“He was that type,” I said. “Very untrendy.”
“He got the bad end of the business. A bunch of yakuza moved into the hotel and had a field day. Nothing so bad as to bother the law. They set up court in the lobby, and stared down anyone who walked into the place. You get the idea, no? Still, the guy held out for the count.”
“I can see it,” I said. The owner of the Dolphin Hotel was well acquainted with misery in its various forms. No small measure of misfortune was going to faze him.
“In the end, the Dolphin came out with the strangest counteroffer. Your guy told them he’d pack up shop on one condition. And you know what that was?”
“Haven’t a clue,” I said.
“Take a guess. Think, man, just a bit. It’s the answer to one of your other questions.”
“On the condition that they kept the Dolphin Hotel name. Is that it?”
“Bingo,” he said. “Those were the terms, and that’s what the buyers agreed to.”
“But c’mon, why?”
“It’s not such a bad name. ‘Dolphin Hotel’ sounds fair enough, as names go.”
“Well, I guess,” I said.
“What’s more, this hotel was supposed to be the flagship for a whole new chain of hotels that A ENTERPRISES was planning. Luxury hotels, not their usual top-of-the-middle class. And they didn’t have a name for it yet.”
“Voilà! The Dolphin Hotel Chain.”
“Right. A chain to rival the Hiltons and Hyatts of the world.”
“The Dolphin Hotel Chain,” I tried it out one more time. A heritage passed on, a dream unfurled. “So then what happened to the old Dolphin owner?”
“Who knows?”
I took another sip of my beer and scratched my ear with the tip of my pen.
“When he left they gave him a good chunk of money, so he could be doing almost anything. But there’s no way to trace him. He was a bit player, just passing through.”
“I suppose.”
“And that’s about it,” said my ex-partner. “That’s all I could find out. Nothing more. Will that do you?”
“Thanks. You’ve been loads of help,” I said.
He cleared his throat.
“You out some dough?” I asked.
“Nah,” he said. “I’ll buy the guy dinner, then take him to a club in Ginza, pay his carfare home. That’s not a lot, so forget about it. I can write it off as expenses anyway. Everything’s deductible. Hell, my accountant tells me all the time to spend more. So don’t worry about it. If you ever feel like going to a Ginza club, let me know. It’ll be on me. Seeing as you’ve never been to any of those places.”
“And what’s the attraction of a Ginza club?”
“Booze, girls,” he said. “Kind words from my tax accountant.”
“Why don’t you go with him?”
“I did, not so long ago,” he said, sounding absolutely bored.
We said our good-byes and hung up.
I started to think about my ex-partner. He was the same age as me, and already he was getting a paunch. All kinds of prescription drugs in his desk. Actually concerned about who won elections. Worried about his kids’ education. He was always fighting with his wife, but basically he was a real family man. He had his weaknesses to be sure, he was known to drink too much, but he was a hardworking, straightforward kind of guy. In every sense of the word.
We’d teamed up right after college and gotten on pretty well. It was a small translation business, and it gradually expanded in scale. We weren’t exactly the closest of friends, but we made a fine enough partnership. We saw each other every day like that, but we never fought once. He was quiet and well-mannered, and I myself wasn’t the arguing type. We had our differences, but managed to keep working together out of mutual respect. But when something unforeseen came up, we split up, perhaps at the best time too. He got started again, kept up both ends of the business, maybe better than when we were together, honestly. That is, if his client list is anything to go on. The company got bigger, he got a whole new crew. Even psychologically, he seemed a lot more secure.
More likely I was the one with problems. And I probably exerted a not-so-healthy influence over him. Which helps to explain why he was able to find his way after I left. Fawning and flattering to get the best out of his people, cracking stupid jokes with the woman who keeps the books, dutifully taking clients out to Ginza clubs no matter how dull he found it. He might have been too nervous to do that if I were still around. He was always aware of how I saw him, worried about what I would think. That was the kind of guy he was. Though, to tell the truth, I didn’t pay a lot of attention to what he was doing next to me.
Good he’s his own man now. In every way.
That is, by my leaving, he wasn’t afraid to act his age, and he came into his own.
So where did that leave me?
At nine o’clock the phone rang. I wasn’t expecting a call—nobody besides my ex-partner knew I was here—so at first the sound of the phone ringing didn’t register. After four rings I picked up the receiver.
“You were watching me in the lobby today, weren’t you?” It was my receptionist friend. She didn’t seem angry, but then she wasn’t exactly happy either. Her voice was without equivocation.
“Yes, I was,” I admitted.
Silence.
“I don’t like it when people watch me while I’m working. It makes me nervous and I start making mistakes. I could feel your eyes on me the whole time.”
“Sorry, I won’t stare at you again,” I said. “I was only watching you to give myself confidence. I didn’t think you’d get so nervous. From now on I’ll be more careful. Where are you calling from?”
“Home,” she answered. “I’m just about to take a bath and go to bed. You extended your stay, didn’t you?”
“Uh-huh. Business got postponed a bit.”
Another short silence.
“Do you think I’m too nervous?” she asked.
“I don’t know. It’s a different thing for everybody. But in any case, I promise not to stare again. I don’t want to ruin your work.”
She thought it over a second, then we said good night.
I hung up the phone, took a bath, and stretched out on the sofa reading until eleven-thirty. Then I dressed and stepped out into the hall. I walked it from one end to the other. It was like a maze. At the farthest recess was the staff elevator, a little hidden from view, next to the emergency staircase. If you followed the signs pointing past the guest rooms, you came to an elevator marked FREIGHT ONLY. I stood before it, noting that the elevator was stopped on the ground floor. No one seemed to be using it. From speakers in the ceiling came the strains of “Love Is Blue.” Paul Mauriat.
I pressed the button. The elevator roused itself and started to ascend. The digital display registered the floors—1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6—slowly but surely advancing, to the rhythm of the music. If someone was in the elevator, I could always plead ignorance. It was a mistake guests were probably making all the time. 11, 12, 13, 14—and rising steadily. I took one step back, dug my hands in my pockets, and waited for the doors to open.
15—the count stopped. There was a moment’s pause, and not a sound, then the door slid open. The elevator was empty.
Awfully quiet, I thought to myself. A far cry from that wheezing contraption in the old hotel. I got in and pressed 16. The door shut, soundlessly, again, I felt a slight movement, and the door opened. The sixteenth floor. Bright, fully lit, with “Love Is Blue” flowing out of the ceiling. No darkness, no musty odor. For good measure, I walked the entire floor from end to end. It proved to have the exact same layout as the fifteenth. Same winding hallways, same interminable array of guest rooms, same vending machine alcove midway along, same bank of guest elevators.
The carpet was deep red, rich with soft pile. You couldn’t hear your own footsteps. In fact, everything was resoundingly hushed. There was only “A Summer Place,” probably by Percy Faith. After getting to the end, I turned aro
und and walked back halfway to where the guest elevators were and took one down to the fifteenth floor. Then I went through the whole routine all over again. Staff elevator to the sixteenth floor, where there was the same, perfectly ordinary, well-lit floor as before. And it was still “A Summer Place.”
I gave up and went down to the fifteenth floor again, had two sips of brandy and hit the sack.
At dawn, the black changed back to gray. It was snowing. Well now, I thought, what do I do today?
As usual, there wasn’t anything to do.
I walked in the snow to Dunkin’ Donuts, chewed on a couple doughnuts, and read the morning paper as I sipped my coffee. I skimmed through an article about local elections. I looked through the movie listings. Nothing I particularly wanted to see, but there was this one film featuring a former junior high school classmate of mine. A teen angst movie by the title of Unrequited Love, with an up-and-coming teenage actress and an up-and-coming teenage singer. I could guess the sort of role my classmate would play: handsome, young teacher with his wits about him, tall, slim, all-around athlete, girls swooning all over him. Naturally the lead girl has a crush on him. So she spends Sunday baking cookies and takes them to his apartment. But there’s a boy who’s got his eyes on her. Average boy, kind of shy, … Typical. I could see the movie without seeing it.
When this classmate of mine became an actor, I went to see his first few films, partly out of curiosity. But before long I didn’t bother. Every movie was straight out of the same mold, and every role he had was basically the same: tall, handsome, athletic, clean-cut, often a student at first, then later teacher or doctor or young elite salaryman, adored by the girls around him. He had perfect teeth, a charming smile. Very suave. Though still not anything you’d want to pay money to see. Now I’m not a snob who only goes to see Fellini or Tarkovsky. No, not by any means. But this guy’s films were the pits. Low-budget productions with cliché plots and mediocre dialogue, movies you could tell even the directors didn’t care about.
Although, come to think of it, in real life the guy had been pretty much like the parts he played. He was nice enough, but who actually knew anything about him? We were in the same class during junior high school, and once we shared the same lab table on a science experiment. We were friendly. But even back then he was too nice to be real—just like in his movies. Girls were already falling all over him. If he talked to them, their eyes would go moist. If he lit a Bunsen burner with those graceful hands of his, it was like the opening ceremony of the Olympics. None of the girls ever noticed I was alive.
His grades were good too, always first or second in the class. Kind, sincere, friendly. It didn’t matter what kind of clothes he wore, he always looked neat and clean. Even when he took a leak, there was something elegant about him. And there’s hardly a male around who looks elegant when pissing. Of course, he was good at sports, active in school government. There was talk that he had a thing going with the most popular girl in the class, but no one knew for sure. All the teachers thought he was great, and on Parents’ Day all the mothers would be enchanted with him too. He was just that type. Though, like I said, it was hard to know what the guy was thinking.
His life was practically right out of the movies.
Why the hell would I pay money to go see a movie like that?
I tossed the newspaper into the trash and walked back to the hotel in the snow. In the lobby, I glanced at the front desk, but my friend was nowhere to be seen. I went over to the video game corner and played a couple rounds of Pacman and Galaxy. Nerve-racking. Games like those bring out the aggression in people. But they do kill time.
After that I went back to my room and read.
The day was impossible to get a handle on. When I got tired of reading, I looked out the window at the snow. It snowed the entire day. I found it inspiring that a sky could actually snow this much. At twelve o’clock I went down to the café for lunch. Then I returned to my room and read and watched the snow.
But the day wasn’t a complete loss. Around four o’clock, while I lay in bed reading, there was a knock on the door. It was my receptionist friend, standing there in glasses and light blue blazer. Without waiting for me to open the door any wider, she slipped into the room like a shadow and shut the door.
“Hotel policy. If they catch me here, I’m fired,” she said quickly.
She looked around the room and sat down on the sofa, straightening the hem of her skirt at her knees. Then she breathed a sigh. “I’m on my break now,” she said.
“I’m going to have a beer. Want something to drink?” I asked.
“No thanks. I don’t have too much time. You’ve been holed up inside here all day, haven’t you?”
“I didn’t have anything special to do. I’m just whiling away the hours, reading and watching the snow,” I said.
“What’s the book?”
“It’s about the Spanish Civil War. The whole history, from beginning to end. Full of innuendo.” To be sure, the Spanish Civil War was rich in historical suggestion. It was a real old-fashioned war.
“Listen, don’t take this wrong,” she interrupted me.
“Don’t take what wrong?” I asked.
Pause.
“You mean, your coming to my room?” I asked.
“Uh-huh.”
I sat down on the edge of the bed, beer in hand. “Don’t worry. I was surprised to see you standing at my door, but pleasantly surprised. I’m happy for some company. It’s been pretty boring.”
She stood up and in the middle of the room removed her blazer. She draped it over the back of a chair, carefully so it wouldn’t wrinkle. Then she walked over to me at the edge of the bed and sat down, her legs neatly aligned. Without the blazer, she seemed vulnerable, defenseless. I put my arm around her and she rested her head on my shoulder. Her white blouse was pressed crisply, and she smelled nice. We stayed in this position for five minutes. Me just holding her, her just sitting there, head on my shoulder, eyes closed, breathing softly, almost as if she were asleep. Out in the street, the snow kept falling, without end, swallowing all sound.
She was tired. She needed somewhere to roost. I was the nearest tree branch. I understood. It seemed unreasonable, unfair, that a woman so young and beautiful should be so exhausted. Of course, it was neither unreasonable nor unfair. Exhaustion pays no mind to age or beauty. Like rain and earthquakes and hail and floods.
Then she raised her head, stood up, and slipped her blazer back on. She walked over to the sofa, sat down, and fiddled with the ring on her pinkie. In her uniform, she seemed stiff and distant.
I kept sitting on the edge of the bed.
“You know that weird experience you had on the sixteenth floor?” I began, “did you do anything special or was there something out of the ordinary? Like before you got into the elevator, or while you were going up?”
She cocked her head quizzically. “Hmm … let me think. No, I don’t think so. But I can’t really remember.”
“There wasn’t a hint of anything odd?”
“Everything was like always,” she shrugged. “There was nothing unusual at all. And, really, it was a completely normal elevator ride, but when the door opened everything was pitch black. That’s all.”
“I see,” I said. “How about dinner somewhere tonight?”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I’ve made other plans for tonight.”
“How about tomorrow?”
“I have swim club tomorrow.”
“Swim club?” I said, smiling. “Did you know they had swim clubs in ancient Egypt?”
“No,” she said, “but I find it awfully hard to believe, don’t you?”
“No, it’s the truth. I learned that from some research I had to do once,” I explained. A token from the department of useless facts.
She looked at her watch and got up. “Well, thanks,” she said. And slid out the door, as noiselessly as when she entered. So much for my only handle on the day. It left me wondering how the ancie
nt Egyptians filled their days, what little pleasures they enjoyed as they whiled their weary way to death. Learning to swim, wrapping mummies. And the sum accomplishment of that you call a civilization.
By eleven o’clock that night I was out of things to do. I’d pretty well done everything. I’d trimmed my nails, taken a bath, cleaned my ears, even watched the news on TV. Did push-ups, sit-ups, stretched, ate dinner, finished my book. But I wasn’t sleepy. I thought about checking out the staff elevator one more time, but it was too early for that. I had to wait until after midnight for the comings and goings of the employees to fall off.
In the end I decided to go up to the lounge on the twenty-sixth floor. I nursed a martini while gazing out blankly at the flecks of white swirling down through the void. I thought about the ancient Egyptians, tried to imagine what kind of lives they led. Who were the ones that joined the swim club? No doubt, it was the Pharaoh’s clan, aristocrats, the upper classes. Trendy, jet-set ancient Egyptians. They probably had their own private section of the Nile or built special pools to teach their chic strokes in. Complete with handsome, likable swim instructor, like my friend the movie star, who’d say things like, “Excellent, Your Highness, only perhaps Thou might extend Thy right arm a little further for the crawl.”
The sky-blue waters of the Nile, the scintillating sun (thatched cabañas and palm fronds a must), spear-bearing soldiers to beat back the crocodiles and commoners, swaying reeds, the Pharaoh’s crowd. Princes, sure, but what about princesses? Did women learn to swim? Cleopatra, for instance. In her younger days looking like Jodie Foster, would she have swooned over my classmate, the swim instructor? Most likely. That’s what he was there for.
Somebody ought to make a film like that. I, for one, would pay to see it.
No, the swim instructor couldn’t be of poor birth. He’d be the son of the King of Israel or Assyria or somewhere like that, captured in battle and dragged back to Egypt, a slave. But he doesn’t lose an iota of his good-naturedness, even if he is a slave. That’s where he differs from Charlton Heston or Kirk Douglas. He flashes his brilliant white teeth in a smile and takes a leak, aristocratically. Then, standing on the banks of the Nile, he takes out a ukulele and bursts into a chorus of “Rock-a-Hula Baby.” Obviously he’s the only man for the part.