"Are you leaving here?" Janet said, "Are you
giving up on us?"
I was. She would go
to the meeting at city hall alone. I
loaned her two bucks for carfare, and our spokesperson was off to give the city
council hell. All alone. Last of the Mohicans. She expected more from me. Another fair
weather hero all for fighting the Long Beach redevelopment authority and saving
this old hotel. Now here Doyle was losing his nerve, going all quiet and non-committal on her.
"I can't go."
I said, "Got to teach a
class." "Got a meeting," I added, gilding the lily with fools
gold. The meeting would have gone on without me. We stood by the front door in the sun. I
spoke under considerable psychic strain, as if I was delivering a passel of
lies to a roomful of skeptical reporters.
I knew that there was always more I could do, more I could have done,
but you have to stop short of the cliff. You have to say no to frenetic
activity, say no to a doomed insurrection. I am not going to let it distract me
from doing my job. I AM GOING TO KEEP
MY LIFE TOGETHER.
Last night at two I woke up and knew it was over, I had to
get out . It was a dead hotel and the
little flames of life inside it were guttering out, one by one. Not enough
oxygen in this place to sustain human life.
I turned the bedside light on, got to the Olivetti and said the hell
with it. 3:30AM, when you start thinking
of killing yourself for no good reason, than it's just something going around
like the flu. It's time to get out. I NEED TO TOUCH NORMAL LIFE AGAIN. It was just me in room 308, Janet down the
hall in 317, Jerry in 212, and a
squatter named Jenkins up on the fifth floor.
She motioned at the empty lobby, maybe seeing if there was
any support there. They were now just names on a petition I had helped draft a
month ago and carried around from room to room.
Official scribe. Only four of us left in those sixty four rooms, and the
office door had been closed and bolted for the last two weeks. We still had the
full complement of high-back chairs in the lobby, two rows of dignity facing each other. If I look close enough and long enough I can
almost see the ghosts. The daily gathering of the refugees. Doctor Redmond's
down on the end next to the window, talking about his trans-Atlantic crossing
in the Iberia and the day they lost the anchor.
Maude is sitting across from him nodding off, Louis in in the corner
under the reading light, looking as fierce and ignorant as ever, rereading his
holy bible, ready to do battle with me on doctrinal issues. John is there too, sitting next to the window
leaning off to starboard, his eyes closed, honest sincere and innocent as a
baby. His head propped up on his huge fist. John was from South Dakota. A lot of the old guard at the hotel was from
the Dakotas. They migrated to Long Beach in the fifties and sixties to get away
from winter. Killing time in the Hotel Buffum among the potted palms, moving from
chair to chair as the sun moved across the sky. Kelly is here too, talking to
Jackson, laughing. He's got his bottle in a paper bag, is wearing his iron gray
herringbone jacket with the flaring lapels.
He gave the place a little class while he lasted, hard to see this
dapper fashion plate as someone who had lived out of his car for five years.
The sane sound-thinking reasonable people went first, when
the notices went under the door. Oh yes
we love our cockroach-infested old hotel, but it is time to leave before the
sheriff arrives. The aging anarchists stayed on, the campaigners against
injustice, the campaigners for a little moving money, and a little more
time. And while we met and talked and
sent out our petitions and talked to reporters, the old hotel emptied out. They
went down to the office one by one and made their deals.
I hugged Janet and we fogged up her heavy lenses for a
minute or so, and she went off to either have a drink with my two bucks or to
stand up before a bunch of uncaring politicians and give them hell for the
Buffumites. This reporter had told us he would be there for the hearing, but I
doubted if he would show. It was a classic lost cause. I was off on the
Greyhound to teach a class of sunny surfer kids the elements of a sentence, the
mechanics of a paragraph. I was trying to talk myself into acting sanely,
trying to remember that I had another life. I had obligations. So, in the end I decided to go quietly, like
everyone else did. Live to tell the tale.
These are the tornados that begin as gentle breezes, as quiet currents
that tug at you lovingly, and you look up at a great translucent peaceful sky
and relax; you go with it, you remember some favorite songs consonant with
noble struggles. You forget that you are just passing through this world.
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