The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy
Leaving Small’s Hotel
by Eric Kraft, as Peter Leroy
LEAVING SMALL'S HOTEL

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Chapter 6
September 15
Flying Saucers: The Untold Story
 
 
 
 
 
When one tells a story, there has to be someone to listen; and if the story runs to any length, it is rare for the storyteller not sometimes to be interrupted by his listener.  That is why (if you were wondering) in the story which you are about to read . . . I have introduced a personage who plays as it were the role of listener.  I will begin. 
     Denis Diderot, “This Is Not a Story”

 

EARLY IN THE MORNING, I ferried our three guests back to the mainland.  Dick and Jane sat in the bow with their arms around each other for the whole trip.  They had told Albertine, while they were checking out, that their stay at Small’s had “really meant something,” and they had made a reservation for a week’s stay at the end of October, so that they could hear the last of my readings.  I was flattered when Albertine told me that, and I wanted to tell Dick and Jane that I was pleased and flattered, but now, I could see, they wanted to be alone.  We must give the ends of things their due, even things as familiar as weekends, even the end of a day, or else there is no rhythm to our lives. 
   “You should be flattered,” said Lou, nudging me and whispering. 
   “What?” I said. 
   Lou nodded toward Dick and Jane.  “They’re experiencing the sense of loss that we feel at the end of a piece of life that we can identify as a piece.” 
   “I know what you mean.” 
   “They’ll remember their weekend with you, as a piece of life apart from the other pieces.” 
   “‘Honey,’” I said in a fair-to-good imitation of Jane’s voice, “‘remember that weekend we spent at that little hotel with the leaking roof and the moribund boiler?  What a dump!  What was the name of that place again?’” 
   Lou laughed as if I had said something funny. 
   At the dock, when all of us made our good-byes, Lou said, “See you later, buddy,” which I took to mean “Good-bye forever, shithead.” 

LATER IN THE MORNING, Albertine and I waited at the dock for the arrival of one of the realtors who had toured the island a couple of days earlier, Liza, who was bringing a prospective buyer.  Liza and her client made the crossing in what looked like a duck blind with an outboard motor on it.  The hull was painted olive drab with splotches of black, brown, and beige, in the style of army camouflage.  The cabin was thatched with reeds.  As the boat approached, I found myself sidling up to our launch, placing a possessive hand on it, and standing a little taller.  My heart swelled with pride.  I was the owner of the better boat. 
  The prospective buyer, Mr. Fillmore, was a small man dressed in a mechanic’s jumpsuit.  To my eye, and I admit that I do not have the trained eye of an experienced realtor, Mr. Fillmore didn’t look as if he could raise the cash to buy Small’s, but Liza seemed to regard him as a hot prospect.  “Mr. Fillmore represents a group that is very interested in acquiring a property like yours,” she said when she introduced him, and then, raising herself on her toes, she winked at Albertine and me over Mr. Fillmore’s buzz-cut head.  I wasn’t sure whether she meant the wink to mean that he was a wealthy eccentric or just a poor deluded sucker. 
   “Thinking of going into the hotel business, are you, Mr. Fillmore?” I asked chummily, as one poor deluded sucker to another. 
   He glared at me, much the way Spike had glared at Matthew when she had accused him of insulting her mother. 
   “Mr. Fillmore and his people are thinking of turning the island into a training facility,” Liza said brightly. 
   “Oh?” said Al. 
   Mr. Fillmore snapped his head in her direction and said, “Do you know that 99 percent of Americans are untrained?” 
   “I didn’t,” said Al, “but I guess I could have guessed — ” 
   “We’re sitting on a time bomb,” said Fillmore, and he cracked his knuckles. 
   “I see what you mean,” I said, lying.  “An untrained citizenry —” 
   Mr. Fillmore ignored me.  He began striding off the dock and onto the island.  The three of us caught up with him and nodded our heads while he waved his hands and sketched his plans in the air.  “This could work,” he said.  “We drop you here by night.  Parachute.  Your mission: penetrate the redoubt —” 
   “The redoubt?” I asked. 
   “The hotel,” Liza explained with a smile. 
   “— and terminate all targeted personnel,” said Mr. Fillmore.  He stopped and stood with his hands on his hips, looking up at the hotel,  where, to judge from the expression on his face, no targeted personnel had been left standing. 
   “I take it you won’t be training people to flip burgers,” said Al. 
   “Or you have your alternate scenario —” Mr. Fillmore went on. 
   “Can’t wait,” I said. 
   “You’re chained to the wall of the dungeon below the redoubt —” 
   “Whoops,” I said, frowning and shaking my head.  “I’m afraid the old redoubt hasn’t got a dungeon.” 
   “That will be taken care of,” said Mr. Fillmore confidently. 
   “Sure,” I said.  “Of course.  Why not?” 
   “Your mission: escape from the dungeon, and then terminate all targeted personnel.” 
   “Ah!  I detect a pattern,” I said. 
   “I want to do a little more recon,” said Mr. Fillmore, looking each of us in the eye in turn.  “Any problem with that?” 
   “No, no,” said Albertine.  “You go right ahead and do all the recon you want.” 
   “Are there any special features you’d like me to point out to Mr. Fillmore?” Liza asked enthusiastically. 
   “Let’s see,” I said.  “There’s the old mine field out in that area somewhere.”  I swept my hand vaguely in the direction of the center of the island.  “But you’ll probably find it on your own, an old hand like you.” 
   “Let’s move out.” 
   “Oh!” I said, snapping my fingers.  “One more thing.  Did I mention that the boiler might blow up at any time?” 

ALBERTINE and I had the dining room to ourselves that night.  After dinner, I built a fire in the lounge, and I began reading the sixth episode of Dead Air, “Flying Saucers: The Untold Story,” to an audience of one. 


LEAVING SMALL'S HOTEL
DUDLEY BEAKER was a fussy, educated man who lived next door to my maternal grandparents.  Encouraged by my mother and tolerated by my father, he took an interest in my development.  He never missed an opportunity to correct my course, and I came to loath him for that.  I kept my loathing to myself, lest he discover it and correct the tendency, but it was bound to come out some day, and, under the influence of flying saucers, it did. 
   Flying saucers were a craze when I was a boy, but I couldn’t make myself believe in them.  I tried.  I wanted to believe in them.  I understood that it would be fun to believe in them.  I followed the reports of spottings and tried to swallow them, but it wasn’t easy.  The photographs were especially hard to accept.  I kept seeing flying hub caps, pie pans, and Jell-O molds instead of saucers. 
   One of the magazines devoted an entire issue to “Flying Saucers: The Untold Story.”  It began with a summary of saucer sightings from earliest times to the present and ended with plans for a saucer detector.  I built a detector, but only for the sake of scientific inquiry.  I didn’t expect it to detect anything.  I was a skeptic and a realist. . . . 
DEAD AIR
LEAVING SMALL'S HOTEL
LOU burst through the door, beaming, pulling mittens from his hands, and said, “What’s this?  You started without me?” 
   “Lou!” said Albertine, clearly pleased to see him. 
   “What are you doing here?” I asked. 
   “I couldn’t stand to miss a single thrilling episode,” he said. 
   “A single — what — do you mean —?” sputtered Al. 
   “If you’ve got a room available, I want to sign on for the whole tour.” 
   “Gee, I’ll have to check.” 
   “Actually, I’m going to need two rooms for the next few days,” said Lou.  He turned toward the doorway and called, “Honey?” 
   A woman came into the lounge.  She was bundled in an enormous insulated jacket that might have served for an assault on Everest, and she wore a fur hat, but her long and stunning legs were virtually unprotected.  “He kidnapped me,” she said, laughing. 
   “Get near the fire,” Lou told her.  “I’ll fix you a hot toddy, or a Tom and Jerry — or how about a hot buttered rum?” 
   “How about a hot cup of coffee?” 
   “Good.  I don’t know how to make any of those other things.” 
   “I’m Elaine,” she said.  “The impulsive old geezer behind the bar is my father.” 
   “Jeez, I’m sorry,” said Lou.  “Where are my manners?  Elaine — Albertine.  Albertine — Elaine.  Elaine — Peter.  Peter — Elaine.” 
   “We interrupted you,” she said to me. 
   “Oh, that’s —”I began. 
   “No, no,” said Lou, flapping his hands.  “Go on.  Go on.” 
   So I did, beginning again at the beginning.
DUDLEY BEAKER was a fussy, educated man who lived next door to my maternal grandparents.  Encouraged by my mother and tolerated by my father, he took an interest in my development.  He never missed an opportunity to correct my course, and I came to loath him for that.  I kept my loathing to myself, lest he discover it and correct the tendency, but it was bound to come out some day, and, under the influence of flying saucers, it did. 
   Flying saucers were a craze when I was a boy, but I couldn’t make myself believe in them.  I tried.  I wanted to believe in them.  I understood that it would be fun to believe in them.  I followed the reports of spottings and tried to swallow them, but it wasn’t easy.  The photographs were especially hard to accept.  I kept seeing flying hub caps, pie pans, and Jell-O molds instead of saucers. 
   One of the magazines devoted an entire issue to “Flying Saucers: The Untold Story.”  It began with a summary of saucer sightings from earliest times to the present and ended with plans for a saucer detector.  I built a detector, but only for the sake of scientific inquiry.  I didn’t expect it to detect anything.  I was a skeptic and a realist. 
   When I finished the detector, I was proud of my work, of course, and, full of enthusiasm, I brought it up from the cellar to show it to my parents.  I brought the magazine, too, so that they could see how well I had reproduced the detector pictured there, which had been built by professionals who had at their disposal professional-grade tools, a fully equipped workshop, and a staff of assistants. 
   Dudley Beaker was visiting when I came up from the cellar.  He and my parents looked the detector over, and I explained what it was supposed to do.  My parents admired it, as parents will.  They praised my effort and execution, just as they would have if I had made a painting, written a novel, or cleaned my room. 
   Mr. Beaker, however, took it upon himself to go further.  He had to consider the worthiness of the underlying goal.  “I’m beginning to think that the human race will never grow up,” he said. 
   “Huh?” I said. 
   “People still have a need to believe in things.” 
   “Yeah, I guess so,” I said. 
   “They won’t accept ideas based on logic and evidence —” 
   “Like what, Dudley?” asked my mother. 
   He said, “Oh, quantum physics or evolution, for example, or the dignity of labor —” 
   “I worked pretty hard on this,” I said. 
   Ignoring me, he continued: “— but quite a lot of them do believe in God, and astrology, and flying saucers.” 
   “One of the articles traced saucer sightings back to prehistoric times,” I said. 
   “Stop and think a minute,” said Dudley.  “If there were sightings in prehistoric times, how could we know about them?” 
   “Well —” 
   “Do you know what prehistoric means?” 
   “Yeah,” I said, “‘before recorded history’—” 
   “Yes, and —” 
   “— but you know that’s not accurate.” 
   “— and — but — what?” he spluttered. 
   Having made a start, I plunged on, and to my surprise, I discovered as I spoke that I knew more than I realized, that in reading about flying saucers I had actually picked up something that might be true.  “It would be accurate to say ‘preliterate,’” I said, “but it isn’t accurate to say ‘prehistoric,’because they recorded history.” 
   “Oh?  And how did they do that?” he asked. 
   “Cave paintings,” I said. 
   “Really?” said my mother.  “That’s fascinating.  They kept their history in cave paintings?  Why did they paint in caves?” 
   “Well, they lived in caves,” I said, guessing.  “And caves are a safe place to work, where the painters wouldn’t be interrupted by saber-toothed tigers, and other people wouldn’t be criticizing them all the time.” 
   “Are there flying saucers in these paintings?” asked my father. 
   “You can judge for yourself,” I said.  I flipped the magazine open to the cave paintings. 
   Mr. Beaker took one look, shook his head, chuckled, and said, “You know, flying saucers are presumed to be ships from other worlds, and in a sense this is true, since most of them come from —” He paused and took his pipe from his pocket, and then finished with a sneer in his voice: “— the world of the imagination.” 
   Dudley would have called himself a realist, and he would have been proud to claim the title, but I think that he was a realist only by default, because he was a person who had come to mistrust and even fear his imagination.  He had become one of those people who prefer the examined life to the imagined one, who disparage that alternative world where I live so much of the time, the world in which survivors of prisons and concentration camps dwell while they endure their trials because it is a place where they can keep self-respect alive, and thought, and will, and hope.  Mr. Beaker had driven me there.  When I had looked at the cave paintings earlier I hadn’t been able to see anything that looked like a flying saucer, but now I could, because now, inspired by a desire to annoy Dudley Beaker, I believed.
DEAD AIR
LEAVING SMALL'S HOTEL
MY LITTLE AUDIENCE was receptive, even appreciative, and my heart was warmed by their  attention.  We talked for a while.  Lou explained to Elaine several times that she didn’t have to be concerned about having missed the earlier episodes.  Albertine did a hilarious impression of Mr. Fillmore.  Elaine laughed radiantly and crossed and recrossed her legs, but when she told us that she worked in public relations there was something about the way she smoothed her skirt and clasped her hands on her knee that made me think that, perhaps, she was not being quite honest.  I think we all wanted to stay up late, talking and drinking till dawn, but suddenly we discovered that we were tired, and so, like grownups, we went to bed. 

I LAY IN THE DARK feeling miserable.  I twisted this way.  I twisted that way. 
   “Okay, what is it?” asked Al. 
   “I’m not happy,” I said. 
   “You’d be happier if you were asleep.” 
   “I’ve been lying here telling myself that I ought to be happy, that there is no insurmountable reason for me not to be happy.  I have told myself that I owe it to you to be happy, so that you can be happy —” 
   “I’d be happy if you were asleep.” 
   “— but everything seems to block the way to my happiness, all the mistakes I’ve made in life — all the disappointments — there they are, heaped upon the road ahead of me like the sand that the surging tide dumps on a shore road in a storm.  Shoveling it all away seems much too much for me to do now, so late in life, with so much sand on the road, so much sand in the bottom of the hourglass.  I can’t get to my future.  The sands of error and disappointment block the way.” 
   “Why don’t you jot that thought down and go to sleep?” 
   “That’s not quite right,” I continued.  “It’s more like having blundered into a swamp, lost my way.  It’s hot, steamy.  The heat is debilitating, enervating.  A swarm of tiny mistakes envelopes my head like a cloud.  In constant motion, they hum around me.  I flap my hands, wave them away, but there are too many for me to dispel.  Disappointments — enormous beetles the size of rats — click and clatter around my feet, biting my ankles and heels with their pincers.  I’ll never get out of this swamp, never walk in the sun again.” 
   She seemed to be asleep. 
   I tried to lie still and work on the swamp metaphor.  I had the feeling that I was on to something.  I began cataloging the mistakes in the maddening swarm, the mistakes — my mistakes — that had led me into the swamp.  First, and worst, my decision to buy the hotel.  It now seemed wrong on all counts.  We had wasted years in hard work on endless tasks, and when we added it all up, as Albertine was forced to do every day, it came to nothing.  Less than nothing.  I had imagined that our work and our profits would buy the hotel for us.  I had imagined our growing old here, living in our rooms on the top floor for as long as we continued to run the hotel and then retiring to one of the little cottages at the water’s edge as permanent guests.  I had supposed that I would go on writing the Larry Peters books, my little stories for boys and girls my age, and they would bring the money we would need.  Another mistake: by refusing to introduce blood, gore, mayhem, and misery into the Larry Peters series, I had lost it. 
   I — I — I!  I suddenly realized that I had been using the wrong metaphors, the wrong metaphors entirely, and they had blinded me to the truth.  The buzzing swarm, the grains of sand — wrong.  They didn’t describe the problem.  Suddenly I saw the problem, saw it clearly, as if a gust of wind had cleared the air, blown the buzzing swarm and heaps of sand away.  It stood in front of me like a fat man in a narrow hallway.  No, no — like a fat man in a tunnel.  Yes.  A fat man blocking our way out of a cave.  Blocking our escape from the dank and dripping cave of our unhappiness, blocking the way to the light, to hope, to a future. 
   I began to feel better.  I wasn’t happy, but I felt better.  At least I knew who was to blame.  The man in the way.  Me.

LEAVING SMALL’S HOTEL | CHAPTER 7 | CONTENTS PAGE


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Leaving Small’s Hotel affirms once more that when the destination is Babbington . . . “time spent in another place, in another life, is the perfect vacation, the ideal.”
Mahinder Kingra, City Paper (Baltimore), December 9, 1998
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Leaving Small’s Hotel is published in paperback by Picador, a division of St. Martin's Press, at $14.00. 

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Copyright © 1998 by Eric Kraft

Leaving Small’s Hotel is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, dialogues, settings, and businesses portrayed in it are products of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author. 

Leaving Small’s Hotel was first published on May 11, 1998, by Picador USA, a division of St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010. 

For information about publication rights outside the U. S. A., audio rights, serial rights, screen rights, and so on, contact Alec “Nick” Rafter at Manning & Rafter Advertising, Promotion, Public Relations & Used Cars. 


ABOUT THE PERSONAL HISTORY
COMPONENTS OF THE WORK
REVIEWS OF THE ENTIRE WORK
AUTHOR’S STATEMENT

LITTLE FOLLIES
HERB ’N’ LORNA
RESERVATIONS RECOMMENDED
WHERE DO YOU STOP?
WHAT A PIECE OF WORK I AM
AT HOME WITH THE GLYNNS
LEAVING SMALL’S HOTEL
INFLATING A DOG
PASSIONATE SPECTATOR
MAKING MY SELF
A TOPICAL GUIDE

CLASSIFIEDS
SWELL IDEAS

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