BANG OUT

The man checked into the hotel room Friday afternoon.  He’d picked it because of the hotel’s web site.  It promised classic San Francisco charm at surprisingly affordable rates overlooking historic Geary Street.  The room had the promised bed and reclining easy chair and kitchenette.  It even had the radiator he’d seen in the photos, an upright steel accordion that could’ve been a set piece in a Humphrey Bogart film.  Everything was a bit more beat up than the web site suggested, but he could stand it for one weekend.

It was the heat.  By that evening he couldn’t take any more of it.  The radiator was off and the room was a dry sauna.  He ran his hands over the walls and located the steam pipes behind the plasterboard.  They ran like arteries inside the skin of the building.  His room was a hub of steam converging on him from the bottom floors and climbing all directions to the upper.  If anything, the desk clerk said on the other end of the phone, you should be so lucky.  Most rooms in San Francisco are freezing cold this time of year. He told the clerk about the noise, the pinging and the clanging that the radiator made all day, even though he hadn’t turned it on.  That’s how they are, the clerk said.  Radiators talk to you.

Fuck this, the man muttered and hung up.  He grabbed his jacket and flew downstairs to Geary Street and the cool night air.

When he returned at quarter after eleven, the room was broiling.  He threw off his jacket and kicked off his shoes.  He threw open the windows as far as they would go.  Then he flopped back on the bed full of the electric numbness of too much lite beer and tequila.  The radiator click-click-clicked and then banged twice, like someone was in the boiler room hammering on the pipes.  Shut up! he called out.  The radiator banged like calling court to order: bam — bam — bam.

He startled awake in the dead of night, lights ablaze.  He was still in his shirt and jeans, and he was shivering.  He slammed the windows shut.  The radiator was cold and chirping like a satisfied cricket.  He ran his hands along the walls for the steam arteries.  They were gone, or dead, or hibernating.

God damn this place, he mumbled.  God damn this and everyone else.

In the morning he made the bed and fixed breakfast.  The steam was already coursing through the skin of the building.  He sweated through the meal, soaking the armpits of his pajama shirt.  He dressed and, with no plan or direction, began walking, making it all the way to the end of Golden Gate Park.  The conversation in his brain went like this: God damn if I — fuck, if this isn’t — how can she say — I damn well worked and slaved — twenty-two years — he thinks he can, I’ll show him — God dammit — how did I not see — how did I deserve this? He didn’t see couples and children and balloons at Stow Lake.  He missed the paddle boats and ducks and ice cream sandwiches.  He only saw the water.  How did I deserve this?

He made it back to the hotel no different than when he left it.  He dreaded returning to the superheated room.  He thought about going to a bar, or Mitchell Brothers, but he hated the idea of sharing space with anyone, even if they were naked.  He bought cold beer and took it upstairs.  He opened the door to his room and heat poured out like packing peanuts flooding out of a shipping crate.  He sat in the reclining chair and clicked through the TV stations.  He turned the volume all the way down.  It was better without.  The radiator banged and creaked and acted up all evening.

That guy reminds me of my son. He pointed to the television set.  My son can draw anything.  His art teacher thinks he’s great.

The radiator clicked and clicked.

Sees something once, and it goes right in the bank. He tapped his temple.  A week later he can draw it like a photograph.

The radiator banged, hesitated, then banged again.

Yeah, and knocked her up!  Got the money to pay for it from me.  Like I wouldn’t know.  How fucking stupid he takes me for?

The radiator made a hollow booming sound.

Oh, I know it happened.  Good and well I know.

The room seethed with heat.  He took a piss and got another beer.  A fast food commercial came on.

My wife makes good tacos, he said.  We have taco night every week.  She grates up the cheese, cuts up an onion.  She even has that little tray that holds all the warm taco shells.

The radiator pinged.

Everyone likes taco night.  You get to make your own.

The radiator pinged once more.

Goddamn I know what she’s up to. His hand began to crumple the beer can.  It wasn’t empty.  What’s his name, and his fucking hair plugs.  Coming around all the time, like I don’t know.

The radiator clanged.

What kind of wife sends her husband off to San Francisco?  For a weekend?  ‘Cool off’, fuck, I know her game.  Wants me gone, she’s got it.

He snatched up his jacket.  I’m going to see some trim, I don’t care about her. He threw the jacket back on the bed.  Fuck that, I’m not going waste my money. And he sat down again.

The heat came on harder, and in waves.  The radiator banged out.

Fucking bones!  He rubbed his fingers together.  Down to the bones!  For what?  For this?

The radiator banged out again.

Oughta show her.  One phone call and our marriage is through.

The radiator banged out a third time.

He got up.  His hands were shaking.  He searched the walls.  They were warm with the blood of steam.  He closed all the windows and stuffed a bath towel into the crack under the front door.  The radiator was clanging, clanging with the urgency of a Sunday morning church bell.

He said, I’m talking to a radiator. He wrapped his hand around the floor valve.  He twisted it open, twisted it for the first time.  Maybe this’ll shut you up.

The valve hissed and the radiator glugged in steam.  It devoured the stuff until its belly was full.  It began to glow.  The radiator went from gunmetal gray to red to orange to hot white.  Heat poured forth.  It made his eyeballs feel like cracking paint.  The heat clamored up his nostrils and plunged down his throat.  It baked his lungs from the inside out.  The air pressure soared, enough pressure to crumple his skull, but the heat inside him pushed back with equal force.  He was at an equilibrium, more of a truce than a peace, and the noise was finally gone.

Copyright © 2010, Jim Nelson