Drew Smith - Arcade

He showed up for his next reservation, thank God. It didn’t occur to me until the date had almost arrived that he might not show up again, and I’d end up paying for that room too.

When he appeared, a guest was yelling at me about her toilet being clogged. She wanted me to know that this was her fourth stay at the motel, and three of those times her toilet had become stopped up.

“Sometimes people put more paper into the commode than the system can handle,” I said.

“I’m not an idiot,” she said. “I don’t use any more here than I do at my house, and the toilets at my house practically never get clogged.”

“This is a really old property,” I said. “Maybe our plumbing can’t handle as much as you’re used to.”

I tried not to look at Mr. Grate and Bench, who had entered the lobby shortly after the woman did. He stood behind the woman, waiting patiently, playing with his phone.

“Could you just try flushing more often?” I said.

“Not that that’s any of your business, but I don’t particularly enjoy the sensation of flushing while I’m sitting on the pot,” she said.

At that, I accidentally made eye contact with Mr. Grate, and the two of us instantly smiled so broadly that neither of us could contain a short burst of laughter.

The woman whipped around to look at him, then glared at me.

“I’m going to dinner,” she said. “My toilet had better be unclogged by the time I get back. And don’t drip toilet water on the seat.”

“Absolutely. Sorry for the trouble. Have a nice night.”

Mr. Grate and Bench held the door for her, and then laughed and shook his head at me when she was gone. “Hope she eats light,” he said, “for your sake.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“I bet you wouldn’t miss that kind of thing if you came to work for me.”

“If she comes back, I might quit this job and come volunteer for you, whether your pregnant rep leaves or not.”

“Haha. Hopefully it won’t come to that.”

We talked for a few minutes about the job, and he said that if it ever looked like the position was actually going to open up we would have a real sit down over lunch one day and he’d tell me what it was all about.

When he was gone, I locked up and went to the woman’s room where the toilet was so close to overflowing that shit and water splashed on my shoes while I plunged it. The diarrhea smell mixed with the smell of her hairspray and powdery deodorant was so strong I thought I might throw up, topping off the already-flooded bowl.

I imagined all the traveling Mr. Grate and Bench did and wondered for a minute if he might have been playing the same game with clerks across the country, following the narrative of their rising hopes.

I RAN INTO A STRAIGHT COUPLE AT THE ARCADE, A RAREsight. They were looking at videos, and the woman was giggling quietly, as they often do in porn stores, unable to believe what they’re seeing, the monuments men have built to vaginas and to the very notion of sex. In my experience women seldom grasped the being-private-in-public basics of porn browsing. Years before she was married and with-child, I took my friend Joan to a porn shop without first explaining what I assumed were the self-evident fundamentals of porn store etiquette. I was looking through the videos piled on the discount table when I heard her call my name. I looked up and saw her next to a man looking at pregnancy porn. “Check this out,” she yelled, holding a video aloft. “Pregnant nuns! What the fuck, right?” The man was gone in a flash, the bell on the door tinkling behind him.

The straight couple I saw at the arcade was discreet enough, whispering and flipping through DVDs. But they muddied the vibe out there just by their presence. I found myself watching them. Once in a while, the husband looked up at me and then said something to his wife, who would look up at me and reply to her husband. Then she would giggle again. I couldn’t tell if they were quietly ridiculing me, or if she was just laughing at the whole scene. Or if they were flirting.

I crossed the store and went down the smoking hallway just to see how they’d react if I passed close to them. We all looked at one another, and a moment later, I heard them following behind me.

“Psst!” the man said.

I stopped and looked back at him. He was drunk and cheery, smiling and holding his wife’s hand. She looked drunk too, the redness in her cheeks visible even in the darkened hallway. She was pretty and blonde and in her early forties, her husband a few years older.

“Hey,” I whispered. “What are you guys up to?”

“Do you want to come with us?” he said.

“Sure.”

“Take his hand, honey.”

She took my hand, so we were all three in a line together. I pointed to a door a couple of feet away with my free hand and we all went inside and locked the door.

The woman was wearing a thin dress in a floral pattern that covered just the tops of her thighs. Her husband moved behind her and lifted her breasts up and down.

“See how nice they are?” he said.

His wife laughed and shook her head. “Bobby loves to show men my tits.”

“I’m proud of ‘em,” Bobby said. “Ain’t they nice?”

“They’re perfect,” I said.

“You’re damn right. See, honey? This guy knows.”

“Mind if I feel?” I said.

“Do you mind, hun?”

“I don’t mind,” she said.

Her husband’s hands were still on her breast as I moved towards her. He reached out and took my hand in his and guided me to her tits. I felt her up as if I were his puppet. I liked having his hand on my hand and mine on her.

“You like that?” he said.

“Sure I do.”

“That’s not even the best part.”

He let go of my hand so I could see what he meant. He put his hands on her hips and slowly lifted the fabric of her dress until I could see that she wasn’t wearing any panties. She had a perfect little patch of hair, and I watched the husband slide his hand down and rub her from behind. After a minute, I could smell it. It was a nice, different smell from the smell I was used to in the booths.

She looked down at his hand and then up at my face, appearing to enjoy herself. She seemed happy and confident like an amateur model showing off. She smiled at me.

“Mind if I touch?”

“That okay, hun?” he said.

“You clean?” she said.

“You bet.”

“Alright then.”

I reached out and slipped my fingers down with her husband’s. We were rubbing her together, sliding in and out. It felt almost perfect, like we had planned it or practiced beforehand. The wife moaned and stretched her neck so that her head was tilted back, pressed against her husband’s.

“Kiss her on the neck,” he said.

I kissed her on the neck, from her throat to her ear. Her husband did the same on the other side. Then we switched sides.

“Go slow,” he said. “We got time.”

Funny, but after he said that, things began moving faster. He lifted her dress off so that she was naked except for a pair of white canvas sneakers.

She wanted to be on all fours on the bench. The husband slipped off his cargo shorts and unbuttoned his Hawaiian shirt revealing a hairy chest and paunch and one of the biggest dicks I’d ever seen. All he wore was a pair of flip-flops.

“She wants for me to be behind while you’re in front.”

“Sounds good to me,” I said.

I stood in front of her. When I started to thrust into her mouth, her husband said, “Don’t do it like that. She don’t like that. Just let her be in control.”

“Oh, sure. Sorry.”

So I stood still while she sucked me and moaned. Bobby slammed her from behind.