I sat in the office, playing Adventure on the Atari. I’d finished the game a zillion times before, but I was sick of Superman, and all the other cartridges required two players to be any fun.

A Benny walked in, a six-pack of bottles of beer in one hand and a cooler the size of a doghouse swaying in the other.

“The ice machine is between Room 2 and Room 4,” I said, pointing to the left.

“I’m not looking for the ice machine,” he said. “I need a bottle opener. Ya got one, pal?” He showed a fresh cut on his thumb. “I thought they were twist-offs,” he said, mushing the tiny flap of skin against the second knuckle of his index finger.

I looked under the office desk and pawed through the lost and found. Some of my best stuff had been left by customers. A thick leather shaving bag that I kept foreign coins in. Two Billy Idol tapes. A fountain pen. Strings of studded or ribbed Venus beads that you were supposed to feed into a girl’s pussy or asshole, or even your own ass-hole, according to the hard-core magazines. A cock ring.

I found a bottle opener with a white plastic handle that was melted by the heat coils of a hotplate. The metal ends were spotted with rust, although I could still make out the words “STAINLESS STEEL TAIWAN.” I handed it over the counter to the man.

“Can I have this?” he asked.

“Yeah, someone’s left it here since last winter,” I said.

“Thanks, pal, thanks. Hey, wait a sec, you know who John Belushi is?”

“Yeah, I know who he is,” I said. I watched “Saturday Night Live” every week.

“You wanna meet him? He came down for a few hours to hang out.”

“Where is he?” I asked. The Benny walked to the office door and pointed through the glass pane. In the distance, I could see frantic splashing in the swimming pool.

“There, the guy in yellow trunks.” A blur of yellow sprung off the diving board into a mass of limbs and glittery reflections of sunlight. “That’s him! Come on, I’ll introduce ya.”

John Belushi swimming at my hotel pool. Cheebugger, Cheebugger, Cheebugger! No Coke — Pepsi! And the Samurai!

Now if it were any other non-guest swimming in my pool, I would have told him to leave. Our insurance didn’t cover them. And anyway, the beach was just a mile away. Who wanted to swim in a pool when the ocean was so close?

Jesus, John Belushi. That guy probably got laid every night. And every morning.

“Hey, I gotta get back to the pool,” said the Benny. “Come down and I’ll introduce ya.” He stepped out of the office. I really wanted to go, but my mother, who was fast asleep in the bedroom, would demand to know why I’d abandoned my post — something I’d never done before.

Still, I just had to go. I’d risk a screaming session with my mother to meet John Belushi. I’d never met a celebrity before.

I came up with a plan. I could tell my mother that I had had to go refill the soda machines because a customer had come down to the office and complained that they were empty. After all, the customer was always right.

I took a thick ring of keys hanging below the Marlboro clock, stuck a “BACK IN 15 MINUTES” sign in the office window, and locked the door behind me. I liked that sign because the customers never knew when those 15 minutes had started.

I unlocked the supply closet next door to Room 3 and dragged out crates of canned soda.

The Fiorellos were sitting in plastic lawn chairs in the shade of the edge of the roof. In the winter, they’d come into the office and sit and blah blah blah for hours with my mother or just themselves, but in the summer, they pulled out folding chairs and sat by their car. After going through the effort of changing into swimming attire, they couldn’t be bothered to walk down to the pool. The National Enquirer was draped across Mrs. Fiorello’s lap. It looked like a wind-strewn newspaper along the freckled fat of the land. Peter Fiorello stared up into the sky, his sunglasses reflecting fuzzy white clouds. Two fingers were wedged into his waistband.

“Peter, look at the young man working so hard in the summer!” said Mrs. Fiorello. “Maybe you should get a summer job, too.” She patted the hairy lump that oozed over the rim of Peter Fiorello’s shorts.

“My job all year round is to be a fat slob next to you and make you look good,” he said. His eyebrows jerked above the rim of his sunglasses and a splotch of blue tattoo ink on his chest quivered. “I make her look real good, don’t I? Just like Suzanne Sommers.”

Mrs. Fiorello was as far from Suzanne Sommers as men were from women. God, I couldn’t even imagine sitting in the car with Mrs. Fiorello, much less being in bed with her. Then again, Peter Fiorello wasn’t going to star in any eight-millimeter films this year.

I threw on a case of 7-Up, The UnCola, onto the handtruck, followed by a case of Tab diet cola and two cases of local sodas — Briardale Cola and Howdy! orange soda. They were cheaper than Coca-Cola and Sunkist, and tasted like it. Mrs. Fiorello opened her hands and shook her palms at the case of Tab.

“Oh, that’s what I need! The One-Calorie Soda! I can’t find it anywhere.”

“She doesn’t even know it causes cancer.”

“Well, even if it causes cancer, Peter, it can’t be as bad as your cigars, you know.”

“But I look good holding a cigar up. Gives me an excuse not to talk because my mouth is full. Showing people you drink Tab tells them, ‘I’m fat! I need help!

Get me on a diet!’ She looks great anyway. Doesn’t need to lose anything but her mother.”

“Peter, that’s terrible! I love my mother. You love my mother, too!”

“I have to fill the soda machine,” I said, anxious to be on my way. They both waved as I shoved off with the handtruck. The three soda machines, which were next to the pool’s shallow end, stood against the walls of a defunct hamburger stand that had closed years before we’d bought the hotel. The glass sliding doors to the stand were still intact, no cracks or chips. If you cupped your hands to the glass, you could see dusty sheets thrown over rectangular kitchen equipment in the darkness inside.

My eyes swept the pool area, lingering over asses and tits, but I didn’t see the Benny who took the bottle opener, or Belushi’s yellow trunks. I looked a little longer, then decided to fill the soda machines while I waited.

The soda key was special. Instead of being flat, it consisted of a small crown of metal that plugged into a circular slot on each machine. One machine held just Briardale Cola, the other held 7-Up and Howdy! orange soda, and the third held Briardale Cola and Tab. Each machine held about 200 cans of soda that went for 35 cents a pop. They would run out after only a few days in the summertime, and I had to refill them right before and again during the busy weekends. The cigarette machine, which charged 75 cents for a pack and a book of matches with blank covers, would run out, too, but the cigarette guy filled that one up, not me.

Filling the machines meant pain. I would get two deep red grooves on each hand between the thumb and the index finger from unloading all the six-packs. When I complained, my mother would slap at my hands.

“That’s nothing!” she’d say, “You’re not bleeding. You’re still young. When you’re old, then you can complain about your body.” The next day, I’d have bruise marks where the red had been, with a bunch of tiny blue and red dots in the grooves of the calluses like specks of glitter caught under my skin. I would show my mother, but she would just laugh, saying they would disappear after a few days. And they did.

Tab was always the last drink to sell out. Even the Bennys would rather drink Briardale Cola with its horse-head logo or Howdy! with its stupid buck-toothed clown mascot instead of Tab. Belushi would never drink Tab.

Out of curiosity, I tried one. It tasted like liquefied dead bugs coated in pesticide and mashed into my mouth. I turned the can on its side and the soda foamed as it hit the dirt. I locked up the machines and took a closer look at the swimmers, walking around the perimeter of the pool. John Belushi was nowhere to be seen. Some guys fit his dimensions, but no one was wearing yellow trunks. Bottle Opener Benny was also gone.