Ever since yesterday, I’ve been thinking about opening up this place as a hotel, given the traffic that seems to flow through here.
Well, not actually a hotel, but more of a bed-and-breakfast sort of joint, for the lower-end market.
There’s no hotels in this county, or in any counties surrounding it. There’s motels--including a world-class one that travel brochures insist is even better than the finest such establishments in New Haven, Connecticut or Baltimore, Maryland--in the big city, but that’s quite a distance away.
There’s a few bed-and-breakfasts, cutesy antique pioneer-era houses, around here, but at thirty, forty, bucks a night, that’s pretty pricey for primitives. They have great beds, and they all set good tables, but primitives don’t have that sort of money.
I’m thinking along the lines of ten bucks a night, for bed and board, but it’d have to be self-serve breakfasts, whatever’s in the kitchen, because franksolich is no chef. And there’s always more than enough chow out here for a primitive to gorge on…..but the overnight primitive would have to fix it all himself.
The only problem is, it would put a crimp on my style. Being deaf, I’m not exactly a sociable person, and I moved out here to the middle of nowhere to get away from people, not to hang around them.
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I’m still laid low by mononucleosis gotten the afternoon of Christmas Day, but as it doesn’t appear likely any more that I’ll have to be taken out of here in an ambulance or a hearse--and hence the necessity of being presentable at all times--I’d gone back to my usual nocturnal habits.
It’s winter; nobody comes out here during the middle of the night anyway.
Or so I thought, until Friday morning.
When I first woke up, I went into the kitchen to turn on the coffee, after which I headed to the alcove that’s between the dining room and the living room, to turn on the computer and check the Drudge Report.
While waiting for the monitor to zoom on, I lit a cigarette and glanced towards the living room.
It was dark in there, but I saw someone slumbering on the couch.
As I hadn’t taken the self-defense devices gotten for Christmas out of their original packages yet, and had put the famous 17†S/K adjustable wrench back into the tool box, I looked around in the darkness for a weapon, picking up a brass clock sitting atop the buffet in the dining room.
I had no idea how I’d use it, but decided I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.
I approached the slumbering form. It was that of a normal person, some guy maybe four or five inches shorter than me, and circa 30 years old. No primitive this, just another native Nebraskan. I poked him, but he didn’t stir.
I gently jabbed him a couple more times, the brass clock clutched in my other hand, and he finally jolted awake. He sat up with a jerk, and his eyes grew as big as saucers upon looking at me.
I indicated I was deaf, but I could understand him anyway, and asked who he was, and why he was here.
He stuttered, still staring at me, and explained. He was from a big city about two hours south of here, and he and his woman had been up here at the bar, drinking. They had a big argument, and she left…..with the motor vehicle they’d come in.
Well, there he was, stranded in town and no way to get anywhere else.
And sordidly drunk too.
Somebody at the bar had told him they knew where he could spend the night, and get things straightened out in the morning. He told me the name of the individual, and I put the brass clock down. It was one of the ranch-hands who works across the road from here, a good friend, and so it was all kosher, copacetic.
He told me the ranch-hand, who brought him out here, had flicked the light off and on, so as to wake me up, but I was slumbering like an infant. So finally the ranch-hand just took some blankets out of the buffet in the dining room and tossed them on the couch, telling him it was all okay, he might as well hit the sack.
Before leaving, the ranch-hand pointed out that franksolich is a nice guy, one of the nicest guys one could ever hope to meet, but also reminding him that I’m deaf, and so he shouldn’t worry if I demonstrated confusion and some, uh, personal peculiarities upon our first encounter.
The coffee now being done, I suggested he have some, as he was really hung over, while I went and got myself decent, apologizing to him for being so decrepit, as I hadn‘t shaved for two days, being ill and tired out and all that.
“I look like Hell when I haven‘t shaved.â€
He looked at me as if I were Bozo from Outer Space, but I let it pass.
In about an hour, he’d finally touched base with his angry girlfriend, who’d spent the night in the big city with a friend of hers.
It ended well, but now I’m starting to wonder if perhaps this is something off which I can make money, being an innkeeper.
