All That You Love Will Be Carried Away

Alfred Zimmer.

Friends call me Alfie, Alfie Zimmer.

Room 19.

Allright.

- Mind if I tell you something? - Not at all.

I've been selling in the Midwest for twenty years,

and I have formulated four basic rules for securing my night's rest.

One, always reserve ahead.

Two, always reserve at a franchise motel if it all possible - your Holiday Inn,

your Ramada Inn, your Confort Inn, your Motel 6.

Three, always get a room on the end.

That way, you only have is one set of noisy neighbors of at all.

Four, always get a room that starts with a one. Do you know why?

Why is that?

Because, I'm forty-four years old, too old to be fucking truck-stop whores,

eating chicken-fried steak, or hauling my luggage upstairs.

Okee Dokie.

Of course, the problem with rooms that begin with a one...

...is that they're all non-smoking these days.

So, I have a rule for that, too.

Ask for'em and smoke anyway.

Save Russian Jews. Collect valuable prizes.

There is a market for gourmet foods in Nebraska, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas;

even in the Dakotas, although you might not believe it.

I've done quite well, especially over the last two years...

as I've gotten to know the market's deeper creases- but...

it's never going to equal the market for, let's say, fertilizer.

Is it possible that behind those lights,

some farmer's wife is even now heating up a pot of Cottager Split Pea Soup.

Or perhaps micro-waving a Cottager Shepherd's Pie or Chicken Francais?

It is. It's as possible as Hell.

Her husband watches the early news with his shoes off...

...and his socked feet on a hassock,

...and overhead their son plays a video game on his Game Cube...

...and their daughter lies on a bed,

kicking her feet behind her, reading Harry Potter.

Can I help you?

I just dropped by for a dinner.

That sounds a good great idea. Come on in.

Can I help you?

Save Russian Jews. Collect valuable prizes.

Can I help you?

Ma'am, according to at least one source I've read recently,

'All that you love will be carried away.'

Maybe then I could offer her...

...a sample box of Cottager brand quick-serve gourmet foods.

Maybe she'd have a particular taste for caviar.

Many did. Even in Ohio.

Alfie Zimmer. Frozen gourmet foods.

Charles More... Fertilizer.

- Yeah, I can tell you, remembered the truck. - Right.

How about that botany make up around Mansfield?

You get called in there?

Yeah. Truck dropped that tassel. I missed my last meeting.

You know why?

I already know what it looks like inside this room.

It's square.

The walls are white.

On one wall is a picture of daylilies, orchids or something.

It's cold in there right now,

but if I hit that "High Heat" button on the Climatron,

it'd heat up real fast, probably become too hot.

There are twin-beds, identical gold bed spreads on each one,

first tucked under the pillows and then pulled back over them,

so that they resemble corpses of infants.

On the table beside the bed there is a flesh colored phone,

a Gideon Bible.

In the bathroom, if you turn on the light,

you get the fan, too.

There is no way around there.

And then, the smell.

Can come a harsh chemical cleansers' smell...

...next with the mildew on the shower curtain.

It's the room of my dreams.

I bought this notebook seven years ago...

...in the stationary department of some five-and-dime in Omaha or Sioux City...

...for a dollar and nine cents.

Restrooms are filled with homosexual graffiti,

most of it tiresome and repetitive,

but "poutie boy mouth" is pretty good.

Poopie doopie you so loopy.

I'm crazy about that one.

Something about the "-ie, -ie," and then, boom, you got "-y".

It could be no more than an illiterate's mistake,

but why think like that?

What fun would that be?

No, I prefer to believe that "-ie, -ie"...

...wait for it... "-y" was an intended construction.

Something sneaky but playful,

with the feel of an "E.E. Cummings" poem.

Two today.

I found two today.

Two in one day.

Two on the last day.

Like some sort of omen.

So many... so many entries recalling thousands of truck stops...

...and roadside chicken shacks and highway rest areas...

...the way certain songs on the radio...

...can bring back specific memories of a place, or a time...

...or the person you were with, what you were drinking,

what you were thinking...

I started collecting bits of graffiti...

...without at first knowing why I was doing it.

They were just amusing, or disconcerting,

or both at the same time.

Yet, little by little I became fascinated with these messages from the innerstate,

where the only other communications seem to be dipped headlights...

...when you passed in the rain,

or maybe somebody in a bad mood flipping you the bird...

...when you went by in the passing lane pulling a roaster-tail of snow behind you.

I came gradually to see...

or perhaps only hope -

that something was going on here.

The E. E. Cummings' lilt of "Poopie doopie you so loopy",

for instance, or the inarticulate rage...

...of 1380 West Avenue.

Kill my mother. TAKE HER JEWELS.

Or take this oldie:

Here I sit, cheeks a flexin', giving birth to another Texan.

The meter, when you consider it, is odd.

Is not iambs, but some odd triplet formula...

...with the stress on the third.

Here I sit... cheeks a flexin'... giving birth... to another Texan.

Of course, it broke down a little towards the end.

I thought on many occasions I could go back to school,

take some courses, get all that feet-and-meter stuff down pat.

Know that I was talking about...

...instead of running on a tightrope of intuition.

All I really remember clearly from the school is iambic pentameter.

"To be or not to be, that is the question."

I had thought about writing a book once.

Just a little one.

The first title that occurred to me was...

"Don't Look Up Here, You're Pissing On Your Shoes"...

...but you couldn't call a book that.

Not and reasonably hope someone...

...could put it out for sale in a store anyway.

And, besides, that was light. Frothy.