Free WLT by Garrison Keillor

couldn’t help himself. There was Alma and there was a lady from the paper and for awhile there was a Nordic goddess from the Ice Follies who was willing to hang up her skates if he wanted to marry her. No thanks . A schoolteacher lady who brought her class in for a tour and wound up sending them home unaccompanied on the streetcar and she ended up in room 434 with Ray.
    â€œI somehow knew she was going to go to bed with me the moment I looked in her eyes,” said Ray over lunch the next day. “Of course I’ve been wrong sometimes in the past, and here she was with thirty twelve-year-old kids, but still, I had a notion. On the tour, I kept touching her on the back, on the shoulder, and she didn’t jump, and then we posed for a photograph and she put her arm around me and pulled me closer and turned toward me so that her breast was halfway into my shirt pocket. That was when I asked her to dinner. She said yes with only a moment’s hesitation. We had wine at dinner and the wine made her frisky. I told her that we might never meet again, that tonight was our night, and that I would like to make it beautiful for her, and we got right on the elevator. She was so lovely. She stood on a chair and I undressed her in full light and I believe nobody had ever looked at her before. She was voluptuous in that Swedish way, those mild eyes and that pale golden hair, and breasts like ripe pears.”
    Dad Benson, sitting at the coffeeshop counter, held a spoonful of split-pea soup in midair. The voice sounded just like Ray’s.
    â€œShe smelled of chalk dust and laundry starch, like all those teachers, but she smelled a lot better when I got the clothes off her, and then when we’d worked up a little sweat, she smelled the best of all,” Ray said. “There is nothing smells so sweet as a sweaty woman, especially if some of the sweat on her is your own.”
    The third-floor quarters spread to include the fourth, and Ray’s bedroom moved to the sixth, the top floor. On the third floor were the executive offices, Accounting, Continuity, and Sales. Ray had hired another Sons of Knute brother, Art Finn, to run Sales, and Art kept hiring new men every month, sales were so good, phenomenal in fact. Art said, “Ray, we’ve got so many people on the waiting list, we could start charging them rent.” Accounting started as a man named Loran Groner, and the next time Ray stuck his head in, three men in green eyeshades looked up, blinking, from the balance sheets.
    On the second floor, the two studios became four, behind a double-door marked ABSOLUTELY NO ADMITTANCE , and beyond was another, marked Keep This Door Closed At All Times . Ray avoided the circus in the studios, but once, lost, looking for Roy Jr., Ray blundered into the Green Room and there were the Dakota Gypsy Yodellers tuning up for the Jubilee and arguing about who was in key. Leo was trying to keep them from socking each other.
    â€œPlease settle this somewhere else,” said Leo.
    â€œWell, there’s no point telling me that,” said a Yodeller. “Go talk to him. He’s the one who’s mad. He’s mad because he can’t tune his damn mandolin. I’m not mad. Anytime he wants to apologize to me, I’d be more than happy to hear it.”
    Elsie and Johnny stood to the side unstrapping their big blonde Bueno Vox piano accordions, a big red-headed bruiser and her forlorn husband—she had had him on a strict potato diet and he lost sixty pounds (because he didn’t like potatoes) and his skin hung on him like waxed bags. “You keep jumping the beat,” she muttered. She rolled her eyes: he was a lousy musician but she was married to him so what could she do? A scraggly guitar player sat noodling, a burning cigarette tucked under the strings, looked up at Ray, and said, “Clint?” Ray knew of no Clint at WLT. Out in the hall, the Norsk Nightingale was huddled with his Norsky