Lancelot

feet.
    â€œNo, wait.” I had already known what I was going to do. And how I was going to deal with it, time coming at me and ten billion cells tingling, waiting.
    He sat down slowly. I picked up the telephone and called my cousin Laughlin at the Holiday Inn. Elgin, simply curious now, watched me.
    â€œLock, I need a favor.” I could ask. I had loaned him the money, Margot’s money, to build the motel.
    â€œSho, Lance. Just you ask.”
    He was too quick and ingratiating. Gratitude, as well it might, made him uneasy. I could see him sitting at his desk: his clean short-sleeved shirt, neat receding hair turning brown-gray, Masonic ring on finger, hand on socks with clocks, short body just slightly fat, a simple shape like a balloon blown up just enough to smooth the wrinkles. He looked like the president of the Optimists Club, which in fact he was. A doomed optimist. The only difference between Laughlin and me was that Laughlin had not even had his youthful moment of glory. Instead he had had twenty or thirty jobs in the past twenty or thirty years, at each of which he had not exactly failed (for he was earnest and if he was stupid it was in some mysterious self-defeating way which not even he was aware of) but rather completed what he set out to do. He lost interest, the job ran out, the company went out of business, people stopped buying bicycles, sugar tripled in price and ruined his Nabisco distributorship. Now he answered too quickly. Two things made him nervous: one, that he owed me a favor; the other, that he was succeeding. Success terrified him.
    â€œJust you ask, Lance,” he said, gaining confidence from my hesitation.
    â€œI want you to close the motel for a few days.”
    â€œWhat’s that again?” he asked quickly.
    â€œJust say they’re going to cut your gas off temporarily as in fact they might. As you know, most of our gas has got to go to New England.”
    â€œI know but—close the motel? Why?”
    â€œI’ll pay you full occupancy even though you’re only half full. It should be for two or three days.”
    â€œBut tomorrow’s Tuesday.”
    â€œWhat’s that got to do with it?”
    â€œRotary.”
    â€œI mean the rooms. Go ahead and have Rotary.”
    â€œWhy do you want to close the rooms?”
    I fell silent. Four boys on the levee were tilting up a tall shorn willow like the Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima. Elgin was watching me, the old Elgin now, big-eyed and unmindful of himself.
    â€œI want all those film people out. They’re almost finished. If they leave there, they’ll have to get out.”
    â€œOh.” Oh, I see, he meant. I was counting on his misapprehension and let it stand. “I don’t blame you.”
    â€œFor what?”
    He trod carefully. “For wanting to keep an eye on ’em. I’ve seen a lot of things in this business.” He’d managed a motel in the French Quarter for a year. “You talk about humbug! But—”
    â€œBut what?”
    â€œAs long as they don’t tear up the furniture or burn the beds or stink up the place with pot, I don’t care who does what to who. You wouldn’t believe some of the things—college kids are the worst.”
    He was either stupid or tactful and I do believe it was the latter. We talked easily, deplored college kids and the vicissitudes of the motel business.
    â€œOkay, Lock?”
    â€œLet’s see. It’s three-thirty. Too late to close today. But I’ll put a notice in each box to be out by check-out time tomorrow.” He warmed up to it. “As a matter of fact, they’ve been talking about cutting off my gas. How do you like that! New York City is going to get our gas! And that means no heat or air conditioning in the rooms. Don’t worry about a thing.” For once, his mournful gratitude gave way to good cheer. It was as if he had repaid his loan. “I don’t even care. I’m changing to propane. Do you know what my gas bill was last month?”
    â€œThank you, Lock.”
    Elgin watched me as I hung up. Something had given him leave to relax and be himself.
    â€œElgin, there are some other things you and only you can do for me.”
    â€œI’ll do them.”
    In my new freedom I remember thinking: If one knows what he wants to do, others will not only not stand in the way but will lend a hand from simple curiosity and