Running the Bulls by Cathie Pelletier Page B

shoe-shine cloth, the ubiquitous plastic-shower-cap-in-a-box. Did anyone really use those caps? Howard picked the box up and studied it. Place on your head before showering, the instructions advised. Had confused Japanese businessmen used them as condoms, thus necessitating instructions? He lifted the cover of the commode and saw that the seat was protected by a narrow strip of paper that a mosquito could break if it sat its ass down. Two large chunks of the white enamel around the inner lid had been chipped away, leaving dark blotches that hinted of seagull droppings. Maybe it was not the very same room with the king-size bed in which he and Ellen had celebrated their silver anniversary, the big twenty-fifth, when he had given her a small diamond necklace. But it was certainly one like it. And therefore, it was symbolic as hell. As Howard Woods situated his suitcase on the floor beneath the clothes rack—he took note of his own ironing board and iron—he knew in his retired heart that he had come full circle.
    ***
    At four o’clock Howard left his room and walked down the corridor, with its shabby rug and dizzying design, to the big double door that said Lounge. It being a Sunday, only a few diehards were in the place, most likely travelers passing through town, since Howard saw no one familiar. He slid onto a stool at the end of the bar and waited for Wally to discover him there. The red seats of the chairs and sofas, so plush in their heyday they were like plopping down on fat strawberries at the end of a weary week, were now threadbare from all those white-collar rear ends: bankers, salesmen, lawyers, nurses, postal workers. Howard stared down the row of empty bar stools. The upholstery had grown so thin that the cheap bluish fabric beneath was now exposed, like painful nerve endings. And, adding insult to injury, the stools had grown lopsided, causing all those white-collar butts to now tilt, even slide a bit from left to right. Before, the plushness had whispered subliminally to the customer that perhaps he should stay awhile. Nowadays, the slanted stools only seemed to shout, Hey, buddy, let’s down that drink and keep moving! Even the decor of the bar—Howard had once thought it Far Eastern and alluring—had grown sickly, too much gilded effect for the approaching millennium. The help-yourself weenies and egg rolls had given way to salsa and tortilla chips, which one could eat from a community bowl with one’s own hands.
    Some things hadn’t changed, simply aged, and those were the pictures and signs behind the bar. One was a black and white 8×10 of William Cohen, Maine’s own son, now Secretary of Defense in Washington. Back in Bill’s hungry days he had walked from one end of Maine to another, a regular vagabond, stopping in to shake hands with Wally and sign a photo for the wall. Next to Bill Cohen was a yellowing publicity shot of Lola Falana. To Wally, Thanks for coming, it said. Love, Lola. Wally had gotten it while at a club in New York City, but unless a customer asked, it appeared as if Lola had sat on one of the plump strawberry-red stools right there at the Holiday Inn in Bixley. Wally liked it that way. “She was the Queen of Las Vegas,” he always said. “It’s good for business.” Wally said this long after only his most sincere regulars could remember who the hell Lola was.
    Next to Lola’s picture was Wally’s handmade sign: Home of the World’s Best Martini! It was pretty damn close to being true, too. At least, as Howard saw it, no one north of Boston could outsmart Wally on the semantics of a perfectly executed martini. This fame had prompted Wally to outdo himself, perpetually, so that he had become a walking encyclopedia on the history of the drink, so much so that he, too, was in danger of losing his job. Eva Braun had forbidden him to fraternize any more than was necessary with the regulars.
    â€œShe told me that while