by Nick Cole
“He was?”
“Oh, yes! He’d been a doctor for a long time after the war. But before that he’d been in the Army. He first hit on the idea of building this hotel when he was a medic in an infantry battalion back in World War Two. One night he was dug in. I think he was in the Ardennes Forest or something. His whole platoon was under attack. The Germans were throwing everything they had at ’em. First artillery, then an attack. Then more artillery. Finally they just shot at each other for the rest of the night. Him being a medic, he didn’t really shoot back. And because the lead was so thick, he couldn’t move much. I suspect he did though. After he died and we buried him, we went through his things. There were all these medals and citations for bravery. I think he saved a lot of people.”
Silence.
“Well,” continued Eldon, “that night your mom came in, he said that during the war, all he ever saw was how bad men could be to one another. He couldn’t understand how we, people you know, how we could write science fiction stories. He’d read a lot of those when he was a kid before the war. I think he thought his future, man’s future, was up there, among the stars. Not on those battlefields he and his friends ended up on. He couldn’t understand how some people could invent weapons and ways to hurt and maim and kill, while other people could write those great stories about the future. It drove him nuts. When he was working on some screaming kid or trying to find someone else’s leg that had gone missing, it drove him nuts to think about that.
“After the war he became a doctor and got married. He told himself for a long time, man didn’t deserve to dream of going to the stars. That’s how he said it. He said we didn’t deserve to dream. After all those stories he’d read as a kid he couldn’t make sense of it after the war.”
A blue jay landed, looked in the window, and then flew off after hopping around for a moment or two.
“So, I asked him why it was that he built the Astro Lodge if we didn’t deserve to even dream about going to space. Because the whole thing seems like a dream about what space could be like. Or what we thought it would be like back in the nineteen sixties. He didn’t answer right away because we got real busy right about then. You see, the night you were born, Mr. Sinatra had just come in with a few friends. Which was not odd except for the fact that everyone else was with somebody. I mean all the guys had girls. Except Mr. Sinatra. He was all alone that night. They came in and had some drinks, and Mr. Sinatra began to sing around the piano. It was their little getaway from the Cal Neva. Mr. Rockwell told him about you being born, and so Mr. Sinatra said he would keep it quiet. He was a class act like that. But I think he was already in a quiet mood like he had something on his mind. So he just sang quiet songs. Romantic ones like ‘Summer Wind’ and ‘Strangers in the Night.’ And some of the others.
“But when he starts to sing ‘It Was a Very Good Year,’ Mr. Rockwell buys me a drink. For a while he’s just quiet. He looks far away. A lot like he would the year before he died. I think he was back on those battlefields in Europe. Then he says, as though he’s got a million bricks on his chest and he’s just trying to lift ’em off, ‘For that little boy in there. That’s why I built this hotel. Because… because I needed to believe there was still good in the world, or that there be might be again, one day. I needed to believe that man wasn’t all bad. Maybe just a little bad, sometimes. I built this hotel because I needed to know that someday we could reach for the stars again.’ That was his answer.”
Eldon paused.
Then he whispered, “Per aspera ad astra.”
The Great Director remained very still. To move now was to break something important.
“That’s Latin. After the war he was so angry he couldn’t believe in anything anymore. But deep down inside he didn’t want to give up on his dream of the future. Of space. His wife had left him. So he came out here to try and believe in the future one last time. He said that after you were born he believed again. That we could make it up there one day. But only if we’re good. Only if we do our best. Only if… we never give up. Aspera ad astra.”
Eldon looked around.
“He built this hotel for you. For your generation. So you wouldn’t think that his generation had only ever wanted to destroy the world like he’d seen on those battlefields. So you’d know that when he was a young man like you would become someday, he’d read stories and dreamed of the stars, and the future. You know what I mean? He was hoping you’d aspire to be better than the bullets and missing legs of the Ardennes Forest. Per aspera ad astra, that’s it. I memorized it that night. It was the first Latin I ever learned. And… the only I know. Still.” He chuckled again. Softly and to himself.
He paused and then looked closely at the Great Director.
“He was waiting for you. He needed you to show up that night because he kept losing his faith in humanity. He needed to know that the next generation was going to show up, kicking and screaming, and hopefully do its best not to destroy the world. That we are as capable of choosing good as we are of choosing evil. Seeing you that night reminded him of that. He was waiting for you to show up and make something beautiful. He was hoping you would choose good, someday.”
They watched the world turn slowly about them.
New truths for one. Old memories for the other. The past and the future collided on the space couch as it turned through a dream of a fantastic tomorrow, a tomorrow of rocket ships and nobility.
“Does this place make any money?” asked the Great Director.
“Barely,” said Eldon quietly. “Believe it or not, once a year we have a jazz festival right here at the hotel. Everybody comes from all around and we really fill up. That pretty much keeps us going for the rest of the year. We have a great restaurant. Chef Leon makes the best Delmonico steak you’ve ever had. Tonight and Saturday nights we get a fairly good crowd. Enough, you know. Twenty or so. We serve a lot of drinks. Not so many as we used to serve when Frank and the boys would come to stay for the night. But some.”
Silence.
“Why do you stay?” asked the Great Director.
Eldon looked toward the front door. His mouth opened in a small oval.
He was a gnarled oak standing silent watch near a windswept field of grass.
A million tears should have fallen without end and never did.
Countless nights had passed watching the front door.
A hundred chances to flee this place of sorrow and shake the dust of missed opportunity from his patent leather dress shoes.
He remained.
His mouth closed. His face a mask through which only the darkness of these other things escaped. He remained.
“I own this place now,” he whispered and watched the front door, waiting.
The Great Director also watched that same front door, and in his mind he saw a film.
A clear, sky blue day years ago. Eldon the night manager. Frank’s crew show up with an Atomic Blonde. Hair so blond it’s almost white. Eyes so blue you’d turn to ice if you weren’t already on fire from her curves. Curves that fling gasoline at your burning soul.
Her boyfriend, a real piece of meat. All knuckles and jaw, operating his mouth like a band saw. There’s this moment. When she comes back to the desk. After Eldon helped get her too-drunk bully boy to a room where he’s passed out in a five-hundred-dollar sharkskin suit. She shared a look with Eldon. The little gnome of a man. Dignified, hardworking, loyal. All the virtues she’d really ever wanted and never found. She apologized for the episode. Apologized sincerely. More warmly than anyone ever had, or ever could. Eldon would replay every moment of that apology in the years to come. He would weigh it against the wheels of time and the grinding gears of duty. Against everything he knew to be true about courage. Just to see her face and hear that voice. Because for him, it had been love at first sight, also.
She came back to the lobby later that night. Came back for a bucket of ic
e, or so she said. It’s late, but still very warm out. He retrieves the ice for her. They talk for a moment. She compliments him on his strength at lifting a man two times his size. She rubs ice on her neck as she talks. She expresses sorrow at not being able to have at least one dance that evening. She’s a chorus dancer in Los Angeles. In Hollywood. She’s been in a few big budget movie musicals.
Would Eldon dance… just one dance… with her, here in this lobby?
In the Moon Room beyond the archway, Frank sings the last song of the evening.
Just a few guys standing around the piano.
Too drunk.
Cigarettes burning.
One last belt of scotchy water. Then rattling ice cubes. Men laugh and Frank sings one last song for them, and for the two in the lobby he cannot see. Because Frank loves to sing. He’s singing now, as she slips off her heels in the fantastic lobby where she and Eldon find themselves alone. The stars on the ceiling twinkle all about them like in the universe. And they are the only two humans in it. Her long neck glistens from the melting ice. Frosted lips entice, smiling at Eldon the gentleman. Delighting in him. Those lips inviting. As inviting as anything he has ever wanted to be invited into. She holds out her hands and beckons him toward her full and waiting body. And Frank sings “The Last Dance.”
Had Eldon ever left his faithful post behind that desk? Did he wonder at that moment what would happen if Old Man Rockwell walked into the lobby and caught him dancing with this chorus line beauty?
Did he care?
No.
He holds her. Just one dance, as Frank sings the last song of the evening.
Eldon knows this moment will never be forgotten. He wants to kiss her. He wants to tell her he loves her.
It would have been enough.
The song ends, and for a long moment the two of them keep moving. Swaying. Slowly, slower, slow. Until they finally stop. It’s quiet, and she leans away from him, looking directly into his eyes. She gives him a look that says…
… Thank you, or, that was just right. Or, get a key from behind the desk. Take me to a room. Which one, he was never sure.
“Kitty!” says one of the boys as they emerge from the arch leading to the Moon Room. Surrounding Frank. Heading to their rooms. They are too drunk to notice the beautiful queen embracing the sad little clown night manager. She lowers her hands, picks up her shoes, and leaves. Just ahead of their drunken arrival. She leaves the space she has shared with Eldon just moments before. The boys laugh with raucous delight. Someone is telling a too-loud story about a settled gambling debt. Frank, listening, sees the song in Eldon’s face. Kitty’s song. And when no one is looking, Frank Sinatra, with one of those blue eyes, winks at Eldon. Then he passes through the front door, coat over shoulder, hat on head, into the night. And is gone.
That’s the filmic moment, thinks the Great Director, of this man’s life.
The spinning couch spun again and again, each rider absorbed in his own thoughts and memories.
After a while the Great Director announced, “I’m hungry.”
“First seating will be in an hour. Check into your room.” Eldon handed him a key. “Come back. Have a highball or two in the lounge. May I suggest the Captain’s Steak. It’s a Delmonico accompanied by Chef Leon’s stuffed baked potato, and some nice firm asparagus we get up from the valley. It’s smothered in Hollandaise. You’ll love it.”
Out in the parking lot the buses are silent as the heat of the day begins to fade. The sun has dropped below the topmost pines. The air is thin and quiet, maybe because of the altitude or the isolation. Maybe both.
When the Great Director finds his room and turns the key on the orange door, a rush of old paint and dust fills his nostrils. It is not altogether unpleasant; in fact it is warm and almost familiar.
He searches for something known in the room and finds only the faintest echo, as though someone were calling to him across a canyon. Cocking his head, he waits, asking for the universe to revolve the cylinder and unlock the great mysteries of his existence. Maybe, he thinks, he has had enough for today. Maybe there have been far too many revelations for one tiny span of time.
He throws his bag, a lumpy mass that has spent more calculable units of time with him than any human being he knows, onto the floor. Seconds later he is lying spread-eagled on the aquamarine bedspread. He thinks about snow and scotch. He thinks about Frank and the Atomic Blonde. He dreams of escape. His eyelids fall. Finished for now.
***
Two hours later it’s dark. At least deep blue. The altitude of the hotel is so high up, and the air so clear, that it remains light during the night, even at the beginning of these spring months. He wakes to a gentle knocking at the door. He tries to remember what made the knocking sound in his dream. Was it the sound of a drum? He considers the dream a passport stamp. From it he learns nothing. Other than that he has been somewhere.
He stands and feels a giddy lightness in his brain and muscles. At his age he is used to a long climb toward uprightness. Now, because of the sleep and the mysteries revealed, and yes, perhaps the clean, high-altitude oxygen, he stands, and before he realizes what he’s doing, he is walking toward the orange door. The persistent yet gentle knocking from his dream convinces him he must open the door.
Maybe I’m still in the dream, he thinks.
Muscles ignite wildly with each fresh infusion of pure high-altitude oxygen as he dreamily jerks open the door. He breathes deeply through his nostrils and feels the air suck right up through his nose and into his cobwebbed brain, flooding his aching lungs. It is not a bad ache, but the ache one feels when legs are stretched after sitting too long. The ache is gone and his red blood vessels rejoice. The dry, clear mountain air and the smell of the pine forest are pleasures to be savored.
Hanging from the doorknob is a charcoal gray suit and a beautiful sky blue tie. A matching pair of shined dress shoes rests below. The Great Director remembers his decree that the doors to the costume truck be flung open. He takes these things inside and hangs them in the empty closet.
It is dark, or at least a dark blue in the room. Through the tall pines he can see a swollen, tombstone-white moon rising behind the silhouette of the forest. For a moment he stands in the center of the room swaddled in darkness. Amid the aquamarine carpet and bedspread, white walls and circle-patterned lampshades, he watches the moon rise. His stomach reminds him that he is hungry. He turns on one of the lamps. Instead of illuminating the room in a soft reassuring reading light, it sends out strange blue, pink, and yellow circle patterns through tinted Malibu-like shades. The room is dark except for these weird and yet comfortable light patterns. He enjoys it, and for a moment he toys with the idea of trying to find a more socially acceptable form of light to dress in. He dismisses the thought.
Things are different here. Different now.
He dresses in the suit and tie, and finds a matching blue handkerchief pinned to the inside pocket. He combs his hair in the mirror. His hair, usually conservative by modern standards, does not fit the suit. He pulls out some long unused gel and slathers his scalp with it. Working quickly, he combs the hair back and to the left side of his head. When it’s finished, it’s not perfectly tamed, but this is good—otherwise it might seem to mock Eldon’s own style.
He finishes the look by taking the matching blue handkerchief out of his inside pocket and giving it two quick folds. He places it in the outside breast pocket. He smiles at himself in the mirror and leaves the room. The weird Malibu lights await his return.
When he reaches the entrance to the restaurant in the lobby, after just having passed Eldon with a nod, it is crowded. A young full-lipped girl from the town below stands guard as hostess in a black cocktail dress.
Most of the crew have filled the dining room, along with a few strangers. Some of the crew, who are just being seated, invite the Great Director to join them. Without hesitatio
n, self-loathing, or anxiety, and with a smoothness and sophistication some might actually call urbane, he waves them off. With an easy nonchalance he heads to the bar.
A red-jacketed bartender greets him with a stiff aquamarine napkin emblazoned with three golden circles. The red-jacketed bartender, handsome, thirtyish, flips the napkin with an ease that invites no one to be threatened. He asks the Great Director for his preference.
The Great Director does not pause, and the Great Director always pauses because that’s his nature. When he pauses he questions himself. What does he want to do for the rest of the day? How much will he need to accomplish the next day? After answering these questions, he vacillates. Vacillates between a glass of wine, because he usually drinks one with dinner, or an iced tea. Now, he neither pauses nor questions, and he does not vacillate. With none of these considerations boiling at the front of his usually fear-driven skull, he simply states, “Scotch.”
The scotch comes and the band filters in. They are men in suits just like the one he is wearing. They are not ready to play yet and there is no sign of the singer, Tony Giantone, as the glitter-caked sign at the entrance to the lounge announces.
Instead, the SmoothTones, as they are collectively known, begin gently rattling their instruments. Testing them. They make small talk, waiting. Even though a few continue to talk, the piano player starts. Just barely tapping out a melody on the piano. Light and easy, it says, “Spring is almost here, everyone.” The rest of the band murmur quietly. The piano player smiles at them as though he too is murmuring along in the last of their conversation.
Without realizing it, the scotch is gone. The Great Director rattles the ice in his glass, sad he has finished his drink so fast. Too fast. He usually only has one; it’s his rule. But the Red-Jacket Bartender is there, standing in front of him, holding the scotch bottle deftly above the rim of the glass with one hand. With a nod of wry confidence possessed only by the most skillful of commercial actors, he inquires whether the Great Director would like his drink freshened.