Rick Moody - Hotels of North America

Gently the sensei began to call us forth, and although I would like to claim it was an impossibility that I had been asleep, it was not an impossibility, and the calling forth was an eruption of life and its cares into the room, which didn’t look like an ashram but like somebody’s apartment with a few cushions strewn about. Soon people were gathering up their stuff, and others were approaching the sensei, if that’s who he was, and bowing, and so I guessed that I needed to go over and bow to him too, so I went over, and as I went over I realized that now I was standing in the company of the woman, the woman I had been thinking of, and I listened as she thanked the sensei and bowed, and then he was turning to me and he was saying that he hadn’t seen me there before, and I said, Yes, that’s true, it’s my first time, and he asked what had brought me there, and I told him that I had actually seen the flyer in the store of the local health-food purveyor, and he said, Oh, my brother, you have no idea how good those flyers are! Priceless advertising, really. And they don’t require much effort! As you can imagine, this remark kind of ruined my pitch, which I had been composing with my superior rhetorical skills in the days since I saw the flyer. I was so nonplussed by his observations that I couldn’t think what to say, and so I smiled like one of the happy converted.

Kay , the sensei said, how is that period of bereavement coming now, are you feeling better, are you able to get out and do things a bit? And K. said something in reply, which I did not catch, because I heard, in this remark by the sensei, the bereavement that this woman faced, and I knew at once that I could be part of the solution. I could be the person who helped her into the next phase of her life, and all I had to do was convince her of this in the next few crucial minutes. The way I saw it, I needed, as soon as her exchange with the sensei was done, to find myself a step behind her as she made her way to the cubbies by the entrance, where I would engage her in light conversation, afterward trying to ascertain her next destination and then, if possible, accompany her. Because, after all, we were one. One mind, one self.

The sensei said something about looking forward to seeing her again, and of course I wondered whether he had put his filthy Eastern-inflected paws on K., but there was no time for that, because now she was heading for her personal effects, and I, in my khaki trousers and worn oxford-cloth shirt, was right behind. A few others lingered by the doorway talking about this and that, some vegan treat they were preparing that night. I said to K., Would you like to go for a quick cup of coffee? I consider myself a sympathetic listener in the area of bereavement counseling. Indeed, I am bereaved myself. And she said: You don’t even know what my bereavement is about. And she fixed on me a look at once skeptical and amused. I was already gathering up my things, a knapsack and sweater, and we were moving toward the door, but then I was stopped by one of the employees, a minion, and was asked if I had perhaps forgotten something. Now the minion was telling me how much the suggested donation was for me to sit and have my thoughts cleansed, and I did not want to appear insolvent in front of K., so I quickly pulled out a few crisp bills and presented them, after which the minion asked if I wanted to fill out a questionnaire about my first time at the ashram, and I looked at him and then looked at K., radiant, unearthly, and then we were out the door.

There’s not a chance in the world you’re going to believe what happened next, which is to say the unlikely antecedent of this particular review, so I have no choice, in the end, but to try to use a few words to describe my thinking at the time. I don’t imagine that anyone believes love was possible after a mere hour spent sitting in the ashram when most of the meditation time our eyes were closed, but why, then, did K. say the thing she said to me only minutes after we had collected our Americanos and arranged ourselves by the window in a nearby café? You see, the truth is that all conversion experiences are really experiences of love. What I have said I have said, in the matter of the hotels of North America, and I can say now, with confidence, that most of the hotels in North America are not very good hotels, at least not the ones in my price range, and they are places where a long-ago idea of entrepreneurship and customer service has gone to perish. Many hotels and motels of North America are like the Capri Whitestone, and after a point, there is no further purpose in reviewing the hotels of North America, especially if your employer, the Rate Your Lodging website, is going to be absorbed into a larger conglomerate, at which time all freelance positions, and indeed any of the scrappy, upstart energy of the formerly shaggy and handmade operation, will be subject to intervention by corporate apologists and by their accountants and fembot publicists. But the main reason to leave off reviewing is because now I have given an account of love. What else is there to say? So we were sitting on the stools at the front of a café, talking about this and that, when K. said to me, Why don’t we drive north and check into a bed-and-breakfast? ★★★★ (Posted 3/8/2014)

It was mid-2014, about the time the Rate Your Lodging website was absorbed into the Dynasty Inc. family of publications, that I was approached by one of the former staff editors about writing an afterword to the collected writings of Reginald Edward Morse. Morse, whose manuscript I was then given, was a reviewer who had inspired a healthy readership among the devotees of Rate Your Lodging and sometimes even beyond. There seemed no reason at all to agree to write this afterword. The fee was insubstantial, the deadline was nigh, and I am not the sort of person who goes online to read reviews. Reginald Morse, whoever he was — and I will speculate on this below — was not a William Faulkner, or even a Molly Ivins or a Mitch Albom. He was a guy practicing a homely craft. There are lots and lots of these people out there, cranking out posts about books, movies, recordings, doctors, professors, accountants, appliances, plumbers, hotels. They believe in what they do. I think it’s admirable. But that didn’t mean I needed to help out.

I had decided to reject the offer, therefore, despite the honor of the request, until the day on which I had lunch with a freelance editor retained by RateYourLodging.com to assemble this book project you hold in your hands. This is when I became aware of what I would call the mystery of Reginald Morse. Michelle Perry, the editor in question, explained to me over the course of lunch that Morse seemed to have vanished not long after posting a final review in March of 2014. He had posted monthly, or twice monthly, beginning in 2012 and continued for more than two years, reviews that from the outset were often ambitious in length and scope, with scant attention paid, in some cases, to the actual hotels being reviewed, in order for him to write about identity, intimacy, loneliness, and love. Nothing in his demeanor, in his excesses of verbiage, indicated that he had any reason to put down his pen. And yet on the first Friday in April 2014, there was suddenly a silence, and thereafter Morse failed to communicate with R. Jahna, his in-house contact, nor did he ever turn in further reviews. That was the last that the Rate Your Lodging website ever heard from Reginald Morse. At least, as of this writing.

It is true, isn’t it, that the inner mechanics of even our closest acquaintances are a mystery to us? It is true that our suppositions about character can be reversed in a moment. There are large parts of all of us that lie hidden, both unmapped and unpredictable. Apparently, Reginald Morse, if that’s even his name, had more hidden than most.