"Think of the motel sign." I'd thought about the name before presenting the idea. "Liberty Motel, Rooms for the Imaginative."

"What do you mean, imaginative?" he asked.

"I will make a different fantasy setting for each room for only three hundred and sixty total dollars. Sixty dollars per room."

"Three hundred and sixty dollars. That's only twenty-two short-stay hours, less than one day," he said and smoothed the corners of his mustache.

Mr. Suri was smart and good at math, and I'd noticed that he played with his mustache when he was about to agree to something. About forty years of age or so, he had the long, graceful hands of a pianist, and in profile he reminded me of that handsome actor Omar Sharif. He came here eight years ago from India with his wife, their young son, Chander, who was now ten, and his brother Garson. An uncle died and left them the motel. Mr. Suri's wife left him for another man about a year after they moved here. I had never seen her. She moved to New Mexico with the child. Amalia told me this much. Mr. Suri had pictures of his son dressed as a cowboy in the office, but none of the boy's mother. I think he was depressed because sometimes he sat alone under the pine trees in front of the motel drawing with a stick in the dirt. He was quiet and did not laugh very often. Garson I hardly ever saw. Whenever they talked on the phone, I heard much stress in Mr. Suri's voice. Garson was younger than Mr. Suri and had a daughter who worked here at the motel. Mara was the niece; she was seventeen and very lazy when it came to her job of cleaning the rooms. Mr. Suri thought she was saving money to go to college, but I knew she planned to run off with her boyfriend. I'd heard conversations they had over the intercom in the linen room.

Mr. Suri finally agreed to my idea.

"I'll let you do two rooms, and then we'll see. Don't touch my heart-shaped tub."

He was very fond of this red tub.

"My first room will be called 'Gazebo in a Rainstorm,'" I announced.

"I like gazebos," he replied.

I had seen a gazebo in a magazine called House and Garden. I get much of my inspiration for my room designs from the pictures in American magazines. Good Housekeeping, Travel and Leisure, Women's Day.

Then he surprised me by saying, "Since Mara has been helping with the cleaning, I want you to take a shift at the front desk."

Usually Mr. Suri or his brother managed that part of the business because of the money. The motel operates twenty-four hours a day. The customers' visits must be timed correctly, and everyone gets a fifteen-minute warning from the front desk phone. I felt moved by Mr. Suri's trust and confidence. In addition to my respect for Mr. Suri-you could say my affection-I was glad to be a part of making his business successful. The business of business interests me very much. I might be older than Mr. Suri by a number of years, but I could still swing my hips and offer compliments to his nature when it helped to make our business run smoothly. Russian women know how to get what they want: no distractions, no destruction.

"I'd like you to do the morning shift. Garson has agreed."

"Eight a.m. to...?"

"Just till four p.m. My brother and I will split the evening and overnight shifts."

"I can work on my room designs while I'm at the front desk."

"As long as you keep everything straight."

"Yes sir. At your service, Mr. Suri."

It made him uncomfortable when I called him sir, but he smiled and offered me the seat at the front desk in the office. It felt as if I were receiving an important award.

"I have to go to Hartford to get a permit for the septic system," he informed me.

He winked at me as he turned to go outside.

"Room five has twenty minutes left. They'll need a warning soon," he added.

The March wind blew across the driveway and into the pine trees as he drove away in his large, gold Delta '88. I tidied up the front desk and then made my call to room number five. The phone rang four times.

"Hmm, huh?" a female voice responded.

"Fifteen minutes," I answered.

There was no further discussion. We hung up simultaneously. I embraced my new a.s.signment with the fervor of a flag bearer at a May Day parade in Moscow.

Chapter Seven: My Father.

Two weeks later, I unveiled room number one, "Gazebo in a Rainstorm," to Mr. Suri. He was very impressed. Room number two had become the "Roller Coaster Fun Park." There had been much activity at the motel and much gossip up and down Windsor Avenue about these rooms. The other motels were feeling the compet.i.tion and had started to add their own attractions. The Flamingo's sign read "Sun Lamps in Every Room," the Windsor Castle added "Feel Like Royalty in Our Rooms," and the Route Five Pay and Stay advertised "Lunch Hour Specials."

Capitalism was exciting, even with its flaws. To be positioned on top was a complicated goal for a Russian soul. I understood better now my childhood friend, Nadia, who was singular in her desire to compete and succeed above all her peers. She had a pa.s.sion to possess and control in the face of any obstacle. When we were children she was always judging, comparing, and pushing us out of the way. She always wanted to seem superior and boasted about everything. I would always try to counter her attempts to make us feel inferior. Whether we were ten, twelve, or twenty, it was always pretty much the same. Here is a typical conversation, word for word.

"My father makes more money than your father."

"Yes, Nadia, he does," I said. Her father was a baker and a well-paid informant for the NKVD.

"My house has more windows than yours."

"Big deal. More cleaning for your mother."

"My hair is straighter and shinier than yours," she would say, flipping her long, straight, blond hair behind her shoulders.

"I like the wave in my hair," I replied.

"I have a sister."

"I have pity for her."

"My dog is more obedient than yours."

Making a judgment about my dog made me angry. Her miniature poodle, Trala, with the matted white hair and leaky pink eyes, may have been more cooperative than my strong-willed terrier, Pepe, but her dog was showy and obnoxious, just like her. My parents made me put up with Nadia and her dog.

"She lives right next door, she is smart, has good manners, and her family is well connected," my mother would say.

She was well mannered in front of the adults, but she treated her friends like servants. No wonder my dog Pepe bit her. Soon after that incident, when Nadia and I were seventeen, both Pepe and my father were gone.

Pepe had been gone for a month the day my father disappeared.

My mother lied. "They needed soldiers to fight the fascists. Your father agreed to go."

"When will he return?"

I asked the same question about Pepe. My mother's answer about dog and father was to light a cigarette.

Amalia later told me the truth.

"Your mother has no idea what he was arrested for, so she made up the fighting fascists story. There are no fascists to fight-we beat them all in the war," she said while we played cards.

"It's not a story. My father is a soldier," I responded.

"Your father is a writer."

"So?"

"Writers are the worst, and on top of that your father wears that ridiculous hat," she said, making a face and pulling her hands down over her ears.

My father wore a tight-fitting blue beret. He used to say it kept out the lies of his neighbors.

Amalia added, "And besides that silly hat, your dog bit Nadia."

"My father punished Pepe," I said, holding four aces, a jack, and a queen and king of hearts in my hand. "Amalia, I don't think you shuffled these cards very well."

"When was the last time your father published anything?"

"When he returns, he will write about the fighting," I said, holding the photograph of my father in my hand along with my playing cards.

"You're a duckling head," Amalia said and sneered from behind her cards.

"Don't call me names. Gin!" I said and put my cards down.

"Did you hear Nadia's dog Trala disappeared?" she said, turning the photograph of my father around to face her and tapping it with her finger.

"Who cares?" I said. "She and her dog can go to h.e.l.l."

"Nice shovel he has there," she said, holding the photograph close to her face. "I did not know your father was a gardener. Your deal."

Chapter Eight: Makeovers.

Life was so different at the Liberty Motel. I'll now take a moment to describe the decor of my room designs. With these "Rooms for the Imaginative" I hoped to bring happiness to our small part of the world here in Berlin, Connecticut, a little bit of green (and yes, concrete), easy to get to from all the converging highways that feed into the city of Hartford. Berlin was like a young sibling in a struggling family-the town waited for the castoffs from big brother Hartford. Everything in the town from the road signs to the picket fences around the tiny front yards looked tired and worn.

Upon entering room number one, you encountered a bed on a raised platform with a six-sided gazebo built around it. I called it the "bed-zebo." It had green ivy around the posts at the sides of the platform and thin strips of clear plastic attached to each of the six sides. With the air moving from the ceiling fan, the Mylar fluttered and gave the feeling of rain falling. Getting trapped in a gazebo during bad weather is very stimulating. Movies and novels are filled with such moments. Who wouldn't want it? I decorated the roof of the bed with wood shingles, but it was what you saw upon looking up from the bed that made this a very popular room. There were six triangular mirrors fitted into the top turrets in the roof. The reflections broke into six different views from anywhere in the bed. Even though I had only been in the bed alone, I still found the angles and broken views quite stimulating. The sides of the bed and the platform were covered with green plastic gra.s.s. It was the same stuff like the mat outside Rosalinda's fortune-telling salon. I put up a wallpaper trim that shows a woman in Victorian dress entering a gazebo. After the trim was in place, the room was complete. Total cost, sixty-three dollars and fifty-three cents.

There was a couple leaving the room. They were regulars, but this was their first-time experience with the new room. Perhaps they would comment. She was very skinny and wobbled in her high heels walking to his car on the gravel driveway. He wore a fedora and worsted pants, and he always wrote a different name on the card when he registered. Today he was "Ulysses S. Grant." I thought he was a local politician. I was sure I'd seen his picture in the paper, but it was hard to tell with the fedora in the way.

"Interesting room," he said without looking at me.

"Thank you, it's my own design," I responded proudly.

His hand shook slightly as he pushed the key through the half-moon opening in the bulletproof office window. The woman, standing by the car, wrapped her sequined sweater tightly around her small frame, impatient in the cold. He unlocked his side first, got in, and opened her door. In the car, they sat without looking at each other as the motor started. As they pulled away, she smiled and gave me a thumbs-up.

There was another couple waiting in a car. No time to waste basking in my glory, I say. I needed to get Mara to clean the room. She was always sleeping in the linen room. Luckily the intercom was very loud.

"Mara! Room one is done! Hurry, we have a couple waiting!"

No answer.

"Mara!"

"I heard you the first time...chill out."

"Don't let Svetlana out. There are a lot of cars coming and going."

"She's asleep on the towels."

I named the cat Svetlana for Stalin's daughter, for whom I also felt great pity. One day the weak, abandoned kitten walked up the driveway and stood in front of the office, and I practically tripped over her when I was leaving. Now the cat was healthy, but she had a bad habit of running across the drive to play with pinecones under the trees. I was afraid she would get run over. Mara always let her out of the linen room when her hands were full with the vacuum and bucket of cleaning supplies.

"Mara-"

"I'm just fixing my hair."

"I forgot to tell you I replaced the vacuum bag."

"How dare you touch my vacuum."

"I made a mess finishing the Gazebo Room. I cleaned up after myself."

"Just kidding, thanks. I'll be out in a minute."

The intercom b.u.t.ton got stuck, and I heard Mara say, "Hey, Svetlana, now that she's a big fancy designer I'm surprised she didn't ask me to clean up her mess. Come here, kitty, help me push open the door, my hands are full."

There went Svetlana, right under the pine trees; she was obsessed with those pinecones. At least right now the driveway was quiet. The couple waiting in the car looked anxious. I signaled them to come over.

"How was the room?" I asked Mara.

"The usual-ripped pantyhose, half-drunk bottle of wine, two-dollar tip. They left this."

She handed me a small, thin, square red box.

"What is it?"

"Didn't open it. I was pa.s.sing by the Roller Coaster Room. The couple in there left the curtain open a crack, and I saw the guy naked standing on top of the bed."

"I'll put it here behind the desk. The customer may come back to claim it. You looked into the room?"

"I couldn't help it. Just as I was walking by, he had his hands in the air like he was on a real roller coaster. Pretty funny." She laughed.

"The fantasy works well. I've already sent the other couple to the Gazebo Room."