The Hotel New Hampshire

The Texan knelt down on the floor and stared at his chair.

'Everything's screwed down here!' Iowa Bob shouted, suddenly. He had not spoken to anyone since after the game, when he told the scout from Penn State that Junior Jones could play anywhere. His face was unfamiliarly red and shining, as if he'd had one more drink than he usually allowed himself -- or the sense of his own retirement had finally come to him. 'We're all on a big ship!' said Iowa Bob. 'We're on a big cruise, across the world!'

'Ya-hoo!' the Texan shouted. 'I'll drink to that!'

The woman from New Jersey clutched the back of her screwed-down chair. Some of the others sat down.

'We're in danger of being swept away, at any time!' Coach Bob said, and Ronda Ray came swishing back and forth between Bob and the Dairy parents poised at their well-fastened seats; she was passing out the coasters, and the cocktail napkins again, and flicking a damp towel over the edges of the tables. Frank peeked in from the door to the hall; Mother and the Uricks seemed paralyzed in the kitchen doorway; Father had lost none of the glitter he absorbed from the bar mirror, but he stared at his father, old Iowa Bob, as if he feared that the retired coach was about to say something crazy.

'Of course the chairs are screwed down!' Bob said, sweeping his arm toward the sky, as if he were giving his last halftime speech -- and this were the game of his life. 'At the Hotel New Hampshire,' said Iowa Bob, 'when the shit hits the fan, nobody gets blown away!'

'Ya-hoo!' the Texan cried again, but everyone else seemed to have stopped breathing.

'Just hold on to your seats!' said Coach Bob. 'And nothing will ever hurt you here.'

'Ya-hoo! Thank God the chairs are screwed down!' the big-hearted Texan cried. 'Let's all drink to that!'

The wife of the man from Connecticut gave an audible sigh of relief.

'Well, I guess, we'll just have to speak up if we're all going to be friends and talk to each other!' the Texan said.

'Yes

!' said the New Jersey woman, a little breathlessly.

Father was still staring at Iowa Bob, but Bob was just fine -- he turned and winked at Frank in the hall doorway, and bowed to Mother and the Uricks, and Ronda Ray came through the room again and gave the old coach a saucy stroke across his cheek, and the Texan watched Ronda as if he'd forgotten all about chairs -- screwed down or not screwed down. Who cares if the chairs can't be moved? he was thinking to himself -- because Ronda Ray had more moves than Harold Swallow, and she was into the spirit of opening night, like everyone else.

'Ya-hoo,' Franny whispered in my ear, but I sat at the bar watching Father make the drinks. He looked more concentrated with energy than I had ever seen him before, and the gradual volume of voices came over me -- and always would: I will remember that restaurant and bar, in that Hotel New Hampshire, as a place that was always so loud with talk, even if there weren't many people there. Like the Texan said, everyone had to speak up if they were going to sit so far apart.

And even after the Hotel New Hampshire, had been open long enough so that we recognized many of our customers, from the town, as 'regulars' -- those who were at the bar every night until closing time, just before which old Iowa Bob would appear for a nightcap before he turned in -- even during those familiar evenings, with those familiar few, Bob could still pull his favourite trick. 'Hey, pull up your chair,' he'd say to someone, and someone would always be fooled. For a moment, forgetting where he or she was, someone would give a little lift, a little grunt, a little perplexed strain would pass across a face, and Iowa Bob would laugh and cry out, 'Nothing moves at the Hotel New Hampshire! We're screwed down here -- for life!'

That opening night, after the bar and restaurant was closed and everyone had gone to bed, Franny and Frank and I met at the switchboard and did a bed check on each of the rooms with the unique squawk-box system. We could hear who slept soundly, and who snored; we could detect who was still up (reading), and we were surprised (and disappointed) to discover no couples were talking, or making love.

Iowa Bob slept like a subway, rumbling miles and miles underground. Mrs. Urick had left a stockpot simmering, and Max was playing his usual static. The New Jersey couple was reading, or one of them was: the slow turning of pages, the short breaths of the nonsleeper. The Connecticut pair wheezed and whinnied and whooped in their sleep; their room was a boiler room of sound. Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, New York, and Maine all gave off the sounds of their various habits of repose.

Then we switched on the Texan. 'Ya-hoo,' I said to Franny.

'Whoo-pee,' she whispered back.

We expected to hear his cowboy boots striking the floor; we expected to hear him drinking out of his hat, or sleeping like a horse -- his long legs cantering under the covers, his big hands, strangling the bed. But we heard nothing.

'He's dead!' Frank said, making Franny and me jump.

'Jesus, Frank,' Franny said. 'Maybe he's just out of his room.'

'He's had a heart attack,' Frank said. 'He's overweight and he drank too much.'

We listened. Nothing. No horse. No creaking of boots. Not a breath.

Franny switched the Texan's room from Receiving to Broadcasting. 'Ya-hoo?' she whispered.

And then it came to us -- all three of us (even Frank) seemed to grasp it. It took Franny about one second to switch to Ronda Ray's 'dayroom.'

'You want to know what a dayroom is, Frank?' she asked.

And on came the unforgettable sound.

As Iowa Bob said, we are on a big cruise, across the world, and we're in danger of being swept away, at any time.