We sell books the old-fashioned way … we read them.
—ANDERSON’S BOOKSHOP, NAPERVILLE, ILLINOIS
Chicago has the damnedest highway toll system in the United States of America. If you’re on one of the numerous interstates crisscrossing the city and you don’t have an Illinois freeway pass, you have to keep pulling off to throw quarters into an automatic collector. Like calculus, it’s simple enough if you understand it. I didn’t, and ran half a dozen toll booths before I realized what they were. Good work, Mr. Vermonter, and now for an appearance at a Chicago mall—how did I get roped into this?—next door to a strip joint with bars on the blacked-out windows. A neon sign read ONE NITE ONLY MISS FIFI FYRE AND LITTLE EGYPT IN FIREROTICA.
Judging by the numerous cars and pickups in the strip-joint parking lot that evening, the glamorous Miss Fifi and Little Egypt had a good turnout for their brief stand in Chitown. Nearby at the mall bookstore, I did not. Two people showed up: Harold Who and the store manager, who was in a white heat to close for the evening and get over to catch Firerotica.
“E-GYPT. LIL EGYPT. YOU LET ME IN THERE, GIRLFRIEND. IT’S FIFI.”
I started upright. A rain of blows fell on the door of my motel room, accompanied by more injunctions to let my nocturnal visitor the fuck into the room or else.
I staggered to the door, which seemed ready to pop off its hinges. Thank God it was just my prostate gland and not my heart that was at risk. Shades of Miami and the [B]udget In[n].
“Excuse me,” I called out, as if I were the one waking up half the city of Chicago. “Excuse me, ma’am. This is 202. Howard Mosher? I’m afraid you have the wrong room.”
“ROOM SCROOM. LET ME IN THERE, GAL, OR I GONE KICK YOUR LYING ASS ALL THE WAY TO DE-TROIT.”
I opened the door. There, in some kind of skimpy terry-cloth getup, stood (I judged) the celebrated Miss Fifi Fyre. “Say,” she said. “You ain’t Lil Egypt. You got my girlfriend in there somewhere, young man?”
It was that “young man” that did it. I began to laugh.
“I’m sorry,” I said, still laughing. (Why was I sorry, for the sake of the West Texas Jesus?) “You really do have the wrong room.”
Miss Fifi was up on her tiptoes, bobbing around and peering past me to see what I’d done with her sidekick.
“What’s your room number?” she said.
“This is 202.”
“Two-oh-two? Why didn’t you say so? We’re in two-oh-four, boy. I got the wrong room.”
More laughter, this time mutual.
“Well,” Miss Fifi said, “you go back to sleep now, Mr. Two-oh-two. Get your beauty rest. Ha.”
“Sorry,” I said again, and just before Miss Fifi began to beat on 204 with all her might, she waved back at me like a railway switchman giving the highball signal and called out, “No problem, dude. No problem at all.”