Frank sat at the controls of the switchboard like the crazed operator of some flight-control tower at an airport under attack.
'And what are you guys going to do?' I asked.
'We're just looking out for you,' Frank said. 'If you really start embarrassing yourself, we'll call for a fire drill or something.'
'Oh, great!' I said. 'I don't need this.'
'Look, kid,' Franny said. 'We got the money, we have a right to listen.'
'Oh boy,' I said.
'You'll do just fine,' Franny said. 'Don't be nervous.'
'What if it's all a misunderstanding?' I asked.
That's actually what I think it is,' Frank said. 'In which case,' he said, 'just take the money out of your shoe and run your wind sprints up and down the stairs.'
'You pill, Frank,' Franny said. 'Shut up and give us the bed check.'
Click, click, click, click: Iowa Bob was a subway again, miles underground; Max Urick slept behind his static, with a static all his own; Mrs. Urick and a stockpot or two were simmering; the guest in 3H -- the grim aunt of a student at the Dairy School, whose name was Bower -- slept with a snore like the sound of a chisel being sharpened.
'And . . . good morning, Ronda!' Franny whispered, as Frank turned on her room. Oh, the delicious sound of Ronda Ray asleep! A sea breeze blowing through silk! I felt my armpits start to sweat.
'Get the hell up there,' Franny said to me, 'before it stops raining.'
Fat chance of that, I knew, glancing out the portal windows on the stairwell: Elliot Park was submerged, the water flooding over the curbs and carving ditches through the playground equipment; the grey sky was teeming rain. I pondered running a few laps, up and down the stairs -- not necessarily for old times' sake, but thinking that this might be the most familiar way to wake Ronda up. But when I was standing in the hall outside her door, my fingers tingled, and I was already breathing hard -- harder than I knew, Franny told me, later; she said that she and Frank could hear me over the intercom, even before Ronda got up and opened the door.
'It's either John-O or a runaway train,' Ronda whispered before she let me in, but I couldn't talk. I was already out of breath, as if I'd been running the stairs all morning.
It was dark in her room, but I could see that she was wearing the blue one. Her morning breath was slightly sour -- but it smelled nice to me, and she smelled nice to me, although I would think, later, that her smell was simply Franny's smell taken several stages too far.
'Goodness, what cold knees -- from wearing those pants without the legs!' said Ronda Ray. 'Come in here and get warm.'
I stumbled out of my shorts, and she said, 'Goodness, what cold arms -- from wearing that shirt without the sleeves!' And I struggled out of that, too. I got out of my running shoes, managing to conceal the wad of money by stuffing it into the toe of one shoe.
And I wonder if it wasn't making love under the squawk-box system that coloured my feelings about sexual intercourse from that moment on. Even now -- when I'm almost forty -- I am inclined to whisper. I remember begging Ronda Ray to whisper, too.
'I could have screamed at you to "speak up" ' Franny told me later. 'It made me so damn mad -- all that silly whispering!'
But there were other things I might have told Ronda Ray if I hadn't known that Franny could hear. I never really thought about Frank, although I would always tend to see him -- throughout our lives, together and apart -- as stationed at an intercom, somewhere, listening in on love. I imagine Frank as listening in on love with the same displeased expression he wore for most of his tasks: a vague but widespread distaste, even bordering on disgust.
'You're quick, John-O, you're very quick,' Ronda Ray told me.
'Please whisper,' I told her, talking in a muffled voice into her wildly colourful hair.
I owe my sexual nervousness to this initiation -- a feeling I have never quite escaped: that I've got to watch what I say and do, somehow, or risk betraying Franny. Is it because of Ronda Ray, in that first Hotel New Hampshire, that I always imagine Franny is listening in?
'It sounded a little subdued,' Franny told me later. 'But I'm sure that's okay -- for the first time.'
Thank you for not coaching, from the sidelines,' I told her.
'Did you really think I would?' she asked me, and I apologized; but I never knew what Franny would or wouldn't do.
'How's it coming with the dog, Frank?' I kept asking, as Christmas bore down upon us all.
'How's it coming with the whispering?' Frank asked. 'I notice it's been raining a lot, lately.'
Or, if it didn't really rain a lot -- that year, just before Christmas -- I admit I took the liberty of interpreting snow as almost rain; or even a cloudy morning that threatened to be rain or snow, sometime later. And it was one of those times, very near to Christmas -- when I'd long ago given Frank and Franny back the wa