Hotels of North America (16 page)

We determined instead that we would get a topper, which was not a word I knew until the moment that K. said, We should just get a memory-foam topper. A topper, you may know, is a thin mattress pad placed on top of the existing mattress and then affixed to it with a fitted sheet—less expensive than a mattress itself. When K. called the online mattress-ordering company, the sales adept she spoke to insisted that a memory-foam topper would not have the same off-gassing problem because it was, in fact, a thinner piece of memory foam and therefore featured fewer artificial compounds. Most people, he went on, ordered a one- or two-inch topper for their non-memory-foam-mattress product, and we should choose a height according to our needs.

But what were our needs, exactly? Our needs were to feel that a bed was a place of sanctuary, especially after the many ups and downs in the housing area that we had experienced, up to and including living in our car, and not because our parents were awful to us or because we were recovering from joyless marriages or what have you, but just because a bed is where a sense of shared purpose first takes root, and so we tried to evaluate our needs, in whispered urgencies, while the sales adept awaited us, and then of course he added that the two-inch memory-foam topper, while admittedly a bit pricier, was superior to the one-inch in terms of simulating the memory-foam experience, and so K. said, That’s right, that’s what we need, she said, we need to simulate the memory-foam experience, and so we charged it on our card. A week or ten days later, we had a two-inch memory-foam topper that did not off-gas significantly and that adequately simulated the memory-foam experience. I will say that when my child visited, which she began to do more regularly in those early days of the topper—that little gremlin of the interior spaces, who was happy, at least, that the space of visitation was an improvement over recent living conditions,
I love it, I love it!—
she immediately referred to the bed in question as the
bouncy bed
and exercised upon it in ways suggested by this sobriquet, such was the profundity of the two-inch memory-foam topper in terms of its luxury and enveloping qualities. To lay your head on the topper was like laying your head on the breast of your slightly soft librarian friend. It was like sinking into an acceptance of the afterlife.

The child loved the bouncy bed, but K., after sleeping on it for a couple of weeks, turned against it, thinking there was something almost swampy about the two inches of memory foam, which did not off-gas, it’s true, but which were otherwise a little bit too much for her. I can vividly remember the day she called the online mattress-ordering company again and described her experience to a different sales adept, who was probably exactly as good as the other. The two inches, she said, were just an inch or so too much, and even though the all-natural equivalent was a bit too hard on its own, now the bed was a bit too soft. The sales adept gave us the bad news, which was that our topper could no longer be returned, though he would be happy to offer us the one-inch memory-foam topper, which was more reasonably priced, because it was only half the size. (To this point the bed-shopping experience had been in the mid–four figures, or way beyond what was feasible without advanced use of credit card debt.) Accordingly, we purchased the one-inch memory-foam topper and removed the two-inch to K.’s former apartment in Long Island City, Queens, now sublet to her cousin, which she was hanging on to in case it didn’t work out with me, a fact that was understood without necessarily being acknowledged.

In due course, during which we reflected on our bedding experience so far, the one-inch memory-foam topper arrived, and we put it on the all-natural equivalent, and there were a couple of nights where K., like a cosmetic-surgery addict who is certain that this procedure has fixed all the problems, pronounced the one-inch memory-foam topper a profound success and claimed she was sleeping better than she had ever slept, although I could tell when K.’s praise of a certain thing was a
★★★
instead of a
★★★★
based on certain tonal features of her voice. She could say the exact same words—
Awesome! Now that’s what I’m talking about!
—and yet if you listened carefully to the tone, you would definitely hear in the tone the
★★★
instead of the
★★★★
. So some time passed, and maybe we were simply exhausted by the bed problem, but despite the clear
★★★
, we both pretended, as one, that the one-inch memory-foam topper was adequate to our bedding needs, because that is the way that cohabitational bliss sometimes works. The child, when she visited, that blob of single-digit girl matter who made me a better person, had no idea that we had gone from a two-inch topper to a one-inch topper, and still referred to the bed as the
bouncy bed,
and had to be relieved of her
mud shoes,
on more than one occasion, before getting onto it.

More time passed, and then, as you knew would happen, K. began to complain about the all-natural equivalent with one-inch memory-foam topper and said that it sagged in the middle a little bit, and so I volunteered to sleep on the side that she said sagged a little bit, anything to prevent K. from sending back the all-natural equivalent mattress altogether, because I knew when she did so we would again have to face the off-gassing problem. Her solutions would no doubt include scenarios in which I would, e.g., wait until she was traveling for her job, which at this particular juncture was the job referred to in certain circles as
party planner,
though this was no permanent gig, and then put the memory-foam mattress in basement storage for a week to allow it to off-gas while she was away. Or she would sleep in the “foyer” (three hundred and fifty square feet, remember) or return to her apartment in Long Island City (where, you will recall, the two-inch memory-foam topper now resided) while the off-gassing took place, whereas I was in favor of intermediate solutions: for example, rotating the all-natural equivalent with one-inch memory-foam topper 180 degrees and seeing if the sag was still present in the same spot, which would suggest that the sag had somehow to do with the bed frame or box spring and not with the mattress itself. This we did. And for some days it seemed as though K. was trying to say that the situation was now a
★★★★
situation again, but I could tell, each day, that the rhetoric of contentment was getting scaled back, however slightly, to a
★★★
, and as a result of her
★★★
, I myself started to feel a little bit
★★★
, though this is not my normal rating, and, as a motivational speaker, I need to be operating from a
★★★★
or even a
★★★★★
position if I’m going to be able to spread the word of self-confidence and positive messaging to the denizens of towns such as Jackson, Tennessee.

It was against the backdrop just described that I booked the room at the Days Inn.
★★★★
(Posted 1/25/2014)

What the hell were those guys doing carrying plants around in their wheelbarrows at 7:00 a.m., and why were they yelling in Spanish? More like the Do Not Sleep Inn! I distinctly heard
cámaras,
or
ocultación,
unless that was a hypnopompic distortion brought on by the night before, about which more anon. Why the hell in Tyler, Texas, anyhow? you ask. Well, I’ll tell you why in Tyler, Texas. I had this idea that I might take my motivational-speaking business and give it a bit of sizzle, in order to create notoriety for my brand. And if you want to get real attention these days, you need a little religion, a little institutionalized ethical certainty, and I was thinking that perhaps I could get my foot in the door of that megachurch in Tyler, whose name is __________; the folks there agreed to take a meeting with us, with myself and my girl Friday, because we are attractive and presentable fellow travelers, well spoken, forward-thinking, and it was a pleasant meeting where they actually gave us lattes, which I wouldn’t have thought was a __________ kind of beverage, expecting, as I was, something a little more utilitarian, perhaps in the traditional Styrofoam.

If it’s useful, I can bullet some of the talking points of the meeting with the staff, which involved my describing the outreach and on-point messaging associated with my brand and the way I had in the past been able to bring men, especially men, back to the theological fold, at least where pride in family was concerned. I noted too that I had on many occasions spoken on the subject of the pollution of the spirit (or so I told them), and how the spirit should not be polluted, and how I personally looked askance at, for instance, a latte, although the one I had in hand, I hastened to add, was tasting mighty good, and if a person of my particular credentials should be needed at the megachurch called __________, I would be happy to render services, especially in pastoral settings, in the one-on-one of listening and sharing, in which I felt waves of compassion for the suffering of others. I liked teen groups, I continued, and K., who smiled brightly and wore a used diamond ring we had bought at an antiques store so that we would not appear to be partisans of any kind of alternative lifestyle, would chime in often, repeating the end phrases of my most powerful assertions. If I said
positive outreach,
K. would also say
positive outreach.
The fellow we were meeting with was called Peterson, and we had a fine conversation with him, and if he had administered a polygraph test, I would have passed a polygraph test on any subject.

Unfortunately, Peterson then said,
Well, as it happens, we’re going to call on the Albert family this evening, perhaps you’d like to come along.
In truth, I didn’t expect, and never quite expect, to be taken seriously as a pastoral counselor. But in the end we allowed Peterson to herd us into in his Escalade. He liked a friendly face, he said, and I certainly had a friendly face. I was remarking, on the way to the Alberts, that I had often read certain works of theology when I was back at the state school, and even in the dusky light, out in one of the subdivisions of Tyler, which consisted of mansion upon unimpressively constructed mansion, I could see naked terror on K.’s face (in the backseat of the Escalade), but God help me, I could not stop talking as Peterson concentrated on the driving, and Melanie, his assistant (seated next to K.), checked stuff off in a handy ring binder. I kept talking and said that if God had designed the orchestra, then the cello was His greatest accomplishment, and a good singalong was the fastest persuader, and no man converted on an empty stomach, along with a few other choice morsels, all the while thinking it possible that Peterson and Melanie adhered to some kind of murderous Texas cult that only masqueraded as _________, or perhaps they were going to apply snakes and their snakebites to us, and how the hell had we gotten talked out of our rental Buick LaCrosse, why were we riding in Peterson’s Escalade? But before I was able to complete this thought we pulled up at one of the neighborhood insta-mansions. And stepped out of the Escalade.

Soon the Alberts and K. and I were standing together by the colonnaded antebellum front of the insta-mansion, exchanging introductions.
This is my wife, Swallow,
I was saying, when Peterson got the call, the fateful call, on his belt-mounted cellular phone. How could I not have known it was a setup?
Lord in heaven, no!
he was saying.
Are you certain? Where do you need me to be? Which hospital? I am so sorry, awfully sorry, to hear what you are telling me, Bobby Joe, I’ll be right down there, blink of an eye!
Ringing off, Peterson gave Melanie a look of such complexity—at once compassionate, studied, malevolent, strategic, and irritable—that it was clear, at least to me, with Swallow now shivering against me, that we were about to be hung out to dry. In a moment, the speech came:
Mr. Morse, I am so sorry to have to do this to you! One of the prized members of our spiritual family has just taken ill. That was his wife calling just now, and I’m going to have to hustle down to the local hospital. As you can see, the Alberts are the finest family out here in this particular subdivision, fine salt-of-the-earth people, and they are expecting you, and you all should really feel free to visit together a little, and I’m going to go on down to the hospital, and Melanie and I will be back in forty-five or so for some fellowship with you all, and I’m just really darned upset about what’s happened.

By the time I realized that Peterson and Melanie were already back in the Escalade, I couldn’t think what to do, frankly, except to make sure I had a phone on my person in case we needed to call for emergency services. In an instant, they were gone, and K. and I were standing in a driveway in a gated community in Tyler, Texas, in front of the insta-mansion getting ready to minister to the Alberts, who comprised the following:

• The father, by the name of Tim, definitely potted upon arrival, carrying some travel mug that was filled, he said, with coffee, though his coffee seemed to have a pronounced sedative effect. He slurred, and used the hem of his bathrobe to wipe his lips repeatedly. It was hard to understand much of what was said. Hydrocodone tablets mixed in with the libation?
  
• The mother, Allison, was a chatterbox paying little attention to the fact that her man looked like he might pass out at any moment. She was upbeat and natural in presentation, in a way that was almost certainly compensatory.
  
• The son, Stan, who had not been shaving long. Apparently, there was nothing in this world that interested him, especially not the visitors to the house. He said he spent most of the services at ___________ texting the friends he’d met while playing massively multiplayer games. He admitted later that he had, as an apprentice hunter, just bagged his first kill.
  
• The daughter, Allyssa, Stan’s younger sister, who was the darlingest, sweetest, most self-effacing kid, cheerful of affect and with bad skin. Somehow the Alberts had managed to protect her from the Albert legacy. Perhaps even Tim Albert had colluded in protecting her. According to legend, her first word, as an infant, was
  marzipan
  .