Free Waylaid by Ed Lin

men would get an electric hot plate with two burners and a tiny refrigerator that could hold about two boxes of Twinkies. They also got a portable electric heater. Those rooms got pretty damn cold — the drafts through the battered air conditioners bolted into the wall neutralized the power of the central heat.
    There were never enough heaters to go around, so when someone complained about the cold, my parents would give mine out, then theirs. Sometimes I went to sleep to the buzzing warmth of the heater only to wake up cold in the middle of the night, the glowing metal strips replaced by darkness, my heater given away to a customer.
    At the hotel I learned the life cycle of white men. Go to school, get a job, get drunk and laid every weekend, get married, have kids, get old, watch your family abandon you, and live off of Social Security until you die.
    Every day I saw the various stages. Kids in school. A john stopping by at three in the morning. An old man waiting for the water on the hotplate to boil for instant coffee, saying he’d have the rent first thing next week. Peter Fiorello was the only old white man I saw who still had a wife and seemed to be happy.
    White women were a little different. After they finished high school, they worked at fast-food joints or, if they looked good enough, landed in the porn magazines. If they were really unlucky, they might end up turning tricks in our rooms. There was no place for old white women at the shore. The only old white women I saw besides Mrs. Fiorello were on television.
    Something strange about those Fiorellos.
    When they stopped by on weekends in the winter, the Fiorellos spent nearly the whole day in the office, talking with my mother. Through the closed door to the office, I would hear muffled voices and my mother’s high-pitched, fake laugh.
    I was sleeping late on the weekends now, but sometimes my father would wake me up with a nudge of his slipper and tell me I had to help him in the crawlspace. Most of the time though, my father would already be off fixing something and I would sleep until about 10 or 11. After I woke up, I’d pop open a canister of generic biscuits and plop the sticky, doughy discs onto a battered metal baking tray that was dented like a cymbal from The Who’s drum kit.
    I was smearing chunky peanut butter on a biscuit when I heard my mother calling from the office. Her pleas were followed by Mrs. Fiorello’s wail that she wanted to see me. I trudged out to the office.
    â€œDon’t you kids wash up anymore?” asked Mrs. Fiorello, tapping a finger against the right side of her mouth. I licked a spot of peanut butter away.
    â€œYou can’t look this sloppy for customers,” said my mother. They were both in their customary discussion positions, Mrs. Fiorello on the office couch and my mother on the bar stool behind the counter. My mother would never leave the counter to sit next to Mrs. Fiorello on the couch. Although they could talk casually, Mrs. Fiorello was a customer, and my mother could never sit with her. Mrs. Fiorello once told me orientals had a hard time being close.
    â€œSay something in Chinese,” said Mrs. Fiorello.
    â€œWhat?” I said. I was letting those biscuits go cold for this? My classmates used to torture me with this stupid shit until I started jabbing pens in their arms and dumping out their desks.
    â€œSay something in Chinese. Something easy, like, ‘Hello.’” Mrs. Fiorello wore a wide grin that stretched her face taut. Her cheeks were as shiny as lacquered wood. I looked to my mother, and she gave a short, artificial laugh.
    â€œWhy do you want to me to say something in Chinese?” I asked. A piece of peanut that had gotten stuck in my molars added to my annoyance.
    â€œJust do it,” Mrs. Fiorello whined, “do it for me.” She said the last bit like one word: “formy.”
    â€œYee,” I said. My mother