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The Hotel Fred

Tina the travel agent gushed with excitement when she called Charlie Parker.
   “You’re not going to believe this,” she said. “Oh, God, if my mother hadn’t raised me right, or even if my boyfriend could lie with a straight face, I’d jump on this myself and salve my conscience by putting you into Le Meridien for free.”
   Charlie asked, “You could do that, get me Le Meridien for free?”
   “If your wife can pass herself off as me.
  “Oh.” Antoinette, aka Twine, his wife of almost ten years, couldn’t lie with a straight face either. “So what’s this great place you’ve got for us?”
  Charlie and Twine had decided to celebrate their tenth wedding anniversary in Cancún. Tina was his sister Delia’s best friend and was supposed to work her travel agent magic to get them a great deal on a top-tier hotel.
  “What I’ve got you,” Tina said, “is the first opening in over six years at the Hotel Fred!”
  The Hotel Fred? Charlie waited for the punch line. It didn’t come.
  “Um, I’ve never heard of that hotel,” he said.
  “Of course, you haven’t,” Tina sighed. “All the more reason I should go and not you.”


  “Fred Pegler, that’s who owns the hotel?” Twine said to Charlie at home that night. She sounded as if she didn’t believe him.
  “Yeah, you ever hear of him?”
  She looked at him like he’d just dropped in from Mars.
  “Don’t you remember? He was the lead singer of No Money Down. They had a string of hits back when we were kids.” For a moment, Twine looked as if she was revisiting a special memory. Then she finished dicing a plum tomato and tossed it into the pot for marinara sauce. “Didn’t know Fred was still alive though.”
  “You’re one up on me,” Charlie replied, “I didn’t know he was ever alive.”
  Charlie did know, of course, that he shared his name with an all-time jazz great, and he generally liked music. But it was a momentary thing with him, in one ear and out the other. He never got a tune stuck in his head. Couldn’t imagine it.
  Charlie’s job was buying media and his thing was numbers: business figures, sports stats, keeping a running total in his head when he went grocery shopping with Twine.
  He asked his wife, “Any of those hits something I might remember?”
  All he hoped for was a song title; melodies were beyond him. He got the National Anthem and the Wedding March confused. Threw rice at ballgames and saluted the bride.
  “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff,” Twine told him. “That was Fred’s. But it was after the band broke up. He recorded it by himself.”
  Twine’s response surprised Charlie. Not only because he knew the title. But the way Twine had answered, her tone. The way she kept referring to Fred, it sounded like this Pegler guy had sat next to her in high school algebra.
  Passed her a love note or two.
  “You remember how the song goes?” Charlie asked, probing. Unlike him, his wife could not only remember a melody, she could also carry a tune.
  Twine nodded. Her eyes lost focus as she recalled the song. She started to sing in her soft clear alto and Charlie could see the lyrics as if they were printed out in front of him.

         The sun burned out at noon today,
         But not before the world caught fire.
         I just turned twenty-six,
         But the boss said it’s time that I retire.
         I swore to tell the whole truth,
         But the judge called me a liar.

  The first verse was slow and bluesy. Then Twine picked up the tempo for the chorus.

         Life can be a bitch,
         Every day a grind,
         No plan without a hitch,
         Not a truth left to find,
         But no matter how bad it gets,
         No matter how hard or tough,
         As long as I have you,
         I won’t sweat the small stuff.

   Charlie was hardly a romantic, but at that moment, looking at the smile on Twine’s face, he’d have given everything he had to have written those words, to have composed that tune.
   Twine stopped singing, took her knife to another tomato, and said, “There’s a couple more verses, but I don’t remember the words.”
   Charlie didn’t think so; he’d bet Twine knew the whole song by heart. She was dicing the Roma in time to the melody still playing in her head. He stepped up behind his wife, slipped his arms around her waist, nuzzled her neck. She stiffened. For a second, he thought she might cry, but then she relaxed and pressed her backside against him.
   “I had my doubts about this Hotel Fred,” Charlie said, “but I get the feeling you might like it.”
   Twine’s head bobbed.
   “It could be cool, Charlie.”
   “I’ll call Tina right now. Tell her we’ll take it.”
   He kissed his wife’s neck once more, and wondered what he was getting into.


   The brochure made the place look like a movie star’s mansion. Or a rock star’s, Charlie supposed. Huge. Tan stucco. Red roof tiles. Lush gardens and a swimming pool in the shape of a sea serpent. The property sat smack on an immaculate beach and the startlingly blue Caribbean Sea. Tina had sent the brochure once they confirmed their reservation. They were poring over it for the hundredth time on the flight to Cancún.
   Wanting to be a sport, Charlie had sprung for first class.
   Twine took this gesture in stride, as if she never flew anything else.
   She was still marveling, however, about the hotel’s many virtues.
   “Only six guest suites, Charlie. Each one situated for maximum privacy.”
   “Tina says the place gets a lot of show-biz types. You’re not supposed to talk to them unless they talk to you first. You know, like British royalty.”
   Twine snorted.
   “And Tina says all the women at the pool go topless, sometimes naked altogether.”
   “I won’t worry about you, Charlie. You’re allergic to silicone.”
   Charlie knew surgeons also used saline implants these days, but he didn’t think it wise to inform his wife he was up on the latest techniques for breast augmentation.
   “I just meant we might not get the warmest or most comfortable reception from our fellow guests,” he said.
   “I think we’ll be all right, Charlie.”
   As if to prove Twine’s point, once past customs, they were greeted by a smiling Hawaiian giant with a dusty-rose drop-top Cadillac. Vintage 1961.


   The Hawaiian’s name was Roderick T. Maui.
   “After the demi-god not the island,” he told them. “But everyone calls me Roddy.”
   He put their bags in the trunk, ushered them into the backseat, and got behind the wheel.
   “Um, there’re no seatbelts back here,” Charlie said.
   “None up here, either,” Roddy answered. “Put your faith in Nuestra Señora.”
   He gestured to a statue of the Virgin Mary on the dashboard and took off. The road from the airport led to the Paseo Kukulcan and the Hotel Zone where everyone who was anyone in the hotel game had built — and built and built — along the Caribbean Sea. Across the road, bordering the Laguna de Nichupté, a string of restaurants, discos, and mini-marts knelt like vassals before their massive hotel liegelords.
   Twine did her best to take in all the natural beauty and the merits, or lack thereof, of tropical oceanfront architecture. Charlie’s numerical bent, on the other hand, inclined him to try to calculate the property values. Within the first kilometer, the total was into the billions. It seemed impossible to him that even a current, chart-topping music megastar could afford to build in a place such as this. Much less one whose day had come and gone.
   He said to Roddy, “You mind if I ask how any individual could afford to put up a hotel along here?”
   Roddy passed a red city bus that was doing 100 in a 70 kph zone. Then he glanced over his shoulder and said, “Fred got here first.”


   Fred’s hotel was approached via a gated flagstone driveway unburdened by signage of any kind. The structure itself was shielded from street view and traffic noise by a thick screen of mature plantings: palms, hibiscus, and ficus. To those not in the know, most every tourist in town, it was likely to be mistaken as a private garden belonging to one of the four-star, thousand-room behemoths to either side of it.
   Roddy pulled up at the front entrance. Two smiling Mexican men, one silver-haired, one young, both wearing aloha shirts, cutoff jeans, and flip-flops, greeted the new arrivals. The older man opened the car door for Charlie and Twine; the younger one fetched their bags. Roddy introduced them respectively as Moises and Nestor.
   Outnumbered by hotel staff three to two now, the Parkers were escorted to their suite.
   Its large windows and balcony faced the pool, the beach, and the sea.
   The ceilings were high; the floors were polished oak.
   There was no television, but in the living room there was an old but lovingly burnished spinet piano. Roddy struck middle C. “In tune,” he said. Next to the piano, on an upright stand, was a gleaming acoustic guitar. Moises picked it up, deftly ran his fingers across the strings, making minor adjustments to three of them. “Also in tune,” Roddy said. In addition to the instruments, there was a high-end stereo system with a hundred CDs and an equal number of classic vinyl albums. “Please play your music no louder than you’d like your neighbors to play theirs,” Roddy instructed.
   The tour continued with the bedroom where the bed was large enough to a land small plane. Of equally gargantuan proportions were a leather reading chair, a footstool, and a brass floor lamp. Rounding out the room was a writing desk that looked as if Dylan Thomas might have bent over it, his poetry to compose. The bathroom was also huge and featured a skylight. The fixtures were dated, but they were immaculate and both the bathtub and the separate shower stall were big enough to accommodate two people.
   For all that, the suite was incomplete. The floors were bare; there was no art on the walls; there were no linens, pillows, or comforter on the bed; there were no towels, shampoo, or even soap in the bathroom.
   As the one who’d had the final say in choosing the Hotel Fred, Twine felt compelled to point out these shortcomings.
   Roddy smiled. Moises and Nestor joined him.
   “We like our guests to feel this is their home away from home,” Roddy said. “In just a minute, I’ll take you to our storage facility. You can choose the art you’d like to hang on your walls, the rugs you’d like to have under your feet. The linens, pillows, and duvet you’d prefer for your bed. The robes, towels, soap, bubble bath, and shampoo you’d enjoy in your bathroom.
   “We’ve also been informed you’ll be celebrating your tenth wedding anniversary while you're with us. Congratulations.” Moises and Nestor politely applauded. “We’d be pleased to have the hotel chef provide you with a complimentary dinner. In the dining room or in your suite, as you prefer. Either way, you’ll have your choice of flowers, candles, and wine for your table.”
   Twine beamed. “This is too cool, isn’t it, Charlie?”
   Charlie said, “Uh-huh.”
   But if he’d had any musical memory at all, he would have started whistling The Hotel California. The place where you could check out but never leave.


   As part of their welcome to the Fred — nobody who stayed there called it anything else, they were told, unless in deference to the native tongue it was el Fred — Charlie and Twine were given free drinks to sip at poolside while the accoutrements they’d chosen for their suite were being installed. Contrary to all the other oceanfront hotels, the Fred’s pool terrace did not look out on the ocean. A high stucco wall and more plantings blocked the view, and provided privacy for those female guests who did, indeed, choose to sunbathe topless.
   At the moment, their number was two: a woman about the Parkers’ age, mid-30ish, with light brown hair, a lithe build, and breasts that appeared to be nature’s own; and a woman closer to fifty with hair a shade of red that Charlie had once seen on an old Chevy, and boobs that stuck up as if raised by tent poles.
   Charlie didn’t look directly at either woman but he expected his peripheral vision would be markedly improved before this trip was over.
   Twine was the one checking out both women. Both of them noticed before long. Red gave Twine a mean look, shook her head in disgust, got up and left. The younger woman only gave Twine a friendly wave, closed her eyes, and went back to absorbing solar radiation.
   “Batting .500,” Charlie told his wife.
   “You think I should do that?” she asked. “Get rid of my tan lines?”
   “I like tan lines. The contrast is sexy.”
   “Really?”
   “Yeah, makes a guy aware he gets to see places nobody else does.”
   “You just don’t want me going topless in public.”
   “That too,” Charlie said.


   Twine was in the shower prior to going downstairs to dinner.
   Charlie sat in the living room holding the guitar on his lap trying to pick out a few notes. Who knew, he thought. Maybe here in this exotic place, so far from home, he could develop an unsuspected talent for music. Write a song for his wife on the occasion of their tenth wedding anniversary.
   Charlie was holding the guitar backward.
   Neither he nor the instrument was left-handed.
   At that point, it didn’t matter. The guitar was a prop, he was in costume, and the suite had been transformed into a movie set. Original watercolors by local artists hung on the walls. As did a genuine drawing by Picasso over the piano. And in the bedroom, by Twine’s choice, a rock concert poster had been placed over the bed, one that featured No Money Down as the opening act for the Rolling Stones.
   Rugs in deep earth colors with patterns that they’d been told were Mayan now graced the floors. Twine had picked out bed linens in a pale coral and a duvet that featured some mythical bird embodying all the colors of the rainbow.
   As for Charlie himself, he wore a jade green silk T-shirt, khaki sea-cotton slacks, and kid leather moccasins, sans socks of course. His ankles were a bit pale at this point but he had a week to work on his tan.
   Five days until his anniversary to work on his song.
   Looking around, he had to agree with Twine. The Fred was a cool place. He’d bet a guy could discover new things about himself here. A soft knock called his attention to the door. Moises or Nestor come to bring some new treat? Roddy had said they’d be looking after his and Twine’s needs. Or maybe it was just the maid come to turn down the bed.
   Charlie went to open the door, guitar in hand.
   Someone new was there. A guy about his own height. Maybe twenty years older. Wavy silver hair, brushed straight back from a widow’s peak. His skin was deeply tanned and lined. He had the clearest blue eyes Charlie had ever seen.
   Maybe the saddest eyes, too.
   He was wearing the same aloha shirt, cutoffs, and flip-flops as Moises and Nestor.
   “Yes?” Charlie asked.
   “I’m Fred Pegler,” the guy said. “Just wanted to see how you’re settling in.”
   The Fred’s owner. Fred himself? Charlie was speechless.
   “You play?” Fred asked, nodding at the guitar.
   Charlie immediately blushed. Felt as if he was being rude, too, leaving a friend out on the front stoop. He repressed his embarrassment and said, “Please come in.”
   Fred stepped into the suite.
   Charlie said, “Excuse me a minute.” He closed the door to the bedroom. Lest Twine make her entrance in the buff. Turning back to Fred, he added, “No, I don’t play. But it’s so beautiful I just had to pick it up.”
   Fred smiled.
   “There are lots of them like that. You fall in love at first sight. Then you hear the music you can make together and you think it’ll never end. May I?”
   Charlie gave the guitar to Fred. He sat in an easy chair, checked the tuning, tweaked it a bit, and began to pluck the strings as he moved smoothly from chord to chord. The sound was rich and clear. It became sweet and heart wrenching. A tune as beautifully sad as Fred’s eyes.
   For an anxious moment, Charlie wondered if he was hearing a classic. Something a normal person would recognize immediately and say to Fred, “Man, I can’t tell you all the times I listened to that song.”
   Then he thought, screw it. Just sat down and let the music claim him.
   When Fred finished he gave a small nod, as if he’d finally gotten the piece right. For Charlie, though, the melody was already disappearing from his mind. His face clouded.
   “Something wrong?” Fred asked.
   “I have musical Alzheimer’s,” Charlie said, and explained himself.
   “My sympathies.”
   “Why’d you stop?” Charlie asked. “Composing and recording, I mean.”
   Fred shrugged, casually cradling the guitar as if it were a small child.
   “I’m a junkie. Been in recovery a long time. But go back to the music scene? No way I’m strong enough for that. Never will be.”
   “How about the song you just played? You ever tape it strictly for yourself?”
   Fred shook his head. Saw Charlie was clearly disappointed.
   “You liked it that much?” he asked.
   Charlie nodded.
   “Tell you what. You’re here a week. I’ll see if I can teach you to play it. Maybe that way you’ll be able to hold onto it. We’ll start tomorrow.” Fred got up and handed the guitar back to Charlie.
   “Glad you and your wife could come visit.”
   “Yeah, we’re glad, too.”
   Fred left. A moment later, Twine opened the door to the bedroom. She had one towel wrapped around her hair and another around her body.
   “Did I hear you talking to someone?” she asked.
   “Fred Pegler dropped by to say hello.”
   “He did? And I missed him?” Her face crumpled. “Did he say anything else?”
   “Yeah. He offered to give me music lessons.”


   The woman behind Fred’s bar was a deeply tanned platinum blonde. Like all the other staff — and the hotel’s owner — she wore a flowerered shirt and cutoffs. Unlike the others, she went barefoot. Other than the crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes she struck the image of a well preserved hippie chick.
   She said her name was Hannah and she came from Minneapolis.
   When she brought drinks to the Parkers’ table, Hannah gave Charlie a folded slip of paper and said, “Almost forgot. Fred asked me to give that to you if you came in.”
   “Thanks,” Charlie said. He stuck the message into a pocket, unread.
   Twine waited until Hannah left before ordering her husband, “Read the note. Tell me what it says.”
   After almost ten years together, Charlie never would have guessed his wife was star-struck. Up till now there had been no sign of it. Having been revealed, it was beginning to bug him. He pulled Fred’s message out of his pocket and passed it to Twine.
   She unfolded the piece of paper and her eyes danced across the words.
   Twine looked up at her husband. “Fred’s inviting you to his apartment, here in the hotel, tomorrow morning at ten, if that’s not too early.”
   “Not for me,” Charlie said.
   “He says he’ll start you out with a 30-minute lesson. Bring the guitar from our suite.”
   “I can do that.”
   Twine put her hand over Charlie’s and squeezed a little too hard.
   “Charlie, you’ve got to take me with you, introduce me to Fred.”
   Charlie gave her a look, then said, “Okay ... if you promise not to faint.”
   Twine got the point. Removed her hand. Sat back.
   Just then the two women who’d sunbathed topless that afternoon entered the bar, dressed for the evening. Charlie hadn’t caught it at the pool but now it was clear they were a couple. Red pointedly ignored the Parkers, but the younger woman gave them a smile. And a wink.
   Before they could discuss what that meant, the maitre d’ entered from the dining room. He told Charlie and Twine their dinner would be served momentarily. Please bring their drinks along.


   “So you like numbers?” Fred asked the next morning.
   “Always have,” Charlie said. “Ever since I was a kid.”
   “But you never took music lessons.”
   “Unh-uh. My sister, Delia, was the one who got the piano lessons in my family. When I said I’d rather go out and play ball, my dad let me. Said he wasn’t going to shell out money just to make both of us unhappy. Delia wanted the lessons, so she got them.”
   Fred nodded.
   “Your sister still play?”
   “Any time there’s a party and a piano.”
   Fred smiled as if he knew a secret. “She likes to get the party going ... and after a drink or two her playing improves.”
   “Yeah,” Charlie said.
   “But a couple more drinks and her playing gets sloppy.”
   “No, after the first two, her husband cuts her off.”
   “Good for him. How about you, you drink, Charlie?”
   “No more than one drink per meal, only occasionally at lunch, hardly ever at breakfast.”
   He looked over at Twine and was pleased to see a grin on her face. Last night, they’d returned to their suite, brushed their teeth, and gone straight to sleep. Hardly the romantic beginning to their trip that Charlie had imagined. That morning, they had been polite enough to set other’s teeth on edge. Far too polite to get sweaty and conjugal.
   Charlie was annoyed because, having thought about it, he’d have liked to keep his lessons with Fred a secret. Make whatever progress he could and then surprise Twine with his playing. Couldn’t do that now, though.
   Still, the two of them appreciated the warm reception everyone at the Fred had given them, and they weren’t about to be rude. They showed up at Fred’s apartment on time and wearing smiles. Charlie introduced Fred to Twine and asked if it would be okay if she watched him torture Fred’s guitar.
   Fred shook Twine’s hand, said he was pleased to meet her, and personally served her a bottle of sparkling water.
   “So you’re a steady guy who loves numbers and whose knowledge of music is zilch,” Fred summed up to Charlie.
   “Exactly.”
   “Well, Charlie, my man, you’re in luck, because between notation, tempo, and the business end of things, music is almost nothing but numbers.”
   Charlie smiled and the lesson began.
   It went far better than he’d ever expected. He understood almost intuitively the music theory Fred laid on him, and much to his surprise he had a high degree of manual dexterity. He could form chords without too much difficulty and once the counting pattern clicked into his head, he got the hang of finger picking almost as quickly. The thirty-minute lesson flew by, and he was hungry for more.
   But he remembered his manners, stood up, and shook Fred’s hand.
   Now, he felt like going back to the suite, practicing a little more, and then getting sweaty with his wife. But Twine had a question for him. And one for Fred.
   “Charlie, would you mind if I stayed a few minutes and talked with Fred? Fred, would that be all right with you?”
   Fred didn’t say a word. Just looked at Charlie to see if it was cool.
   Charlie said, “Sure. You can catch up with me down at the beach.”
   He didn’t want to practice or get sweaty anymore.


   The Fred had a dozen thickly padded lounge chairs set out on the beach. Each pair of them shared a dark blue umbrella and a small circular table. Charlie had his pick. The Fred’s guests, evidently, liked to catch their rays near the pool, behind the garden wall. Charlie kicked off his Fred-provided flip-flops, peeled off his T-shirt, and dropped it on the nearest chair. He left his sunglasses and bottle of Coppertone on the table.
   A yellow flag was waving on the beach as he ran across the sand. He remembered from his tourist guide that yellow meant caution. Water conditions might be marginal. He wasn’t a strong swimmer, but he plunged into the sea. The Caribbean was surprisingly cool, and he got a mouthful of saltwater. A freshwater kid growing up, the salt took him by surprise. He spat the water out and looked around. A handful of other bathers were splashing and playing games up and down the beach, but not nearly as many as he would have expected.
   No one was within fifty yards of him.
   A steady procession of waves rolled shoreward. Maybe four-to-five feet high. Not big if you’d spent your life swimming in the ocean but plenty big for him. The force of the first wave that struck him almost knocked him off his feet. But that one caught him broadside. He turned sideways to the next wave and more or less knifed through it. He enjoyed both the physical sensation of the water rushing past and that fact that he’d quickly learned to cope, at least a little, with this force of nature.
   Soon he was diving over the waves, trying to time his leaps and plunges to the very last second before the wave would smash into him. When he tired of that he tried to bodysurf the waves. Again, timing was critical, starting to paddle toward the beach just as the wave lifted you so you could ride it as far as possible. He wound up being dunked more than once, but soon his timing improved and he got some good rides.
   It was a hoot. Like a roller coaster and a magic carpet ride rolled into one. And, man, what a workout. He’d never have thought playing in the water could be so tiring. His legs were getting wobbly and it seemed like the backflow, the waves returning to the sea, was getting stronger. Maybe it was time to head for a lounge chair.
   Down the beach, he heard a whistle blow. He turned to look and saw a lifeguard from one of the big hotels waving swimmers ashore, and the flag posted on the sand was now red. With his back to the sea, a wave caught Charlie when he wasn’t looking. It knocked him off his feet and hurled him toward the beach. Before he could stand
up, though, it pulled him under and back out.
   He panicked. He felt as if he was being swept away. The word riptide popped into his head and his heart turned to ice. He’d be carried out to sea, way too far for his meager swimming abilities to return him to land. Nobody would notice he was gone and he would drown.
   Of course, if he didn’t get his head above the surface right away, he’d drown sooner rather than later. He stroked as hard as he could, hoping he was moving in the direction of the sky and not the sandy bottom. Growing desperate, he wondered why, with all its other amenities, the Fred didn’t have a goddamn lifeguard of its own.
   He broke the surface in a trough between waves, managed to gulp enough air to refill his lungs, and then was smashed under again by the next wave. But this time somebody grabbed his wrist. And then there was an arm under his chin and he was being towed to shore by a far stronger swimmer than he was. The Fred did have a lifeguard.
   A female lifeguard.
   If he wasn’t mistaken, he was feeling bare breasts against his back. Ah, well, just another of the little extras that made a stay at the Fred such a treat. But when they got close enough to the beach to stand without worry of being reclaimed by the deep, Charlie saw that he’d been saved not by an employee of the hotel but by another of the guests: the brunette who’d been by the pool yesterday and in the bar last night.
   She looked at herself and said, “Well, hell, do a good deed and lose half your bikini.”
   Before Charlie could respond, she crossed the beach and took the lounge chair next to the one he’d staked out. She lay down on her stomach and as Charlie approached he could see her breathing was already returning to normal. More than he could say for himself.
   He sat on his chair and stared at her.
   She felt the weight of his eyes and said, “I came out and saw you in the water. You looked a little rubber-legged out there. Then the whistle blew, the wave hit you, and away you went.” Figuring he knew the rest, she picked up his bottle of sunscreen and handed it to him. “Do my back and legs, will you?”
   Owing the woman his life, how could he say no?
   As his hand touched her back, she told him, “I’m Jenny. From L.A.”


   “One time, I jumped on a plane so see you in L.A.,” Twine told Fred.
   “You mean in concert?” Fred asked.
   He sat in a big easy chair, still holding the guitar he’d used for his lesson with Charlie. Only now, it separated Fred from Twine like one of those fences Robert Frost said made good neighbors.
   “No, you’d stopped touring by then,” Twine said. “I was just trying to meet you. To tell you how much I loved you. That and the fact you had saved my life.”
   With grave suspicion, Fred asked, “How’d I do that?”
   “You released Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff.”
   “And that did it?”
   By way of an answer, Twine began to sing. One of the verses she hadn’t sung for Charlie.

          I almost died the day you left,
         Didn’t know which way to turn,
         I felt so damn bereft,
         My soul began to burn
         But by that fire’s light,
         I saw it clear enough,
         The love you gave to me endures,
         I’ll never sweat the small stuff.

   Fred looked sadder than ever now. “You have a nice voice,” he said.
   “I was sure you wrote that song for me,” Twine said.
   Fred shook his head. “The girl I wrote that song for didn’t make it.”
   Twine had been on her feet, shuffling nervously in front of him as she made her confession. Now, she sank to her knees, like an acolyte before her guru. She reached up, and he took the hand she offered. Held it gently.
   “We had a plan, Lucy and me,” he told Twine. “We were both going to come down here and get clean. Then we’d get married on the beach. Live out our lives high on each other. Take joy from looking at all that pretty blue water out there. Only Lucy never met the plane that morning. I wanted to go find her, but Roddy clocked me, and the last flight out left on time. He had people look for her back in L.A., but they didn’t find her. A janitor cleaning the ladies room at a highway rest-stop did.”
   He gave Twine’s hand a squeeze, then let it go.
   “So what’s your sob story, sister?”
   Twine leaned back on her heels.
   “I got pregnant at 16 by a guy my dad warned me against. The guy left, proving my dad right. Then my dad, a cop, got killed chasing some moron who’d robbed a 7-Eleven. Right after that I lost the baby, and then the jerk who knocked me up came back.”
   “You didn’t ...” Fred didn’t finish the question.
   “Go back to him? I broke his nose with a Coke bottle.”
   Fred laughed. It was the first time Twine had seen him look happy, and she was glad she’d been able to put a smile on his face.
   “Yeah,” she said, “I thought my dad would have liked that, too. But I didn’t know if that one ray of sunshine was enough to keep me going. Then your song came out on the radio. I couldn’t get enough of it. It made me think my dad’s love endured in me. So I wasn’t going to sweat the small stuff, either.
   “When I turned 18, that’s when I flew out to L.A. I had to tell you how much your song meant to me, how much I loved you. But you’d disappeared; nobody knew where you went. One guy even told me you were dead and your estate had released the song.”
   “Not dead, but in need of some money. I’d recorded that song with just me and the engineer in the studio. Then I put it away for years. It about killed me to turn a buck off it. But the money went for a good cause ... and if it helped you, too, that’s nice to know.”
   Fred fell silent for a time, maybe thinking about Lucy.
   Then he asked Twine, “Charlie know any of that stuff you told me?”


   “Your wife has Margo worried,” Jenny from L.A. told Charlie.
   “Who?”
   “She is your wife, isn’t she? You’re wearing a ring and so was she. Of course, you could both be married but to other people.”
   Jenny propped herself up, giving him a peek at her boobs.
   “Yes, we’re married,” Charlie said. “To each other.”   
  “That’s what I thought.” She lay back down, but looked up at him. “Margo is my friend with the red hair. She’s a pretty big talent agent back in L.A. She’s also worried your wife wants to put the moves on me.”
   “Twine’s not like that.”
   “Twine?”
   “Antoinette.”
   “Oh. Well, she was looking us over pretty good the other day. I don’t mind, but Margo kind of freaked. Me stepping out on Margo here wouldn’t be part of our arrangement.”
   Charlie couldn’t resist. “What exactly is your arrangement?”
   “Well, I live at Margo’s house. Eat her food. Drive one of her cars. Saves me a lot of money, if you know the cost of living in Los Angeles. I’ve been able to save almost everything I’ve earned the past five years.” Jenny smiled brightly. “My accountant told me last month I’ve officially become a millionaire.”
   Charlie goggled. “What do you do?”
   “I’m a model, but not the usual kind.”
   “Um, what other kind is there?”
   “I model body parts: hands, feet, legs, tushie, abdomen, cleavage, arms, shoulders. Do some body-double work for films, too.”
   “What about your face? You’re really pretty.”
   Jenny smiled at him again. “Thanks. But, no, I only show my face off-camera.”
   Charlie lay back on his chair. “Well, I’m glad I got to see it, especially when I was going down the second time.”
   Jenny propped herself up again and looked down on Charlie.
   “Margo’s mad at you, too,” she said.
   “Me? Why?”
   “Because of the suite Fred gave you. She wanted it. She says it’s nicer than ours. The last guest who had it was a bigshot producer, a guy who works both movies and the Broadway stage. But Fred tossed his ass out and gave the suite to you. Margo was hoping she’d get it.”
   Charlie said, “I think I’d be happy with a fold-out sofa here.”
   Jenny lay back down, making it easier for Charlie to look at her face.
   “Me, too,” she said. “But not Margo. Anyway, back to our arrangement. Back home, we allow each other some latitude. I’m bisexual by nature. Margo’s bi by professional necessity. But when we travel we’re supposed to be true to each other, you know?”
   “Sounds reasonable,” Charlie said.
   “But now Margo said I should see if you’d be interested in a threesome with her and me.”
   “What?” Charlie sat up, looked down at Jenny, waited to see if he’d heard her right.
   “It’s her way of getting back at your wife. Teach her not to mess with other people’s honeys. That and she wants to get into your suite any way she can.”
   “Jesus,” Charlie said.
   “She’s going to be bitchy if I tell her you said no,” Jenny told him. “And you might want to be a little grateful to me for saving your life. So at least think about it, okay?”
   

   Charlie went back to his suite, showered, and slipped on a pair of faded cocoa shorts and a navy blue T-shirt that said Daily Planet across the chest. He picked up the suite’s guitar, sat in the living room’s easy chair, and reflected on his day thus far. He’d been given a music lesson by a rock star; gotten pissed off at Twine for both horning in on his lesson and then staying behind with the rock star; almost drowned; been rescued by an attractive woman who’d been topless two out of the three times he’d seen her; and had been propositioned, for ulterior motives, to commit an act of infidelity he’d never entertained even in his fantasies. At least with anyone who looked like Margo.
   He couldn’t remember another vacation quite like it.
   Welcome to the Fred.
   He’d told Jenny regretfully he’d have to decline her offer. No offense, but there was no way in the world he was ever going to share a bed with Margo. He did offer to buy Jenny a new bikini, though, said she should get whatever she liked and he’d reimburse
her.
   Jenny had been a good sport. Gave him a peck on the cheek and said, “If she gets too nasty maybe I won’t sleep with her anymore either. After all, I have a million dollars — even if that really isn’t a lot of money where I live.”
   Charlie began to practice the song Fred was teaching him. Having mentally converted the melody into a series of numbers, he had no trouble remembering it. He played until the fingertips of his left hand got sore. Then he pushed through the pain and practiced until they throbbed.
   Anything to try to take his mind off the fact that he’d left Twine with Fred that morning and she still hadn’t returned to their suite. Well, hell, he thought, it wouldn’t be like he was the first guy who lost his wife to a big —
   The door to the suite opened and Twine walked in, looking as if she’d been crying. There was still a sheen of moisture on her eyes, and her chin was quivering. Not from a wound she’d received, but from a heartbreak she was about to inflict. Charlie’s heart sank. The news she had for him, he was sure, had to be bad.
   It would go something like: He and Twine weren’t going to have an eleventh anniversary. She was leaving him and would be staying at the Fred permanently. The new Mrs. Pegler.
   Twine closed the door and crossed the living room. She took the guitar from him and laid it on the adjacent sofa. She sat on Charlie’s lap and put her arms around him. Tears fell hot against the back of his neck.
   Oh, God, he thought, here it comes.
   And Twine said, “I’ve been with Fred, just came from his place this minute.”
   If Charlie could have moved, he would have dumped her on the floor. If he’d retained the power to speak, he would have screamed at her. But at that critical moment, the only semblance of animation about him was the quivering in his tortured fingertips.
   “It was like nothing I’d ever done before,” she said.
   That did it. He definitely didn’t want to hear the details. He slipped out from under her. “I don’t want to know,” he said.
   He started to go, planning to pack his suitcase and buy a seat on the first plane leaving for anywhere. But Twine caught his wrist, just like Jenny had. He looked back at her.
   “Oh, Charlie,” Twine said. “I wasn’t with Fred like that. We didn’t have sex.”
   His relief was immense. He moved the guitar and plopped down on the sofa.
   “It was much deeper than sex,” she said.
   “What?” Charlie demanded, “What’s deeper than sex?”
   “Friendship, Charlie. Today, Fred and I became friends. Talked for a long time. Bared our souls. And then I told Fred I knew all the words to every song he ever released. He didn’t believe me. So I proved it. He played all his songs and I sang them, every one. It was too much. Like a dream come true.”
   Charlie could understand that. Fred had shared just thirty minutes of his magic with him and he’d felt its power. It must have been a far more, what ... captivating experience for Twine to spend most of the day with Fred. Singing with him.
   So even if she hadn’t slept with Fred ... had he lost her anyway?
   She seemed to confirm his fear. “I told Fred something today I never told you.”
   “Do I want to know?” Charlie asked.
   “I think you should.” She told Charlie the story about getting pregnant, how she’d felt guilty about her dad dying, and how depressed she’d been until Fred’s song came out. “It saved my life, Charlie. Fred saved my life. He really did, and I never got the chance to thank him until today.”
   Charlie sat back, gave his wife’s words a good deal of thought.
   “It’s important to thank someone who saves your life?” Charlie asked.
   “Yes, it is.”
   Charlie told her what had happened to him that day. And how he’d been asked to repay his debt.
   Twine frowned, did some deep thinking of her own.
   “Jenny, all right, if you want to, and tell her thanks for me,” she said. “But not Margo, okay?”


   Charlie and Twine flew home on the Fred’s private jet. Over the course of the week, Charlie had continued to make remarkable progress with his musical education. Once he understood the mathematical underpinnings of the art form, it was really pretty easy. On the night of the Parkers’ anniversary, Twine and Fred sang a duet of Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff in the hotel’s dining room, Fred’s first public performance in decades. Charlie sat front row, center.
   Roddy got it down on digital video.
   Fred lent Charlie the guitar from the suite, said he could bring it back the next time he and Twine came to visit. Their suite would be ready for them.
   Charlie stuck to his original bargain with Jenny. Bought her a new bikini. Though where she found one that cost $1,500, he’d never know. Maybe L.A.
   To entertain themselves on the flight home, Twine sang Fred’s songbook from memory, and Charlie tried to pick out the music by ear. That was pretty ambitious even for someone who was making a fast start, and many of his attempts went hilariously wrong. But as they made their approach for landing, on Twine’s third rendition of what they now considered their song, Charlie got it right.
   Accompanying his wife on the last two lines of the final verse.

          The love you gave to me endures,
          I’ll never sweat the small stuff.   

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