The glass front doors wouldn’t open either.
Now she was worried. Feeling panicky, she ran to the closest fire exit and tried it. The door wouldn’t budge. She sprinted to the O’Donnell’s living quarters and tried the door there: locked! She pelted back to the delivery entrance. Locked!
Eight exit doors from the building, all locked.
Now she began to panic in earnest. She ran back to her room and grabbed her cell phone to call Alex, and that’s when she began to lose her mind. Her cell phone wouldn’t connect. No matter what she did—turn it on, turn it off, it wouldn’t connect. She couldn’t get service.
She picked up the phone at the front desk, and found it was dead.
It rapidly dawned on her: I am trapped inside this hotel. I can’t get out.
This did not make sense. What if there was a fire? What about building codes? Surely there had to be some way out of this building! The elevator wouldn’t work. And the doors to the stairwells were locked.
Desperate, Kateri ran to the janitorial closet where the fire extinguisher was, next to a fire ax. She grabbed the ax, and ran towards the front door, raising it as she went.
“Kateri! Wait!”
Mr. O’Donnell stood in the lobby, waving his arms. He was holding a handset.
Shell-shocked, Kateri halted, lowering the ax and trying to catch her breath.
“There’s nothing wrong.” Mr. O’Donnell said.
“Nothing wrong?” Kateri couldn’t help spluttering. “None of these doors will open!”
“Uh,” Mr. O’Donnell suddenly began clicking on his handset. “Which door do you want open?”
“All of them. Now.” Her joints suddenly collapsing, Kateri dropped the ax and fell into a chair. “Don’t tell me you did this.”
“Um. Yes. I, uh, did. I’ve been working on the door locking system while I wait for the analysis scripts to finish processing. I guess I must have locked all the access doors accidently. I’m sorry.”
Kateri took this in, and then flew to her feet. “Do you realize what would have happened if we had guests here and there was a fire? People could have been killed! And it would have been your fault!” She yanked her hair, trying to contain herself.
Mr. O’Donnell didn’t try to defend himself. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“Did you block the phone lines too?”
“Yes. That’s what I was actually trying to do,” Mr. O’Donnell said. “I was trying out this cell phone jammer.”
“You were TRYING to jam the phones?” Kateri yelled. “Why in the world would you need something like that? For Pete’s sake, we run a hotel, not a fortress!”
“I don’t know. It just seemed like it might be useful,” Mr. O’Donnell offered.
“You—you—you…” she ran out of things to say. “You think just like Alex!” she finally burst out.
“I suppose I’m guilty of that, yes,” he admitted. “Or, to be precise, Alex thinks like me. Uh. Let me go and get things unlocked. Before any guests show up.” “And before your assistant manager quits,” Kateri muttered to herself.
“Never, ever do that again!”
She stalked back to her room and threw herself on the bed.
Alex’s Thursday was going fairly well, except that Kateri seemed to be unusually uptight. He had called the Maids In Time to come and clean, since there were twelve rooms being vacated. Several families en route to a reunion had experienced a car breakdown and had checked in after midnight. It took most of the morning to check the guests out, but they all left on time, which had to be some kind of record.
Then a minor medical crisis occurred. A guest who had arrived last night called to say he was having an allergy attack. After finding out the guest was allergic to cats, Alex guessed that Link had been illegally sneaking around the halls that night. With profuse apologies, Alex relocated the guest to the top floor, where the exploring tortoiseshell cat was least likely to prowl.
He called Sam and David to help the guest move his luggage, and was just giving them final instructions when Kateri stomped into the lobby.
“Let me guess,” he said quickly. “The Maids.”
She thrust out her hand. A cigarette was dangling from the end of it. “One of them was SMOKING while cleaning the room!”
He helpfully held out a trashcan for her to dispose of the cigarette.
“I told her I was completely disgusted by such unprofessional behavior, and all she did was mutter something in Spanish, when I know she speaks perfectly good English!” Kateri ranted.
Alex listened to her, and, when she paused for breath, said, “Was she cleaning one of the smoking rooms or the non-smoking rooms?”
“The smoking rooms,” she said. “But what difference does that make?”
Alex shrugged and reached for the phone. “I’ll call their manager and tell them our complaint.”
“You’d better,” Kateri growled. “If I catch another one of them…”
Alex tapped her on the shoulder. “Shh. Someone’s coming in.” Kateri shook her head, trying to change her expression from peeved to pleasant, and turned to face the couple who had just walked into the hotel. She and Alex both gasped at the same time.
“Excuse me, is this the legendary Twilight Hills Hotel?” the man asked, taking off his gray flat cap as he came into the door, escorting his smiling wife on his arm.
Kateri was frozen. “Rose!”
The redheaded girl grinned, tossed her blue scarf over her shoulder and threw out her arms to her friend. “Kateri!”
The two girls hugged and began jumping up and down in excitement.
Grinning, Alex came around the desk to greet his own friend. “Ben Denniston!
This is a surprise! What brings you down here?”
Ben glanced around the hotel. “Business trip, but we couldn’t pass up a chance to come by.”
“It’s really good to see you. Why didn’t you let us know you were coming?”
“Well, it’s not as though we thought you wouldn’t have room for us,” Rose said playfully, still holding Kateri’s shoulder. She was wearing a multicolored coat that was almost too bright to look at. “We were on our way down to North Carolina and we thought we’d stop by to stay the night—that is, if we can get a room.”
Alex immediately moved to the hotel computer and briskly typed. “One honeymoon suite available—with the hotel’s compliments.”
“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Rose said, blushing. “It’s been a year since the wedding.”
“I don’t see a problem,” Ben said, squeezing his young wife’s arm. “But there’s no need to make it complimentary.”
“Absolutely there is. We couldn’t charge friends and comrades-in-arms,” said Alex. “Please. We’d be honored.”
The other O’Donnells happily agreed to cover for Alex and Kateri so that they could take their shifts off to spend time with their friends. The O’Donnells knew Rose, who had gone to the same college as Alex, and had come down to visit during the March for Life. And Rose had grown up in the same town as Kateri, who counted Rose as one of her oldest friends. They’d both gotten to know Ben through Rose, and he’d become a close friend of theirs as well.
“So how are things with Alex?” Rose asked, sitting on the bed while Kateri changed out of her work clothes.
Kateri sighed, “That’s a large question.”
Rose shrugged. “We’ve got time. Tell me.”
Kateri glanced at Rose, who had taken off her coat and was wearing a simple blue shift dress that matched her embroidered blue scarf. As usual, Rose was dressed with style and flair. Rose was beautiful, adventurous, a diehard romantic: in short, she was everything that Kateri was not.
“Rose, the problem is that Alex should really be hooked up with someone like you, not someone like me.”
“What makes you say that?” Rose put her head to one side, so her long red hair fell down her back.
An image flashed into Kateri’s mind of a lovely, for
lorn Rose fainting on Alex’s shoulder, while Alex slashed his way out of a band of enemies. But she couldn’t explain that. “It’s a mystery to me why you never fell for him.”
Rose laughed. “I was just never interested in him. Sure, we have a lot in common, but I’ve never felt for him that way. Not like I felt for…” A faraway look came into her eyes, and Kateri rolled her eyes and turned to her hairbrush.
She had seen that look on Rose’s face quite a lot whenever the subject of Ben came up. Thank God they’re married at last.
“What do you think about Kateri, Ben?” Alex said abruptly, as the two friends stood in the weight room, talking about some adventures of the recent past.
“You’ve mentioned her quite a bit in your e-mails,” Ben said, staring out of the window with a smile. As usual, he looked battle-scarred and older than his age, but Alex thought to himself that marrying Rose had been good for his complexion. “She’s quite a character. You know I have a world of respect for her.” “Just don’t know if it’s going to work out between us sometimes,” Alex said, and found himself rambling on. “I’m crazy about her, even still, but she’s always holding me at arms’ length. I feel I’m trying too hard to make something happen, and I don’t like that. I’ve always thought, if it’s meant to be, it’ll happen. No matter what I do. And if it’s not meant to be… nothing I can do will change that.” He shrugged.
“Spoken like a fatalistic Irishman,” Ben said, with a hint of irony. “Well, perhaps it’s good for you to be trying too hard. It might keep you from taking her for granted. You know, I always took Rose for granted. Until suddenly, one day, she wasn’t there.” He raised an eyebrow and turned away.
Alex was silent, recalling those dark days of the past when it had seemed that Rose was beyond their reach. They’d never given up hope, particularly Ben, but it was far easier to be on the far side of that trial.
“I hope I’m always there for Kateri,” Alex said quietly.
“Yes,” Ben said, fingering his hat. “I hope you can be. None of us ever intends to go.”
“The thing is,” Rose said unexpectedly, “is that Ben isn’t really flamboyant and romantic like me. At least, not on the surface. I think I bring out the romantic in him.”
“Huh,” Kateri paused in trying to tame her hair. Is that what Alex does for me? Is that why I like him so much?
“Well, we all need that,” Rose shrugged. “Otherwise, we’d just be stern-faced Puritan Platonists, all morals and ideal forms.”
“I don’t know why I need it,” Kateri said, sitting down. “I’m not an intellectual, like you. And we Kovachs have always been romantic idealists. It’s the Polish in us. How else could we be activists?”
Rose shook her head. “But you’re idealists. That’s the problem. And in this fallen world, ideals are easily shattered, and then you have a disillusioned idealist, which is almost worse than a cynic. In fact, they’re probably the same thing. No, I think you need to be a romantic in order to survive, because it doesn’t make sense to be one. It never does. That’s the whole point.”
Kateri stared at her. “So you’re saying I should flutter and faint in Alex’s arms sometimes?”
Rose giggled. “It would probably do you some good. It’s hard to keep trusting a man, Kat, but you have to trust him. And distrust those high ideals of yours.
I’m not saying don’t believe them. Just don’t take them quite so seriously. Laugh a bit at yourself, especially when you fall short. Ideals are fine things, but they can’t be the only things, or they turn into idols,” Rose said reflectively. “And don’t forget: ‘Satan fell through the weight of his own gravity.’”
Kateri groaned at the familiar words. “Okay, stop confusing me with your literary brilliance, Miss Bookworm! So who are you quoting?”
“You should know!” Swinging her legs mischievously, Rose grinned, and added, “You obviously need to read him more often. Don’t you remember?
‘Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.’”
“Do I really want to read him? He sounds too much like Alex,” Kateri grumbled.
Rose threw up her hands. “It’s all in G.K. Chesterton. Look him up sometime.”
Kateri shook her head wearily. “I could never stand that guy.”
“This is the problem, Ben,” Alex said, later on that evening. They had gone out to dinner at a restaurant attached to a local cavern. The girls were prowling about the gift shop, trying to find a present for Rose to bring home to her new niece. The two men were sitting at the table, finishing their wine. “I guess Kateri feels our relationship is too random. She and I—let’s face it. We were thrown together during all of that stuff that happened with you and Rose. If that hadn’t A Fairy Tale Retold 129
happened, we probably never would have started dating. I bet that’s why she feels it’s too odd for us to be together.”
“Well, God can use anything,” Ben said philosophically. “After all, Rose and I were thrown together as well. I suppose that’s one reason I kept writing her off for a long time. She was just this appendage I had picked up during a bizarre quest. I never thought that there might be something more to it than that.”
“An inconvenience that turned into an adventure,” Alex said with a smile.
“So, what happened to you that changed your mind?” Alex asked.
Ben toyed with his wine glass, and a slow smile came over his scarred face.
“Losing her,” he said quietly. “Let’s hope it doesn’t take that for you and Kateri.”
Busy week ahead,” Mom announced to the family at breakfast a few days later. “I just took reservations for a business conference. They booked every room we have for one overnight Tuesday next week. Then on Thursday, the Tietjen-Namod wedding will take up one-third of our rooms, and the Wood-Heesch wedding will take up another third. Let’s hope we don’t have an influx of tourists all of a sudden! There’re a couple of one-night reservations in between these two as well. Kateri, I’ve already booked the Maid In Time service for the day after the business conference so you can relax.”
“Busy indeed!” Alex said, pushing back his chair. He could already think of about ten things that needed to be attended to before this surge of guests arrived. “Barbarians, look alive. There are great opportunities for civilization ahead.”
David looked nonplused, but Sam said, “Guess this means that we’re making the hotel work, aren’t we?”
“It certainly does look like it,” Mom said, putting on her reading glasses.
“This quarter has gone remarkably well so far. If we can manage to build up a little bit of a cushion, well and good.”
“A cushion we need, just in case our hefty king-sized mattress is snatched out from under us,” Alex reminded her.
“Wait a second,” David said, pausing with his fork in midair. “If we’ve booked every room for this Tuesday, does that include Kateri’s room?”
“Um. Yes,” Mom said hesitantly. “Kateri, you can move into our suite…”
All eyes were on Kateri, and she colored.
“That’s okay,” she said, and picked up another forkful of eggs. “I’ll book a room at the motel down the street.”
“And give the competition business? Absolutely not,” Alex said firmly.
“We’ll upgrade you to our living room couch.”
“Upgrade? You should get your sense of direction checked, Mr. Day Manager.”
“Wow! We’ve never booked all the rooms before,” Sam said. “We should have a celebration!”
“I guess we could,” Mom said. “Though we can hope that it gets to be so frequent that we don’t even need to take notice.”
“I say we celebrate anyhow,” David said, breaking the crusts off another piece of toast. “This whole hotel business is a lot of work.”
“Almost the exact opposite of a permanent vacation,” Alex murmured, yawning, then noticed Kateri’s downcast look. “Wait a second,” he said. “Kateri, your birthday is on T
uesday, isn’t it?”
Kateri stared at her plate, her cheeks red. “It doesn’t matter,” she said in a stiff monotone. “Business is business. We should definitely celebrate booking all the rooms.”
“Let’s celebrate that, and your birthday, on Monday,” Alex said, going to Kateri and squeezing her shoulder. “How about that, Mom?”
“Sounds like a plan,” she smiled.
Kateri looked up at him, suddenly wary. “Oh no. You’re about to go and buy me some ridiculously expensive present, aren’t you?”
Alex grinned. “How did you know?”
“We’re supposed to be saving money.”
“Not at the expense of treating you, our valuable employee.”
“You just look for justifications for buying me presents, don’t you?”
He rumpled her hair. “Kateri, you are finally figuring me out.”
Mr. O’Donnell was nearly finished sifting through the data, and he proudly showed his progress to Alex and Kateri on Monday evening. Kateri squinted at the green and black data. It still looked like pages and pages of numbers and figures that didn’t make much sense to her.
“You’re sure you’re sifting this the right way?” Alex asked. “How do you know what to look for?”
“Looking for repetitions," his dad said. “Finding structure. Sorting by key fields. Some of the variables are things like ‘Yes’ and ‘No.’ The Perl scripts I’m 132 Alex O’Donnell and the Forty CyberThieves running suggest that more than likely, each record has about thirty fields. And sorting the user logs this way, I seem to get the equivalent of forty users. At least, that's how it makes the most sense.” He exhaled. “But of course, it's a lot of trial and error.”
The desk phone rang, and Alex went to answer it in his usual professional voice. It was a guest question about the local pizza parlors, and Alex gave a recommendation. “Anything else I can help you with tonight? Have a good night, and thanks for staying with us.” He hung up with a sigh. “Dad. Kateri’s party’s at nine. You’ll have to be on call. Is that okay?”
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