visit her one day. It looks like a lovely spot, and you can walk all the way up inside her. She has a crown like a queen, even though there is no royalty here.
After working there for a few months, I learned the Liberty Motel is also something of an attraction. Known in the business as a “short-stay” establishment, it’s a place for lovers in need of privacy. Prostitutes and politicians, traveling salespeople, truckers, and teenagers living at home all frequent the hotel. Money flows easily through such hands. Sometimes it’s all in single-dollar bills. Sixteen dollars and fifty cents per hour paid up front. I treat everyone the same, underworld and
Stained carpet, broken side tables, and stale smells from cigarettes and alcohol were the basic decor of the rooms when I first started working here. One day I asked Mr. Suri if he would let me redecorate the rooms. “What’s wrong with them?” he protested. “There is a heart-shaped Jacuzzi in one room that cost me five hundred dollars.”
“Yes, and when people leave that room, they tell me how much they like it,” I patiently explained.
“Stalina, let’s leave it at that.”
“I can make beautiful rooms.”
“No.”
“Sixty dollars per room.”
“No.”
“Think of the motel sign.” I’d thought about the name before presenting the idea. “Liberty Motel, Rooms for the Imaginative.”
“What do you mean, imaginative?” he asked.
“I will make a different fantasy setting for each room for only three hundred and sixty total dollars. Sixty dollars per room.”
“Three hundred and sixty dollars. That’s only twenty-two short-stay hours, less than one day,” he said and smoothed the corners of his mustache.
Mr. Suri was smart and good at math, and I’d noticed that he played with his mustache when he was about to agree to something. About forty years of age or so, he had the long, graceful hands of a pianist, and in profile he reminded me of that handsome actor Omar Sharif. He came here eight years ago from India with his wife, their young son, Chander, who was now ten, and his brother Garson. An uncle died and left them the motel. Mr. Suri’s wife left him for another man about a year after they moved here. I had never seen her. She moved to New Mexico with the child. Amalia told me this much. Mr. Suri had pictures of his son dressed as a cowboy in the office, but none of the boy’s mother. I think he was depressed because sometimes he sat alone under the pine trees in front of the motel drawing with a stick in the dirt. He was quiet and did not laugh very often. Garson I hardly ever saw. Whenever they talked on the phone, I heard much stress in Mr. Suri’s voice. Garson was younger than Mr. Suri and had a daughter who worked here at the motel. Mara was the niece; she was seventeen and very lazy when it came to her job of cleaning the rooms. Mr. Suri thought she was saving money to go to college, but I knew she planned to run off with her boyfriend. I’d heard conversations they had over the intercom in the linen room.
Mr. Suri finally agreed to my idea.
“I’ll let you do two rooms, and then we’ll see. Don’t touch my heart-shaped tub.”
He was very fond of this red tub.
“My first room will be called ‘Gazebo in a Rainstorm,’” I announced.
“I like gazebos,” he replied.
I had seen a gazebo in a magazine called
Then he surprised me by saying, “Since Mara has been helping with the cleaning, I want you to take a shift at the front desk.”
Usually Mr. Suri or his brother managed that part of the business because of the money. The motel operates twenty-four hours a day. The customers’ visits must be timed correctly, and everyone gets a fifteen- minute warning from the front desk phone. I felt moved by Mr. Suri’s trust and confidence. In addition to my respect for Mr. Suri—you could say my affection—I was glad to be a part of making his business successful. The business of business interests me very much. I might be older than Mr. Suri by a number of years, but I could still swing my hips and offer compliments to his nature when it helped to make our business run smoothly. Russian women know how to get what they want: no distractions, no destruction.
“I’d like you to do the morning shift. Garson has agreed.”
“Eight a.m. to…?”
“Just till four p.m. My brother and I will split the evening and overnight shifts.”
“I can work on my room designs while I’m at the front desk.”
“As long as you keep everything straight.”
“Yes sir. At your service, Mr. Suri.”
It made him uncomfortable when I called him sir, but he smiled and offered me the seat at the front desk in the office. It felt as if I were receiving an important award.
“I have to go to Hartford to get a permit for the septic system,” he informed me.
He winked at me as he turned to go outside.
“Room five has twenty minutes left. They’ll need a warning soon,” he added.
The March wind blew across the driveway and into the pine trees as he drove away in his large, gold Delta ’88. I tidied up the front desk and then made my call to room number five. The phone rang four times.
“Hmm, huh?” a female voice responded.
“Fifteen minutes,” I answered.
There was no further discussion. We hung up simultaneously. I embraced my new assignment with the fervor of a flag bearer at a May Day parade in Moscow.
Chapter Seven: My Father
Two weeks later, I unveiled room number one, “Gazebo in a Rainstorm,” to Mr. Suri. He was very impressed. Room number two had become the “Roller Coaster Fun Park.” There had been much activity at the motel and much gossip up and down Windsor Avenue about these rooms. The other motels were feeling the competition and had started to add their own attractions. The Flamingo’s sign read “Sun Lamps in Every Room,” the Windsor Castle added “Feel Like Royalty in Our Rooms,” and the Route Five Pay and Stay advertised “Lunch Hour Specials.”
Capitalism was exciting, even with its flaws. To be positioned on top was a complicated goal for a Russian soul. I understood better now my childhood friend, Nadia, who was singular in her desire to compete and succeed above all her peers. She had a passion to possess and control in the face of any obstacle. When we were children she was always judging, comparing, and pushing us out of the way. She always wanted to seem superior and boasted about everything. I would always try to counter her attempts to make us feel inferior. Whether we were ten, twelve, or twenty, it was always pretty much the same. Here is a typical conversation, word for word.
“My father makes more money than your father.”
“Yes, Nadia, he does,” I said. Her father was a baker and a well-paid informant for the NKVD.
“My house has more windows than yours.”
“Big deal. More cleaning for your mother.”
“My hair is straighter and shinier than yours,” she would say, flipping her long, straight, blond hair behind
