The Benitox checked into the Check-In Center. Woman-app at the Welcome desk handed him (the Benitox) a cubic of lemonade. When you sipped it that lemonade the lights of the Check-In Center swayed like a tide. “That always happen?” the Benitox wondered. “Only when you drink a lemonade,” the Woman-app said between her yawnings (—her yawnings betweened basically every word).
She had no Welcome rooms open but she had a Welcome room antechamber pre-show ready to go and he the Benitox could stay in there till the adjoining Welcome room cleared out—“Maybe a week or two,” the Woman-app added. “I can live with that.” “You’ll have to. Or you’re not allowed.”
The Benitox showed himself to the antechamber pre-show. Stopped in the bunker-laundromat to discover some lightly-disturbed sheets. A Laundry-app told him it wasn’t Tatami style anymore in the antechamber pre-shows, as the Benitox was accustomed to. “What are you talking about, I’ve never stayed here,” said the Benitox. “Oh okay,” Laundry-app admitted. “Do you know me?” the Benitox wondered. “Sure I do,” said the Laundry-app. “How?” “You told me.” Laundry-app got back to work lightening clothed sheets on a cedar plank dangling from chains affixed to the popcorn ceiling. The air smelled in that bunker crisp as a newly-felled forest. The Benitox skedaddled.
Turned out the Woman-app at the Welcome desk already promised the antechamber pre-show to a traveling circuitry inspector. His name was Tony Shelf. He was born in the Water-birth hospital and he told that to everyone he met. “I don’t care how you were born,” the Benitox told him off. “Why not? You should.” “I just don’t. I don’t watch videos of births either.” “This guy, he doesn’t even watch the films, this guy,” Tony Shelf said to the floor, to the plastered-over tatami.
“You want to know how I was born?” said the Benitox suddenly. “Of course!” Tony Shelf ate a bite of his leftern-most-handed leather glove. “Of course!” again he exclaimed. “I don’t know how I was born,” the Benitox responded. “That’s the end-truth of it. They never tell you.” “But they do! They do!” “Maybe now. You must be what? 60? 80 years my junior?” “Easily! Easily!” “Then things were different for you,” the Benitox said, and left it at that.
Now the Benitox paced around the antechamber pre-show, inspecting all the paintings dangling from the stucco walls. “You pick these paintings, Shelf?” “They were always here.” “Uh huh.” The Benitox paused before a tasteful one in a belabored frame that hardly suited its sleekful-tastefulness. “You like this one, Shelf?” “That’s a good one, yes.” It was of a cardboard box computer-programming. In a sweeping romantic style that reminded the Benitox of Pizza factory-gargoyles. “It remind you of anything?” the Benitox wondered. “You testing me?” “I was before, Shelf, I won’t lie. But now I need your God-honest expertise.” “Sure. Sure. Thank you for saying it. Yes, it reminds me of the hitchhiker that murdered my wife and sister. They were driving together to a concert. Though nobody told me who was driving.” “I’m sorry to hear that, Shelf,” the salesman growing on him.
Room service-app barged in. “You call it, Shelf?” the Benitox wondered. “No. I’m sure it’s for the Welcome room.” The room service dripped onto the plastered-over tatami. Room-service app said, “No. Room service for you. From the Management.” “From the Woman-app at the Welcome desk?” “Luglorna? She’s not management. Are you kidding me here? You saw her and you went, She’s in charge? Did you really? I’ll fucking choke on this room service if you thought that and make you watch.” “Relax, relax,” said Shelf, “what’s your name, anyway, little guy?” “I’m Grater Doorhandle.” “Grater Doorhandle?” the Benitox wondered, “what kind of name’s Grater Doorhandle?” “It’s my moniker, irregardless, Mr. Benitox-sir.” “I like him,” said Shelf. “I like you,” he went on, turning now to Doorhandle. “You’ve got moxie, is the word.” “He smells like drippings.” “The drippings are what you’re smelling,” Doorhandle the Room service-app went on the defensive, “the drippings are what smell like drippings.” “Yes! Life’s a puzzle!” Shelf bellowed. “Be gone now, Doorhandle,” said the Benitox. “Fine fine,” the Room service-app replied. “Fine fine,” added Shelf.
Shelf left eventually. He said he was off to the spa. But the Woman-app at the Welcome desk had specifically mentioned the spa was now turned off for the season. The Benitox figured Shelf was really after the Woman-app at the Welcome desk who was off the Check-In Center clock by then and likely signed into the pleasure-giving gig-econo harlot-mainframe. Shelf was an unforgivable deplorable deviant, the Benitox decided, chasing after an innocent Woman-app like that, no matter how desperate she might be for the extension of additional credit, no matter how starred her harlotry-syllabus was.
Everyone’s the same everywhere, the Benitox decided, no one’s ever been different enough anywhere to prove to me otherwise.
The Benitox heard a knocking now. “No more drippings!” he shouted, surprising himself. “Wrong side,” said a muffled voice from behind the steel door to the Welcome room. “But we have drippings in here, I’ll admit. I can hide them away. You won’t have to think of them.” “Ask him if he wants us to hide the drippings,” said another even-more muffled voice, a significantly more metallo-feminine tone than the original first.
The steel door swung open. Two sets of bug-eyes concealed behind thick-framed glasses scanned the Benitox. “You’re the Benitox,” said the glassed eye-pair behind the original voice, who seemed to be a genuine person. “I’m called Andy,” he said. “This is Maggie.” “I’m Maggie,” Maggie said. “You should come in.” The Benitox obliged them.
The Welcome room resembled a magnificent hall shrinked down to Welcome room-size. “How long you been here?” the Benitox wondered.” “Three weeks,” said Andy and Maggie in sweetest unison. (Embarrassed by this intimacy, they both bit at their right-most hands like televised ice dancers defected from the dry countries for here our USA.)
“Where do you sleep in here, anyway?” the Benitox wondered. “Standing up,” solely Maggie offered now. “And how do you know me?” “You’re the Benitox,” went on Andy, “we have your slippers, we have your cookbook, we have your memoir, we have your electro-baton, we have your signature Hitachi—” “OK, I get it.” “Does it surprise you?” Maggie asked him, “how enmeshed into your ecosystem we are?” “It’s all junk, that’s all,” the Benitox admitted. “It’s not junk,” retorted Andy. “I love a lot of it.” “I love a lot of it, too,” came the back-up from Maggie. “I didn’t have a choice,” the Benitox admitted. “For not having a choice, it was a very good choice,” Andy decided. “Stay the night with us,” begged Maggie. “I’m situated in the antechamber pre-show already,” the Benitox replied. “I prefer what I know.” “Come see us tomorrow, then,” added Andy alluringly. “No promises.”
The Benitox left back through the steel door, which clicked closed behind him. The couple offered a muffled goodbye through it and then their hum disappeared for the night like a screen shut off. Tony Shelf had not returned. He the Benitox didn’t wish to think of that, but of course he did anyway. He paced across the former-tatami instead of sleeping, setting deep grooves in the floor, and felt the next day like he’d still taken his eight hours. It was often as such for him.
Refreshed as the Benitox was, his knees ached, so deep through the night had he ground into the floor. He wished the spa hadn’t turned off for the season and wondered the amount what would be for the proper credit-line extension, an amount which might persuade the Switch flipper-app into flipping the spa switch back into a more favorable position the ON position.
The Benitox laughed—he didn’t have that kind of dough anymore. Nobody did.