The Hotel New Hampshire

“They’re my toes!” Egg said.

“Maybe I’m dying,” Lilly said, and everyone shivered, especially Mother.

“You are not dying,” Father said, sternly.

“Frank’s the only one who’s dying,” Franny said.

“No,” said Frank. “I have already died. And the living bore me to death.”

“Stop it,” Mother said.

I went to lift weights in Iowa Bob’s room. Every time the weights rolled off the end of the barbell, one of them struck the closet door, and it opened, and out fell something. Coach Bob was terrible about the closet; he just threw everything in there loose. And one morning when Iowa Bob dropped a few weights, one of them rolled into the closet and out rolled Egg’s bear. The bear was wearing my running hat, Franny’s green sweater, a pair of Mother’s nylons.

“Egg!” I screamed.

“What?” Egg screamed.

“I found your damn bear!” I yelled.

“It’s my bear!” Egg yelled back.

“Jesus God,” Father said, and Egg went to Dr. Blaze to have his ears checked, again, and Lilly went to Dr. Blaze to have her size checked, again.

“If she hasn’t grown in two years,” Franny said, “I doubt she’s grown in the last two days.” But there were tests that could be run on Lilly, and old Dr. Blaze was apparently trying to figure out what the tests were.

“You don’t eat enough, Lilly,” I said. “Don’t worry about it, but just try to eat a little more.”

“I don’t like to eat,” Lilly said.

And it wouldn’t rain—not a drop! Or when it rained, it was always in the afternoon, or in the evening. I would be sitting in Algebra II, or in the History of Tudor England, or in Beginning Latin, and I would hear the rain fall, and despair. Or I would be in bed, and it was dark—dark in my room and throughout the Hotel New Hampshire, and all of Elliot Park—and I would hear it raining and raining, and I’d think: Tomorrow! But in the morning, the rain would have turned to snow, or would have petered out; or it would be dry and windy again, and I would run my wind sprints in Elliot Park—Frank passing me en route to the bio lab.

“Nuts, nuts, nuts,” Frank would grumble.

“Who’s nuts?” I asked.

“You’re nuts,” he said. “And Franny’s always nuts. And Egg is deaf, and Lilly’s weird,” Frank said.

“And you’re perfectly normal, Frank?” I asked, running in place.

“At least I don’t play with my body as if I were a rubber band,” Frank said. I knew, of course, that Frank played with his body—plenty—but Father had already assured me, in one of his heart-to-heart talks about boys and girls, that everyone masturbated (and ought to, from time to time), and so I decided to be friendly to Frank and not tease him about his beating off.

“How’s it coming with stuffing the dog, Frank?” I asked him, and he became immediately serious.

“Well,” he said. “There are a few problems. The pose, for example, is very important. I’m still deciding on the best possible pose,” he said. “The actual body has been properly treated, but the pose really worries me.”

“The pose?” I said, trying to imagine what poses Sorrow ever had. He seemed to have slept and farted in a variety of casual positions.

“Well,” Frank explained. “There are certain classic poses in taxidermy.”

“I see,” I said.

“There’s the ‘cornered’ pose,” Frank said, and he recoiled from me, suddenly, putting his forepaws up to defend himself and raising his hackles. “You know?” he asked.

“God, Frank,” I said. “I don’t think that one would be too appropriate to Sorrow.”

“Well, it’s a classic,” Frank said. “And this one,” he said, turning sideways to me, and appearing to sneak along the limb of a tree, snarling over his shoulder. “This is the ‘stalking’ pose,” he said.

“I see,” I said, wondering if in this pose poor Sorrow would be supplied with a branch to stalk on. “You know, he was a dog, Frank,” I said, “Not a cougar.”

Frank frowned. “Personally,” he said, “I favor the ‘attack’ pose.”

“Don’t show me,” I said. “Surprise me.”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “You won’t recognize him.”

That is precisely what worried me—that no one would recognize poor Sorrow. Least of all Franny. I think Frank had forgotten the purpose of what he was doing—he was so carried away with the project of it; he was getting three credits of independent study in biology for the task, and Sorrow had taken on the proportions of a term paper for a course. I could not imagine Sorrow, ever, in an “attack” pose.

“Why not just curl Sorrow up in a ball, the way he used to sleep,” I said, “with his tail over his face and his nose in his asshole?”

Frank looked disgusted, as usual, and I was tired of running in place; I did a few more wind sprints across Elliot Park.

I heard Max Urick yell at me from his fourth-floor window in the Hotel New Hampshire. “You goddamn fool!” Max cried across the frozen ground, the dead leaves, and startled squirrels in the park. Off the fire escape, at her end of the second floor, a pale green nightgown waved in the grey air: Ronda Ray must have been sleeping in the blue one this morning, or in the black one—or in the shocking-orange one. The pale green one flapped at me like a flag, and I ran a few more wind sprints.

When I went to 3F, Iowa Bob was already up; he was doing his neck bridge routine, down on his back on the oriental rug, a pillow under his head. He was into a high neck bridge—with the barbell, at about 150 pounds, held straight over his head. Old Bob had a neck as big as my thigh.

“Good morning,” I whispered, and his eyes rolled back, and the barbell tilted, and he hadn’t screwed the little things that hold the weights on tight enough, so that a few of the weights rolled off one end, and then the other, and Coach Bob shut his eyes and cringed as the weights dropped on either side of his head and went rolling off everywhere. I stopped a couple with my feet, but one of them rolled into the closet door, and it opened, of course, and out came a few things; a broom, a sweat shirt, Bob’s running shoes, and a tennis racquet with his sweatband wrapped around the handle.

“Jesus God,” said Father, from downstairs in our family’s kitchen.

“Good morning,” Bob said to me.

“Do you think Ronda Ray is attractive?” I asked him.

“Oh boy,” said Coach Bob.

“No, really,” I said.

“Really?” he said. “Go ask your father. I’m too old. I haven’t looked at girls since I broke my nose—the last time.”

That must have been in the line, at Iowa, I knew, because old Bob’s nose had quite a number of wrinkles in it. He never put his teeth in until breakfast, too, so that his head in the early mornings looked astonishingly bald— like some strange, featherless bird, his empty mouth gaping like the lower half of a bill under his bent nose. Iowa Bob had the head of a gargoyle on the body of a lion.

“Well, do you think she’s ‘pretty,’” I asked him.

“I don’t think about it,” he said.

“Well, think about it now!” I said.

“Not exactly ‘pretty,’” said Iowa Bob. “But she’s sort of appealing.”

“Appealing?” I asked.

“Sexy!” said a voice over Bob’s intercom—Franny’s voice, of course; she had been listening to the squawk boxes at the switchboard, as usual.

“Damn kids,” said Iowa Bob.