Donald Westlake - Smoke

"Yes, every room. You're welcome to take it with you, if you like."

"Yes, you said that." The girl seemed obscurely troubled, and even sighed a little. "Well, we can only hope for the best," she commented, as though to herself, and left Mrs. Krutchfield steaming in a stew of irritation and bewilderment.

New Yorkers!

There was only one empty room at The Sewing Kit tonight, Nathan Hale, the one Mrs. Krutchfield always rented last because it was downstairs in back, too near the kitchen and the TV, and with no view at all to speak of, unless you like extreme close-ups of pine trees. But it was a nice group tonight, a nice mix, with some Germans in Betsy Ross, making marks on maps, and a family of Canadians in Ben Franklin washing their clothing in the sink — they'd particularly asked for a room with a sink, since The Sewing Kit did not offer private baths, but only communal bathrooms shared by two or three guest rooms — and in other rooms were several groups of mid-westerners, whom Mrs. Krutchfield had always found to be the very nicest of Americans, if somehow not all that stimulating. And of course the retired couple from Detroit — "Motor City!" they kept calling it, with the exclamation point solidly present in a silvery saliva spray — were still here, and still had more of their postcard collection from all over the "Lower Forty-eight" — as they called America — to show to their innkeeper or the other guests or anyone else who didn't move fast enough.

And of course there was the New Yorker in General Burgoyne.

Somehow, not entirely sure why, Mrs. Krutchfield found herself hoping the Motor City! couple and the girl from Brooklyn never crossed paths.

The Sewing Kit did not serve lunch or dinner, offering instead a typed-up list of suggestions of fine restaurant experiences to be had in the general Rhinebeck-Red Hook area. Mrs. Krutchfield did serve a breakfast of which she was proud, enough baked and fried food to pin any traveler to the seat of his or her car for hours after departure from The Sewing Kit, but the other meals she prepared only for herself, in her private quarters off in the left front wing of the sprawling structure, from which she could watch the main entrance and the circular drive for late arrivals or unexpected departures.

Usually, after dinner, Mrs. Krutchfield would join in the side parlor any of her guests who might like to watch TV. She herself was always in bed by ten, but she didn't mind if the guests continued to enjoy television by themselves, so long as they kept the volume down and turned the box off no later than the end of Jay Leno at 12:30. (New Yorkers always wanted to watch David Letterman.)

This evening the parlor was comfortably full, mostly with midwesterners, plus the Canadians (who smelled of Ivory Liquid), all spread out on both sofas, the three padded armchairs, and even the two wooden chairs. The girl from Brooklyn came in a little later than everyone else, looked around, smiled, said, "That's okay," waved the midwestern gentlemen back into their seats, and settled cross-legged on the floor in front of the sofas more gracefully and athletically than a city girl should be able to do.

Mrs. Krutchfield was justifiably proud of the big black gridwork dish out behind The Sewing Kit, bringing in television signals from all over outer space, but the truth was, she didn't make much use of its potential, limiting herself almost exclusively to the three networks, except when it so happened that one of the guests knew of a particular old movie afloat on some obscure brooklet crossing the heavens, and asked if they might tune in: a Martin and Lewis comedy, perhaps, or Johnny Belinda, or Fail-Safe.

There was nobody like that tonight, though, so they contented themselves with sitcoms. Mrs. Krutchfield sat in her usual place, the comfortable armchair directly opposite the TV. On the maple end table beside her lay the remote control, atop the satellite weekly listings open to tonight's schedule. (It was better not to let any of the male guests near the remote control.) And so another evening began at The Sewing Kit.

At first, everything was normal and serene. Then, at just about four minutes past nine, as everybody was contentedly settling in to watch a program broadcast from some parallel universe in which, apparently, there was a small town where the mayor and the fire chief and the high school football coach spent all their time joshing with one another at a diner run by a woman suffering from, judging by her voice, throat cancer, all at once the TV set sucked that picture into itself, went click, and spread across itself an image of three people moving on a bed, with no covers on. With no clothing on! Good gracious, what are those people doing?

Some horrible corner of the satellite village, some swamp beside the information highway, had suddenly thrust itself — oh, what an awful choice of words! — onto their TV screen. Gasping and shaking and little cries of horror ran through the room as Mrs. Krutchfield grabbed frantically for the remote control, only to find it had somehow fallen to the floor under her chair.

The people on-screen were also gasping and shaking and emitting little cries, though not of horror. "Mrs. Krutchfield!" cried a midwesterner, a stout lady from Loose Falls, whose chubby hands were now a bas relief on the front of her face. "Mrs. Krutchfield, help! "

"I'm, I'm—"

Scrabble, scramble — there! A different channel. On this channel, in a bare room, garishly lit, several men in ski masks and gray robes waved machine guns over their heads and yelled at the camera in some foreign tongue, urging who knew what depredations to be directed against the decent people of the planet, but at least they were clothed, and none of them were women, so they afforded Mrs. Krutchfield that calm moment of leisure she needed to figure out how to get back to Kitty's Diner, where the coach was saying: "— and that's when you throw the long bomb."

The sound track laughed, God knows why, and most of the people in the parlor dutifully laughed along with it, and life got back to normal.

For eight minutes. Im -plode, click, and now it was two people on what looked like a hockey rink in a large empty arena. These two weren't entirely naked, since they were both wearing ice skates, but what they were doing together was certainly not an Olympic routine.

Cries and shrieks from the sofas. Great wafts of Ivory Liquid essence from the Canadians. Mrs. Krutchfield lunged for the remote, and it was gone again !

Under her chair again — how could she keep knocking the blame thing off the end table like that, without noticing? — but this time she was more sure-fingered in fighting her way back to Kitty's Diner, where Kitty was rasping: "— and that's why you can't get today's special today."

The sound track laughed, the people in Mrs. Krutchfield's parlor laughed, and the world returned to its accustomed orbit.

For four minutes this time, before the implode click picture, during which half the guests either squeezed their eyes shut or protectively slapped their palms to their faces. But this time it was something entirely different. The picture on the screen was in black-and-white, to begin with, instead of those all-too-real flesh tones. Also, the woman walking along the cliff-edge above the stormy sea was fully clothed. Not only that, she was . . .

"Gene Tierney!" cried a midwestern gentleman who had not shut his eyes.

" She wouldn't do things like that!" cried a midwestern lady, whose eyes were still firmly sealed.

"It's a movie!" cried another midwestern gentleman.

Eyes opened. On-screen, the action had moved indoors, into an extremely cute cottage not unlike The Sewing Kit itself, though perhaps a bit more cramped. In this setting, a recognizable Rex Harrison marched and harrumphed, dressed like a pirate captain or something, and behaving in a rough-and-ready way that didn't at all suit him. Also, you could see through him, which was odd.