WAS UP EARLY the next morning, as always, but when I entered the kitchen I found Cedric “Call Me Lou” Abbott already there, chatting with Suki, the cook, and making himself a breakfast sandwich from the meat loaf in the “leftovers” refrigerator. 
   “Good morning!” Lou said when I walked in.  “Coffee’s almost ready.”  He was smiling, but that didn’t change my conviction that he was a grumpy guy, because I have learned that many a grumpy guy will smile in the company of strangers. 
   “Morning,” I mumbled, hoping that Lou would conclude from my mumbling that I was one of those people who do not like to converse before they have had their coffee.  I turned quickly toward the door and said, “I’ll go see if Dexter brought the papers,” employing the same significant mumble. 
   “Swell idea!” said Lou, who apparently had no ear for a significant mumble.  “I’ll come along.”  He followed, carrying the sandwich.  Together, we headed down the path toward the dock.  Along the way, I decided, after a quick survey of my personal history conducted while walking with my head down, my eyes on the ground, and my hands in my pockets, that Lou was probably the first person I had ever heard actually use the word swell, or, if I was wrong about that, certainly the first person I had ever heard use the word swell so early in the morning. 
   “This Dexter,” Lou asked, “who’s that?” 
   “Dexter?  He’s our mailman, paperboy, delivery service —” 
   “Hard-working fellow?” 
   “Hardly working, as we say around here.  He does some fishing and some clamming, except on days when he would rather not, and on his way out to the bay he drops off our mail and our newspapers —” 
   “— except on days when he would rather not,” said Lou, chuckling. 
   “Right,” I said, not chuckling.  “I have come to suspect that Dexter does not like delivering our mail and newspapers.” 
   “And why have you come to suspect that?” asked Lou. 
   “I have come to suspect that because Dexter does not exhibit any apparent desire to see that the goods actually reach us. He brings his boat within what seems to him to be flinging distance of our dock and then from that distance he flings a plastic bag in our general direction.  Sometimes he puts enough effort — technically, we call it ëoomph’ — into the fling to get the bag onto the dock, and sometimes—” 
   Lou and I had reached the dock.  We stopped there and stood in silence for a moment, looking at a plastic bag floating just out of reach. 
   “Sometimes he does not,” said Lou, chuckling. 
   “Yeah,” said I, not chuckling. 
   I stretched out on the dock and began trying to snag the bag with a boat hook while Lou ate his meat-loaf sandwich.  After a short while Lou said, “What a great morning!” 
   I twisted my head around and looked up at him to see if he was being sarcastic.  He didn’t seem to be.  He pointed to the bag of papers and mail and said with a smile, “Looks like it’s sinking.” 
   “Oh, yes, it is,” I said.  “It is sinking, slowly but surely.” 
   “Why don’t we start up the launch and go out and get it before it goes under?” 
   “Why don’t we?” I said with a sigh.  “I’ll tell you ëwhy don’t we.’  Because after a damp night — and last night was a very damp night — the engine tends to be a little reluctant to start, and also because the launch leaks, and before I leave the dock in it I like to pump it dry so that I’ve got a better chance of staying afloat for the duration of my journey.” 
   Lou clapped me on the back heartily, as grumpy guys will when they are desperate to hide their gloom, and, pointing toward the bag, said, “It’s not going to sink between here and there.  Tell you what—why don’t I get into the boat and you just shove me out in the direction of the bag while you keep hold of the line, and then pull me back in after I snag the bag?” 
   “Swell idea,” I said, and that was what we did.  Then we carried the dripping bag between us all the way back to the hotel and began laying the things out to dry.  When Albertine came into the front hall, she found it covered with newspaper. 
   “ëWhat fresh hell is this?’” she asked. 
   “It’s the paper,” I said, “and the mail, and the magazines.” 
   “And it’s all over the whole damned place?” 
   “Just the ground floor,” said Lou, beaming.   He handed me a limp envelope and the letter that had been in it.  “This doesn’t look like the kind of thing you’d want lying around for everyone to see,” he said. 
   He was right. It was a letter from the publishers of The Unlikely Adventures of Larry Peters, a series of books for children or young people or “pre-adults” that I had been writing for years, and the news was not good.  “In the face of a continuing decline in sales,” they wrote, “we have decided with extreme reluctance to write finis to the series.”  There was no mention of a wake with open bar, hot hors d’oeuvres, and a jazz band. 
   “Oh, this is swell,” I said.  “This is just swell.”  I sank instantly into a foul mood, and I was still in a foul mood that evening, when the time came to read the second installment of Dead Air. 

Under the surface humor, Kraft’s take on the national experience is thoughtful, disturbing, and unlike that of any other American writer.

Leaving Small’s Hotel is published in paperback by Picador, a division of St. Martin's Press, at $14.00. 

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Leaving Small’s Hotel is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, dialogues, settings, and businesses portrayed in it are products of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. 

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