The Pink Hotel

by Patrick Dennis; Dorothy Erskine

  She continued then, gesturing occasionally, forming words slyly with her mouth, as she rode to the thirteenth floor. In 1414, she washed her hands again carefully, washing the soap with her hands, and then her hands with the soap. She would like to thrash the spoiled little brat until her arms ached, she told herself, while it seemed to her again that all the disillusion of her marriage centered in Little Faunt.

  It was wrong, of course, to hate a child. She was a wicked woman, she supposed, the cruel stepmother of fairy stories. It wasn’t really the child’s fault either, it was Big Faunt’s. She bit her lips, clenched and unclenched her hands, washed them again. It was just that she was very tired, tired of hearing about the little fellow; hated Faunt for making a fetish out of a natural obligation. Fauntleroy Schuyler Charles, Junior, regarded reasonably, was a thin little boy with a big nose, a bed-wetter at eleven.

  Yes, she hated both Faunts, yet she remembered when, not so very long ago, she had blessed the year and the month and the day and the hour of Big Faunt’s birth, when her love had been a quick well of enchantment.

  The throat of Mrs. Fauntleroy Charles contracted spasmodically. Nerves, she supposed, but she had the remedy for that in her little chased-crystal pillbox. She crossed the room, opened the French doors. The days and nights in Florida without Faunt had been little separate deaths, she decided from the balcony. A spangled sky was freshly polished for the tourist trade and the imported turf in the Pleasaunce spiraled up at her, wrapped her again in a gray-green blanket of thought; but time crouched, waiting, and the golden bowl was broken.

  Faunt’s tight-lipped smile still mocked her, and the buoyancy of Mrs. Fauntleroy Charles became suddenly quite intolerable. In easy pleasure, her finger tips brushed cloud fronds in the gun-metal sky, stroked purple shadows in the lawn of the Pleasaunce, investigated the twisted outlines of a banyan tree.

  Lights came on in adjacent wings, and Mrs. Fauntleroy Charles sensed cloudily the stir she was somehow commanding, saw again the gray-green blur of the Pleasaunce.

  She swung astride the balcony, and a chilly little moment hung suspended when no breeze stirred and no bud opened, when the mandrake root was barren and no star fell. Little breakers hesitated and were lost in a swirl of white foam. Now the silver cord was loosed, and now the pitcher broken at the fountain. “Our Father who art in Heaven. Hallowed be thy Name. Thy Kingdom come. Thy will—” Then, thinly and from afar, Mrs. Fauntleroy Charles heard herself screaming and was desolate.

  711

  Purcell felt pretty sick. He had been right after all. 1414 had jumped, and it had not been pleasant to identify her. He didn’t know just what he could have done for the dead woman, but it didn’t keep him from feeling like a callous bastard just the same. She had minded her own business like a gent, and if she had taken the short way home, Purcell figured that it was nobody’s business but her own.

  He couldn’t deny though that it would have been a lot easier for him personally, as executive assistant manager, if 1414 had decided to walk out into the Atlantic and get lost, or taken an overdose of sodium amytal in her own bed. It was bad publicity, of course, and the old bag of guts upstairs would be hysterical. Let him. Well, he had wired her husband and called the coroner and there was nothing, now, he could do for the poor flesh.

  For a minute, he wondered what kind of fellow a guy with a name like Fauntleroy could be. He looked up at the big gold clock. It was only four o’clock. He yawned. Maybe he could still get some sleep.

  Purcell hadn’t gotten any more sleep though. He had dozed uncomfortably and dreamed that he was falling; had got up finally and sat on the edge of the tub and smoked a cigarette.

  There was a pamphlet under the door. Are You Ready? it asked in bold face. He retched suddenly and spat. People who walked and talked with God gave him the pip.

  The hotel, the people in it, made him sick, he told himself. Some of them were all right, of course, but the odds weren’t even twenty to one. He thought of his mother then, and the split basket of apples, Russets and Winesaps and Grimes Goldens, that she had kept by the kitchen door. He had a dark-brown taste in his mind and moss on the roof of his mouth, and he would have given a finnif right then for one of his mother’s apples.

  He had played around, he told himself, long enough, maybe too long. 1414 had settled it. He’d tell Mary, send her the flowers today.

  Christ, you had to love something or go off your rocker. Look at old Mrs. Pierrepont and that horse doctor who gave her high colonics. She had married and dowered him and irrigations—barring tender domestic interludes—were a thing of the past now to Dr. Frisby.

  Yes, it was a dirty world, and Mary was one of the few nice things in it. He thought of her suddenly as a gangling little girl with high hips and a smooth circle of light-brown braids. Little girls always got him: they were so goddamned self-possessed and practical.

  He dressed finally and went down to the Desk, even if it was still only seven o’clock. The way he felt now, he’d even be glad to see Moxley. Dukemer was on, drinking black coffee like a sponge, and all soggy about this New England Boiled Dinner that she’d been popping corn with lately. Mather seemed to be a nice enough little guy, but Dukemer in love was a horse of a different color. She was so soft and full of good will that she had been short every day for the last two weeks, and gotten it up without even seeming to notice.

  She didn’t, now, know a room number from a day rate, and Purcell wondered just what it was this little guy Mather had. Whatever it was, he decided, it certainly didn’t show. He was disappointed in Dukemer. At her age, she ought to start using her head. After all, Dukemer didn’t have much time left to be foolish in or the dough to back it up.

  He’d better check on the Pleasaunce too. The porters had been working on it since daylight, but if J. Arthur found one blade of bloodstained grass, he’d probably s-c-r-e-a-m. He’d call Mary Street, too. No more of this mañana stuff, the time was now.

  The Bar

  When Mary came in at a quarter to nine Purcell still couldn’t forget Mrs. Fauntleroy Charles and what had been her face, but he had felt better at once. It did him good just to look at her. “I’ve got news for you, baby,” he said. “I’m going to let you see me tonight.” Mary’s eyes widened, she nodded her head emphatically. She smiled a little and seemed suddenly to sparkle like a spun-glass angel.

  There was another idea for Christmas. A tree without blue lights. Without any lights. No tinsel. Gingerbread men and candy canes. Strings of popcorn and cranberries. Gilded nuts and pine cones, and the biggest damned yellow-haired angel in the world.

  He’d held her hand right out in the open, said “Keep this,” and given it a squeeze and a pat and a push.

  Purcell’s bloodstained image of Mrs. Fauntleroy Charles gradually assumed its proper perspective. He’d had one drink and eaten a tremendous breakfast about eleven o’clock, and after that the whole day had taken on an opera bouffe quality. It was the job for him, he thought jocularly.

  The affair of Mrs. J. C. Bower and Mr. C. J. Bauer, who had checked in on separate registration cards in the late morning and checked out again in the late afternoon, had pleased him so much that he had almost given them a day rate. The old girl had been as dignified as Queen Mary and almost as old, but a lot friendlier, and there had been an illicit sparkle to her pince-nez, a gamine flourish to her ancient script. Crowding seventy, both of them, Purcell supposed, so they had every right to be proud. Maybe the kids hadn’t made medical history, but they had certainly given it a terrific jolt.

  Mrs. J. C. was in the wrong town though, even if she was an eager beaver in elastic stockings. She belonged in St. Petersburg. By now, Old Bauer had probably ripped the white piqu£ piping off his waistcoat, and felt that anyone over eighteen was too old for him.

  T. J. Sturt III was another problem. He had been drinking Metaxas for twenty-four hours straight and was wearing a steady glow like an electric Christmas candle. Western Union reported at ten-minute intervals to com
plain that 926 was sending improper messages in alphabetical order to every hotel in the United States beginning with the Arizona Biltmore and the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs. “Go fluff your duff,” was the burden of his song.

  The door to 926 was wide open, and the Third had been wearing only a pink lace Lastex girdle and a small bouquet of yellow Shasta daisies. There was a little schoolteacher from Des Moines, partly dressed, in the cupboard. She was fairly drunk, Purcell supposed, but only mildly hysterical. “I teach Civics,” she kept saying, “and I never saw anything like that in my life,” she repeated pointing to the Third who was acting out tableaux vivants in the middle of the room.

  Purcell could understand how she felt. He didn’t know that he’d ever seen anything quite like the living pictures himself, and he certainly hadn’t been teaching Civics, either.

  With Purcell’s hand under her arm, the little schoolteacher had permitted herself to be led very quietly back to her own room, only repeating at intervals, “But downstairs in the bar, he seemed like such a nice fellow.”

  “He is a nice fellow,” Purcell assured her lightly, “and you’re a nice girl, but nice girls and nice fellows should never, never get together in a hotel room with a bottle of Greek brandy.” It was always the nice people who got away with the most outrageous things. Nice people were the white man’s burden. It was easy enough to figure the other kind.

  The rest of the day had been routine. A couple of cooks had had an argument with kitchen knives over a soufflé. One had lost the tip of one forefinger, and the other part of an ear and the argument. Every time Purcell felt that he had seen everything, that nothing could surprise him any longer, he was at once proved wrong.

  It was an improbable world, where only the most unlikely things happened, a world that made no sense of any kind—a vast nursing home for incurables. Upon reflection though, he didn’t know that he’d change any of it. It was a hell of a life, he supposed, dirty and funny and to no purpose, but it was good enough for him.

  Once people started being intelligent, ordering their emotions, they stopped being interesting. You could take psychiatry and social consciousness and international relations and everything that Burgeoned Betterment and put it where the monkey put the nut.

  He headed for Phil in the bar. Purcell wondered how long Phil would last. Phil was a good bartender, and all good bartenders died of steady, moderate drinking. It was an occupational disease, the only way they could stand people, be civil to the public. He had never seen Phil drunk, but he didn’t suppose he had ever seen him completely sober either.

  Purcell had a drink, and then he and Phil had had one together. He told Phil the high lights of the day and had a steak with an order of French fries. “Ever get married?” he asked Phil suddenly.

  “You kiddin’, boss?” Phil answered. “Fifteen years in March, and is my Old Lady a pain, but I got one of the cutest little girls you ever seen. She don’t look nothing like me, my wife neither, and smart! Say, know what she says to me yesterday—Ger-maine, her name is—” Phil enunciated carefully, and Purcell found himself looking at a picture of Ger-maine out of Phil’s wallet. “She gets a daisy on her report card, see, and the Old Lady tells her this is very good. Ex-cellent. Well, the kid thinks a while, see, and finally she pipes up. ‘If I’m so smart, Daddy,’ she says, ‘why aren’t we rich’?

  “Six years old,” Phil continued earnestly, “and I’m telling you the questions that kid can ask!” He shrugged, spread his hands and swallowed. “There isn’t no answer.”

  “What do you know about that,” Purcell said and backed hastily away.

  Taxicab

  “That was good,” Mary said of the hot pastrami and sipped her beer.

  “Look, baby,” Purcell said. “I’m not much good at talking but you know what I mean.” Mary nodded gravely. “Let’s go,” he said.

  In the cab, they had been in each other’s arms at once, had arrived at the Baldwins’ too soon. “Let’s do it all over again,” Purcell said, so they had gone right back to Doc’s Bar & Grill. They had another beer and looked at each other a lot and sighed, and finally they had repeated the business about the cab.

  “Gee,” Mary said, getting out of the cab, giving herself a little shake. “I haven’t been kissed so much since I was a baby.”

  “This is only the beginning, darling,” Purcell told her. “Only the beginning,” and then he had kissed her again, a real awful one, under a spray of night-blooming jasmine on the Baldwins’ front steps.

  The Conference Room

  The Conference Room wasn’t really a conference room at all. It was the Salle Chinoise, the opulent setting of such oriental goings-on as cocktail parties, luncheons, Canasta tournaments, bar mitzvahs, communion breakfasts, alumni get-togethers and an occasional illicit affair. The Salle Chinoise was all things to all men and by means of simple legerdemain on the part of the Banquet Department—the folding and unfolding of its lacquer doors, the practiced reshuffling of its chairs and tables and sofas—the place was ready, willing and able to accommodate any odd function at any odd time. But today’s gathering was one of the oddest.

  Hurrying out of the bar, Purcell popped a chlorophyll lozenge into his mouth and made up a fairly plausible excuse for tardiness as he ran, two steps at a time, up the Grand Escalier. As he reached out to open the door of the Salle Chinoise, a strong, hairy hand grasped his wrist. It belonged to the assistant lifeguard at the pool.

  “Not so fast, buddy,” the lifeguard rumbled.

  “Hey, what is this?” Purcell said.

  “Security check, Mr. Purcell,” the lifeguard mumbled. “I din’t reckinize you in this-here dark hall.”

  “Security check? What have you been smoking? Now get the hell back out to the pool before the Old Man finds out you’re away from your post. Poodles could be drowning at this very—”

  “Sorry, Mr. Purcell. It’s orders. Mr. Wenton tole me so himself. I ain’t supposed to let nobody in unless their name is on this-here list.”

  “What is this?”

  “Very hush-hush. Big Christmuss Confrunce. Mr. Wenton don’t want no spies to happen in from none of them Palm Beach hotels. Wait, I gotta see is your name on the list. Let’s see. Purcell. Purcell. I don’t—”

  “Purcell,” Purcell said. “With a P—as in psychotic.”

  “Huh?” the assistant lifeguard said.

  “Look,” Purcell said, pointing to his name on the typewritten list. “There it is. Now let me in, for God’s sake. I’m late enough already.”

  “Oh, sure thing, Mr. Purcell. I just didn’t seem able to find your name. Mr. Wenton said it was real important not to let in nobody who wasn’t arthurized. It’s very important. You know. Christmuss.”

  “Sure, I know,” Purcell said. “And if you’re a good boy maybe Santa Claus will give you a frontal lobotomy.”

  “Huh?” the assistant lifeguard said. But Purcell had already opened the door and slipped inside.

  If the unreality of the day had not been enough to shake a stronger man than Purcell, the Christmas Conference was. The first thing he saw as he stepped into the Salle Chinoise was three male choristers, sweating profusely beneath greasepaint/beaver hats and mufflers. Purcell opened his mouth to speak, but the carolers had opened theirs first.

  “I—” Purcell began. It was too late.

  “Deck the halls with boughs of hol-ly, Fa la la la la, la la la la!”

  “I’m sorry I’m—” Purcell tried again.

  “ ‘Tis the season to be jol-ly, Fa la la la la, la la la la!”

  Weakly, Purcell sank into the nearest empty chair as the men sang on.

  The Salle Chinoise had been hastily transformed into what was undoubtedly J. Arthur Wenton’s notion of the Board Room at U. S. Steel. A long row of splintery dining tables had been placed up the center of the room and covered with green baize. Up the center of the table in military precision five pitchers of ice water stood at attention, each surrounded by six tumblers. The rest of
the table was covered with an array of scratch pads, clip boards, notebooks, sketches, tinsel and tarlatan, and although Purcell wouldn’t swear to it, he thought he saw a nylon Santa Claus beard peeping out from under Mr. Wenton’s attaché case.

  Seated at the table Purcell noticed the Old Man himself, looking like a cross between Elsa Maxwell and a horned toad. J. Arthur was flanked by the Maitre d’Hôtel, still in his morning coat, and the Banquet Manager, already in his dinner jacket. Behind a pile of mistletoe and holly Purcell caught the sloe eyes of the Greek florist, looking sad and homesick for the humid confines of his shop on the Promenade Floor. His furry eldest son sat next to him nervously fingering a garland of cranberries. The Housekeeper, the Head Gardener, the Engineer and the Electrician sat restively in their rusty-black Best Clothes trying to look as though Board Meetings were a daily occurrence and as though they did not regret the unkind stroke of fate that had brought them from their snug principalities and duchies below stairs into the august presence of the Emperor.

  Across the table from him came the discreet jingle and jangle, rattle and clatter of Edythe St. Clair Conyngham’s many gold bracelets, her gold cigarette case, lighter and holder (all plated). “About two-thirds of a bottle,” Purcell said to himself as he caught a glimpse of Mrs. Conyngham’s glazed, slightly bloodshot eyes. “About two-thirds of a bottle last night and three—maybe four or five—quick pick-me-ups today.” With a final roar, the trio came to the end of “Deck the Halls.” Edythe’s head swayed rhythmically and she pulled her slack mouth into a simper of genteel approval.