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The Hidden History of Gangsters
A story excerpt from Channel Surfing in the Sea of Happiness
by Guy Babineau

I was channel-surfing in The Sea of Happiness. Except for
Big Helen, I was alone in the hotel bar, nursing a Bloody
Mary. I munched disconsolately on the celery stick garnish
and thought, the more you try to bite out of life, the more
fibrous strands you're likely to get caught in your teeth.
The remote was like a prosthesis, appended to my wrist,
switching stations in time with my pulse. The war, a soap
opera, the weather channel, more talk about the war, snow,
a sitcom rerun, more war, more snow, country singers
whose mothers don't know they're lesbians, heroes of the
war. Big Helen put down my sandwich.

"You want malaise with that, Baby?"

"Malaise. I don't need malaise. My God, woman,
look out the window," I said, pointing. "It's all around us."

"Baby, I said mayonnaise. And that ain't no
window, that's a t.v."

I came to my senses and sure enough, I was waving
the remote at the wall screen television.

"Sorry."

"You better settle on what you want. You gonna
wear that thing out."

I laughed self-consciously. "Yeah. I guess you're
right. Got a toothpick, Helen?"

"Sure, Baby."

She handed me a red plastic toothpick in the shape
of a swordfish and plunked down a clean ashtray. Hotel
Concord, it said, in lettering that made me think of
zootsuits, Swing and victory.

"Thanks."

"Uh-huh."

I'd come here looking for happiness. When did I
turn into a spectator, watching it and confusing what I saw
with what I felt?

Monsieur Delacroix and I arrived the day after the war
ended. We had both lost our jobs, taken our separation pay,
borrowed Monsieur Delacroix's sister's convertible, and
driven the long drive to Chicago. When we crossed the
border at Detroit there were yellow ribbons on all the cars
on the highway, except ours. At truck stops, on turnpikes,
at gas stations, in all the towns, big yellow bows welcomed
home the troops. Just past Gary, Indiana, Monsieur stuck
in the Judy Garland tape. Chicago! she belted out as the
silhouette of its tall skyscrapers came into view. For a split
second I thought I saw a huge yellow bow tied to the very
tip of the top of the Sears Tower. It was a trick of the
light. Out came the sun, a gold-plated knife cutting through
the platinum winter clouds. We laughed, rolled down the
rooftop to let the icy wind whip our hair, and took the first
exit downtown. No one noticed. Safe, at last.

Big Helen took my empty glass, wedging her large hips
tightly between tables to get through. She brushed against
my cigarette. Ashes flew.

"Gee, Helen, sorry."

"Saw'right, Baby. Saw'right."

The Sea of Happiness is in the Concord Hotel. The hotel
has nothing else in common with the supersonic jet but a
name. The speed of sound is irrelevant in the Concord
Hotel, if you're escapees like me and Monsieur Delacroix,
trying to out-distance the speed of shame. We were
vigilant, looking over our shoulders to make sure shame
wasn't tailgating us like a second-rate detective. So far,
we'd been smart and quick, committing crimes and leaving
the evidence. On purpose. We imagined that shame was
stuck at the scene of a felony, smoking a stogie as it
scratched its double chin. Clueless, it overlooked the
obvious.

The rooms at The Concord Hotel are forty dollars a
night for a double with t.v. But there's no cable or
converter, just a dial you turn by hand and fuzzy reception.
You get two hard beds, a closet with a broken door, red,
orange and yellow striped curtains and bedspreads, a
cockroach in the bathroom and Monsieur Delacroix snoring
his head off beside you. The walls are paper thin, so if it
isn't Monsieur keeping you awake, it's the radio upstairs,
people in the next room having sex, guys yelling up and
down the halls.

The Concord Hotel was built in the 1920s. Mr.
Maharaj the graveyard shift told us. You could tell it was
stylish then. A marble lobby in deco lines. Brass rails.
There was probably someone to shine your shoes while
fedora-doffed you read your Chicago Tribune.
Nowadays, the marble is cracked, and the brass is
tarnished. But there is still life in The Sea of Happiness.
You get to the bar through a doorway in the hotel
lobby, past a wall mural of piccolo-playing mermaids,
whales with trombones, giant clams propped open like
grand pianos with musical notes coming out of the keys in
wavy lines, and lobsters with eyes winking at the end of
long stalks, playing their claws like castanets, all dancing at
the bottom of a dayglo ocean. The Sea of Happiness is
spelled out in interlocking sea horses.

Inside, the ceiling and walls are draped with purple
fishing nets, encrusted with blue plastic starfish and pieces
of pink and yellow coral. There's a stuffed marlin over the
service area. The tables are covered in plexiglass
embedded with shells; oysters, periwinkles, sand dollars,
conches, nautiluses, butter clams.

The big t.v. screen reminded me of Monsieur's
Theory of Elevators, which had been going over and over
in my head since I sat down.

There were several Japanese students staying in the
hotel. Wide awake, after stumbling in from the bars at 4
a.m. our first night on the lam, I couldn't sleep. Monsieur
Delacroix sawed logs, clearcutting his way through giant
redwoods. I continued my ongoing search for literature in
unexpected places. In the drawer of the bedside table, I
found the usual Gideon and a Buddhist Bible in Japanese.
Left behind, no doubt, by one of the pay-by-the-week
Japanese students. What they studied, I haven't figured
out.

I wondered, what do they write home?

Postcards of the Hancock Building. Postcards of the Sears
Tower. Like America. Miss home.

We got on to the hotel elevator with two of the
Japanese students. I experienced my usual moment of
doubt, but I hid my fear of heights from Monsieur. He
thought I was ridiculous. Technology of any application
lifted his spirits, particularly if it lifted Monsieur Delacroix.
Especially if it made him higher than a kite. He lived for
the moment, worshipping machines and motion. Monsieur
Delacroix treated life like an adventure movie, munching
popcorn all the way through its ups and downs.

The Japanese students had chips and Coke from the
lobby vending machines. A break in their homework I
guess. I stood in one corner. Monsieur stood in the other
corner on the same side. Each of the students
took a remaining corner. They were very nice to me and
Monsieur Delacroix. We smiled and said hello to each
other.

"Tourist?" asked one of the students.

"Yes."

"America?"

"No, Canada. Toronto."

"Ah, like America!"

"Yes, like America."

We stood at opposite sides of the elevator, smiling.

"Nice night."

"You have a nice night too."

The elevator door closed. Monsieur Delacroix
turned to me, and his mouth lemon-sucked itself into a
tightness of concentration.

"Have I ever explained My Theory of Elevators?"

"Your what?"

"My Theory of Elevators, dear."

"Wait," I said. "My Notebook."

We got inside our room and each cracked open a
beer. Monsieur kicked off his black and white checkered
sneakers and sat down on his bed. I lotus-positioned,
cozily lap-topped, on the opposite bed.

"In an elevator, if there are two people, they will
form a perfect line," Monsieur Delacroix announced. "One
will stand against the left wall, and one will stand against the
right wall. If there are three people, they will form a perfect
triangle. One at both the right and the left wall, standing
away from the door, and one right in front of the door as
close to it as he can get. If there are four people, you have
a perfect square, as you witnessed with the students; each
will take his own corner. If there are five, all corners will
be taken, and there will be one right in the center, so you
have a possibility of lines, triangles, and squares."

"Lines, triangles, squares, oh my," I said. "And
what if you're by yourself?"

"You're free to stand where you wish, but you'll try
to abuse the privilege. You'll nonchalantly lean against one
wall, then the next. You'll cross your legs, fold your arms,
maybe even close your eyes. You'll turn the light off, and
then back on. You'll fiddle with fan. You'll carve your
name into a wall. You might even carve some
pornography, if you're interesting. You'll contemplate
Emergency Stop. But..."

"But?"

"But. Your freedom is an illusion. No man can
bear to go up and down alone. When you share the
elevator, you worry...what to say?... where to look?...how
to cover up a smell? You worry about the spread of germs,
and what another's cough means. But when you are alone;
nagging away at the back of your head, you start to think to
yourself...you begin to worry...what if the cables snap?"

Monsieur Delacroix helped himself to another Miller, and
let out a self-satisfied sigh. "And now it's time for our
facial," he said. And got out the Aloe Vera Five-Minute
Masks.

I wondered if he was right, that people trapped in a
box can't form a circle and join each other.

What about the guy I’d met?

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