Arthur Hailey - Hotel

Booker T. Graham, whose take-home pay was thirty-eight dollars weekly, put on his greasy jacket and went home.

By now, traffic at the drab brick staff entrance - located in an alley off Common Street - was increasing steadily. In ones and twos, night workers were trickling out while the first day shift, converging from all parts of the city, was arriving in a swiftly flowing stream.

In the kitchen area, lights were snapping on as early duty helpers made ready for cooks, already changing street clothes for fresh whites in adjoining locker rooms. In a few minutes the cooks would begin preparing the hotel's sixteen hundred breakfasts and later - long before the last egg and bacon would be served at mid-morning-start the two thousand lunches which today's catering schedule called for.

Amid the mass of simmering cauldrons, mammoth ovens and other appurtenances of bulk food production, a single packet of Quaker Oats provided a homey touch. It was for the few stalwarts who, as every hotel knew, demanded hot porridge for breakfast whether the outside temperature was a frigid zero or a hundred in the shade.

At the kitchen fry station Jeremy Boehm, a sixteen-year old helper, checked the big, multiple deep-fryer he had switched on ten minutes earlier. He had set it to two hundred degrees, as his instructions called for. Later the temperature could be brought quickly to the required three hundred and sixty degrees for cooking. This would be a busy day at the fryer, since fried chicken, southern style, was featured as a luncheon special on the main restaurant menu.

The fat in the fryer had heated all right, Jeremy observed, though he thought it seemed quite a bit smokier than usual, despite the overhanging hood and vent fan, which was on. He wondered if he should report the smokiness to someone, then remembered that only yesterday an assistant chef had reprimanded him sharply for showing an interest in sauce preparation which, he had been informed, was none of his business. Jeremy shrugged. This was none of his business either. Let someone else worry.

Someone was worrying - though not about smoke - in the hotel laundry half a block away.

The laundry, a bustling steamy province occupying an elderly two-story building of its own, was connected to the main St. Gregory structure by a wide basement tunnel. Its peppery, rough-tongued manageress, Mrs. Isles Schulder, had traversed the tunnel a few minutes earlier, arriving as usual ahead of most of her staff. At the moment the cause of her concern was a pile of soiled tablecloths.

In the course of a working day the laundry would handle some twenty-five thousand pieces of linen, ranging from towels and bed sheets through waiters' and kitchen whites to greasy coveralls from Engineering. Mostly these required routine handling, but lately a vexing problem had grown infuriatingly worse. Its origin: businessmen who did figuring on tablecloths, using ball-point pens.

"Would the bastards do it at home?" Mrs. Schulder snapped at the male night worker who had separated the offending tablecloths from a larger pile of ordinarily dirty ones. "By God! If they did, their wives'd kick their arses from here to craptown. Plenty of times I've told those jerk head waiters to watch out and put a stop to it, but what do they care?"

Her voice dropped in contemptuous mimicry. "Yessir, yessir, I'll kiss you on both cheeks, sir. By all means write on the cloth, sir, and here's another ball-point pen, sir. As long as I get a great fat tip, who cares about the goddam laundry?"

Mrs. Schulder stopped. To the night man, who had been staring open mouthed, she said irritably, "Go on home! All you've given me is a headache to start the day."

Well, she reasoned when he was gone, at least they'd caught this batch before they got into water. Once ballpoint ink got wet, you could write a cloth off because, after that, nothing short of blasting would ever get the ink out. As it was, Nellie - the laundry's best spotter - would have to work hard today with the carbon tetrachloride. With luck they might salvage most of this pile, even though Mrs. Schulder thought grimly - she would still relish a few words with the slobs who made it necessary.

And so it went, through the entity of the hotel. Upon stage, and behind - in service departments, offices, carpenters' shop, bakery, printing plant, housekeeping, plumbing, purchasing, design and decorating, storekeeping, garage, TV repair and others - a new day came awake.

2

In his private six-room suite on the hotel's fifteenth floor, Warren Trent stepped down from the barber's chair in which Aloysius Royce had shaved him. A twinge of sciatica jabbed savagely in his left thigh like hot lancets - a warning that this would be another day during which his mercurial temper might need curbing. The private barber parlor was in an annex adjoining a capacious bathroom, the latter complete with steam cabinet, sunken Japanesestyle tub and built-in aquarium from which tropical fish watched, broody-eyed, through laminated glass. Warren Trent walked stiffly into the bathroom now, pausing before a wall-width mirror to inspect the shave. He could find no fault with it as he studied the reflection facing him.

It showed a deep-seamed, craggy face, a loose mouth which could be humorous on occasion, beaked nose and deep-set eyes with a hint of secretiveness. His hair, jetblack in youth, was now a distinguished white, thick and curly still. A wing collar and neatly tied cravat complemented the picture of an eminent southern gentleman.

At other times the carefully cultivated appearance would have given him pleasure. But today it failed to, the mood of depression which had grown upon him over the past few weeks eclipsing all else. So now it was Tuesday of the final week, he reminded himself. He calculated, as he had on so many other mornings. Including today, there were only four more days remaining: four days in which to prevent his lifetime's work from dissolving into nothingness.

Scowling at his own dismal thoughts, the hotel proprietor limped into the dining room where Aloysius Royce had laid a breakfast table. The oak refectory table, its starched napery and silverware gleaming, had a heated trolley beside it which had come from the hotel kitchen at top speed ~ few moments earlier. Warren Trent eased awkwardly into the chair which Royce held out, then gestured to the opposite side of the table.

At once the young Negro laid a second place, slipping into the vacant seat himself. There was a second breakfast on the trolley, available for such occasions when the old man's whim changed his usual custom of breakfasting alone.

Serving the two portions - shirred eggs with Canadian bacon and hominy grits - Royce remained silent, knowing his employer would speak when ready.

There had been no comment so far on Royce's bruised face or the two adhesive patches he had put on, covering the worst of the damage from last night's fracas. At length, pushing away his plate, Warren Trent observed,

"You'd better make the most of this. Neither of us maybe enjoying it much longer.

Royce said, "The trust people haven't changed their mind about renewing?"

"They haven't and they won't. Not now." Without warning the old man slammed his fist upon the table top. "By God! There was a time when I'd have called the tune, not danced a jig to theirs. Once they were lined upbanks, trust companies, all the rest - trying to lend their money, urging me to take it."

"Times change for all of us." Aloysius Royce poured coffee. "Some things get better, others worse."

Warren Trent said sourly, "It's easy for you. You're young. You haven't lived to see everything you've worked for fall apart."

And it had come to that, he reflected despondently. In four days from now - on Friday before the close of business - a twenty-year-old mortgage on the hotel property was due for redemption and the investment syndicate holding the mortgage had declined to renew. At first, on learning of the decision, his reaction had been surprise, though not concern. Plenty of other lenders, he assumed, would willingly take over - at a higher interest rate, no doubt but, on whatever terms, producing the two million dollars needed. It was only when he had been decisively turned down by everyone approached - banks, trusts, insurance companies, and private lenders - that his original confidence waned. One banker whom he knew well advised him frankly, "Hotels like yours are out of favor, Warren. A lot of people think the day of the big independents is over, and nowadays the chain hotels are the only ones which can show reasonable profit. Besides, look at your balance sheet.