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fire chief in Lafayette told reporters the fire was one of “suspicious origin,” with “clear evidence of the use of accelerants,” and the office of the attorney general conducted an investigation; no charges were brought). It was painted sea green. It had a flat roof that overhung the cement balcony walkway giving access to the rooms on the upper floor. The roof was supported by wrought-iron grillwork, and the walkway was enclosed by waist-high wrought-iron fencing. All of the ironwork was painted white. The doors of the rooms and the frames of the picture windows fronting on the parking lot were painted pale turquoise. At the northeasterly corner there was a dark blue Dempster Dumpster. There were two brown and chromium ice machines, one at the crook of the V on each floor. The sign at the edge of the road was mounted on an orange trailer and fringed with light bulbs; black movable letters advertised “ 34AIR-COND RMS, SOME W/DINETTES. TV. FREE COFFEE. VACANCY, $10.00S. $14 DBL .” Off to the southeast of the V was a square green cinder-block building with a sign on the door that said “ OFFICE .” It had a small porch under the roof overhand on the front. There were two green metal lawn chairs on the porch, and a spindly white metal table with a glass top between them. There was a can of Miller beer on the table next to the chair nearest the door.
    Earl parked the Dodge alongside a charcoal gray Lincoln Continental in front of the office. There were six other vehicles in the lot: a carmine Firebird Trans Am, a black Camaro, a neon green Dodge Charger, a black Plymouth Road Runner with oversized tires, a GMC four-wheel-drive truck with oversized, off-the-road cleated tires that gave it two feet of ground clearance, and a silver Honda motorcycle. The door to the fourth room to his left on the first floor was open; a four-wheeled cart equipped with a brown laundry bag on the front, festooned with large plastic bottles of spray cleaners, stood beside it. He could hear a man and a woman arguing inside the room.
    “Well,” the man said, “it’s very fuckin’ simple. It’s not hard to understand. It’s almost five o’fuckin’ clock, and you’re not fuckin’ done. You’re supposed to get in here, and get the fuckin’ work done by
three
o’fuckin’ clock, and you didn’t fuckin’ do it. As fuckin’ usual. Now I don’t have to fuckin’ tell you, why this’s important. The best we got in this place is a short season, all right? And this is the fuckin’ season, which so far sucks, and we got to have stuff ready. We got to scratch for bucks. And the way we fuckin’ scratch for bucks is we do our fuckin’ work. Now I look at it thisway, and you don’t? Well, fuck me, then—and you can fuckin’ quit. I bet I can find someone that’ll take your fuckin’ job, and be fuckin’
grate
ful to get two-five-oh an hour, in this godforsaken hole.”
    The woman’s voice was half plaintive and half angry. The volume increased and the pitch rose as she spoke. “Mister Battaglia,” she said. “I don’t
rent
these rooms, these goddamned … 
animals.
I don’t bring the beer in here, and throw empties all around. I don’t throw up in the bathrooms, onna walls and onna floors. I don’t shit in the bathtubs. I don’t pull the curtains down and break the goddamned springs, so they won’t go up again and you have to take them down and roll them up. Isn’t me, that falls asleep, eating pizza, I’m in bed. And then rolls around in it and stains the goddamned sheets. You know why there’s no chairs in Twelve? Because the bastards broke them. I guess they threw them out the windows—they’re out the back, back parking lot. You know why there’s no blankets, in the laundry room? Because last night they ruined four, least they looked like that to me. You wanna let these cannibals in? Fine. Go and take their money. But don’t expect me, make it like, they never were in here. I can’t do it. Nobody can. They