Mr. Launder

By Roberto Ontiveros

When Lisa walked into room 207 to get away from her boss Tammy, she noticed a faint but obvious scent of what she thought must be aftershave.

No one, no guest – not since the incident with Mr. Launder – was supposed to be in this room.  207 was the unofficial break room for the staff who needed a time out.

For a fierce moment of wonder, Lisa considered the possibility that Mr. Launder was somehow back.

The incident was still fresh in her mind.

Three days after his checkout date and Mr. Launder was still in this room; he was not leaving.  Mr. Laudner had supplied himself with food and booze and outside of his 3 p.m. snoring he was making no noise.

Rather than call the cops, management decided to call his room and just ask the fellow if he knew it was past checkout time.

When Mr. Launder answered he sounded cordial and as if he were answering the phone at his home.

“Mr. Launder, this is Tammy at the front desk.  Are you aware that checkout was three days ago?”

There was no noise for maybe three seconds then Mr. Launder hung up.

Tammy, from the front desk, called again, and again Mr. Launder picked up the phone. 

“Hello,” he said in that same tone of neutrality.

“Where do you think you are Mr. Launder?”

“I know I am at home … Who is calling?”

“Front Desk.”

“Well, Mrs. Desk, I don’t appreciate crank calls.”

He stayed on the line as if awaiting more incriminating information so that he could perhaps get the authorities involved.

Tammy hung up.  Then she told Ruben, the maintenance kid, who, although not very tall or strong, was scrappy enough to bark a rude guest out of the lobby, to go up and knock on room 207.

She cautioned Ruben that the man might not be well.

“Well, shouldn’t we call an ambulance, then?” Ruben asked.

Tammy, who had some experiences with the medics in town, shook her head with a slow but sure deliberation.

Ruben knocked politely on 207 and just twice.  He would later explain to the staff that he could hear the man sighing as if he had a very trying time getting off the bed.

When Mr. Launder came to the door, he answered as cordially as he had answered on the phone but his face was flushed from walking.

Ruben’s first reaction was concern.  “Hey, man, are you okay?”

Mr. Launder cleared his throat, and ran a puffy hand through his reddish hair and said. “I have allergies. How may I help you, young man?”

Not understanding why he did this, Ruben asked if Mr. Launder needed anything from downstairs.

Mr. Launder looked at Ruben with his own kind of concern now and said, “Son, I am not a rich man, but I can spare a twenty.”  He pulled the bill from the side pocket of the beige Sansabelt pants he was wearing and placed it in Ruben’s hand, then smiled as if a little proud of his charity, and said, “Go and get yourself a sandwich.”  Then he closed the door.

The staff had a noon time meeting about what to do about Mr. Launder.  

“Look, you know he is not hurting anyone,” Ruben said. “I say we keep an eye on him for a bit.”

Tammy shook her head.  But offered no better idea.  Lisa, who had been scribbling notes on a napkin with a blue runny ink pen said. “We need to act like burglars. We need to somehow make him feel unsafe.” 

Tammy smiled at this but suddenly had a better idea.  “He sleeps, right?”

“One would assume,” Ruben remarked while eating a Pop Tart.

“No, he does,” Lisa said. “I hear him snore around 3 p.m.  When he takes a nap. He naps hard until like 5 p.m..”

“Okay,” said Tammy with a look as she was about to roll up her sleeve to reach into a waste basket.

At 3:14 p.m. Tammy, Ruben, Lisa and a resident that volunteered to help entered room 207. 

Mr. Launder was conked out on the bed, in a white T-shirt and boxers. The man was in his late sixties and watching him sleep, Lisa was reminded of a picture she had once seen of L. Ron Hubburd on a yacht, smiling sly and slightly.  Mr. Launder looked so assured in his slumber, dreaming of other worlds: planes and volcanos or pennies or Captain Kangaroo episodes he might have seen with any children he might have had, Lisa thought.

The team had practiced this move before. Four people on each side of a bed sheet, lifting an imobile body from a bed to a stretcher.  But there was no stretcher. They needed another guy and the resident who always wore sunglasses agreed to help.

Mr. Launder made no sound even as Ruben cursed in Spanish and as Lisa exhaled in deep and strained ways.

The team and the sleeping Mr. Launder made it to the elevator, where they rested for five minutes before pressing the down button.

Room 101 was thirty feet from the lobby, and aside from a broken air conditioner, the room was no different from room 207.

After the crew placed Mr. Launder on the bed, they all met in the conference room to drink water and congratulate each other; to speculate if the man was mad or just faking.  In the end it did not matter.  Lisa went up to get all of Mr. Launder’s things and put them in his new air condition-less room.

The resident who always wore sunglasses and never really spoke to anyone offered anyone who wanted a drink a beer, because he said he had “like nine cans of some Canadian stuff in the mini-fridge.” 

Ruben took him up on his offer, and the two men drank in silence sitting on the couch in the lobby while watching room 101.

At 5:20 p.m. the door to room 101 opened, and Mr. Launder, fully dressed in a sky blue leisure suit, with a rested look on his face, walked out of the room and walked right outside the sliding glass doors of the hotel.

The resident in sunglasses and a black T-shirt and jeans looked at Ruben and they high-fived fast.

Lisa, standing now in room 207, which had – almost by unconscious and unanimous decision – been designated the unofficial place for staff to find a quick break, walked around to find the source of what she now thought was cologne.

The scent was strong and all over, like a false patchouli.

When the air conditioner thundered on, Lisa turned to look at the box and saw a tiny sample of some blue fragrance atop the yellowing plastic flap above the vent lines.

She picked up the vial and poured its remaining liquid onto the carpet, then put the small glass bottle in her pocket.  There was a very purple flower she had noticed growing between the stones outside the front office.  Plucked, it would be lovely in this glass.

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