Tuesday

1

As with all hotels, the St. Gregory came awake early after a short, light sleep.

Near five a.m., night cleaning parties tiredly began dissembling their equipment to store it for another day.

A switchboard operator put down her knitting and made the first morning wake-up call. Between now and seven a.m., the switchboard group would awaken other guests. As usual, the peak would be 7:45, with close to a hundred and eighty calls requested. Even working at high speed, the three operators would have trouble completing that many in less than twenty minutes. Inevitably today there would be complaints from guests to management alleging that some operator had called them either too early or too late.

Two floors below street level, in the engineering control room, Wallace Santopadre, third-class stationary engineer, put down a paperback copy of Toynbee’s Greek Civilization. Now it was time for the final stroll of his watch around the engineers’ domain. He checked the hot-water system, noting that there would be plenty of hot water during the heavy demand period soon to come, when upwards eight hundred people might decide to take morning showers at the same time. Santopadre also noted that the massive air conditioners were running more easily as the result of a drop in outside temperature.

Not far from the engineering station, in an odorous room, Booker T. Graham wheeled today’s last trolley with garbage in and, a little at a time, spread the contents on a large flat tray, raking the mess back and forth like a gardener preparing topsoil. Whenever he saw a trophy – a returnable bottle, intact glassware, silverware, and sometimes a guest’s valuables – Booker T. retrieved it. At the end, what was left was pushed into the fire and a new portion spread out. The present month, almost ended, promised to be average for recoveries. So far, silverware had totalled nearly two thousand pieces, each of which was worth a dollar to the hotel. There were some four thousand bottles worth two cents each, eight hundred intact glasses, a quarter a piece, and a large assortment of other items. Graham yearly saved to the hotel about forty thousand dollars.

In the kitchen area, lights were on. 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 today’s two thousand lunches. 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. The fat of the fried chicken in the fryer had heated all right, though he thought it seemed quite a bit smokier than usual. He wondered if he should report the smokiness to someone, then remembered that only yesterday an assistant chef had scolded him for showing an interest in sauce preparation. This was none of his business either. Let someone else worry.

Someone was worrying in the hotel laundry half a block away. Mrs. Isles Schulder was concerned about a pile of soiled tablecloths. In the course of a working day the laundry would handle about twenty-five thousand pieces of linen, ranging from towels and bed sheets to greasy coveralls from Engineering. Mostly these required routine handling, but lately businessmen had stated to do figuring on tablecloths, using ball-point pens. Once ballpoint ink got wet, you could write a cloth off because, after that, nothing would ever get the ink out. So, Nellie – the laundry’s best spotter – would have to work hard today with the carbon tetrachloride, the only thing that could wash off the ink.

And so it went, through the entity of the hotel. Upon stage and behind 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. Looking in the mirror, he could find no fault with it as he studied his reflection. It showed a beaked nose and deep-set eyes with a hint of secretiveness. His hair, black in youth, was now white, thick and curly still. He looked as an eminent southern gentleman.

It was Tuesday. Including today, there were only four more days to prevent his lifetime’s work from turning into nothingness.

The hotel proprietor entered the dining room where Aloysius Royce had laid a breakfast table. He gestured for Royce to sit with him. Serving the two portions, 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. At length, pushing away his plate, Warren Trent observed, “You’d better make the most of this. Neither of us may be enjoying it much longer.”

Royce said, “The trust people haven’t changed their mind about renewing?”

“They haven’t and they won’t.”

“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.”

On Friday before the close of business – a twenty-year-old mortgage on the hotel property was due and the investment syndicate holding the mortgage had declined to renew. One banker whom he knew well advised him frankly, “Hotels like yours are out of favor, Warren. Nowadays the chain hotels have replaced the big independents and are the only ones, which can show profit. Look at your balance sheet. You’ve been losing money steadily.”

Curtis O’Keefe would arrive today and there was not the slightest doubt that he was fully briefed on the St. Gregory’s financial woes.

Warren Trent switched his thoughts to more immediate affairs. “You’re on the night report,” he told Aloysius Royce.

“I know,” Royce said. “I read it.” Complaint of excessive noise in room 1126, and then, in Peter McDermott’s handwriting, Dealt with by A. Royce and P. McD. “Miss Marsha Preyscott – daughter of the Mr. Preyscott – was almost raped. Do you want me to tell you about it?”

Royce and Warren Trent’s casual relationship was based upon the example of Aloysius Royce’s father. The elder Royce, who served Warren Trent first as body servant and later as companion and privileged friend, had always spoken out with disregard of consequences, which, in their early years together, drove Trent to white hot fury and later had made the two inseparable. Aloysius was a little boy when his father had died over a decade ago, but he had never forgotten Warren Trent’s face, grieving and tear stained, at the old Negro’s funeral. They had walked away from the cemetery together after Trent’s words, “You’ll stay on with me at the hotel. Later we’ll work something out.” The “something” had turned out to be college followed by law school, from which he would graduate in a few weeks’ time. In the meanwhile, Aloysius performed personal services, which Warren Trent accepted. At other times, they argued heatedly. And yet Aloysius Royce was conscious of a border never to be crossed. Now he said, “The young lady called for help. I happened to hear.” He described his own action and Peter McDermott’s intervention, which he neither praised nor criticized.

Warren Trent listened, and at the end said, “McDermott handled everything properly. Why don’t you like him?”

Royce was surprised by the old man’s perception. “Perhaps I don’t like big white football players proving how kind they are by being nice to colored boys.”

“Your father had an instinct for people. But he was a lot more tolerant than you.”

The elder Royce had always accepted cheerfully whatever life brought, without question or complaint. Knowledge of affairs beyond his own limited horizon rarely disturbed him. And yet he had an insight into fellow human beings too deep to be overlooked.

“You’d better tell young McDermott to come and see me. Ask him to come here. I’m a little tired this morning.”

“Mark Preyscott’s in Rome, eh? I suppose I ought to telephone him,” said Mr. Trent instead of greeting Peter McDermott.

“His daughter insists that we shouldn’t. And there was no rape as it was prevented.”

Warren Trent sighed and waved a hand in dismissal. “You deal with it all.” His tone made clear that he was already tired of the subject. There would be no telephone call to Rome.

“Something else I’d like to deal with concerns the room clerks.” Peter described the Albert Wells incident.

“We should have closed off that room years ago.”

“I don’t think we should close it if we tell the guest what he’s getting into.”

Warren Trent nodded. “Attend to it.”

Now Peter said, “I thought you should know about the Duke and Duchess of Croydon. The Duchess asked for you personally.” He described the incident and the differing version of the waiter Sol Natchez.

Warren Trent grumbled, “I know that damn woman. She won’t be satisfied unless the waiter’s fired.”

“I don’t believe he should be fired.”

“Then tell him to go fishing for a few days with pay. And warn him from me that next time he spills something, to be sure it’s boiling and over the Duchess’s head.”

Abruptly changing the subject, Warren Trent announced, “Curtis O’Keefe is checking in today. He wants two adjoining suites. You’d better make sure that everything’s in order.”

“Will Mr. O’Keefe be staying long?”

“I don’t know. It depends on a lot of things.”

For a moment Peter felt a surge of sympathy for the older man.

The hotel proprietor asked, “What’s our convention situation?”

“About half the chemical engineers have checked out; the rest will leave by today. Coming in – Gold Crown Cola is in and organized. They’ve taken three hundred and twenty rooms, which is better than we expected, and we’ve increased the lunch and banquet figures accordingly. The Congress of American Dentistry begins tomorrow, though some of their people checked in yesterday and there’ll be more today. They should take close to two hundred and eighty rooms.”

Warren Trent gave a satisfied grunt. At least the news was not all bad.

“We had a full house last night,” Warren Trent said. He added, “Can we handle today’s arrivals?”

“It’ll be close. Our over-bookings are a little high.”

Like all hotels, the St. Gregory accepted more reservations than it had rooms available. It gambled on the certain foreknowledge that some people who made reservations would fail to show up, so the problem resolved itself into guessing the true percentage of non-arrivals. Most times, experience and luck allowed the hotel to come out with all rooms occupied – the ideal situation.

But once in a while an estimate went wrong.

In Peter’s own experience the worst occasion was when a baker’s convention, meeting in New York, decided to remain an extra day so that some of its members could take a moonlight cruise around Manhattan. Two hundred and fifty bakers and their wives stayed on without telling the hotel, which expected them to check out so an engineers’ convention could move in. Hundreds of angry engineers and their women waited in the lobby that night, some waving reservations made two years earlier. In the end, the city’s other hotels being already filled, the new arrivals were dispersed to motels in outlying New York until next day when the bakers went innocently away. But the monumental taxi bills of the engineers were paid by the hotel and exceeded the profit on both conventions.

Peter said, “I talked with the Roosevelt. If we’re in a jam tonight, they can help us out with maybe thirty rooms.” Even fiercely competitive hotels aided each other in that kind of crisis, never knowing when the roles would be reversed.

“All right,” Warren Trent said, a cloud of cigar smoke above him, “now what’s the outlook for the fall?”

“It’s disappointing. The two big union conventions have been cancelled.”

“Why?”

“It’s the same reason I warned you about earlier. We’ve continued to discriminate. We haven’t complied with the Civil Rights Act, and the unions resent it.” Involuntarily, Peter glanced toward Aloysius Royce who had come into the room.

“More conventions, and just plain folks, are going to stay away until this hotel and others like it admit that times have changed,” remarked Royce.

“It so happens,” Peter said quietly, “that I agree with what he said.”

“You’re being fools, both of you,” grunted Warren Trent.

When Warren Trent heard the outer door close behind Peter McDermott and Aloysius Royce’s footsteps return to the small book-lined sitting room, which was the young Negro’s private domain, the hotel proprietor noticed how quiet it was in the living room. There was only a whisper from the air conditioning, and occasional stray sounds from the city below. Sitting quietly here, the memory stirred him.

More than thirty years since he had carried Hester, as a new, young bride, across the threshold of this very room. And how short a time they had had: those few brief years, joyous beyond measure, until the paralytic polio struck without warning. It had killed Hester in twenty-four hours, leaving Warren Trent, mourning and alone, and the St. Gregory Hotel. Warren Trent remembered her like a sweet spring flower, who had made his days gentle and his life richer, as no one had before or since.

In the silence, a rustle of silk seemed to come from the doorway behind him. He turned his head, but the room was empty and, unusually, moisture dimmed his eyes.

Was the hotel worth fighting for? Surrender: perhaps that was the answer. Surrender to changing times.

And yet… if he did, what else was left?

Nothing. For himself there would be nothing left, not even the ghosts that walked this floor.

No! He would not sell out. Not yet. While there was still hope, he would hold on.