Breakfast of Champions

9






WHILE KILGORE TROUT was inadvertently poisoning the collective mind of New York City, Dwayne Hoover, the demented Pontiac dealer, was coming down from the roof of his own Holiday Inn in the Middle West.
Dwayne went into the carpeted lobby of the place not long before sunrise, to ask for a room. As queer as the hour was, there was a man ahead of him, and a black one at that. This was Cyprian Ukwende, the Indaro, the physician from Nigeria, who was staying at the Inn until he could find a suitable apartment.
Dwayne awaited his turn humbly. He had forgotten that he was a co-owner of the Inn. As for staying at a place where black men stayed, Dwayne was philosophical. He experienced a sort of bittersweet happiness as he told himself, “Times change. Times change.”


The night clerk was new. He did not know Dwayne. He had Dwayne fill out a registration in full. Dwayne, for his part, apologized for not knowing what the number of his license plate was. He felt guilty about that, even though he knew he had done nothing he should feel guilty about.
He was elated when the clerk let him have a room key. He had passed the test. And he adored his room. It was so new and cool and clean. It was so neutral! It was the brother of thousands upon thousands of rooms in Holiday Inns all over the world.
Dwayne Hoover might be confused as to what his life was all about, or what he should do with it next. But this much he has done correctly: He had delivered himself to an irreproachable container for a human being.
It awaited anybody. It awaited Dwayne.
Around the toilet seat was a band of paper like this, which he would have to remove before he used the toilet:


This loop of paper guaranteed Dwayne that he need have no fear that corkscrew-shaped little animals would crawl up his a*shole and eat up his wiring. That was one less worry for Dwayne.


There was a sign hanging on the inside doorknob, which Dwayne now hung on the outside doorknob. It looked like this:


Dwayne pulled open his floor-to-ceiling draperies for a moment. He saw the sign which announced the presence of the Inn to weary travelers on the Interstate. Here is what it looked like:


He closed his draperies. He adjusted the heating and ventilating system. He slept like a lamb.
A lamb was a young animal which was legendary for sleeping well on the planet Earth. It looked like this: