The Maples had none of those problems. The "rooms" were actually small, separate cabins each with one room that served both as a bedroom, a tiny kitchen and a living room, and each had a small bathroom with a toilet, sink, and shower. One could park a car right at the front door of the cabin instead of having to walk a block or more carrying luggage. Each cabin had a small stove, refrigerator and sink, so they were much in demand for people with families. It was a lot cheaper to buy a few things at the grocery store and cook them in the cabin than feed four or more people at a restaurant. The rates were also reasonable for people working factory jobs instead of working as managers in the music business or salesmen calling on the manufacturing industries in Nashville.
The Maples did pretty well for a couple years after Interstate 65 was built. A lot of people had stayed there before and liked it. Then, the chains began popping up all over, and were quickly surrounded by the fast food restaurants, gas stations, and the obligatory big box stores. Everything a traveler needed was within a five minutes drive from the hotel and often within a short walk. The fill rate of The Maples decreased to almost zero, and the owners were forced to reduce the rates and cut back on maintenance.
By the time Walt bought it, there were two cabins in use by permanent residents and the other ten needed major repairs to be habitable. The main office/owner's home was still in good shape though, and Walt planned on doing the repairs to the cabins himself. The owners were happy to accept his counter offer. They'd already made the down payment on a condo in Florida and needed the money.
During the three weeks vacation he used before leaving his job as an accountant at one of the local factories, Walter had stripped the walls of each cabin except the two that were occupied and put up vinyl wall paper. The floors got new vinyl tile. He painted all the ceilings and installed lighted fans over the beds. New combination heaters/airconditioners finished his renovation. Walter then turned his attention then to some special additions that cost him most of his remaining savings.
Walter had experienced problems with women since he was in high school. It wasn't that he didn't like women because he did. He just didn't have any idea how to talk to women. As a result, he'd never had a female friend much less a date. He didn't have any male friends either because he wasn't into all the things men are supposed to like. He didn't watch or play sports, didn't fish or hunt, and he didn't hang out in bars every weekend.
Most of what Walter knew about women had come from the men's magazines he bought at a little grocery store twenty miles from his house. He began to like looking at the nude women and jacking off when he looked at the pictures. It was inevitable that he'd want to see a real live woman naked. Walter had bought The Maples Motel because of that need, and he made the most of the opportunity.
In each ceiling fan he installed a miniature video camera and microphone that looked like decorative trim, and he put similar cameras in the light fixtures on each wall. The bathroom got a video camera aimed at the shower, another aimed at the toilet, and still another above the vanity mirror over the sink, all camouflaged as trim around a light fixture or mirror frame.
Walter had used wired cameras and microphones because he'd read that the signals from wireless cameras could be intercepted by others. Walter knew what he was doing probably wasn't exactly legal, and he didn't want anybody finding a video signal and then tracking down the source. The wires for all the cameras and microphones led through the walls and up above the ceiling of each cabin. From there, they formed a cable that ran overhead to the viewing room in the office. Nobody had ever asked about those cables, but if they had, Walter would have said they were to run the cable TV and electricity to each cabin.
In a small room he'd walled off from what had been the living room of the owners home, Walter installed a large video monitor and ten smaller monitors with switches to connect any camera feed to any monitor. He also installed amplifiers for the microphones with switches to connect any microphone to his headphones, and another switch to connect the video from any camera and the corresponding audio to a video recorder.
His chair sat in the center of the arc of monitors, and the switch panel was to his right. The entrance to that room looked like a book shelf in the living room, but it moved down the wall on rollers to reveal the actual door. That door was locked with a push-button combination lock.
Walter needed customers to watch, so he built a simple web site explaining that The Maples Motel was a place to experience traveling as it was in the good old days. The web site was careful to point out that while The Maples Motel did accept credit cards, cash was always welcome and that with cash, The Maples didn't require the personal information most of the chain hotels did.
Business was slow until two couples showed up one afternoon and rented a cabin for the weekend. They asked if cash was OK and were amazed that Walter said yes and didn't ask them for any personal information. He only had them sign a rental agreement. He'd even chuckled that if they didn't use their real names, nobody was going to check.
Walter had watched the two couples that night as they played. He came when the two women kissed, fondled each other's breasts, and fingered each other's pussies until they came. He came again when the women were sucking the men's cocks while the men licked the women's pussies. He came again when each man fucked the other's wife.
Business seemed to pick up after that. It wasn't because he'd paid to advertise more. Walter had the best advertising money can't buy. He'd listened in to more than one couple who talked about finding The Maples Motel on an adult web site as a place to go for private playtime that was clean and didn't ask a lot of questions.
A month after that he filled another four of the cabins with full time residents as a result of the newspaper ad he ran for a few months. Those people were retired couples living on Social Security along with a little savings. The Maples had become a sort of community for them because they all knew each other and socialized every day.
He did have a few customers who came to Nashville for the music or to prowl the many shops in town. The only time they were at The Maples was at night, so it didn't matter to them if they had forty seven cable TV channels instead of sixteen or if there was a workout room and spa available. It was just a cheap place to sleep.
The bulk of his new business was what Walt called his "overnighters", though sometimes they stayed only a couple of hours and some stayed for the weekend. The "overnighters" were usually a couple who wanted a quiet place for a little fun where nobody knew them. They came from nearby towns and cities, and sometimes from as far away as Chattanooga or Knoxville or Memphis.
These same people weren't into answering a lot of questions about who they were or where they lived, and they weren't into using credit cards either. They paid in advance with cash, and Walt was pretty certain the names on most of the room rental agreements were fake. It was these customers who gave Walter most of his evening entertainment.
Walter was usually sitting in his chair in the viewing room by six. There wasn't much to see before that since his customers would usually go out to eat or were making dinner in the tiny kitchen area. It would be about seven when things started to get interesting, but he sat down at six just in case.
If things weren't happening in one of the overnighter cabins, he'd watch Cabin 9 or Cabin 10. Joe and Rita Asherman lived in Cabin 9, and Jack and Liz Clovis lived in Cabin 10. Both couples were retired and on fixed incomes so neither couple did much except sleep, eat and watch TV until they got together every evening. On many of those evenings, they'd end up in bed together and doing all the things Walter had fantasized about doing since he was in high school.
They hadn't done anything when they first moved in, but then Rita and Liz had a birthday party for Joe. Both women had evidently decided to make the party a good one. Walter was watching Cabin 9 when Jack and Liz came in. Jack grinned and pulled a bottle of bourbon from the paper sack he carried.
"Thought this might help the party along a little", he chuckled. "Liz says you're a bourbon man. That right, Joe?
"Oh yeah...bourbon and I go back a long ways."
Rita smiled.
"Yes you do. I remember pulling you out of the bushes in the front yard one night after you two got together."
"Well, I was just really tired that night, that's all."
Rita chuckled.
"You didn't seem all that tired once we went to bed. I couldn't keep your hands off me. You weren't able to do anything but you sure wanted to try."
Liz laughed.
"Did that happen to you too? I didn't pull Jack out of the bushes, but I did have to help him undress. He said the room was spinning too much and he couldn't find his belt. Once I got his clothes off he seemed to be able to find me just fine. I got my boobs and butt squeezed until I got naked. I got him in bed and climbed in after him expecting to have a little fun. He'd gone to sleep. Can you believe that? He got me all hot and bothered and then he went to sleep."
Rita smiled.
"It's the bourbon that does it to them. That's why we girls don't drink it. I got us some vodka and orange juice."
After two drinks, Liz whispered something to Rita that Walter couldn't hear. Rita grinned as she nodded. Liz turned to Joe.
"Joe, Rita says you've always had this fantasy about seeing her with another woman."
Joe grinned.
"Yep. I never could convince her to do it, though. She'd always say we didn't know any couples well enough to ask about something like that."
