Arthur Hailey - Hotel

"Couldn't we just spin the wheel.."

"If we did, there'd be no gamble. Just a certainty." She stopped, considering. "What happened just now was for the second time, and there was some chemistry involved."

"Chemically, I thought we were doing fine."

"So in the course of things, there'd be a natural progression."

"I'm not only with you; Fra ahead."

"In bed, I imagine."

He said dreamily, "I've taken the left side - as you face the headboard."

"I've a disappointment for you."

"Don't tell me! I'll guess. You forgot to brush your teeth. Never mind, I'll wait."

She laughed. "You're hard to talk.."

"Talking wasn't exactly .."

"That's where we started."

Peter leaned back and blew a smoke ring. He followed it with a second and a third.

"I've always wanted to do that," Christine said. "I never could."

He asked, "What kind of disappointment?"

"A notion. That if what could happen ... happens, it ought to mean something for both of us."

"And would it for you?"

"It could, I think. I'm not sure." She was even less sure of her own reaction to what might come next.

He stubbed out his cigarette, then took Christine's and did the same. As he clasped her hands she felt her assurance crumble.

"We need to get to know each other." His eyes searched her face. "Words aren't always the best way."

His arms reached out and she came to him, at first pliantly, then with mounting, fierce excitement. Her lips formed eager, incoherent sounds and discretion fled, the reservations of a moment earlier dissolved. Trembling, and to the pounding of her heart, she told herself: whatever was to happen must take its course; neither doubt nor reasoning would divert it now. She could hear Peter's quickened breathing. She closed her eyes.

A pause. Then, unexpectedly, they were no longer close together.

"Sometimes," Peter said, "there are things you remember. They crop up at the damnedest times." His arms went around her, but now more tenderly.

He whispered, "You were right. Let's give it time."

She felt herself kissed gently, then heard footsteps recede. She heard the unlatching of the outer door and, a moment later, its closing.

She opened her eyes. "Peter dearest," she breathed. "there's no need to go. Please don't go!"

But there was only silence and, from outside, the faint whirr of a descending elevator.

15

A few minutes only remained of Tuesday.

In a Bourbon Street strip joint the big-hipped blonde leaned closer to her male companion, one hand resting on his thigh, the fingers of the other fondling the base of his neck. "Sure," she said. "Sure I want to go to bed with you, honey."

Stan somebody, he had said he was, from a hick town in Iowa she had never heard of. And if he breathes at me any more, she thought, I'll puke.

That's not bad breath in his mouth; it's a direct line from a sewer.

"Wadda we waitin' for, then?" the man asked thickly. He took her hand, moving it higher on the inside of his thigh. "I got something special for you there, baby."

She thought contemptuously: they were all the same, the loud-mouth chawbacons who came here - convinced that what they had between their legs was something exceptional which women panted for, and as irrationally proud as if they had grown it themselves like a prize cucumber. Probably, if put to a real white-hot test, this one would wind up incapable and whimpering, like others.

But she had no intention of finding out. God! - that stinking breath.

A few feet from their table the discordant jazz combo, too inexpert to get work at one of the better Bourbon Street places like the Famous Door or Paddock, was raggedly finishing a number. It had been danced - if you chose to call untutored shuffling a dance - by one Jane Mansfield. (A Bourbon Street gimmick was to take the name of a celebrated performer, misspell it slightly, and allocate it to an unknown with the hope that the public passing by might mistake it for the real thing.)

"Listen," the man from Iowa said impatiently, "whyn't we blow?"

"I already told you, sugar. I work here. I can't leave yet. I got my act to do."

"Piss on your act!"

"Now, honey, that's not nice." As if with sudden inspiration, the hippy blonde said, "What hotel you staying at?"

"St. Gregory."

"That's not far from here."

"Can have your pants off in five minutes."

She chided: "Won't I get a drink first?"

"You bet you will! Let's go!"

"Wait, Stanley darling! I've an idea."

The lines were going exactly right, she thought, like a smoothly running playlet. And why not? It was the thousandth performance, give or take a few hundred either way. For the past hour and a half Stan whoever-he-was from somewhere had docilely followed the tired old routine: the first drink - a try-on at four times the price he would have paid in an honest bar. Then the waiter had brought her over to join him. They had been served a succession of drinks, though, like the other girls who worked on bar commission, she had had cold tea instead of cheap whiskey which the customers got. And later she had tipped off the waiter to hustle the full treatment - a split bottle of domestic champagne for which the bill, though Stanley Sucker didn't know it yet, would be forty dollars - and just let him try to get out without paying!

So all that remained was to ditch him, though maybe in doing so - if the lines kept going right - she could earn another small commission. After all, she was entitled to some sort of bonus for enduring that stinking breath.

He was asking, "Wha' idea, baby?"

"Leave me your hotel key. You can get another at the desk; they always have spares. Soon as I'm through here I'll come and join you." She squeezed where he had placed her hand. "You just make sure you're ready for me."

I will be ready."

"All right, then. Give me the key."

It was in his hand. But held tightly.

He said doubtfully, "Hey, you sure you'll .

"Honey, I promise I'll fly." Her fingers moved again. The sickening slob would probably wet his pants in a minute. "After all, Stan, what girl wouldn't?"

He pressed the key upon her.

Before he could change his mind she had left the table. The waiter would handle the rest, helped by a muscle man if Bad Breath made trouble about the bill. He probably wouldn't, though; just as he wouldn't come back. The suckers never did.

She wondered how long he would lie hopefully awake in his hotel room, and how long it would take him to realize she wasn't coming, and never would, even if he stayed there the rest of his useless life.

Some two hours later, at the end of a day as dreary as most - though at least, she consoled herself, a little more productive - the big-hipped blonde sold the key for ten dollars.

The buyer was Keycase Milne.

WEDNESDAY

1

As the first gray streaks of a new dawn filtered tenuously above New Orleans, Keycase - sitting on the bed of his room at the St. Gregory - was refreshed, alert, and ready for work.

Through the previous afternoon and early evening he had slept soundly.

Then he had made an excursion from the hotel, returning at two a.m.. For an hour and a half he had slept again, waking promptly at the time he intended. Getting up, he shaved, showered, and at the end turned the shower control to cold. The icy rivulets set his body, first tingling, then glowing as he toweled himself vigorously.

One of his rituals before a professional foray was to put on fresh underwear and a clean, starched shirt. Now he could feel the pleasant crispness of the linen, supplementing the fine edge of tension to which he had honed himself. If momentarily a brief, uneasy doubt obtruded - a shadow of fear concerning the awful possibility of being sent down for fifteen years if he was caught once more - he dismissed it summarily.