There's a recurring story you'll hear, if you talk to people in the semi-rural south about immigration, changing landscapes, foreign motels, things like that: It's about the guy who used to own the gun shop on main street in town.
"It's like being in a motel, only thing you do is get locked in," he said.
Ms. Steele arranged for a school bus to retrieve the daughter at the motel first thing each morning for her ride to a Wichita middle school, and to drop her off last, shielding the girl from embarrassment before schoolmates.
Marly Temple (Edie Falco, above with Marc Blucas), a sardonic young woman who runs a strategically placed family motel, is the closest thing to a central character.
In early March, when the bloom was at its height, I drove from Los Angeles to Beatty, Nevada, northeast of the park, and checked in at a Motel 6. "This thing with the flowers, it's crazy," the man on night duty said.
That the motel budgets for such things is neither here nor there; they budget for fire insurance, but you really ought not torch the place.
David, for his part, is a bright guy stuck in a dead-end job whose marriage has come apart and who lives in a furnished studio or motel room while sorting things out.
Rushdie's digital archive, in its old Mac setting, contains the usual ephemera of his life: bank statements, newspaper articles, drafts of stories, at least one screenplay, and even folders called "NAMES FOR NEW CHILD" and "Puppet Motel Folder". These digital things come with their own form of marginalia, some of which have presumably been collected in the "STICKIES 1999" folder.
The card is also good for floral discounts, should you be romancing a fellow geezer, and then it'll get you 10% off at participating Super 8 Motels everywhere should one thing lead to another.
SLEEP The only thing the new Motel One (www.motel-one.de) chain has in common with an actual motel is its low price.
