like a child meeting a belt for the first time -- this decay and odor of technical beasts living in our houses with us, giving us more time for emotional/mental/physical decay, this drying process speeded, as if the sun was not good enough, hot enough, as if soap and water writhing between our hands was inefficient, as if our bodies deserved more than we provide, as if we could not take care of ourselves, the perpetual adolescence was real, but it was not this generations’ fault, but the one before it, the excuses coming and coming, Mt. Everest pile of excuses -- “kids will be kids” -- until the kids were adults and none the better or wiser.
Why did clothing, meant to cover then to only be an adornment, receive the careful notice and celebratory ritual washing? What about the lungs and the liver and the gall bladder and the appendix and the pancreas? Here I am pouring putrid colored sugar water down and down, a toxic accretion, lining the linings of VITAL organs, no, those so rarely or carefully flushed.
Knobs snapped, and the lids collapsed, the metallic tumbler and liner freeing itself, it may and could roll anywhere, anywhere now. Nathan with the gray steel crushing the ivory white sides, busting, busting a hole that if skin scraped would surely bleed, its edges would rip clothes if so allowed, the threads of miniscule width and depth, fracturing holes where there once were none.
The washer innards now visible, present, pipes and cords and connections to transport life-affirming water to our dead clothes and wash and wash them, colors and whites, never mixed in hot water, except with disastrous results.
We thumped the back of the dryer, and pounded the back of the washer, dragging.
We took it away from Uncle Ander’s.
XXII
Uncle Ander turned on the television. The George Lopez Show on Nick At Nite.
"They used to show Donna Reed and Mr. Ed right now," he said.
I showed him where TV Land was on the dial.
"Do they show Who's The Boss?" he asked.'
"Yes, I'm sure they do."
The phone on the side table vibrated.
It was Nathan.
“WE GOTA SHOW.”
XXIII
I knocked on Uncle Ander’s door. On his door hung a plastic sign that said “Life’s A Beach.”
Wires streamed from a doorbell slot. I was kicking dirt off my Pumas when he opened the door.
“You live here, you don’t have to knock,” he said.
“Forgot the key,” I said.
I stomped. I stomped some more.
Uncle Ander was in a apron and slippers. “Muddy out?” he asked. He also wore a cap that said, “Too Hot for Real Cars.”
“Not too bad, I just stepped in something on the condo lawn.” The association had torn up the condo grass, stripped to a muddy surface, like undercooked brownies.
“They’re getting it changed out, the grass,” he said.
“Why?”
“Okay, they’re not. I am. Just this part.” He pointed out the window.
“Why? They’ll let you do that?”
“They do not know. The association, bunch of dimwits. But, Luis said it was better, for goats.”
Luis also once told Uncle Ander that a ‘hootenanny’ was the real name for diarrhea.
“Are you planning on getting goats?” I said.
“Not sure yet, you know, about the goats.”
“So why change your grass?”
“I might decide about the goats.”
“I thought you and Luis got in a fight.”
“I decided to change my grass before the fight. Come on, let’s go sit down.”
We went through his hallway, pictures of him and mom as kids, pictures of him and my Aunt Sue-Sue at a Buccanneers game, in Hawaii, in Bermuda, in South Dakota at Wall Drug Store. A picture of him outside the Corvette Museum in Kentucky.
“Want a beer? Natty light, Milwaukee’s Best.”
“Um, how bout orange juice?”
“Ah, the hard stuff. I’ll get it.”
There were built-in bookshelves in his living room. He had approximately 20 Readers Digest novels and an old volume of Funk & Wagnall’s encyclopedias. I sat on his pea green couch. There were two crossword puzzle books and a copy of “Your Best Life Now” by Joel Osteen on his coffee table. Spies Like Us was on television.
“You like this movie, Spies Like Us?” asked Uncle Ander. He placed a glass of Tropicana on the coffee table.
“Sure, I like it fine. Chevy Chase is funny.”
“
He died too young, John Candy.”
“For sure,” I said and sipped some orange juice.
We watched as John Candy and Chevy Chase trudged through the snow.
“The only reason you’re here, because of your mom,” he said staring at the spies. He was drinking the Natural Light. Some of its pee-yellow foam was on his lip.
“She asked me to stop by, she thought something might be going on, since you haven’t talked to her lately.”
His apron rounded out further his already round belly, another toy car on the apron.
“She just doesn’t like me using the smoker, the barbecue,” he said.
“No, I think she likes it fine, she was just wondering you know...”
“I know, it’s been a year.”
“Yeah, it has.”
“She wants to know how I feel? How I think?”
“Yeah, that’s all she wants,” I said.
Uncle Ander stood up, went to the kitchen. I didn’t hear the refrigerator or the pantry, but a shuffling under a stack of papers. I could hear the bend and crack and smell of newspapers and the drop and bounce of an orange juice container. His recycling pile. Uncle Ander found what he was looking for, he put the stacks back up one on top of another.
“I pull this out every so often, this article,” he said and handed it to me. It wasn’t a picture of her or of anything, but a simple events announcement. He sat back down in his recliner.
“The Quiltin’ Corner meets every Wednesday at 10:30am at the Largo Senior Center. Bring your best ideas, your best designs and your best heart!” Below that announcement was one for asking for families to adopt dogs. It was no more than three lines and 2 inches wide.
“You’re adopting a puppy?”
“No....It’s the quilting. She would be going to it, the quilting.”
“I didn’t know she quilted,” I said.
“Well, she didn’t. Not for long. But she tried and she was going to do it.”
“So, that’s what you miss her quilting?”
“No I hate quilting, really. I miss her doing things, new things. I miss her trying, us growing. I miss her.”
He folded the small piece of newspaper. His face reddened, the folds around his mouth increasing, trembling lips.
I looked at the television.
John Candy and Chevy Chase hugged one another in their overstuffed puffy winter coats.
Uncle Ander cried.
“It’s so sad what happened to John Candy,” he said.