The Hotel-Motel Bar & Grill

Playboy's College Fiction Contest Winner

University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama

Proprietor: Izard McAdoo, high school English teacher, divorced, weekend father, albino, heir to modest fruit-spread fortune. Chief patrons: Elizabeth, 12, Ellen, 10, Ted, 33.

The spirit of the Hotel-Motel Bar & Grill was derived from Iz's lifelong affection for the strangeness of hotels and motels. The quilted bedspreads, the shag carpets, the garbage cans with plastic liners and the television sets bolted onto fiberboard dressers. The foreign smells of transience and disinfection. In those odors, and in the Yellow Pages of an unfamiliar town, the clanging of wire hangers and the hollow knock of empty bureau drawers, he always caught the nuance of possibility. What had started out as a lark, playing "tavern" with his daughters on Sunday afternoons (which consisted mostly of charging them Monopoly money for colas and treats), ended up as a full-scale project that transformed his luxurious, if somewhat sterile, Southern Cal hacienda-style condo. He had chosen to upgrade the ambience of a tourist-trap family-inn sort of place, yet the basic attractiveness of the Hotel-Motel Bar & Grill lay in its lack of normalcy. It was his home but not his home.

Ellen and Liz both shared their mother Amy's ever-present tan and gray eyes. Ellen's features still appeared pliable and innocent, framed in little-girl pigtails or braids. Liz's nose and cheekbones were already sculpted into model beauty, and she came to visit with at least three varieties of gels and fixatives for her salon-coifed hair.

"What's the difference between a motel and a hotel?" Ellen asked.

"A motel's a hotel with a parking lot," Liz answered in a patronizing tone.

"Don't hotels have parking lots, too?"

"Daddy!"

"Relax, Elizabeth." Iz leafed through the dictionary. "A hotel is 'a public house that provides housing and usually meals and various services,' " he read.

"What kind of services?" Liz asked, precisely raising one eyebrow in a way he had thought only her mother could, cocking it a full half inch and holding it for several seconds, and Iz realized she was trying to embarrass him. He refused to falter.

"You know--shoes shined, clothes pressed, room service, wake-up calls."

Liz smiled a small smile, barely revealing teeth, but said no more.

"Just like here," Ellen said.

"Damn straight," Iz replied, leaning over to tickle them both.

•

After considerable thought and purchase, Iz had managed to cover just about every imaginable amenity. Cleanliness was important: daily change of sheets and towels for guests and sparkling-clean water glasses and wrapped perfumed soaps on the bathroom countertops. To have the water pressure perfectly adjusted, the vodka chilled, the limes fresh, the ashtrays spotless, the plants lush and the air fragrant and gently circulated by ceiling fans--that attention to detail made Izard's adrenaline rush.

Liz and Ellen took notice of everything, from additions such as the big-screen TV and the onyx backgammon table to the more subtle touches. On cool nights, they liked to sleep with the windows wide open, but then complained about cold feet. His solution was to buy hot-water bottles, which he ceremoniously placed at the ends of their beds when he tucked them in. He loved the moment when the warmth sank in, when their faces registered twin expressions of contentment; he sometimes thought this endeavor was charmed. Liz and Ellen loved the exclusivity of the arrangement, though Hotel-Motel etiquette required proffering hospitality to other guests, too.

Amy would shit, simply shit, if she ever came in; to her, the apartment would represent would represent two of his most irritating qualities: the ability to enjoy himself and his inherited money. Not that much about him seemed to please her now; in the two years since their divorce, most of her sentences began with the phrase "The problem with you is...." and ended with "Grow up." He never instructed the girls not to tell Amy anything that went on, but he trusted them to know it wasn't the smoothest move. He savored their present ages, when those issues did not have to be discussed, though it felt like borrowed time, as if he had the pleasure of those two wonderful girls for just a short time before they grew (continued on page 140) Hotel-Motel (continued from page 84) up and into Amys, lovely Amys.

Peter Pan Land

What Ted Maupin, fellow English teacher, running partner, former roommate, cynic and meddler, called the Bar & Grill. Ted had a stock set of ready lectures. He was 6'3" with linebacker girth, and he seemed particularly fond of backing Iz up against his car in the high school parking lot, standing almost close enough to brush him with his immense black beard.

"Izard, my friend, when you moved into a place of your own, the idea was that you were a single grown man who wanted to fuck single grown women in the privacy of your own home."

"I take women home.

"For the moment, I'll even overlook the paltriness of your conquests in order to stick to my point, which is the following." Ted took a deep breath. "Instead of a love nest, you've set up a fantasyland for preadolescents. You make little sandwiches and kiddie cocktails when you should be out making time with voluptuous lovelies."

"Jesus, Ted, I just happen to think my kids are a little more important than my libido."

"I suppose worrying more about whether a bed is properly made than whether there's a woman in it in the morning is normal for a thirty-four-year-old man?"

"And you think with your dick--hardly a qualified judge of normal human behavior," Iz replied.

"This is old, Iz. Let's bury the hatchet." So saying, he turned and walked toward his car.

"Besides, what could be more romantic and/or sexy than the comforts of a luxurious hotel? Beats car sex or meeting roommates in the hall."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're right, I'm wrong, silly old dickbrained Ted. Why don't you just invite me to come over on Sunday and shut up?" He got into his car and slammed the door.

Iz waved. "See you Sunday."

•

On the inside of the master-bedroom door hung the only physical reminder of his marriage to Amy, a sign they had stolen on their honeymoon. At two or three in the afternoon of their second day in Acapulco, he insisted that they needed to take at least one walk on the beach. He felt queasy and jittery, not unlike the way he'd felt as a child after eating a dozen candy bars or an entire bag of candy corn. He wanted to be vertical, to stretch, to breathe deeply, expelling lust and fatigue into the fresh beach air.

Through tickling and teasing, he carefully cajoled Amy into getting dressed and was just finishing up himself when he heard her laugh. He found her doubled over and pointing at a sign. It contained the standard instructions for what to do in case of fire, yet the designers of the warning had, for some reason, decided to emphasize one phrase in red block letters: If you cannot leave this room, please call the front desk.

Amy fell to her knees and crawled toward the night stand. She picked up the phone. "Help us, help us, please," she said, giggling. He crawled over to her and pushed her back onto the bed. He laughed with her, tears in his eyes. She laughed harder, and at the end of each phrase of her laughter, he heard a grace note of hysteria. She clung to him then, and tiny strings pulled at his skin until he was as tight as she, and he kissed her mouth shut and moved with her. They tugged at their clothes and each other until everything was tangled and damp, and they didn't leave the room for two more days.

Izard ached for the feeling, the dizzy feeling of wanting someone that much.

Decorator tips for albinos

Iz did not spend a lot of time in front of mirrors, because when he did, he often found himself engaged in monologs with refrains of "I do not look like a bunny rabbit, a tall, scared, undernourished bunny rabbit. I am an eccentrically and distinctively virile man."

Thus, personal vanity figured into planning the decor of the Bar & Grill. Wine colors were a must, for at certain times of the day, his irises glowed an odd Burgundylike shade, and he enjoyed accentuating the disquieting effect that had. He contrasted the paper smoothness of his skin with elaborately brocaded upholstery on couches and love seats and the chaise in his bedroom, and with deeply ribbed corduroys on the easy chairs and ottomans. He had the painters drop infinitesimal amounts of red into the white paint for the walls, calculated to highlight the faint flush that so often rose to his cheeks. To offset that narcissism, he purchased towels and sheets in blues and browns so deep and rich that his pallor appeared comic. For all his efforts, almost everyone was too polite to mention his mien. Only Ted, broad, dark, sarcastic and Sicilian, found the subject worth noting.

Iz scrubbed and polished and fretted. If there was one thing he counted on in the women he did bring home, it was a pleased reaction to the carefully wrought luxuries: the extensive collection of compact discs, hidden stereo speakers in each room, track lighting, heat lamps in the bathrooms, inches-deep plush carpet. But his last would-be conquest, Nora, had refused to take The Tour, his spiel concerning ceiling heights, the techniques used on the silk-screen prints in the hallways, the miraculous abilities of the kitchen appliances and the pedigree of the audio-visual equipment that usually helped get him through the initial consternating stages of seduction. After a few moments of going-nowhere banter in the foyer, Nora had put her hand on the doorknob and shot him what he took to be a defiant look.

"You know, Iz," she said, "not everyone wants to be a guest."

He scrubbed between the pale-green tiles of the bathroom shower stall, remembering how he had felt shamed, confused. He saw that he was basically different from women he met. When he was in their homes, it wasn't as a true guest. They assumed so much. "Use my towels, my toothbrush; help yourself in the refrigerator, liquor cabinet." And they believed that to be a complimentary attitude. But a guest felt cared for. Couldn't they see that presenting clean linens, a fresh toothbrush and even scouring mildew were real acts of affection? A woman he loved, or might love sometime in the future, should not have to look at gunk stuck in the grout; the tiles should feel smooth and slick beneath her wet feet.

Forays into the gourmet world

The Bar & Grill wasn't official until Iz bought the grill. Liz and Ellen assured him that they would like nothing more than to live solely on grilled-cheese sandwiches for the rest of their lives, at least the rest of their lives that fell on the weekends they spent with him. They were flexible to a point--after some debate, they decided to allow him to experiment with cheeses other than American. After three months, he sensed that he might be able to sneak other foods onto the menu. He purchased an encyclopedia of creative cookery and found what he was looking for in the A's--appetizers galore!

Liz raised the eyebrow and Ellen's lip curled when he brought out the first plate of his concoctions.

"What are those?" Ellen nearly whined.

"Stuffed-olive canapés," he answered.

"What's a canopy?" Ellen asked.

"Canapé is the French word for couch," Liz replied.

"Doesn't look like a couch to me," Ellen said, and both girls looked at him.

"Canapé does mean couch, but also appetizer," Iz replied. "It's sort of a little seat for whatever you decide to put on top." They didn't say anything for a moment. Then Ellen laughed.

"A sofa for olives. I like that."

It turned out that there was very little resistance, though each new presentation had to be officially approved. He placed the offering directly between them on the bar. When Liz gave a nod, they reached their hands out simultaneously. Liz had adopted Amy's taste-testing technique, and he watched her closely with some dismay, knowing that Ellen was mirroring every move. Liz held up the meat-stuffed grape leaf to just beyond the tip of her nose. She closed one eye and regarded it with the other--the one sure eye of a jeweler peering through his loupe. Then Liz nodded again and each girl popped the entire appetizer into her mouth. If she liked it, Liz's expression always indicated some surprise that Iz had managed to pull it off again, and he had to remind himself that she wasn't Amy, that she was only 12. When Ellen liked something, she immediately gobbled five or six, until Liz stopped her by reaching over to wipe her mouth with a cocktail napkin.

One weekend, he got carried away, serving fried-cheese profiteroles, egg-and-an-chovy mousse, antipasto, pâté maison and clam-macadamia puffs. They especially liked the hors d'oeuvres with silly names: pigs in blankets, seafood pretties, angels on horseback, crab dabs, henhouse nomads and quark snacks. Soon they demanded participatory rights; they took to renaming the selections and insisted that Iz type up a menu including the new names. Thus, guacamole became purée de green and barbecued chicken wings were known as hot quackers. The menu had one caveat, printed at the bottom in bold letters: Caviar will not be served to no one for no reason.

•

Iz clutched the phone and struggled to fully open his sleep-stuck eyes.

"What's the matter, Amy?"

"For starters, Ellen's ophthalmologist says that besides being perilously nearsighted, she's also got astigmatism."

Izard propped himself up on an elbow. "I thought the school nurse or somebody was supposed to catch stuff like that in the first grade."

"Seems Ellen knew something was wrong, so she stood behind the kids with glasses and memorized what they said."

"She cheated on a vision test?" he said, chortling. "That's rich."

"I'm glad you think it's funny that your youngest daughter could have been flattened in traffic...." she trailed off.

"Anyway, what it really is is one more unexpected expensive expense."

"I'll take care of it, Amy."

"Oh, that's right, Mr. Wizard comes to the rescue--he leaps tall buildings with checkbook in hand."

Izard pulled the covers over his head and braced himself.

"Goddamn you." Three solid raps echoed in Iz's head as she emphasized each syllable by beating the receiver against something hard. He guessed a headboard.

"Are you still there?" Amy asked, her voice sounding drained.

"Yes, Amy, I'm still here."

"It's my job, too. My boss is a total ass, besides the fact that he refuses to pay me what I'm worth."

So that was the real problem. But what did she want from him? He wanted to make it better, but how? Every neuron in his brain shrieked, Don't say it, don't say it, don't----"Listen, Amy, if you hate the job that much, why don't you quit? I'd be happy to help you out financially until----"

"You think everything is that easy? You know what you are, Izard? A goddamned child. In the real world, people earn their living-you can't just walk away from your lemonade stand when it stops being fun." She sighed. "When are you going to----" Her voice broke, and then it came, a crash and a muffled metallic ring.

"Please send me the bill," Izard said to the dead line.

Izard dialed Ted's number and began uttering apologies before Ted had a chance to speak.

"Never mind, dearest pal, I don't need my beauty sleep. However, I assume there's a reason for this call?"

"Amy," Izard answered. "Amy called."

"Let me think; what brand of fatherly malfeasance is it this month? Scuffed patent-leather shoes? More overly extravagant gifts? She's not still mad about the fighting kites, is she?"

"No. This call was a report of financial fiasco." He paused. "I think she's really distraught, though."

"Iz, when you've got an apocalyptic mentality, a dollar bill lost in a change machine is a disaster. Don't let it get to you."

Izard laughed.

"Can we go back to sleep now?" Ted asked.

Uncle Awful Bearing Gifts

A typical Ted-style surprise visit: He arrived at the door holding a carton. Liz forgot herself for a moment and joined Ellen in hollering "Uncle Awful, Uncle Awful" and trying to snatch the carton away from him.

Ted retained his hold on the box.

"This is for your father, the fair-haired innkeeper." He handed the box to Iz. "In this box, you will find a marvel of modern technology, an appliance that will revolutionize the way you do business."

After cutting through layer after layer of packing tape with a steak knife, accompanied by a chorus of "Hurry, Daddy, hurry," Iz finally got the box open. He saw only a glint of stainless steel before Ted snatched the box from his hands.

"Let me show." Ted removed the contraption and flung the box aside. "This, my friends, is the absolute finest automatic ice crusher. Not only is it fast as a whip but you get three choices of how fine to crush the ice."

An hour later, after every cube in the house was crushed, Ellen finally broke down.

"Didn't you bring us anything?"

"You still owe me five dollars from pool last time," Liz said.

"All in due time. I can't believe either of you could think for one moment that I'd forget about you." Ted pulled two small boxes from his jacket pocket. "Not that either of you greedy Guses deserves these."

Liz and Ellen grabbed the boxes, which were quickly found to contain very special plastic swizzle sticks--pink elephants on Liz's set and orange giraffes on Ellen's.

"We need to have mar-teenies so we can use them," Ellen announced.

"I haven't forgotten the five dollars," Liz told Ted.

"Double or nothing?"

Liz did the eyebrow thing. "It's your money."

Ted snorted and Iz winced. He played bartender, mixing doubles for himself and Ted, Squirt and lime juice for the girls.

"Don't forget the olives," Ellen reminded him. He grimaced but dropped three olives into each glass. Then they all migrated, drinks in hand, to the Billiard Room.

"Tracy Jacobs has a Bumper Pool table in her basement, but it's tiny and it's got cat fur all over it," Ellen said as she dragged a step stool over to the table to make her shot. Iz choked back a laugh. Her next play was without benefit of the stool. Although her accuracy on long shots was erratic, Iz guessed glasses would take care of that problem. He guessed that with her steady aim and nice smooth stroke, she would grow into a dependable player--no flash--but rarely missing routine shots. On her shot, Liz stalked to the table, abruptly leaning over to attempt a difficult carom. He watched the cue ball hit the three into the four ball, which sank soundly in the center of a side pocket. When Liz was hot, like today, she beat Ted for real; when she was cold, Iz had seen Ted purposely miss in an attempt to head off a snit.

Liz banked the eight ball into a corner. "You lose, Uncle Awful. Put down your drink and rack 'em up."

"I need a refill," Ellen announced.

"Me, too," said Ted and Liz. Iz obliged and went to fetch a second round. When he returned, Liz looked up from her shot.

"You're the best daddy in the whole wide world," she announced.

"You're the best daddy in the whole wide world," Ellen echoed.

When Ted repeated it for the third time, Iz felt like crying.

When Ted was $40 down, he announced that there was a television special on bears he couldn't miss.

"Didn't we just see a show on bears?" Ellen complained.

"That was polar bears--this one's on black bears," Ted said.

"Let's watch MTV in the other room," Liz suggested to Ellen. As they headed down the hall to the Game Room, Iz heard Liz musing over how to spend her winnings.

Iz switched on the set and stirred a pitcher of martinis.

"C'mon, friend, lighten up," Ted said. Iz smiled. "I'm trying."

"You know, the only thing better than a good bear story is a good woman," said Ted.

"Smooth transition, guy." Iz heard fake heartiness in his voice.

"I thought so. Anyway, I've sort of been seeing someone."

"That's a bit vague.... Are we talking a new squeeze or a potential Aunt Evil for my daughters?"

"I think I'd say the latter."

"Oh." Iz took a big gulp of martini. "Don't go sad on me again, all right? Besides, she's got this great friend."

Iz laughed. "I knew there had to be a punch line."

"I'm serious. She's a zookeeper, Iz. A perfect match for a strange white beast like you."

"Ho, ho, ho. I've never let you set me up before and I'm not----"

"Not even if she lets you wear the duck mask?"

Iz laughed again. "Absolutely not."

Neon and martinis and the conscience of the single father

When Iz woke up, he immediately knew he would look like a rabbit in every mirror in the place, and even from his bed, the Hotel-Motel felt desolate. That usually heralded the onset of a weekend alone, but sometimes it happened on days like today, when Liz and Ellen were fast asleep in the thick, curtained dark of the guest rooms, floating far away in little-girl dreams.

At that point, it was important not to look at a clock. He kept his eyes to the front and headed directly to the bar, so there was no reason to suspect that it was not a proper hour to begin drinking. He switched the coffee maker on and pulled a beer from the refrigerator. For not the first time, he wondered what Ellen and Liz would think of him when they grew up to realize how much booze three double martinis really was. Maybe he would have gotten his act together by then, or at least changed his act, so it wouldn't matter. They could all have a laugh at that old guy--the silly, half-drunk, dandy divorcee who collected neon beer signs. Yet that seemed unfair to the Hotel-Motel Bar & Grill, a betrayal of his vision. He wanted his daughters to know what genuine fun was, so that no matter what forces pulled at them in years to come, there would be a solid, happy memory of their threesome.

The entire project could also be seen as at least marginally educational. Not just drink making, either. They knew how to tip, how to give change, how to be polite, how to roll egg rolls and bake pretzels. They knew something of style and a lot about bears and whales and lions and rain forests and football. They would never be hustled at pool or cards, though they might be tempted to do the hustling, and they were probably hopelessly spoiled forever. Nothing wrong with that; Iz wanted them to have high expectations.

God, he'd been over this a hundred times with Ted. They had both lost patience with the part of him that wouldn't shut up about it.

"Christ," said Ted, "you'd think it was a Federal crime to want to be loved."

The wife and the barfly

When the doorbell rang on Sunday afternoon, Iz was expecting Ted, so he was surprised when he opened the door to a small woman with big flaming-red hair. She stuck out her hand.

"I'm Irene, the zookeeper. Ted told me to meet him here."

"I'm Izard. Come on in," he stammered. "Did Ted say he'd be here?"

"He's not here?"

"No, not yet, but I am expecting him. I mean, Ted's a lot of things, but dependable, I mean undependable, isn't one of them."

Irene laughed, but Izard saw her shrink up in front of him, and he responded with a sudden impulse to protect this woman that superseded his desire to strangle Ted.

He took her arm.

"Let me show you around."

She followed his lead silently through the first part of The Tour but took her arm back in the Billiard Room.

"Let me look for a minute." She circumnavigated the room, ran her fingers over the green felt of the table and rolled the seven ball into the eight ball so it made a nice smack.

"Darts is my game, really. I've always thought I needed to be three or four inches taller to play pool really well."

Iz pointed toward the dartboard. "Would you like to give it a try?"

When she took the darts in her hand, he noticed that her fingernails were painted an orange-red that matched her hair. She threw a dart, but it wavered, missing the board and landing in the cork beneath it.

"I'm nervous," she said, and she wrapped her arms around her shoulders and squeezed. Iz restrained a shiver. "I've got to pull myself together," she added. Her second dart hit the heart of the bull's-eye. "Better," she said, taking his arm.

"Can I see the rest?"

When they reached the TV Room, she turned to him and smiled.

"This really is PeterPanLand, isn't it?"

Iz nodded. PeterPanLand--he wanted her to repeat it again and again, running the words together as she just had. For a moment, he imagined her petite body softly enveloped between his bed sheets, her hair fanned out brilliantly on a navy-blue pillowcase.

"Daddy?"

Iz turned to the doorway, where Liz and Ellen stood watching them. Oh, that's just wonderful, he thought. Caught acting like some demented pubescent, thinking wild thoughts about the skin of a total stranger. Four gray eyes remained trained on his face.

"Sorry, Liz, Ellen. This is Irene. She's a friend of Uncle Awful's."

Their eyes softened slightly at the mention of Ted.

"Only Uncle Awful isn't here yet, so we have to entertain Irene for a while. OK?" His voice sounded ridiculously smarmy. "Make yourself comfortable. Can we get you anything to drink? You name it, we've got it." Shut up, shut up, you're making it worse, he thought.

Irene looked directly at Liz and Ellen. "Does anybody around here know how to make a mai tai?"

Iz watched them nod in unison and head behind the bar. Iz felt himself about to panic; he grabbed some quarters from the tip jar and headed for the jukebox. "Any requests?" he asked.

"Bon Jovi," Liz said.

"The fast one," Ellen added.

Iz looked at Irene. "Something festive," she said.

Right, he thought, that's definitely what's needed. "Ellen, would you fix me a martini while you're at it?"

He was afraid to look at Irene, even with the martini. He tried to concentrate on what she was saying about the zoo, but whenever he focused on her face, he stared, and his brain took stock without permission--white skin, almost as pale as his, but flecked with gold-dust freckles, and the hair a mesmerizing red, more hair than could possibly be on one head, yet there it was, soft and bouncing slightly as she spoke. He found it difficult to speak; his lips felt swollen and he pressed the cold rim of his glass against them. He strained to re-enter the conversation. Something about the gestation period of elephants.

"The door was wide open." Ted was standing in the room. A woman with short black hair and a long white skirt leaned against his arm. Her shoes were in her hand, along with an unlit cigarette, and her feet and the bottom of her skirt were splashed with mud.

"Hello, Liz, Iz, Ellen, Irene." He paused to wink at Iz. "This is Aunt Evil, but I'm afraid she's not at her best today. We've just finished up the Invisible Man Run."

"I thought you liked this woman, Ted," Iz said.

"What's the Invisible Man Run?" Irene asked.

Ted grinned boozily. "What it is is getting into a cab and heading for the sleaziest bar we know of in Southern California--The Lone Eagle--and having a drink, traditionally a straight shot of tequila. Then you go from tavern to tavern, guzzling a drink at each establishment as you methodically and drunkenly work your way home. What's our record, Iz?"

"I don't remember," he answered too quickly.

"C'mon, Daddy. We know you know," Liz said.

"Something like three hours and forty-five minutes," Iz answered reluctantly.

"Yikes. How many bars are we talking about?" Irene asked.

"Twenty-three. Am I invisible yet?" This was the first and last thing Aunt Evil said. Ted led her to a chair and gave her a light.

"Yikes," Irene repeated, "I think I'll wait to sign up until I see if she survives."

"I think we need some food," Ellen said, and Iz felt incredibly happy as she and Liz ran off to the kitchen. Perfect hostesses in the face of this nonsense. Once they were gone, Ted and Irene watched Iz. Ted grinned madly and Irene's clear green gaze made his lips tingle again, so he distracted himself with a demonstration of the new ice crusher. Half the cubes in the freezer were pulverized before Liz and Ellen returned with pizza rolls and clam dip.

"We weren't expecting a party," Liz said apologetically, though she looked pleased, gray eyes sparkling.

"Neither was I," Iz said in Ted's direction.

"But it certainly is festive," Irene said and smiled.

"Festive," Ted repeated, and everyone laughed.

"The door was wide open, so I didn't ring."

Iz's shoulders tensed; he knew without looking that the voice belonged to Amy. Who invited her? He wanted to giggle--no--he had to deal with this situation thoughtfully, if not entirely soberly.

"Amy, what are you doing here?" He decided to stall. Amy didn't look good, sort of crushed. Her spiky short hair drooped, waiflike, and her lips were taut, as though she hadn't laughed in a long time. She even slouched. But her gray eyes were clear and stern as she snapped her gaze almost audibly from her daughters to Ted to the disheveled Aunt Evil to Iz and back to Liz and Ellen.

"Amy must've heard we were having a party," Ted said jovially.

"Amy." Izard shot a warning shot to Ted. "You're certainly welcome here."

"May I speak with you privately?" Amy's voice was low. Iz wobbled to his feet and followed her to the kitchen.

"I didn't plan on barging in," she began.

"Well, I must say your unprecedented appearance is along rather unexpected lines."

"Are you drunk?" Her voice raised half an octave.

"You were about to explain your barge, were you not?"

"As if I should do the explaining." She looked over her shoulder at the door to the living room. "Shit, Iz, this is just too much. This isn't a home, this is a playpen."

"You haven't even seen it."

"It's gross." Now her volume increased. "I don't need to see any more." He set his glass down on the countertop and reached his hands toward her shoulders. "But, Amy, it's all in fun."

She shrugged his hands away. "Oh, sure, booze and food and games and a bunch of goddamned drunks." Her voice was loud enough to be heard in the other room.

"Be reasonable. Please."

"What I just walked in on is reasonable? Besides, I don't feel reasonable--I got laid off."

"Maybe it's for the best. I mean, you were miserable----"

"Oh, shut up."

Iz was afraid to say anything more. He knew he wasn't thinking clearly about anything except wanting Amy to relax, wanting to be back with the others. Amy was silent for a moment as her eyes flicked over the gleaming appliances, the hand-painted countertop tiles, the monolithic side-by-side refrigerator-freezer.

She sighed. "I just don't think I have the strength to look for a job right now."

"Why don't you take a little time off first?" Izard hurried to the sink and rummaged in a drawer beside it.

"You want me to take a vacation? I lose my job and I'm supposed to go lallygag on a beach somewhere?" Her voice rose again.

Izard pulled his checkbook from the drawer with a flourish.

"Why don't you at least think about it? I'll write you a check and----"

"No!"

His hand froze.

"What does it take to----" She took a step forward and grabbed his martini from the countertop and hurled it toward the sink. Beside him, the heavy glass exploded against the stainless steel; Iz watched a lone olive bounce off the edge and land on the floor.

"Amy, I'm sorry. We'll work it out later, OK? Please?"

"No. It's not OK. Not OK at all." She started to cry.

Izard fled, flinging himself out the swinging door in time to see Irene flee toward the master-bedroom suite. Liz and Ellen and Ted panned right as he pursued. The bathroom door clicked shut. He approached it, taking a deep breath. As he knocked, he heard the sound of china against brick coming from the kitchen.

"Are you OK?" he asked.

"I'm sorry," Irene said. "I'll come out in a while."

He heard two more splintering crashes. Too loud to be anything but dinner plates. He tried to organize his thoughts. "Is there anything I can do?"

"Not really. I guess it's just nerves. Surly lions I do fine with, but----"

"Situations like this?"

She laughed. "I'm not sure I knew situations like this really existed. I mean----" This time the crashing was sustained, and Iz pictured the slivered remains of a dozen champagne goblets scattered across the kitchen floor.

"Hey, stay in there as long as you want," Iz said.

"Thank you. I'll be fine. Go ahead and check on----"

"I should, thanks, but I'll be back. You hang on." He turned away.

"Izard?"

"Yes?"

"Great bathroom."

When Izard stepped into the living room, six gray eyes pounced on him, waiting for him to do something. Ted seemed absorbed in fiddling with the jukebox. Izard noted with relief that Amy's hands were empty, resting lightly on the back of a chair. Standing there with her shoulders sagging slightly, she would have again appeared helpless if her eyes had relented.

Suddenly, Supertramp burst from the speakers. "Even in the quietest moments...."

"Very funny, Ted."

"I thought so."

"You would," Amy said.

Izard hoped sarcasm was a good sign; perhaps she was sapped of her anger.

"Down, girl," Ted replied as he bent over Aunt Evil.

"What's funny?" Ellen asked.

Iz saw Ted tenderly grasp her hand. He thought of Irene lighting up his pale-yellow bathroom. He wondered if she was sitting on the toilet seat, if her head was bowed. He imagined her hair brushing the checkerboard tiles.

"Maybe we should go, Mom," Liz said. Iz noted with satisfaction that her eyebrow was cocked, but in Amy's direction, not his.

"I think not. Like your Uncle Ted said, this is some party," Amy said.

"Now can we play spades?" Ellen asked.

Aunt Evil moaned.

"Maybe we should be leaving," Ted said. "He who fights and runs away, etc."

"No," Iz said quickly, "I think playing cards is a dandy idea. Why don't Liz and I get everybody a drink? Yes?"

This time everyone's gaze turned to Amy. Her eyes gleamed for a second.

"Mom?" said Liz. Amy looked down. Did her eyes soften? Still, she didn't speak.

"We're having a special on frozen margaritas due to a surplus of crushed ice," Ted offered.

Amy looked up. "Thank you, Ted. I think I will have one. Strawberry."

Ted moved Aunt Evil to the couch and Liz got a blanket to cover her. After some debate, Ellen conceded to playing rummy rather than spades if she got to keep score, and even Amy finally agreed to play if she didn't have to sit on the floor.

Between turns, Amy swirled her drink dangerously close to the rim of her glass and she snapped down her discards, but she kept getting good cards and Iz saw that she was pleased. Ted hummed. Izard prayed to the card gods and thought he felt Liz and Ellen praying, too.

"I win," announced Amy. Liz grabbed Amy's almost-empty glass without asking and headed for the bar.

"I demand a rematch," Ted said.

"Deal me out of this one," Iz said. He got up from the table and took four beers from the refrigerator and a bottle opener from the drawer.

"Where are you--" Liz cut her sister off with the whir of the blender. Iz headed toward his room. Amy shot him a malevolent glance, then turned to Ted.

"Why is it that men think it's attractive to wear their shirts unbuttoned to the middle of their chests?" she asked as Ellen began dealing. Iz didn't hear Ted's response.

He tried to walk steadily, tried to reassure himself. So they would have their first date through a bathroom door. So what? He sat down next to the door and tapped it lightly with a bottle.

"Do you want a beer?"

Her voice came from just the other side of the door. "Is it safe to open the door?"

"Relatively. Definitely safe to crack it." He snapped the top off one beer and lined the other bottles up against the wall. From the living room, he heard a murmur suggesting relative peace. He smiled.

"Are we talking cold beer?" she asked. "Cold. Very cold." Iz watched the knob turn slowly. "So, tell me, Irene, what made you decide to become a zookeeper?"

Other prize winners in Playboy's College Fiction Contest: second prize, "Jet Pilot for the Sandinistas," by Robin Lewis, University of Alaska, Fairbanks; third prizes, "Loose Ends," by Suzanne Kehde, University of Southern California; "Out of the Blue," by Maria Franco King, Chabot College at Livermore, California; "Pizza Man," by John McNally, University of Iowa; "Magnet Hill," by Rachel Simon, Sarah Lawrence College.

"Nora put her hand on the doorknob. 'You know, Iz,' she said, 'not everyone wants to be a guest.' "