Stanley Elkin - Boswell

“Who?”

“The Great San — Felix. Felix Sandusky. You don’t remember me, but we’re old friends. Congratulations.”

“Felix Sandusky? He ain’t in. He’s dead.”

“Don’t be a wise guy,” I said. I started toward the elevator.

“I told you,” the clerk shouted, “he’s dead.”

“Do you want me to break your mouth?”

“Come on,” the clerk said. “You better get out of here.”

“Felix Sandusky, jerk. The Great Sandusky.”

“Yeah. Yeah. The Great Deadbeat. He owed for two months.”

“How much?”

“How much what?”

“How much did Mr. Sandusky owe you?”

The clerk went to a filing cabinet, opened it, took out a loose-leaf notebook and looked through it. “Mr. Sandusky owed us a hundred twenty dollars.” He looked up at me.

“I saw that room,” I shouted. “It was empty. It was a rathole.”

“That was 416,” the clerk said angrily. “That’s the best view in the hotel. That’s a four buck a night room, fella. Without the rate that’s a four buck a night room.”

I wrote a check and gave it to the clerk. I made it out for a hundred dollars. The clerk looked at it and smiled.

“He’s dead, Mr. Boswell,” he said.

“He’s no fourflusher.”

“No, sir.” He looked again at the signature on the check. “Didn’t you used to wrestle?”

“I’m The Masked Playboy.”

“No kidding? You?”

“I said I was.” I dug into my pocket and took out the pass I had meant to give Sandusky. “Here,” I said, thrusting it at him.

“What’s that for?”

“It’s a pass. Friday’s matches. You be there, you understand. You knew Sandusky — you be there. I want you to see what I do to John Sallow. You knew Sandusky.”

I walked back to my hotel. I read the medallion on the building: ‘“Hotel Missouri — Transients.” You said it, I thought. That’s telling them, innkeeper. There should be signs all over — in banks, on movie seats, on beds in brothels, in churches. That would change the world. Felix Sandusky lies amoldering in his grave. Felix Sandusky lies acrumbling in his grave. Even on coffin lids: transients! Put it to them straight. No loitering! Not a command, a warning. Official, brass-plated Dutch unclery.

I took the key from the desk clerk and went up to my room. By some coincidence my elevator had been inspected by H. R. Fox that very day. I was safe. H. R. Fox said so. Stay in the elevator. It wasn’t bad advice, but there too I was a transient. Sic transient.

I called room service.

“Yes, sir?”

“This is the transient in 814.” (Jerk, I thought, it adds up to thirteen. How come you didn’t realize that?) “Send me dinner.”

“What’s that, sir?”

“Send me dinner.”

“What would you like, sir?”

“What difference does it make?”

I hung up.

In a moment the phone rang. It was room service, a different voice than the one I had just spoken to. Already, I thought. The turnover, the turnover. “Is this the gentleman in 814 who just called about his dinner?”

“Yes,” I said. “Send it up as soon as it’s ready, please.”

“Would the gentleman care for some chateaubriand?”

“Is that expensive?” I asked.

“Well—” the voice said.

“Is it?”

“It’s our specialty, sir.”

“Fine.”

“Very well then, chateaubriand. And a wine? Should you like to see our wine list?”

“No,” I said. “Send up your best wine. Two bottles.”

“Certainly, sir. Is the gentleman, is the gentleman—”

“Yes?”

“Is the gentleman entertaining?”

“Only himself, buddy.”

“I see, sir. Very good sir.”

“Oh, and, buddy?”

“Yes, sir?”

“You can’t take it with you.”

I hung up. The meal would cost a lot of money. Good, good it would cost a lot of money. Maybe it would make up for my meanness earlier. By this time the significance of Sandusky’s death had gotten mixed up with the twenty dollars I had held back from the clerk at Sandusky’s hotel. Suddenly my pettiness seemed as inexcusable as Sandusky’s death. In a kind of way both were petty. It was for just such inexplicable actions, perhaps, that we were made to die. Our punishment fit our crimes, all right, but that didn’t make me feel any better.

My dinner came and I ate it without enjoyment and drank the two bottles of wine sullenly.

I called the desk. “This is the transient in 814. That adds up to thirteen, did you know that?”

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“I was in your elevator some while ago,” I said, “looking at the control panel.”

“Is something wrong, sir?”

“You can drop the sir, buddy. We’re all of us transients, you know.”

“Sir?”

“Have it your way,” I said. “There’s no thirteenth floor.”

“Sir?”

“There’s no thirteenth floor. There’s a twelfth floor and a fourteenth floor, but there’s no thirteenth floor.”

“Sir,” the clerk said, humoring the drunken transient from out of town, “that’s standard hotel policy. Many of our guests are superstitious and feel—”

“I know all about it,” I interrupted him, “but that’s the most important floor of all.”

The clerk smiled over the telephone.

“Get it back, do you understand?”

“I’ll see about it, sir.”

“Thank you,” I said politely, “I thought you should know.” I hung up and immediately remembered something I had forgotten. I called the desk clerk again.

“Transient in 814,” I said.

“Yes sir,” the clerk said. He was getting a little tired

of me. Fun was fun, but there was a convention in town.

“Has John Sallow checked into this hotel?”

The clerk brightened over the telephone. “Just one moment, sir, I’ll check that for you.”

The line went dead.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the clerk said in a moment, “no such party is registered at the Missouri.”

“Standard hotel policy, I suppose, like the foolishness about the thirteenth floor. Superstitious guests, I suppose.”

“Shall I check my reservations, sir?” the clerk asked coldly.

* “No,” I said. “If he shows up, have him get in touch with the transient in 814.” I hung up.

I found a Yellow Pages in the night stand by the telephone, opened it to Hotels and called them all alphabetically. Sallow was nowhere. Sure, I thought, what do you think, the Angel of Death needs a room? How would he sign the register? He’s no transient.

I went to bed.

In the gym at eleven o’clock the next morning I went up to Lee Lee Meadows, the promoter. Lee Lee was wrapped in a big orange camel’s hair coat and was talking to a reporter. “Lee Lee, is it true you can go fourteen days without water?” the reporter was asking.

“Lee Lee,” I said, “I’ve got to speak to you.”

“I’m talking to the press here,” Lee Lee said.

The reporter caught the eye of one of the wrestlers and walked over to him. Lee Lee raised his hand to object, but the reporter smiled and waved back. Lee Lee turned to me. “Yeah, well, what’s so important?”

“Is Sallow in town yet? I tried all the hotels.”

Lee Lee frowned. “He’ll be when he’ll be,” he said.

“I’ve got to see him before the match.”

Lee Lee looked at me suspiciously. “Hey, you,” he said, “what’s the excitement?”

“I just have to see him.”

“Yeah? Bogolub called me about you. He said you ain’t too anxious to fight The Reaper. That you don’t want to lose.”

“No,” I said, “I want to fight him.”

“Because I got five tankers wild to be whipped by The Reaper.”