Hotel

5

Curtis O'Keefe marched into the busy, cavernous lobby swiftly, like an arrow piercing an apple's core. And a slightly decayed apple, he thought critically. Glancing around, his experienced hotel man's eye assimilated the signs. Small signs, but significant: a newspaper left in a chair and uncollected; a half-dozen cigarette butts in a sand urn by the elevators; a button missing from a bellboy's uniform; two burned-out light bulbs in the chandelier above. At the St. Charles Avenue entrance a uniformed doorman gossiped with a news vendor, a tide of guests and others breaking around them. Closer at hand an elderly assistant manager sat brooding at his desk, eyes down.

In a hotel of the O'Keefe chain, in the unlikely event of all such inefficiencies occurring at once, there would have been whip-cracking action, slashing reprimands and perhaps dismissals. But the St. Gregory isn't my hotel, Curtis O'Keefe reminded himself. Not yet.

He headed for Reception, a slender, dapper six-foot figure in precisely pressed charcoal gray, moving with dance-like, almost mincing, steps. The last was an O'Keefe characteristic whether on a handball court, as he often was, a ballroom floor or on the rolling deck of his oceangoing cruiser Innkeeper IV. His lithe athlete's body had been his pride through most of the fifty-six years in which he had manipulated himself upward from a lower-middleclass nonentity to become one of the nation's richest - and most restless - men.

At the marble-topped counter, barely looking up, a room clerk pushed a registration pad forward. The hotelier ignored it.

He announced evenly, "My name is O'Keefe and I have reserved two suites, one for myself, the other in the name of Miss Dorothy Lash." From the periphery of his vision he could see Dodo entering the lobby now: all legs and breasts, radiating sex like a pyrotechnic. Heads were turning, with breath indrawn, as always happened. He had left her at the car to supervise the baggage. She enjoyed doing things like that occasionally.

Anything requiring more cerebral strain passed her by.

His words had the effect of a neatly thrown grenade.

The room clerk stiffened, straightening his shoulders. As he faced the cool gray eyes which, effortlessly, seemed to bore into him, the clerk's attitude changed from indifference to solicitous respect. With nervous instinct, a hand went to his tie.

"Excuse me, sir. Mr. Curtis O'Keefe?"

The hotelier nodded, with a hovering half smile, his face composed, the same face which beamed benignly from a half-million book jackets of I Am Your Host, a copy placed prominently in every hotel room of the O'Keefe chain. (This book is for your entertainment and pleasure. If you would like to take it with you, please notify the room clerk and $1.25 will be added to your bill.)

"Yes, sir. I'm sure your suites are ready, sir. If you'll wait one moment, please."

As the clerk shuffled reservation and room slips, O'Keefe stepped back a pace from the counter, allowing other arrivals to move in. The reception desk, which a moment ago had been fairly quiet, was beginning one of the periodic surges which were part of every hotel day. Outside, in bright, warm sunshine, airport limousines and taxis were discharging passengers who had traveled south - as he himself had done - on the breakfast jet flight from New York. He noticed a convention was assembling. A banner suspended from the vaulted lobby roof proclaimed:

WELCOME DELEGATES CONGRESS OF AMERICAN DENTISTRY

Dodo joined him, two laden bellboys following like acolytes behind a goddess. Under the big floppy picture hat, which failed to conceal the flowing ash-blond hair, her baby blue eyes were wide as ever in the flawless childlike face.

"Curtie, they say there's a lotta dentists staying here."

He said drily, "I'm glad you told me. Otherwise I might never have known."

"Geez, well maybe I should get that filling done. I always mean to, then somehow never . . ."

"They're here to open their own mouths, not other people's."

Dodo looked puzzled, as she did so often, as if events around her were something she ought to understand but somehow didn't. An O'Keefe Hotels manager, who hadn't known his chief executive was listening, had declared of Dodo not long ago:

"Her brains are in her tits; only trouble is, they're not connected."

Some of O'Keefe's acquaintances, he knew, wondered about his choice of Dodo as a traveling companion when, with his wealth and influence, he could - within reason have anyone he chose. But then, of course, they could only guess - and almost certainly underestimate - the savage sensuality which Dodo could turn on or obligingly leave quietly simmering, according to his own mood. Her mud stupidities, as well as the frequent gaucheries which seemed to bother others, he thought of as merely amusing - perhaps because he grew tired at times of being surrounded by clever, vigilant minds, forever striving to match the astuteness of his own.

He supposed, though, he would dispense with Dodo soon. She had been a fixture now for almost a year longer than most of the others. There were always plenty more starlets to be plucked from the Hollywood galaxy. He would, of course, take care of her, using his ample influence to arrange a supporting role or two and, who knew, perhaps she might even make the grade. She had the body and the face. Others had risen high on those commodities alone.

The room clerk returned to the front counter. "Everything is ready, sir."

Curtis O'Keefe nodded. Then, led by the bell captain Herbie Chandler, who had swiftly materialized, their small procession moved to a waiting elevator.