Chapter One 

Where Scarlett Never Fell

Garden Week, 1978

              It's really nothing more than an old, falling down, second class hotel, just about to crumble into grit. Its once pristine alabaster turrets and cornices have long since been smudged with the soot of a greedily growing city. The transients who spend the nights there are never quite sure that the bed linens have been changed or how safe they are behind the tarnished brass locks on their doors. The people who live there are denizens of a dust-ridden decadence, spending the days and minutes of their lives to descend and sit in the lobby where they cross and uncross their legs with the hope that anything - romance, scandal, hate, or humor - will hurry the hour hand around the circumference of the mezzanine clock

The dust sits heavy as the President of the Emporia Garden Club walks into the lobby and stares at the staircase for a moment. Tremulously, tentatively, with a gleam of glamour glowing in her eyes, she makes her way to the front desk and, lightly resting her perfumed hand on the mauve marble counter, asks the front desk clerk: “Is this where Scarlett fell?”

The gold garlands ringing the columns glimmer and the dust assumes its air of self-righteous esteem. The permanent residents ease back into their shabby chairs and threadbare sofas with modest grins of smug pride. I draw back into myself, for I know that this woman's illusions and the lovely aura of willing deceit will soon be shattered. I am the one to do it, as gently as I know how.

“Didn't Vivien Leigh pretend to miscarry right here on the grand staircase? Weren't there real live alligators in the reflecting pools of the court at the top of the stairs? Wasn’t the Hotel burnt to the ground and wasn't it built anew in seven days? Didn't Bette Davis break one of the huge French mirrors over the fireplaces in the Grand Franklin Street Suites in a fit of bitch frenzy? And where’s the swimming pool, the Turkish Baths, the draft of the Monroe Doctrine, the family of ducks, and the peanut soup?

I wish I knew. Shattering someone else's illusions is a terrible task but unfortunately most of the time there isn't any way around it. The Hotel shattered most of mine.

I started working here during college, to free myself at least temporarily from financial dependence on my father. It appeared the Hotel would provide me with a summer job of archetypal fantasy: front desk clerk at the Grand Old Hotel, welcoming foreigners to the city of my heritage and birth. It was almost too Dickensian to be true.

Well, that conceit didn't last long. Graciousness and good manners had only been a veneer that protected me from life. I quickly learned how alcohol incapacitates human beings from leading their own lives. I saw what happens to the fiercely independent people, the ones who never marry or assume responsibility beyond themselves and end up all alone. I became a cog in the workings of an institutional bureaucracy (“I'm sorry, I can't help you.”) For the first time in my life, I had to deal with, prostitutes and their irate johns, winos, insanity, hate, theft, wife-beating, threats on my life, complete incompetence, and a fuck-the-whole-world attitude, not to mention outright rudeness. These were the things that others chose to ignore, and mine was the task to handle them so as not to create a scene. I found what Life was like underneath the mahogany membrane and gilt wash, and all the while I was trying to keep the chipped flecks on the knotty pine beneath it.

Yet I came back for more. The Hotel Jefferson is a huge Victorian Earth Mother who simply accepts everything that happens, silently clutching at her gesso palm fronds. The Jefferson knows that this too, shall pass. It has taught the tedious lesson of patience both to me and to the elderly permanent residents.

The permanents are the second great myth of the Hotel. These people have been forgotten by reality. Unspeakable loneliness, boredom, television, and liquor reign supreme in their lives. Going downtown to the tearooms is a gala event, as is the daily pilgrimage to the Lobby where they sit and watch the hours and other people pass in the Byzantine splendor of cool golds and brazen Edwardian reds. The Lobby is a velvet and gold leaf frame for their portrait of life. It has convinced us that the whole level of human existence is somehow exalted by a little gold paint.

The silent respect of the Lobby imparts dignity if you are willing to accept it, and if you have the dignity to return to it. The lesson of the Lobby is the same one these elderly shadows of the past assert: dignity is the courage to be yourself, even if the black transvestite is wearing a silk frock from the French Room at Thalhimers Department Store and you're still wearing the same old painted columns (which really do look like marble).

Along with the dignity of years comes the great gift (other than love) that the permanents have to offer: the past. Most of them still live there and will do so until the ends of their days. They are the ones who actually hold up the mythic pillars of the Hotel, for it is only they who have known the brigades of bellboys, the alligators, and the demise of the ever-so-gracious past, the past they cling to so fervently. This is what makes the Hotel what it is.

It is a community of the past above most other things. Everyone lives together and knows where the others have come from and what they have done right and wrong in their lives. It's like living on the old family estate with the servants you have grown up with and all your fifth cousins twice-removed whom you genuinely don't care for. You have to be somewhat well-behaved or at least gracious, for if you are not, your name will be bandied about over dinner on the Mezzanine. But no matter how rude or inept you may be, the hopeful smile of redemption waits on everyone's lips; your communal dignity expects you to reclaim it, today or tomorrow, whenever you get around to it. The Hotel, like Richmond, is a city of second chances.

Now the Hotel, or at least the building itself, will get its own second chance. After a seemingly interminable creeping decadence, a new Jefferson Corporation has been formed to undertake the massive restoration of this architectural masterpiece. The sordid exterior will be bleached to its original white, and its rooms will be enlarged, modernized, and painted. Everyone presently living here, some who have resided at the big “J” for forty years, will be kindly forced to leave. Just where will these elderly legends go? If you make the sad mistake of asking them, they raise a hand to the side of their face and say, “I just don't know.” I can see them now, clinging to those faux marble columns, far too massive for even two people to encircle with their arms outstretched. There'll be some Federal “friend” who'll gently pry them off with promises of “relocation” to shag-carpeted golden years. The idiom is too true. Lost Southerners almost always depend upon the kindness of strangers.

Oh, but do excuse me, I’ve certainly rambled on. You say you're up here from Emporia, touring Richmond for Garden Week? I see. Well the story goes that David O. Selznick was a guest of the Hotel in the nineteen thirties, and when he saw the staircase, he felt it would be appropriate for Scarlett's Atlanta home. But the set designer for Gone with the Wind was in town last year and he said he'd never heard of the Hotel Jefferson, much less seen its staircase.

But just between you and me, I think Vivien Leigh really did tumble down this cascade of blood red wool. The staircase in Hollywood is probably long gone, and this is as close as any of us are ever going to get to it. It might as well be where Scarlett fell.

Chapter Two  

        Miz Alice Saunders Goes to the American Boys' Club        

    August      

Slowly the broken blind directed its shaft of light around room 342. When the sun first struck the window, a prism of light penetrated the stagnant air to reflect off the bureau mirror in the bathroom, where the triangular shaft of sunlight then illuminated the plastic brocade shower curtain. As it moved out of the mirror, the sun edged its way along the brilliant turquoise moldings, inducing the absurd faentine blue to blaze as if this were the first ray of daylight to pierce a pharaoh's tomb after millennia of dark peace.

A natural sundial, the beam indicated each successive minute and hour of the day. When it glanced off the ambered photographs, it was sure to be about nine, and when it hit the night stand, periods of five minutes could be counted out as the isosceles spotlight passed over the last empty pony of Jack Black, the brass lamp base, the blue pills, used tissues, the red pills, and finally the bottle of Maalox at 9:40. The yellow wedge insinuated itself into the bed at 9:45, moving across the crusty muslin nightgown, striking its first broken vein on Alice's chest at precisely 10:02. With every new varicose vein, a minute passed, until at 10:17 the beam had snaked its way across the reticulum of neck wrinkles into the bottom of her nostril. At 10:19, the sun wedged its ray of light into the hairline crack between heavily veined eyelids. At 10:20, Miz Alice Saunders opened her right eye and shut it again.

She was awake.

She sighed as she attempted to shift her loose folds of wrinkling fat into an upright position. Failing this, she picked up the receiver of her dull black telephone.

“What time is it?”

“It's 10:22 Miz Saunders.”

“A.m. or p.m.?”

“A.m.”

She slammed the phone down.

“Oh Hell!”

Although generally low and gravelly, the twang of Miz Alice Saunders’s voice almost always recalled that of a whiny three-year-old. When cursing and shouting however, she demonstrated enormous lung power, reaching down into what could only be defined as a baritone range. Her diction was slow and distinctly southern, although not entirely. It was obvious that she had grown up in the South and had spent a few years in the North.

“Oh, Hell, I didn't get enough sleep, I never do. That Johnny Carson makes me stay up too late and then I just can't fall asleep. I'm not used to this sort of life. I gotta get out of this firetrap they call a hotel.”

This last thought sufficiently frightened Alice so that when she attempted a seated position on the bed, it was now achieved. Her slippers patiently waited, a frayed gold damask left and a new black terrycloth right. With Herculean effort and a good deal of rocking, she pushed forward off the bed and stood up to reach her cane. Keeping her center of gravity low by extending both arms outward and stooping at the spine, she stepped over the trashcan, dirty clothes, and scattered sections of The Richmond News Leader on the floor, to get to the bathroom in time.

This accomplished, she put on yesterday's (and the day before's and the day before that's as well) underwear and slip. Then she decided to put on a fresh brown plaid. She hadn't worn it for three days now, and she was getting tired of the brown plaid she had worn for the last three days. Slowly she pulled the wrinkled dress over her head and then brushed her sparse, Miss Clairol Burnished Dark Copper Chestnut hair. The roots were coming up white again.

When she looked in the mirror, she saw the same pretty young lady of 27 that she'd seen fofty-five years ago when she'd married her second husband. Cackling at her own beauty, she abandoned the mirror and went to her pet refrigerator for a Co-Cola. They were all gone.

“Well, Hell! I wonder if I'll ever be able to get one of those good-for-nothing people at the desk to bring me a case of cokes. The niggers won't do it nomore, and the maids act like it's beneath their dignity. I declare, I always give'em a quarter and I always pay for the cokes in cash, which is a lot more than I can say for most of the people in this dump. I think I'll just have me a little toddy to calm me down, I think.”

Alice ambled over to the bureau for a fresh pony of Mr. Black and opened the top drawer. There they stood in neat shining rows, whole platoons of little empty bottles of airline liquor. They took up the whole top drawer now. She rooted around in them but couldn't find a full one.

“I'll just bet those maids have gotten into my room while I'm downstairs and drunk up all my liquor. I cain't go on living here, it's just not decent anymore. I cain't even keep my toddy safe. It's disgraceful, just dis - graceful. Oh look, there's a half a bottle left on the night stand. Goody.”

Turning and making the two painful steps back to the bed, she sat down among the creased sheets and grasped the bottle lying inside the empty box of tissues. Her eyes passed over the blue pills, so she picked them up and spilled two into her palm. Curving yellow fingernails pushed them into her mouth, and clenching the tiny bottle as tightly as possible between her drooping lips, Alice took her medicine.

“Ah now, that makes me feel better.”

She picked up the phone again and when no one answered, she clicked the clear plastic buttons up and down until Lucille picked up the line.

“What time is it?”

“It's 11:38.”

“I want a number. 4-4-2-5-7-6-3.”

“I'll connect you in a minute.”

While Lucille pushed the dial around downstairs, Alice wracked her mind for a scheme to force her nephew to give her more money. She'd run out again last night, and wouldn't be able to get another cent until he brought some to her in cash. Alice wasn't allowed to cash checks anymore, since Douglas had gotten power of attorney over her.

“It's just dis-graceful the way he took control of an old woman's money. I was doing fine with it, I was. He just wants to get it all when I cash in my chips. He's gonna have to wait a long time though, I'll make sure of that. I'll get some money today though; after all, it is my money.”

“Good morning, Bayliss, McMurphy, and Dobbs.”

“I want to talk to my nephew right now.”

Holding her hand over the receiver, the receptionist turned to Mr. Dobbs, who was standing behind her, greeting a client.

“It's your aunt sir; shall I tell her you're not in?”

Douglas Dobbs sent the client down the hall and turned to address the receptionist.

“Of course - tell her I'm not going to be in for the rest of the day - she's probably run out of money again. For God's sake, I don't want to be troubled with that woman again today. Tell her I'll drop by and see her tomorrow.”

“You'll be in Charlottesville all day tomorrow sir.”

“Miss Babb, I don't care what you tell her, just don't bother me about her again. I pay you to screen the public, especially if I am related to them. Not another word about her, do you hear?”

“Yessir. Miz Saunders, Mr. Dobbs isn't available for the rest of the day, but he did mention something to me about dropping by to see you tomorrow.”

“I want my money now!”

Alice slammed down the receiver and uttered a mild curse. Her eyes welled up in tears.

“A lonely old woman like me, and I cain't even get some toddy to calm me down. It just ain't right. Hey wait a minute. I can get some at lunch. I'll go down right now and sit on the Mezzanine and see what's doing while I wait.”

Pushing herself up with her cane, she hobbled to the door, locked it and painfully waddled down the hall to the elevator. The maids were chattering in the corridor as they cleaned up the rooms. One of them went to open 342.

“Hey, you. Keep out of my room.”

“Why Miz Saunders, yoh’ bed ain't been changed foh’ night onta three weeks now. De housekeepah's aftuh me foh not doin' my job.”

“You go into that room and I'll see to it that you don't have a job tomorrow. Do you hear?”

Alice's cane was shaking at the maid as she complied with the crazy old woman's demands.

“Yessum. (I guess dat mean no likkah foh’ me ‘til de afternoon).”

Rounding the corner to the elevator, Miz Saunders pushed the down button with all her might, deciding to stand on her swollen ankles. The last time she'd sat down on the settee to wait for it to come, she'd found that she couldn't move quickly enough to get in before the doors closed on her. She still had a nasty bruise on her shoulder to show for the experience. Or was that from falling and hitting the night stand? She couldn't remember now.

When the elevator doors opened onto the Mezzanine, Alice was greeted by the sight of Miss Tolliver and Mrs. Blunt sitting in rocking chairs, chatting about various complaints, anatomical and spiritual. These ladies were the same age as Miz Saunders, but apparently paid more attention to their appearance; bathing regularly and laundering their clothing did, of course, make a considerable difference. The ladies motioned to Miz Saunders to come and sit with them, but both the ladies and Miz Saunders knew that it was nothing more than a polite formality; Miz Saunders didn't care for the ladies' “airs” as she put it, and the ladies didn't care for Miz Saunders' unkempt hygienic and moral state. Miz Saunders genteelly waved her cane and smiled and indicated that she was going to have lunch. The ladies nodded their heads and started to gossip.

“Why I hear that just last week, she had so much to drink that they discontinued phone service for her. When she found out that there wasn't anyone on the other end of the line, why she came down to the lobby in her shimmy and it wasn't even buttoned down the front. Can you imagine!”

“Well, my dear, you know the cause, she's just an old rummy. That's all there is to it. I hear that she does just about anything if she runs out and can't get any more. Why she's even had that nigrah Fred in her room, drinking with her, just so she can get him to go to the liquor store for her. I declare, she is dis - graceful, and the poor thing's family just won't put up with her anymore. She's got a perfectly decent nephew with a good practice downtown and I can easily imagine that having an aunt like that around could make him lose business. Can't say that I blame his wife for not wanting her; she's already been asked to leave three hotels for her bouts with likkah. Heard that's the reason her third husband left her, too.”

“She's been married three times?”

“Lord yes. She buried the first two and the last one divorced her. At least, that's her story. She's lived in some fine houses too. It's that devil gin what's got her and won't leave her alone.”

“To think that people of our generation can be so, so, well, just so disheveled. You know if the poor thing just bathed once in a while and wore clean clothes, I think that I might be able to find it in my heart to do something for her. Why, with all the money she's supposed to have, you'd think she could afford at least a new dress. She's worn that same one from the very first day that I laid my eyes on her.”

“Why Sadie, that's not the same dress, it's just that everything she wears is the same color and even the same plaid most of the time. The cut's different on most of them. Take what she’s wearing today. Well, you remember the rage after the war for ballerina...”

Even if Miz Saunders had heard their conversation, it wouldn't have made any difference; she knew what they thought and just didn't give a damn. She was much more interested in a drink right now, anyway.

She stood at the entrance to the Mezzanine until Mae came and asked where she wanted to sit. The formality of this was actually unnecessary as well, for she always sat up against the banister of the staircase and watched the lobby while she gnawed her food. Mae also knew what she wanted to eat and drink: chicken and Jack Black and the Jack Black had better come first or Saunders'd worry Mae to death.

“I want a toddy please.”

“Coming right up, Miz Saunders. I'll bring a menu along with it.”

“Oh, just bring me some sliced tomatoes and a drumstick, that's all I want. And maybe some ice cream.”

“Vanilla?”

“Of course.”

“It'll be just a sec.”

“Just bring me my toddy and I'll be fine.”

While Mae dashed off, Alice slid her cane onto the banister, sat, and watched the business people and travelers come through the lobby. She attempted to strike up a conversation with them if they climbed the staircase to enter the restaurant.

“Gosh, you're a mighty pretty girl. Is that your boyfriend?”

“Oh no ma'am. He's my boss.”

Starting conversation with a personal compliment that was never returned, Saunders chuckled and joked with more strangers for about three minutes, at which point they nearly all had something urgent to do, although they did smile before saying good-bye. She was glad for their conversation; they usually had something interesting to say and didn't complain about the size of their social security checks or rheumatism.

“If I hear those old biddies go on about how awful life is for them one more time, I'm just going to tell them off. Well, if it's so awful, why don't you just go up to your room and shoot your little brains out Miss Tolliver? No one wants you anyway, and the way you chase Mr. Gwathmey around is downright common. The only thing that's ever going to happen to you is that you're going to shrivel up and blow away down Main Street one day when you haven't been outside for weeks. That's right, a great big gust of wind is going to whisk flat-chested Little Miz Bessie Tolliver off and break her into small little wisps of white hair and itty-bitty chips of beef jerky.”

The toddy was starting to do its work now, and by the time the chicken and tomatoes arrived, Miz Saunders was ready for another toddy, which Mae produced immediately. In fact, she turned around and picked it off the table behind her when Alice asked for it.

“I think I’ll even add a quarter to her tip. That'd make thirty-five cents; she surely cain't expect anything more than that.”

By the time she had all but finished her second toddy, Mae had brought her the ice cream and Alice was almost tight enough to eat all of it. Between the toddies and the food, she had no problem keeping her weight on.

“Mae, I want another toddy.”

“Now Miz Saunders, you know that you're only allowed two at a meal.”

“Who says?”

“The management and your nephew.”

“Oh, go on. I want another toddy right now!”

“Miz Saunders, I don't have time for your complaints. If you think that I'm not treating you right, I suggest you take that little matter up with the management.”

Alice was almost in tears and about to scream when Mae handed her the check and told her she'd better sign it and leave right now or Mae would pick her up and put her into the elevator herself. Alice was not about to call Mae's bluff, because for all her skinniness, Mae was wiry and could probably do the deed. Grumbling, Alice signed the check and left a dime instead of the full thirty-five cents.

“Tell Mike I want to see him, Mae. I'll call for him in the kitchen.”

The ladies had adjourned downstairs, leaving Alice the Mezzanine house phone in relative privacy. She sat down on the hot horsehair couch, and picked up the phone.

“I want to speak to Mike in the kitchen.”

Sitting at the perfect 90 degree angle to the hypotenuse of Saunders above and Lucille on his right, allowed Old Man Gwathmey to hear these last nine words. He turned to his nephew visiting from Palm Beach and winked. Gwathmey knew exactly what was going on, and what would eventually happen tonight, since this whole little comedy took place quite frequently and rather predictably. Just after lunch in a quiet corner of the Mezzanine, Gwathmey introduced the dramatis personae to his sister Esther’s son Leonard:

“Mike Green is a perennial ladies' man, and has a stream of girls, black and white that flow in and out of the Hotel at all hours of the day and night. Well liked by most everyone, Mike is easy to get along with and will do most anyone reasonable favors if he feels so inclined. As head chef in the kitchen, Mike has the most responsibility of any of the black personnel here at the big “J,” thus permitting him to consume uncontrolled quantities of alcohol at any hour of the day. In contrast to the other nigrahs who work in the Hotel, Mike Green is what people in Richmond call a “black man” nowadays. What they mean when they say this is that this is a black person who is as responsible and weak as any white man.”

It was now midway through lunch, so Mike was on his fifth rum and coke of the day, which was necessary, considering the shit he had to put with from the riffraff in this fleabag. It was roasting in the kitchen and everybody wanted their food five minutes ago. The last person on earth he wanted to talk to was Miz Saunders. Crazy old white bitch. Not even worth butt fucking neither.

“Hello, hello, who is this on the phone?”

“It's me, Mike.”

“Whachoo want Miz Saunders?”

“I ran out of toddy last night and I...”

“I don't got no time to go to the ABC store and get you yoh bottle today. You got any money?”

“No, Mike, that's the trouble. I ran out last night.”

“Well, call me when you’ve got something worth discussing.”

“But I...”

Mike slammed down the receiver just in time to save a medium rare steak from curling up well done. Miz Saunders didn't realize she'd been cut off until Lucille came on the line and asked her if she wanted a number.

“No, but see if you can't find Fred for me.”

“Lord, Miz Saunders, whaddya think I am, a magician? His wife's been after him all day, and his little girl too. He's prob'ly drunk somewhere down in the basement.”

“Well, you just make sure he calls me first. Tell him I got some business for him. I'll wait for him up here.”

Old Man Gwathmey winked at his nephew again. His narration about the next character on the last after lunch, was on the sour note of: “Fred Brantley on the other hand, is what everyone, or most everyone in Richmond, white or black, liberal or conservative, Jewish or Gentile would agree is a nigger. People would only call him that behind his back, of course. The fact that he is black colors this opinion, of course; if he were white he would be trash, unless of course, he were worse than Fred. In that case, he would be a white nigger, and that’s about as low as a white man can sink. Shiftless, lazy, an unrivaled drunkard, Fred is the only remaining bellman the Hotel has, and he is never to be found. Needless to say, no one trusts him or relies upon him and he is constantly threatened with being fired. The scapegoat for just about anything that goes wrong, Fred is never given the chance to be anything but a nigger.”

Saunders slammed the phone down again. “Damn niggers! They don't have any appreciation left in them. Here I am, a poor helpless old woman, and I can't even get my toddy without giving them a ten dollar tip. Why, I been good to 'em too. Didn't I go down to Thalhimers and get Mike that sweater he wanted for Christmas last year? It cost me a pretty penny, but that doesn't make any difference to them. I bought Fred's little girl that dress, and I might as well have given her the colic, the way he treats me. I been good to them, I have, and they don't respect me at all. Now that I don't have but so much money to spend they treat me like I was crazy or somethin'. All they ever wanted from me was tips at Christmas and I can't even give that to them anymore 'coz my nephew's got power of attorney. It just ain't fair, it ain't. That song was right: Nobody knows you when you're down and out.”

Decades ago she'd sung it in a string of New York night clubs and now she started to hum it since her singing voice was gone. Oh, for the days when she sang and danced all night and then spent the rest of the morning in bed with her men. Three husbands, all gone and no children to look after her, except mealy-mouthed Margaret's boy, who never called and only begrudgingly took her to the tearoom twice a year.

“I’ve had my fun I guess, but I'm not through with it yet. I'm going to get my toddy today, come Hell or high water. Just watch them try to stop me.”

The phone rang and she eagerly picked it up.

“Hello.”

“Whachoo want?”

“Fred, I’ve run out of money and I can't get any toddy.”

“Whachoo want me to do 'bout it?”

“I loaned you fifteen dollars last week to go buy me some toddy and you never showed up with the toddy or with the money. I want one or the other now!”

“Whachoo talkin' 'bout? I don't got none of your money, and I ain't about to go out and buy you no bottle on a day like today. Dey's fryin' eggs on the streets, dey's so hot.”

“I want my...”

Fred slammed the receiver down. Alice Saunders was on her own. She sat and thought for a minute, and then she pushed her weight forward onto her cane so she could stand up.

“I'll get my toddy if it's the last thing I do!”

When Alice got back up to her room, she pulled out the jewelry box from under her white dress in the bottom drawer. She had ceased wearing most of her precious things decades ago, though if she tried, she could remember where they'd from. The platinum bar brooch, set with tiny emerald cut sapphires had been her wedding day present from her first husband. As soon as he'd pinned it on her dress in front, he'd started unhooking her gown in the back. That she would keep a while longer. The swinging gold earrings in the shape of minuscule saxophones were a gift from an admirer in New York - an admirer who also kept the club in bootleg liquor as she recalled. She'd only spent that one night with him and her legs tingled at the remembrance. He disappeared after that. She picked up a heavy sterling cuff bracelet, where was that from? Oh yeah, her third husband Maurice gave her that on their first anniversary which had been a pleasant enough occasion, but there was the unpleasant memory of Maurice's jealous rages at her for just going out and having a good time. Why he'd even called her a slut the night he left her for good. (He'd actually called her a sot, but Alice had been entirely too crocked to make such fine distinctions.)

She spat on the bracelet. It looked gaudy and tacky now, and she flung it across the room. Alice continued to rummage through the rest of her gold and silver and platinum odds and ends, remembering different mornings and afternoons of love, until she got to the last necklace and couldn't recollect why she had her jewelry out.

“Oh yeah, I need some toddy. I'll take that silver bracelet and sell it. That ought to keep me in toddy for at least three days.”

It took her a half hour to locate the bracelet, lower her grasp to the floor, and retrieve it. She'd had to drag a chair through all the trash on the floor so that she could get down to the floor and back up again. Now she needed a hat and a taxi. Alice picked up the receiver.

“I want a cab.”

“Veterans?”

“Yes.”

“Location?”

“Downtown.”

“There'll be one here in half an hour.”

Alice slammed down the receiver and started to search for her brown hat. Looking into the mirror she saw her pretty face again, but this time she noticed that there was a good half-inch of white at the roots.

“I'll tend to that when I get back. A girl just can't let herself go when she gets along in years.” She searched out gloves and a hat to match and made ready to go downstairs.

Downstairs, Lucille was talking to Floyd at Veterans.

“Hey kiddo, can you get me a cab here in a half hour?”

“Sure thing sweetheart. Client and destination?”

“Miz Saunders -”

(Floyd and Lucille simultaneously spoke the destination): “American Boys Club.”

“You got it.”

“Bye Cille.”

“Bye Floyd.”

Tom was sitting with Lucille in the switchboard room reading the afternoon paper and heard most of her conversation.

“Lucille, what on earth does ole' Miz Saunders want to go to the American Boys Club for?”

“For boys, of course.”

“Oh, come on. That old thing?”

“Chile, ain't you never heard of the American Boys Club? I bet you been there this month for your good time.”

“Lucille, what on earth are you talking about?”

“Kiddo, ain't you never heard of a ‘ABC’ as in ‘Alcoholic Beverage Control’ store?”

“Oh, I get it.”

“College ain't taught you everything, that's for sure. You'd better warn the night shift, 'coz she's gonna raise Hell for the rest of the evening. Why do you think Saunders's been after Fred and Mike today?”

When the cab arrived, Lucille called up to Miz Saunders but she was already in the elevator, resplendent in an ancient hat and matching shopping bag. Hobbling past the front desk, she stopped and spoke to Tom.

“Well, Miz Saunders, how're you feelin' today?”

“Hey there, good lookin'. Oh, kinda poky. I’ve got to go see my doctor and just hate the ride. My nephew cain't take the time out of his schedule to see that his poor old aunt's properly looked after.”

“Your cab is here.”

“See ya later.”

“Now, you do what the doctor tells you.”

“Oh, donchoo worry 'bout me. I always do just what he tells me.”

She got out the Main street door and into the cab which the cabbie courteously opened for her. Alice adored small chivalries and struck up a lively conversation. She was having a good time.

“Where to, lady?”

“Take me to Bachrach's on Broad.”

“Beside Schwarzchild's?”

“Yeah, next to that Jew store. They're might uppity in there. I don't like it.”

“Can't say I blame you. The last time I tried to buy my wife a twenty carat diamond ring in there, they wouldn't let me make sure it was the right size. Take it or leave it, they said. Changin' a wife's easier than changin’ a ring size.”

“Oh, go on. You're a scalawag. Listen, I’ve got to go one more place after that, and then back to the Hotel. Can you wait for me?”

“Sure thing, but it'll cost you a extra five dollars.”(The cabbie had sized her up at a glance and knew she'd give a quarter tip and he was not about to lug this old bag of bones all over town for a mere twenty-five cents.)

“All right; that'll be fine.”

They had arrived at Bachrach's, a pseudo pawnshop for anything slightly refined or old. The windows were littered with fine old porcelains and elegant silver services that people no longer used or appreciated. Once inside, Miz Saunders went straight to the back past rows and rows of heirloom and vintage jewelry to the smelter and said:

“How much for this piece of silver?”

The smelter picked it up and looked at it. It was heavy, solid sterling and there was the Cartier hallmark on the clasp. This was worth having, maybe this time he wouldn't call up Dobbs on the phone and tell him that his aunt had sold another piece of jewelry, and did he want it back for an additional $25? Maybe this time, he'd do the old lady right and buy it for what it was worth.

“Are you sure you want to sell this? Whoever bought it for you laid out some bucks. It's quite valuable.”

“A hundred dollars?”

“Lady, we're talkin' more like three or four hundred. It's a rare piece, too. You sure you don't want it?”

“I'll sell it to you for three hundred if you don't ask me if I want it again. It's got bad memories, but right now I can't even remember what they are.”

“If I'm going to do you square, I'll have to give you three-fifty, and not a cent more.”

“Sold.”

On her way back to the cab, the only thing Alice could think about was the number of toddies that $350 would buy. She'd show her nephew now. She fairly leapt into the taxi and gleefully told the cabbie to take her to the other side of Broad Street.

“That's a rough neighborhood, Miz Saunders.”

“It'll be rougher after I get through with it, let me tell you. Take me to the American Boys Club, or don't you know where that is?”

“Lady, I was weaned at the American Boys Club.”

“Well good lookin', I'll tell you what; it's such a hot day and I'm such an old lady that I'll buy you a bottle of any liquor you want if you'll pick me up some ice. Whatcha say?”

“I say all right by me. Howzabout if I leave you here and go run get it while you're inside? It'll save us time.”

“Well, all right, but you’ve got to promise that you'll be back before I get out of the store. Now, what's ya pleasure?”

“Howzabout a fifth of my good friend Jack Black?”

“Lord have mercy, a man after my own heart! Say, you ain't married, are you?”

“'Fraid so. Got the curse bad. Why, you interested in a ole polecat like me?”

“Well, I might be.”

They both laughed at her preposterous coquetry and he let her off in the middle of downtown Richmond, in the midst of the hottest part of the day, midway through a heat wave that was killing people her age in Texas. He also let her off in the middle of what Alice called “the wrong side of Broad Street:” the black side. The young men tossed innuendoes at her as she walked inside the liquor store.

It was air-conditioned and Alice was grateful for it. The heat had been beginning to get to her, but she wasn't going to let it conquer her until she was safely back in her room, toddy in hand. She limped over to the counter and waited in line behind construction workers. It took her a good ten minutes to get to the front of the line.

“I want two, no make that three bottles of Jack Black please and put them in this bag.”

“I'll need to see your identification.” (General snickering).

“Oh, go on.”

The clerk went back to the shelves and picked up three dusty bottles of the Tennessee whiskey. Why it seemed the only time he ever sold more than a fifth was on a Saturday night to well-heeled whities who'd run out before a party. This old woman was a wild one. Comin' down here in the middle of the day for her liquor. She and that Fred character ought to get together and swap drinkin' tales.

“Here you go lady.”

“Here's the money. I want my change in ones.”

She'd given him a fifty dollar bill and he counted out twenty-three one dollar bills. What a crazy old white bitch. She'll be set for another week.

Alice turned to go out and the young men seemed to eye her suspiciously, as if they could see the $324 in her bag. She did her best to ignore them, but was perceptibly quaking with fear. When she got to the door, the cab wasn't there so she waited.

After fifteen minutes the cabbie came into the store just about ready to light into her for holding him up, but she got the first word in.

“Where in the Sam Hill have you been? My legs are starting to swell up from standing here so long, and I was afraid that you weren't coming back. You're a nasty man.”

Tears began to well up into her eyes.

“Lady, I been waitin' for you around the corner for almost a half hour. I can't park on Broad this time of day; it’s rush hour. Come on, let's get going before your ice melts.”

Out they went into the heat, which was taking its toll on Miz Saunders. The cabbie helped her into the taxi, and just in time because her legs were about to collapse beneath her. There was no conversation on the way back to the Jefferson. Miz Saunders was too exhausted and still mad at the driver. When he pulled up to the Main Street door, Alice informed him to go around the block to the side street door, and that he'd have to carry the ice and the liquor inside and help her up the side staircase if he wanted his bottle.

She was starting to relent. He was such a nice man and he did like Jack Black and he did even make sure that she got into her room and he put the ice into her pet refrigerator.

“How'd you like to sit down and have a little toddy with me?”

“Well, lady, I can't think of anything else I'd druther do, but I’ve already spent an hour getting you around town. My boss is like to fire me.”

“Even if I give you a big tip?”

“Can't drink on the job no how. I'll tell you what though, I'll fix you one lollapalooza and me a glass of ice water and sit down with you for five minutes. It's too hot to run back outside right this minute.”

“All right.” Alice chirruped.

“How do you like your Mr. Black?”

“Just fill that mayonnaise jar up 'bout halfway and drop a couple of cubes in it. That'll do me right.”

“Whatever you say.”

The cabbie and Miz Saunders sat down after he had fixed their respective drinks, and relaxed in silence. The previous hour had been trying and they were both bushed.

The old dame's room was a wreck. It smelled pretty raunchy too and even if the air conditioner was going full blast, it was not cooling the room down. When he craned his neack around and looked behind him in the bathroom, he noticed that the window was open. Crazy old dame.

“Well, I gotta go.”

“Wait a minute. Let me give you your money. How much?”

“Let's see, cab fare's about $6.50, two bucks for the ice and five for waiting, oh fourteen dollars'd do it.”

Miz Saunders dug down into her liquor bag and pulled out his bottle and the ones. Well on her way to toxic bliss she started to count out the ones but gave up when she'd reached six.

“Here, take this,” she said, extending the whole bundle.”

“Well I should refuse it, but I'm not about to. Listen lady, you just call me up any time you need to go downtown; I'll take care of you. Okay?”

“Sure. Now you go out and buy your wife something pretty, that is if you're really married.”

The cabbie got up to leave and Alice motioned for him to stop.

“Wait, you'll need a tip. Here's a quarter. Thank you, you're the only person that treated me like I was somebody today.”

“Thanks for the tip. See you 'round.”

“Wait a minute. what's your name?”

The cabbie was out the door and just about to close it when he poked in his head and said, “Just ask for Mr. Black. Bye now.”

Alice smiled. What a nice man. He was the only person who had treated her like somebody today. Her eyes welled up to the brims for the final time and she fixed herself another toddy.

“A girl just needs a little toddy to keep herself relaxed and fresh. I got mine and I did it all by myself today. My nephew can go straight to Hell.”

At 9:30 pm Miz Alice Saunders blacked out as the last rays of sunlight disappeared between the shadows outside room 342. The switchboard operator and the front desk clerk plugged up her line at 9:48 when she got on the phone in a drunken stupor demanding to see Mr. Block, some sort of a veterinarian. She didn't hang up the phone until 10:20 the next morning.

Chapter Three

        The Genuine Artifact

    Day One

Tom anxiously locked his bicycle to the “No Parking” sign outside the Jefferson Street entrance to the Hotel. Mr. Beauchamp had told him to come in Thursday at three to speak more definitely about working at the Hotel for the summer. The prospect of working every single Friday and Saturday night from eleven until seven in the morning all summer long did not exactly thrill Tom; such a schedule would greatly dilute the time he could dedicate to amorous pursuits, and hunting was always better on weekend nights. But then again, having a job, earning his own money and not having to ask Daddy for a cent, well that was nothing to be scoffed at if you valued your independence as much as Tom did. Tom had yet to learn that the price of his independence was directly proportional to the amount of trouble he procured for himself, since he was still fervently attempting to see how much trouble he could get himself into. The fact remained that Tom's premature concept of freedom, not having to answer to anyone for anything, and coming and going as he pleased overruled the logic and undesirable consequences that might mope around his conscious and subconscious. Plus, the whole situation was tempered by the idea of becoming part of a childhood legend: the Hotel Jefferson.

For a city with the hushed traditions of Richmond, the Jefferson had always been an incongruously grand design with its marble columns and plush draperies and statue of Thomas Jefferson, the only true demigod ever to spring from Virginia's soil. At the top of its Gone With the Wind staircase, the Hotel housed one of the few shrines hallowed to the native deity: the renowned Valentine statue of Thomas Jefferson. Once alligators had frolicked in votive dance at the idol's feet, cooled by sacrosanct libationary pools. The well-bred palm trees bathed in a rain of colored light, the rustling of skirts against parasols of organdy, and the cold fragrance of white marble whistled through Tom's uncollective consciousness like the light June breeze wafting its way down to the river. He hoped he could live up to his heritage.

He straightened up over his bicycle and entered the side door, walking under the bronze side staircase which carried the shy or undesirable from the Lobby to the Mezzanine. The side stair was the only way people could gain access to all the floors of the Hotel without being seen in the Lobby. Otherwise it was mandatory to go round the corner and walk the whole length of the front desk, as Tom was now doing.

The front desk of the Hotel had originally been divided into three functional sectors defined by dusty pink marble counters bulging out toward the Lobby. The counters were in turn separated and bounded by four of the faux marble columns that ran from the floor up to the roof, supporting both the ceiling and Mezzanine. The counter nearest the doors, originally intended for reservations, was protected from wintry blasts by a leaded glass booth in which an ocean liner, a train, and a Phoenician galleon were outlined in black metal and beveled crystal. The next or middle area of the front desk proffered the registration forms on the counter, while a pine structure badly stained to resemble walnut with apothecary cubbyholes for keys and letters, hid the offices of the Hotel from sight. The last area, nearest the staircase, contained the NCR machine, the cash drawer, the folio sheets and various decrepit steel stools. Whoever stood behind these counters surveyed everything that took place in the Lobby, save for activity on that section of Mezzanine remaining directly overhead.

Tom walked past one wave after another of the worn marble counter, past the front desk clerk Dudley who was simple but friendly, and past the mahogany phone booths to the burgundy doors. And then, through these doors with their dingy sheers.

“Go on back to Beauchamp's office, hon.”

Marilyn smiled and continued to blabber at the switchboard. Once back in the heart of the Hotel's offices, Tom knocked on the formica paneled door.

“Who is it? Oh come on in, son.”

Mr. Beauchamp and Mr. Birdsong were hunched over Beauchamp's desk, sorting nickels from pennies and dimes into neat piles. Tom sat and waited. Glancing around the office, his eyes rested on a large bronze bust of the idealized young Jefferson behind Mr. Beauchamp’s bald head, another statue of a nude lady from the Belle Époque languishing on a bronze slice of the moon, and a blue and white ceramic oriental urn large enough to hide a fairly fat child in. These however, were the only intriguing things in the room because the rest of the office was badly remodeled 1960's, replete with absolutely the worst pecan-like paneling. The high narrow window on the left was at foot level for the street.

“Son, have you filled out your forms?”

“Why nossir, you didn’t…”

“Glen, go get the employment forms if you would please sir.”

“Another new front desk clerk? Oh Lord child, you don't know what you're getting yourself into.”

“Glen, will you just go and get those forms?”

“Follow me.”

Glen Birdsong had met some unconfessed major disappointment in his life, leaving him scarred, sarcastic, and sorry. He had passed up the chance to be one of the top womenswear designers on the East Coast shortly after finishing college fifteen years previous, with a first-class portfolio and awards from major garment manufacturers. But instead of leaving Richmond, Glen stayed on at the Hotel where he had worked during school as a front desk clerk. He slowly rose in position to head of parties and catering, and he gave the most elegant society soirées that Richmond had known in the past ten years. He always dressed in high Sixties style and was devoted to fortune telling: reading cards, palms, coffee grounds, and the future in general.

Outside of Beauchamp's office, Glen Birdsong opened up the locker for the personnel files and handed one to Tom.

“You sure you wouldn't rather work here as a maid? The pay's the same and you don’t...”

“That's all right thank you. I have my own pen.”

Tom filled out the forms and returned to Beauchamp's office. They were now separating the dimes from the pennies.

“Ya durn fool, thay ain't no more silver dimes in circulation, stop wasting time.”

“Now Daddy B, you never can tell. The victim has returned.”

“Jest hush up. Let's see son. How much money do you want?”

“Well, I uh ...”

“It don't make any difference chile, 'cause all they'll give you is minimum wage here. I hope you haven't got an ailing mother or illegitimate...”

“Glen take this money to the bank and keep your fool trap shut. I am interviewing.”

Glen walked out the door putting on his square sunglasses, his green gabardine bell bottoms flapping in the air-conditioned breeze.

“Well son, I’ve thought your case over and I think we can use you. Can you start this evening?”

Tom hadn't really planned on it, but it was the only serious job offer he'd come across, he did want the job, and could stay if he wanted to.

“Yessir.”

“That's fine. We'll have you on three afternoons a week, and you'll be doing the audit Friday and Saturday nights for the summer.” (Oh Christ. There go my weekends).

“Let's go on out to the front desk.”

Beauchamp stood up and hobbled out the door. He was old, bald, fat, and looked like he had built fallout shelters in the Fifties. He carried Tom out to the front desk and introduced him to Dudley. Dudley grinned.

“Now son, the evening shift is from three to eleven. I don't have to tell you it's highly preferable for you to arrive at five minutes afore three to five minutes after. This is a good shift for you to start on.”

“Yeah Bub, almost nothing happens.”

“Now will you be quiet Dudley, or am I goin'ta haveta whup you for the second time this week? Don't pay him no mind; he don't know what to do wid himself, 'less he can make some weak joke or say somethin' stupid. The only real busy time you're likely to have is from about four to seven when there'll be people checking in.”

“You're not serious are you Daddy B.? Someone's goin' to check in? The only thing I seem to do around here is hand out the Reader's Digest once a month.”

“And ya don't even do that well, ya durn fool. Now Dudley, I'm entrusting you to train Tom here about what to do. No funnystuff, d'ya hear? You'll be all right son, and I'll come down to check on you after dinner.”

“Thanks, Mr. Beauchamp.”

“Welcome aboard pal. Here, the first thing for you to do is go have a looksee at the rooms. Let's see what's clear.”

Dudley rested his chubby elbows on a wooden plank nailed into the column between the cashier and registration counters, under the room board. He compiled a sheet and handed it to Tom:

ROOMS underlined twice with a wavy curve. Fourteen dollars, seventeen dollars, thirty-four dollars, fifty dollars, single and double beds, bath and shower.

“Do they still rent rooms for fourteen dollars a night here?”

“You'll understand why when you see them. Here's the pass-key. Go take a good look around so you can tell people what they're in for when they check in.”

The rooms were not to be believed. 206 next to the elevator. It looked like an historic reconstruction of the first room in the first Quality Court that had ever been rented to a traveling salesman, and which out of respect to its commemorative significance, had not since been dusted. Room 286. God, it was incredible. The shower in the bathroom must have been picked up for a song from the Dachau rummage sale. Room 331. A double bed and not much more. Room 380. The bed wasn't made up and an empty bottle of Vodka poked out from under the bed. Room 306. Next to the elevator again, but this time Tom could hear the elevator pulleys screeching as the elevator went up and down. Room 386. Badly faded fake Audubon prints on the wall above the beds. Room 382. Bright turquoize walls and a black and pink tiled bathroom. Room 403. An absolutely dreadful chipped Spanish Regency mirror. Room 405. Oops. Someone was in there. Room 434. Filthy, greasy, grimy windows. The brasses on the Chippendale coffee table were falling off. Room 530. Spacious, but you could have sown radish seeds in the carpet. Room 532. Scratched chinoiserie.

Tom carefully inspected each room, looking at the bathrooms, the beds, the chipping paint, and the hodgepodge of furniture.

Then it was up to the sixth floor where no one was registered. The sixth floor was opened only in case of a big convention. There were so many perennially empty rooms in the Hotel that there wasn't any call for having a ruckus on the sixth floor as well. Tom correlated all the rooms which were superimposed one on top of each other in the same order and position as they descended to the Lobby. The sixth floor had room numbers in the mid thirties, forties, and fifties; locked doors at the north end of the corridors protected a dilapidated roof garden that hadn't seen use since the nineteen-thirties. Room 642. Burned and blackened. Room 634. The first room with passable furniture. A black leather glove lay on the night stand.

Tom had seen enough. Down to look at the suites. 250. Each suite had a different period of dust-dulled furniture, which was nonetheless in fair repair and of above mediocre quality. And there were the beautiful beautiful sculpted marble fireplaces with carved and inlaid mirrors reflecting above them. The beds were not made up in 252. Room 148 had early 20th century reproduction Sheraton furniture and was almost quite nice. The large French doors gave onto the balcony, a granite Italianate loggia with high round Renaissance windows and crumbling balustrade overlooking Franklin Street. Decidedly lovely, possibly magical and completely encrusted in pigeon shit. Tom loitered for a moment and smoked a cigarette.

“This is where I'll have my wedding dinner served. Candles, champagne, and a white tablecloth. Violins, hearts, flowers. And the dusk descending among the treetops. Even the heedless birds can't ruin the great truths, the designs that humankind made.”

Tom ended his reverie with a long glance up and down Franklin Street. He watched the winos teetering toward the blood bank on Broad Street to make deposits and withdraw meager sums for the weekend. Back to the front desk.

Dudley was standing behind the door jamb to the switchboard room, squirting Marilyn with a water pistol. Marilyn was not amused.

“You idiot, leave me alone!”

Tom was coming to realize that the Jefferson was not the incongruously grand design he had pictured, neither in terms of the professionalism of the staff, nor the physical condition of the Hotel. He did not blink, he did not bat any eye, nor raise an eyebrow. This was going to be his source of money, and his meal ticket too.

“What do you want for dinner, buddy-o?”

In contrast, the dinner menu proved sumptuous and varied and Tom selected flounder stuffed with crab meat. Dudley wrote up the meal tickets while Marilyn scuffled to the bathroom for the fourth time that evening. As soon as she came back, Dudley and Tom ascended the staircase to the kitchen in order to retrieve dinner. Since it was a slow night, the cook was in a fair mood.

“Sometimes they don't even send it down. You just have to pray and wait.”

Dinner was duly consumed with proper china and flatware, and the pink napkins. Dudley was picky about his food; Tom wasn't.

After dinner, Dudley took Tom out to introduce him to the small group of permanent residents seated on the yellow velour couches at the foot of the stairs. It was conversation hour. Their courtesy and gentle demeanor relieved some of Tom's apprehensions.

“Mr. Gwathmey, I'd like you to meet the new front desk, clerk, Tom Wharton.”

“How d'ye do, son?”

“And this is Mrs. Blunt and that's Mr. Bass.”

“Well, it's nice to meet you. I certainly hope that you'll be as happy here at the big 'J' as everyone else is.”

The permanents were all dressed in quiet, comfortable, and entirely genteel clothing. Mrs. Blunt fingered her Monet chains as she smiled and nodded her head; Mr. Bass stealthily glared at anyone Mrs. Blunt bestowed her attention upon. Mr. Gwathmey moved with great deliberation, blinking and folding his arms as his dinosaur jaw rose and fell, occasionally making comments in the process.

“Dudley, here are the dining room receipts and the cash. You had better get back behind the front desk where you belong.”

“Oh, Mae, here's the new front desk clerk. Tom Wharton.”

“Pleased to meet you, hon. Dudley, now put that money in the cash drawer. And do it now!”

Mae whisked away up the staircase in her pink uniform taking the red carpeted steps two at a time. Dudley took Tom back behind the front desk and showed him how to add up and charge the receipts. Most of the bills didn't run over three dollars.

“Gosh, don't these people eat anything?”

“No, not really. Vanilla ice cream and sliced tomatoes mainly.”

With the restaurant take registered and the various transits checked in, Tom and Dudley sat down to watch the better part of M.A.S.H. on television, while Marilyn went to the bathroom for the seventh time complaining of a terrible headache. MacFlecknoe strolled up to the front desk smoking a very cheap cigar, and started to tell Dudley and Tom all about a wealthy veterinarian in Charlottesville with stables and insufficient insurance to cover them in case of loss.

Soon, a stubby little country jack joined MacFlecknoe and they both invited the front desk clerks up to their rooms for a drink after the shift was over.

“Ah’ve got a leetle tad of bourbon.”

MacFlecknoe magnanimously offered to provide the glasses and ice.

“We'll have an old fashioned bullshit session.”

Dudley accepted right off the bat but Tom hesitated. He knew that the last thing he should be doing was going into a client's room, but Dudley whined for him to come too, and Tom finally acceded.

As the remainder of the night wore on, Tom was introduced to the rest of the permanents. Saunders, a stout woman in brown replete with cane, a slight stench, and badly tinted hair. Mrs. Lassiter, elegantly dressed in a white pants suit, white sandals, white turban and well tinted hair. The obvious scent of vodka lingered about her pores. Mrs. Tate came down in her housecoat, and just loved to gossip so much that she could never remember all of the names at once. But that wasn't important. What people did was so much more interesting than who they were, and then don't you know what they say about names and tales?

In the midst of mature to elderly voices and smiles, Tom was presented to one woman who was nothing less than striking: Miss Tolliver. Tom had rarely seen a woman so refined or composed and yet so meek. A graceful Coco Chanel stoop to her petite curved shoulders, lustrous Marcel waves in her white hair, a simple black silk dress, and the faintest trace of tame red lipstick. For the first time in his life, Tom understood why women clamor for pearls. Miss Tolliver’s slight frame was enchanted by a small but shining, even radiant strand of modestly correct pearls, which she stroked as she spoke. Her birdlike tone, the humble flutter of her demurely sage eyes, and her quiet understated style, timelessly dated to the past effected a loveliness and true elegance that Tom had rarely been exposed to.

“You ought to see her room. It's stacked from floor to ceiling with the most incredible collection of God knows what. She's been here for twenty years, retired school teacher, no bucks, and she's got the hots for Old Man Gwathmey.”

“Dudley could you watch the phone for a minute while I go to the ladies room? Thanks, hon.”

Marilyn grabbed her purse and rushed out the door.

“Let's call up Scruggs. Room 529.”

“Who's in there?”

“An old pal. Smells like piss. Carries toilet paper around with him, stickin' out his pants 'cause he can't control it any more. Now we'll have some fun.”

Imitating a Negress of the lower social orders, Dudley started to regale Scruggs, his falsetto wavering from time to time.

“Hey Scruggie! Whachoo doin' up there all by yo' lonesome? Why don't you come down and buy me a drink? Wha' I wone? Why I be ready foh a pink lady, uh, huhn. I knowse I'se black. OH Scruggie. We's all pink on de inside. What? And do what, may I ask? What? You am naked as de day you wur boan? Uhm, hmm. What you want from me shugah lumps? All I want is a little drink, doncha know? What? You am one vile thing, you nasty old man. And what?”

The performance tended to the grotesque but Dudley continued to prance about the switchboard and laugh at himself, providing vulgar comebacks to the lewd suggestions of the old geezer who probably hasn't seen anything more feminine than a vacuum cleaner in the past three months. Scruggs was also bound to realize that he was talking to some weirdo who lived in the hotel with nothing better to do and no one more interesting to talk to. Every once in a while Tom could hear a low gravelly voice snicker across the line as Scruggs made another suggestive comment to this bizarre front desk clerk. The vignette embarrassed Tom so much he made it clear he preferred to watch the TV.

Marilyn returned from the bathroom perspiring under the load of her purse (Lord only knew what she had in it) and a few people checked in, with Tom doing the honors this time. The cordial smile, the courteous personal questions, the officialdom of it all succored Tom at the beginning of an experience that was proving more than he had bargained for. He had only just begun and knew it. Better to start off right from the start.

“Come on buddy, let's add up the take, but first try this.”

Dudley handed Tom a small cotton pad impregnated with alcohol from a compact circular bottle. Two adolescents were frolicking on the beach pictured on the label.

“That's to help clear up your zits pal, and it's right refreshing after a long hot night like tonight.”

Albeit an unusual offer, Tom accepted and accordingly wiped his face.

It isn't that bad and it does freshen you up a little bit. Dudley isn't such an awful person at all; he's just goofy. And there's something else about him which is equally strange; he is jam packed with good intentions and he's just as ashamed of them. Much fuller than I am, at any rate, but he wants to laugh at them and they're not funny. This hooting chortle of his is little more than ill-timed nervousness. He's real. The genuine artifact, in the flesh. Dudley is just so fucking earnest that it's not to be believed, and he won't accept it because even Dudley knows that it's not cool.

“Let's add up the subtotals again.”

“Dudley, if the cash count is off 392 dollars, it must be in the folio sheets. We only took in 65 dollars tonight and there's no way you can have misplaced three hundred odd dollars since we didn't even see anything close to that.”

“Wait a minute, Bub. I'm doing the count here.”

“All right, you keep adding it all up, and I'll look through the folio sheets.”

Dudley all but blindly added up the money in the drawer four times while Tom hunted through the accounts for the mistake he knew was there. Some of the bills were more than outrageous, running into thousands of dollars while the majority was less than three dollars.

After checking out the restaurant receipts, it was discovered that the Swatters had only consumed two iced teas and two ice creams on the Mezzanine for dinner and someone entered the amount multiplied by a hundred.

“Here it is. Room 392. MR/MRS SWITZER. You added $ 396.00 to their account. And you rang it up credit instead of debit.”

After the labors of correction, which Dudley didn't really fathom all that well, the balance was certified and the deposit made. Marilyn's Austrian boyfriend came by to pick her up and the night auditor Grasso descended to the Lobby in greasy black, stuttering and upbraiding Dudley for his ignominious service at the front desk.

“You play too much. You need 'tink about your work.”

“Ah, take it easy Grasso; we all like to have a good time, now don't we? Let's go Tom, they're waiting for us upstairs.”

“Good night, Mr. Grasso.”

“Good night, sir.”

Back in the doorman's closet, Dudley and Tom punched out.

“Grasso sleeps off most of the night, and then goes to early mass at the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart. He's always grumpy, so just forget him. He's always like this when his wife's not around.”

“He's married?”

“Yeah, he's got a wife in Italy somewhere, who he says is young and beautiful. 'De prettiest woman in world,' he says. Only she won't come to the States to live. She usually comes over every two or three years, or that's the story, and he goes back every summer for a visit and a little piece of action. If you ask me, she just plain doesn't want to come back because she couldn't put up with an old sourpuss like him, all those black clothes and early mass and stuff like that. I wouldn't, that's for sure.”

Once inside the elevator Dudley started to pummel Tom on the shoulder in a display of questionable affection.

“You're going to be all right brother, you know? You're going to get along just fine here.”

Up in room 428 MacFlecknoe and Earl were already at it, drinking and bullshitting each other to the point that they themselves didn't know what the  truth about anything was anymore. Drinks were accordingly passed out to Tom and Dudley as the redneck took off his pants and covered the shame of his Mamma's nut hugger briefs with an ill-tuned guitar. Earl laughed out loud like a donkey and split a grin from ear to ear of teeth that looked like large kernel white corn.

“Why don't we go out and get us some pussy, men?”

“I have to go home and get some sleep, I'm exhausted.”

But Dudley answers,

“I’ve already got my woman, I mean lady. I have my lady. The Hotel. I love her. and I know her like a lover. She's just what I want and what I need. And I don't need to go looking any farther. I'm only really happy when I'm here. I love the Hotel Jefferson as a lover does.”

His smudged glasses glinted in the light of the frayed silk lampshade as everyone sat and stared at the rug in a moment of uncomfortable silence, because someone had revealed too intimate a glimpse of our maudlin nature.

Earl strummed a meaningless chord on his guitar.

MacFlecknoe put out his cigar.

Tom crunched his ice.