Last Summer at the Golden Hotel

by Elyssa Friedland

  “It’s on fire!” Larry yelled, moving with surprising speed across the lobby toward the coffee and tea station. Amos was momentarily heartened to see the old guy move so quickly. Earlier that day when Amos had wished Larry good morning, he could have sworn the Golden’s lifelong concierge had responded, “I think Mondale’s really got a shot.”

  Realizing, finally, that Larry was not referring to Amos’s head and was running toward a spot on the actual rug, Amos followed his eyes to where a group of bellboys were dumping water on a burst of flames smoldering on the lobby carpet.

  It was then that Brian came dashing into the room, grasping a walkie-talkie.

  “Call the fire department,” his son yelled to no one in particular, though Amos could see the flames were already extinguished.

  “It’s fine,” came a chorus of voices from where the fire had erupted, and Brian swept his forehead in relief.

  “I got this, boss,” called out Victor Herbert, the head of the maintenance crew.

  Brian put up praying hands in Victor’s direction. “You all right, Dad?” he asked, putting a hand on Amos’s back.

  “Yes, totally fine. Not sure what happened.”

  “Me either,” Brian said. “Guess this might be Diamond Enterprise’s problem, though, not ours.”

  “Not necessarily,” Amos said, though he wondered if that morning’s meeting had just been for show, to make the old folks feel like they had a say.

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. Just when I see all the problems, sometimes I think it could be nice to wash our hands of this place.”

  Amos looked around. He didn’t like discussing business around prying ears.

  “I suppose. The place really isn’t what it used to be, is it? I don’t see how we can compete with the fancy-schmancy hotels with the Netflix and the coffee gadgets in every room. Those things never used to matter to our guests.”

  “It’s not Netflix that’s the problem. And we have a crazy coffee maker, too. It even starts small fires,” Brian said, smiling broadly.

  Amos took pleasure in his son’s good looks. Such a handsome boy, who always seemed just a bit lost. He and Fanny had been beyond grateful when it had seemed his life was settling into a predictable rhythm—marriage, a job with his father-in-law he couldn’t screw up, children likely. They’d felt so much more relief when Brian had married than Peter, who they’d always known would land on his feet, if he ever decided to leave them at all. Though seeing the hours Peter put in at the office, how he always had those white things sticking out of his ears so he could participate in never-ending conference calls, didn’t fill him or Fanny with satisfaction. They worried about both their boys. Maybe it was the plight of parents generally, but it did seem like their two were an especially big handful. They worried Peter would keel over dead at the office, and they worried Brian would fall into a deep depression, and that was before they even got into their worries about their two grandchildren. Michael was going the struggling actor route? And was he missing the obvious when his grandson had brought a “friend” to the hotel last year and declined a second room? How would Fanny react if his suspicions were correct? Then there was Phoebe, whose job existed only on her cell phone. By his granddaughter’s age, Amos had already been engaged and a business owner. What was this generation waiting for?

  Amos lowered his voice to a whisper.

  “Brian, I’m worried about you. If we sell the hotel, what will you do? Your mother and I are in Florida now almost all the time. You’d be welcome to come down there if you’d like. A lot of young people like South Beach.”

  Brian looked wistful as he tugged at a loose thread on his shirtsleeve. Amos wondered if Fanny was still sending Brian clothing from Bloomingdale’s sales.

  “I think it’s time I figure out the next steps on my own. Without your help. But I love you and appreciate you both.” Brian rose and moved in the direction of where a small crowd was still gathered by the scene of the fire. Amos thought to join him. There was still life in his bones. He could figure out how to hide the damage in the rug, and where they could get a replacement coffee urn quickly. But as he went to lift himself up, he felt the weight of his legs keeping him down, like he had ankle weights working as resistance. It was as though his body was telling him to rest, that running a hotel was a younger man’s game. Self-consciously, he scratched at the rug on his head. Who was he kidding? He took nine pills each morning and swallowed a bottle of antacid each night.

  “Take this at least,” Amos said when Brian returned, pulling two crisp hundred-dollar bills from his wallet. “For the fire inspector.”

  “Dad, it doesn’t work that way anymore,” Brian said, pushing away the money.

  It doesn’t? He and Benny had handed out bribes at least once a week. They’d practically put the police chief’s kids through college.

  “Besides, the Golden will be just fine,” Brian said. “We’re going to have bee pollen facials at the spa. Oh, wait, we don’t have a spa.” He flashed his killer dimpled smile again.

  “Well, at least we have a working fire extinguisher,” Amos said, remembering Benny and their shoestring days. They had purchased the fire extinguishers secondhand. He remembered the twinkle in his best friend’s eyes. “Something’s gotta be used. It’s these or the towels.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Brian

  Even though he’d given the all clear to the staff, Lucy had gone and called the fire department anyway. “It’s protocol,” she’d said, actually putting the staff handbook under his nose. “Rule 3.1 states that in the event of a fire, including an ‘only smoke’ incident, the fire department must be called, even if the situation is able to be controlled by hotel staff.”

  Brian was liking Lucy less and less. She was clearly embarrassed that she hadn’t come up with the idea of putting the hotel on social media and therefore had taken to criticizing all of Phoebe’s posts. She made the pool look so small. The grass looks brown with the filter she used. Meanwhile, the hotel was up to six thousand followers, about two thousand of which had entered the giveaway for the free stay.

  The firemen had insisted on inspecting the entire property, which had led to an astonishing number of “This isn’t up to codes” and “We’ll be backs” from the fire chief. All this headache because, as it turned out, Shirley Schwartz had set up the memorial candle for her late husband next to the tea kettle and coffee urn. Why she had to mourn Herb in the lobby was a mystery to Brian, until he heard her saying while being comforted after the fire, “This was my Herb’s favorite spot in the hotel. Right next to the Sanka.”

  At the end of the day, Brian should have been exhausted mentally and physically, but instead he was wired. He didn’t feel like going back to Angela’s place, and had sent her a text saying he needed to work late. She had responded with a simple, No problem. I’m not really feeling great anyway. Angela was easygoing, which Brian wanted to appreciate, but he sensed it was because she felt lucky to be with him and not because she was that way by nature. And what did that say about him, that he sought out relationships in which he’d have the upper hand? He’d be lying if he said he got butterflies when he saw her, that he thought of ways to impress her like he had Melinda. If anything, the pleasure he took from their relationship was that she seemed to view him as though he were the Earl of Windsor.

  Was he still that wounded from Melinda’s betrayal? It had to be that. Otherwise, he wouldn’t bother studying her Facebook profile. She’d actually gone and married the contractor. They had three children. What was Brian lacking that the other guy had? God, he needed a drink before this self-reflection went any deeper. The Catskills provided a far too perfect landscape for contemplation, and right about now the last thing Brian wanted to do was think. He headed downstairs to the jazz lounge and nearly shed a tear of joy when he found the bar open past its usual time. There were a few stragglers perched on stools and one staff couple canoo
dling in the corner. He didn’t have the energy to tell them to take it to the boiler room like the rest of the employees did.

  “What can I getcha, boss?” asked Paula, the brassy bartender who doled out drinks nightly at the Golden.

  “Scotch. A double, please,” he said, sliding onto a stool and cradling his head in his hands.

  “That kind of day?” she asked, placing a glass with one large ice cube before him, just the way he liked it. “I heard about Mrs. Schwartz and the fire. I can make it a triple if you want. On the house.” It was one of Paula’s familiar jokes. He gave her a smile he knew was too feeble. The problem with anything being “on the house” was that the house was crumbling.

  “I’m going to let the first shot kick in, and I’ll be back to check on you in a bit,” Paula said, moving to the other end of the bar with a wet rag. Brian followed her with his gaze. Paula had probably been on the Golden staff for a good decade by now. She’d cut her chops as a bartender on a cruise line. After handling the drunken masses partying until all hours of the night, serving cocktails to the tame accountants and lawyers from the tristate area was a breeze—not that the collared shirt set weren’t just as wild when no one was looking. Paula gave herself over to the job, keeping track of the way Mrs. Cohen liked her martinis with extra olive juice and remembering that if Dr. Mondshine asked for a whiskey neat, what he really wanted was a double but didn’t want Mrs. Mondshine to realize. If the hotel closed, Paula would be one of many casualties. Some, like Larry, needed to retire. Quite a few of the waiters, lugging trays since the sixties and seventies, were testing the limits of their balance and strength. But Paula was in her prime. It wasn’t like in the old days, when the seasonal staff came from the best colleges and graduate schools to earn cash and find a match. Those guys had been temps—the longest stint was no more than three summers. Nowadays, the staff were locals who counted on their salaries desperately. When Brian’s eyelids fell, all he saw was a conveyor belt of faces he’d need to fire. Which was why he needed to stay awake.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Brian spotted a lone familiar figure sitting at a booth for two, nursing a glass of wine. He rose from his stool to join her.

  “Aimee,” he said, catching her by surprise. “Want company?” He motioned toward the empty seat opposite her.

  “Um, sure,” she said, moving her sweater off the chair to make room for him. He sat down and took a long pull from his drink.

  “Looks like we both needed a little help this evening,” he said, lifting his nearly empty glass.

  “I sure did,” Aimee said. She clinked her wineglass against his Scotch and took a sip that outsized his.

  “You okay?” he asked. “I’ve never seen you in a hat before.” She was wearing a straw sun hat, even though they were indoors and it was past 10 p.m.

  “Yeah, well, I’m not really a hat person, but . . .” Her voice trailed off. “There was an incident at the beauty parlor.”

  “An incident?” he asked. And just a few minutes earlier he’d been thinking about how great a hire Anna, the newbie, was. The ladies seemed to love her “modern” styles, and the salon business was finally ticking up after years of operating at a loss. His father and Benny had once suggested closing it during a particularly bleak meeting of senior management, and Louise had all but forced them to get second circumcisions for their audacity.

  Aimee slowly removed the hat, and Brian felt his eyes widening despite his attempt to appear nonplussed. Hadn’t her hair been straight and past her shoulders at the meeting that morning? Now she looked like a standard poodle.

  “I got permed.”

  Even Brian knew that perms had gone the way of leg warmers and shoulder pads. An entire section of Memory Lane captured Golden guests in peak eighties style.

  “It didn’t help that the fire department evacuated the salon during my appointment, so the solution was on my hair for an extra thirty minutes,” she added.

  “That’s Lucy the intern’s fault,” Brian said. “I kind of want to fire her, but she works for free and is remarkably good at organizing the payroll, so—”

  “You manage a lot here,” Aimee interrupted. “I’m sorry that I didn’t really step up more over the years. I guess it was easy to busy myself with the kids and just assume you had everything under control. But there’s really no excuse.”

  “You’ve got a lot on your plate. Three kids! A husband,” Brian said. “And for what it’s worth, I think you have the kind of face that can pull off any hairstyle.” What was he saying? Why was he flirting with Aimee Goldman? It had to be the Scotch. And the mood lighting. And the fact that she really was a lot prettier than he’d ever realized. He was starting to notice what his brother had seen all those years.

  “Ah, yes. My husband, Roger. The asshole.” She polished off the last drips of wine in her glass and signaled for Paula to bring her another.

  “Excuse me?”

  Aimee shook her head. “I’m sorry. I’ve had too many of these.” She pointed to her empty glass. “Or not enough, depending on how you look at it. I came down here planning to get so drunk that I stopped caring that I look like Marcia Clark.”

  “Ooh, the O. J. movie was so good. Did you see it?”

  “So good!” Aimee took a handful of pistachios from a bowl and began shelling them. “I think I’d better start trying to sober up. Did I just tell you my husband is an asshole? He is, I just didn’t mean to blurt it out.”

  “You did,” Brian said. “But I’ve already forgotten it. Unless you want to talk about it.”

  “I don’t want to talk about anything. Well, we can talk about true crime movies. I’ve always been partial to dramatizations of the Menendez brothers. You?”

  “I like a good Robert Durst documentary,” Brian said. “Anything that makes my own family seem normal makes for perfect entertainment.”

  “I feel the same.” He could see in the crinkles around her eyes that she meant it. Had her eyes always been that lovely shade of green, or had she gotten color contacts? And how had he never noticed her ample chest? This was not the same body he’d grown up around. If that was what childbirth had done to her, he was certainly glad she’d become a mother.

  “I could maybe have another,” he said, eyeing his empty tumbler suggestively. “Were you serious about sobering up?”

  “Does it still look like I got electrocuted?” she asked.

  “Kind of,” he said.

  “Then bring on the booze,” Aimee said, her body unfolding itself like a paper airplane. He didn’t take the time to think about the consequences when he slid over in the booth so that he was next to her, so close he could smell her shampoo.

  Paula had way too many years of experience behind the bar to even cast a second look at them when she brought over the next round. And the next. And the next.

  THE WINDSOR WORD

  FIRE SWEEPS THROUGH CRUMBLING HOTEL

  Will this be the final flame for the Golden?

  By George Matsoukis

  Hotel guests were terrified late Sunday afternoon when a raging fire broke out in the main lobby of the Golden Hotel. Four fire departments from the area responded to the scene and were able to extinguish the flames, but not without significant damage to the building.

  Sources from hotel management could not be reached for comment, though as the Windsor Word has previously reported, all owners are on-site this week. It is believed they are gathered to discuss selling the hotel to casino operators Winwood Holdings, a subsidiary of Diamond Enterprises.

  The source of the fire could not be verified, and some tongues are wagging that this was no accident. Others are insisting the blast came from an overturned memorial candle.

  “Normally we wait for the end of summer for the bonfire,” quipped Sunny Bowman, the longstanding groundskeeper at the hotel. In a sign that the hotel could be winding down operations
, Mr. Bowman said he has not planted any perennials this year even though co-owner Louise Goldman is a known begonia lover. The cutbacks could also just be evidence of a general belt-tightening. Several hotel guests were overheard complaining that the gefilte fish was from a jar instead of homemade.

  This is not the first time a fire has ravaged the Golden. Nearly a decade earlier, fireworks on July 4th got out of hand, destroying the auditorium and smoldering at least half of the front lawn.

  There is no word yet on whether the current fire will have an impact on the offer from Diamond Enterprises and what steps will be taken to remediate the damage. Among the items damaged by smoke were a signed photograph of Jackie Mason and a baseball bat used by Willie Mays. The extent of the damage is not yet known.

  It is far too easy to view this fire as yet another sad episode for a hotel and region facing tremendous pressure to stay robust and relevant.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Aimee

  Oh. My. Fucking. God. What had she done?

  She rolled over slowly and quietly, hoping not to wake the sleeping body next to hers. Or the one she thought might be next to hers, based on her recollection of the prior evening. The sheets were ruffled, evidence that what she thought happened hadn’t been a dream, but nobody was there. That made things easier. She returned to her back and stared at the ceiling, feeling the pulse of her hangover with every breath. The ceiling fan was spinning, or was that just in her mind? She was too old for this feeling. As if to second her opinion, Shaggy barked from his dog bed.

  Aimee sat up slowly and stared back at her golden retriever, certain she saw judgment in his eyes.

  “He’s done far worse to me,” she said out loud, likely trying to convince herself more than her puppy. Shaggy didn’t even like Roger, which should have been her first clue that her husband was no good. Dogs sensed things more acutely than people. One whiff and they knew who deserved a menacing growl. Shaggy sniffed her butt regularly and couldn’t get his face away from her children’s crotches, but he either ignored Roger or gave him the death stare. Proof positive.