“I know this girl here who will suck your dick for 10 bucks. We used to take the same bus together. She don’t fuck, but you can come on her tits, she don’t care. Her name’s Chris or Karen and she’s in Room 30,” said Vincent. He threw his head back like a horse tossing its mane. “I know you’ve got at least 10 bucks.”
I saw the girl in Room 30. She couldn’t ever get me hard.
He traced my look of skepticism with his eyes and drew the wrong conclusion.
“No, it’s okay. She doesn’t care about you orientals.” His hands on his thighs flipped to open palms.
I felt a pin slip into my stomach. Vincent’s a friend, I told myself, he doesn’t mean anything.
I hit reset on the Atari and the game began again.
“Hey, c’mon now! That’s not fair!” Vincent put up a fight for a few seconds, then tossed his controller onto the couch next to me.
“So anyway, you have to get laid,” he said, running a single finger through his hair. Vincent looked at the office clock, which was a large plastic-molded Marlboro sign with a dial in the middle of the second “o.” A cowboy in spurs leaned against the “M.” It was a quarter to 11.
Vincent got up and stretched, cracking bones in his lower back. “Maybe Patty’s cooled off by now. Remember what I told you. I’ll be disappointed if you don’t get laid by the end of the summer. Real fucking disappointed.” He wagged a finger at me and pulled at his waistband. “Or maybe you’ll turn queer on me or something. Maybe you’re fag bait already!”
Right then, Peter Fiorello walked into the office with Mrs. Fiorello. The Fiorellos were the first regulars I’d met — they were both retired, and they’d been coming down to our place since we’d bought it. Each of them kissed Vincent on the cheek. They were old enough to be Vincent’s parents, maybe even his grandparents. The three of them together smiling in a semi-embracelooked like a spaghetti-sauce commercial. The only things missing were the aprons and wooden spoons.
Peter Fiorello’s shrunken patch of short white hair looked like a knit cap. Peter would walk around shirtless in the summer, exposing old tattoos on his chest and arms that were blue and blurred beyond recognition. His tits were smeared excess red and brown paint, and they clung to his chest like dried mud. Peter wore a gold chain with a religious pendant on it and dark shades. I never saw him with his shades off or without a smelly, smoldering cigar in his hand. He smiled often, flashing two rows of rotten corn kernels.
Mrs. Fiorello was loud, large, and annoying. She had big pouffy hair with plump breasts and a stomach to match. Her skin was covered with impossibly dense freckles. There must have been a thousand dark brown dots per square inch all over the massive surface area of her body. Seeing her in a one-piece bathing suit that didn’t even show that much skin took away my faith in God.
The Fiorellos were the hotel’s only steady customers throughout the four seasons. They lived somewhere in New York, but there were too many loud blacks and Puerto Ricans up there. They wanted to come to our hotel at the Jersey shore where they could relax and talk to us nice Chinese people.
“Watch this man. He’s going places,” Peter said, wrapping an arm around Vincent’s waist and stroking Vincent’s neck with his free hand. He liked Vincent and would touch him so much it was worrisome.
“Peter, you tell the boy to listen to what I say, okay?” said Vincent, making a meaningless gesture at me with his right hand.
“You listen to Vincent, he’s going to be on top. He’s the man to look out for,” Peter said.
“Vincent is a good boy. If you turn out like him, your mother will be really proud,” said Mrs. Fiorello. Vincent winked, extracted himself, and walked around the Fiorellos. His slippers made sucking sounds as he walked back to Room 59.
“I used to look like that,” said Peter, standing at the office window. He leaned back and rubbed the scraggly white fuzz on his chest.
“Now you’re twice the man, Peter,” said Mrs. Fiorello, patting his stomach.
“You see this? You see this? Always a compliment with a nit-pick. Always a slap with a kiss.” He tapped his cigar and his nose twitched as he winked from behind his impenetrable shades, which were as dark as a wet blackboard.
“Oh, stop, Peter!” said Mrs. Fiorello, taking a playful swat at his face.
Listening to the Fiorellos talk was like watching an old stand-up routine, complete with elbowing and winks: “These cigars really aren’t bad for you,” he might start.
“Peter never inhales. He only breathes out, so it’s okay.”
“You know, she’ll be the death of me, not these things. Cigars are a habit you can break, but women always break you first.”
“Peter doesn’t need to be broken. All those years of being in the Navy broke you. He cleans so much around the house, I feel like I’m the one making a mess. I just watch the television and put my feet up.”
“She puts her feet up on my back when I’m scrubbing the floors. It’s abuse, I tell ya. You people know how to treat your women. Put them in their place in China.”
“Peter!”
“It’s true, they can’t even walk next to their husbands, they have to walk behind them.”
“They have such pretty dresses, the Chinese women. Doesn’t your mother have any like that? She should wear them. Pretty and silk.”
The Fiorellos would always throw in something about China or Chinese food, as if I couldn’t follow a conversation if they didn’t. Mrs. Fiorello turned to the television screen. “This is a computer game, right? You shouldn’t play them anymore, they rot your brain. I read it in Newsweek.”
“They develop motor skills and improve hand-eye coordination,” I said, using my prepared answer from the video-game magazines. “They also keep kids off the street and out of trouble. Video games don’t require parental supervision, unlike many movies, and nobody gets hurt playing them. They’re also good for children who don’t have any playmates.”
Mrs. Fiorello rolled her eyes and dropped to the couch next to me. I felt the creaky frame give a little and the seat cushion grew tight. “You think you’re so smart. Just wait until it’s too late,” she said. After a heavy sigh, she
added, “Is your mother in?”
“Hold on a sec,” I said. I turned off the Atari and walked back into the living quarters. I went into my parents’ bedroom and shook my mother awake. It was 11 now, about time for her to get up, anyway. I could tell by the motel’s log that she’d been up until five renting rooms, but six hours of sleep was more than enough. Today was going to be another busy day for the hotel, and there were rooms we needed to clean. In a few minutes, my mother was fully dressed and in the office. I heard an exaggerated but brief greeting exchanged amongst the three of them.
I shut the door to the office, feeling the heat of the living quarters. I followed the worn path on the livingroom rug, between a lopsided couch and a bare TV stand, back to my room. Talking to Vincent had made me think about this girl from school I liked, Lee Anderson. She had blonde hair and green eyes and was so cute, I couldn’t help but look away when she caught me staring, which was about every two minutes. Even though she was just 12 like me, I could tell that Lee was going to be a perfect girl when she grew up. She was already past a B cup, and she had long soft blonde hair that curled at her shoulders. Her body was growing in all the right places, and she was looking pretty damn sexy.
When we were in fourth grade together, she’d drunk beer from her Thermos and couldn’t