Late Night Grande Hotel (Part 7)

Part VII: Room 707 (Moonlighting)

Maria wanted to live in the America she was teased with on late night basic cable. Life was so special on late night cable TV...so much more colorful, so much more exciting, so much more fulfilling. She desperately wanted to be Maddie, trading coy quips with David while they were finding and savoring all of the adventure and mystery and romance that life had to offer.

Maria wanted that America. The Real America.

The hotel was a good start...an oasis in a seedy, rundown hellhole (that she could find back home)...big...if not really as big as its name promised..."Grande"...but bigger by far than anything she'd ever walked through the front door of back in Manila. Real America.

But she was still Maria, not Maddie. And the awkward man in the off-the-rack suit struggling with their luggage...well, he was certainly not David. Maria shrugged. If this were only the outskirts of the Real America, she would make do for the time being.

Maria stayed two steps back as the awkward man ("Richie" she sighed...children are named "Richie" in the Real America...children, not husbands) conducted business with the immense red bear behind the reception desk.

Maria regarded the bear with a mixture of fear and morbid fascination...she had never seen a human being so large (except maybe Ralph Kramden) and he indeed seemed more beast than man. She wanted to dislike him intensely.

But as she looked at him more closely...his smile was opaque but his eyes were alive with expansive tales both lived and observed...in the real America...broad, full-bodied tales lived in bold primary colors.

His teeth were straight and white, his shoulders broad and sturdy. His shirt was neatly pressed, unstained by sweat or foodstuff despite his bulk.

And, most importantly, his hands were tapered and powerful with fingernails that were immaculately manicured.

All was forgiven...the red bear was massive and masculine and calmly sure of himself...he was America incarnate and Maria's heart swelled with chaste but proprietary affection.

Richie inspired that kind of affection in Maria once upon a time.

All of the American sailors...on leave from other ports since the US bases closed...had the glow and sweet musk of America about them. She danced for them...danced on their laps and made their American thingees stand up and take notice...danced and waited for the one who would be her David...who would make her Maddie.

Richie looked smart and sturdy in his crisp white uniform...she thought he was the one. She was wrong...but he got her to the outskirts of Real America anyway and she was grateful to him for that.

Grateful for the voyage to the outskirts of America...and for the little green card in her purse...and for the little gold wedding band on her finger. All of these were significant. All of these were important. Almost as important as America. Maria could forgive him for not being David...maybe that comes later.

The boy who relieved Richie of their bags moved with an effort that was just the other side of laziness. This Maria understood all too well. Invisible sighs and reluctant performance had been part and parcel of her life for as long as she could remember.

At home...she remembered performing…in the bar, grinding on the laps of boy-men from the other side of the world. At home...she was still performing...in the role of doting wife, here and now on the outskirts of Real America.

At home...she was performing...doing her new job…as Richie’s submissive spouse…on the side until she was called, finally, to her real job somewhere in Real America.

Moonlighting.

The boy ("Jerry", Maria sighed with exasperation. She wished that she had found the courage to ask the red bear his name...it was not "Richie" or "Jerry" of this much she was sure) and Richie and Maria spoke not at all as they rode the elevator to the 7th floor.

Maria wandered the length and breadth of their rooms...a honeymoon gift from Richie's tomato-faced parents...while Richie paid Jerry to go away.

Jerry winked lecherously at Maria as he disappeared through the door. David would have done it too...but with style.

In five minutes, she would be reminded that men are all thumbs and unfocused heat when they're undressed. In five months, a bored doctor would tell her that she was pregnant. In five years, she would be three children...and twenty-five pounds...heavier and still living on the outskirts of Real America with an uncomplicated, unromantic boy-man who allowed himself to be called "Richie".

In her heart she already knew all this...but she didn't dwell on it. Maddie wouldn't dwell on it and neither would she.

The Real America was out there...David and Maddie proved it...the red bear proved it...late night cable TV enshrined it...and she had made it to the outskirts. She couldn't be more than a heartbeat away. In the meantime, she would make herself happy in her part-time job. Moonlighting and marking time on the outskirts of the Real America.