Hotel

12

"It's a funny thing." Christine put down the immense multicolored menu.

"I've had a feeling this week that something momentous is going to happen."

Peter McDermott smiled across their candle lit table, its silver and starched white napery gleaming. "Maybe it has already."

"No," Christine said. "At least, not in the way you mean. It's an uneasy kind of thing. I wish I could throw it off.

"Food and drink do wonders."

She laughed, responding to his mood, and closed the menu. "You order for both of us."

They were in Brennans Restaurant in the French Quarter. An hour earlier, driving a car he rented from the Hertz desk in the St. Gregory lobby, Peter had collected Christine from her apartment. They parked the car at Iberville, just inside the Quarter, and strolled the length of Royal Street, browsing at windows of the antique shops, with their strange mixture of objects d'art, imported bric-a-brac and Confederate weaponry, any sword in this box, ten dollars. It was a warm, sultry night, with the sounds of New Orleans surrounding them - a deep growl from buses in narrow streets, the clop and jingle of a horse-drawn fiacre, and from the Mississippi the melancholy wail of an outbound freighter.

Brennan's - as befitting the city's finest restaurant - had been crowded with diners. While waiting for their table, Peter and Christine sipped a leisurely Old Fashioned, herbsaint flavored, in the quiet, softly lighted patio.

Peter had a sense of well being and a delight in Christine's company. It continued as they were ushered to a table in the cool, main floor dining room. Now, accepting Christines suggestion, he beckoned their waiter.

He ordered for them both: the house's specialty combining Oysters Rockefeller, Bienville and Roffignac, flounder Nouvelle Orleans, stuffed with seasoned crabmeat, choux fleur Polonaise, pommes au four, and - from the hovering wine steward - a bottle of Montrachet.

"It's nice," Christine said appreciatively, "not to have to make decisions." She would be firm, she decided, in throwing off the sense of unease she had mentioned a moment ago. It was, after all, no more than intuition, perhaps simply explained by the fact that she had had less sleep than usual the previous night.

"With a well-run kitchen, as they have here," Peter said, "decisions about food ought not to matter much. It's a question of choice between equal qualities."

She chided him: "Your hotelship's showing."

"Sorry. I guess it does too often."

"Not really. And if you must know, I like it. I've sometimes wondered, though, what got you started to begin with."

"In the hotel business? I was a bellhop who became ambitious."

"It wasn't really that simple?"

"Probably not. I had some luck along with other things.

I lived in Brooklyn and in summers, between school, got a job as a bellboy in Manhattan. One night, the second summer, I put a drunk to bed - helped him upstairs, got him in pajamas and tucked him in."

"Did everyone get that kind of service?"

"No. It happened to be a quiet night and, besides, I'd had a lot of practice. I'd been doing the same thing at home - for my old man - for years." For an instant a flicker of sadness touched Peter's eyes, then he continued, "Anyway, it turned out that the one I'd put to bed was a writer for The New Yorker. A week or two after, he wrote about what happened. I think he called us 'the hotel that's gentler than mother's milk.' We took a lot of kidding, but it made the hotel look good."

"And you were promoted?"

"In a way. But mostly I got noticed."

"Here come the oysters," Christine said. Two aromatic heated plates, with the baked half shells in their underlayer of rock salt, were placed dextrously in front of them.

As Peter tasted and approved the Montrachet, Christine said, "Why is it that in Louisiana you can eat oysters all year round - Y in the month or not?"

He answered emphatically, "You can eat oysters anywhere, at any time. The Y-in-the-month idea is an old canard started four hundred years ago by an English country vicar. Name of Butler, I think. Scientists have ridiculed it, the U.S. Government says the rule is silly, but people still believe."

Christine nibbled an Oyster Bienville. "I always thought it was because they spawned in summer."

"So oysters do - some seasons - in New England and New York. But not in Chesapeake Bay, which is the largest oyster source in the world. There and in the South spawning can happen at any time of year. So there isn't a single good reason why northerners can't eat oysters around the calendar, just as in Louisiana."

There was a silence, then Christine said, "When you learn something, do you always remember it?"

"Mostly, I guess. I've a queer sort of mind that things stick to - a bit like an old-fashioned flypaper. In a way it's been lucky for me." He speared an Oyster Rockefeller, savoring its subtle absinthe flavoring.

"How lucky?"

"Well, that same summer - the one we were talking about - they let me try other jobs in the hotel, including helping out at the bar. I was getting interested by then and had borrowed some books. One was about mixing drinks." Peter paused, his mind leafing over events he had halfforgotten.

"I happened to be at the bar alone when a customer came in. I didn't know who he was, but he said, 'I hear you're the bright boy The New Yorker wrote about. Can you mix me a Rusty Nail?"'

"He was kidding?"

"No. But I'd have thought so if I hadn't read the ingredients - Drambuie and Scotch - a couple of hours earlier. That's what I mean by luck. Anyway, I mixed it and afterward he said, 'That's good, but you won't learn the hotel business this way. Things have changed since Work of Art.' I told him I didn't fancy myself as Myron Weagle, but wouldn't mind being Evelyn Orcham.

He laughed at that; I guess he'd read Arnold Bennett too. Then he gave me his card and told me to see him next day."

"He owned fifty hotels, I suppose."

"As it turned out, he didn't own anything. His name was Herb Fischer and he was a salesman - bulk canned goods, that kind of stuff. He was also pushy and a braggart, and all the time had a way of talking you down. But he knew the hotel business, and most people in it, because it was there he did his selling."

The oyster plates were removed. Now their waiter, backstopped by a red-coated captain, placed the steaming flounder before them.

"I'm afraid to eat," Christine said. "Nothing can possibly taste as heavenly as that." She sampled the succulent, superbly seasoned fish.

"Um! Incredibly, it's even better."

It was several minutes before she said, "Tell me about Mr. Fischer."

"Well, at first I thought he was just a big talker - you get a million of 'em in bars. What changed my mind was a letter from Cornell. It told me to report at Statler Hall - the School of Hotel Admin - for a selection interview. The way things turned out, they offered me a scholarship and I went there from high school. Afterward I discovered it happened because Herb badgered some hotel people into recommending me. I guess he was a good salesman."

"You only guess!"

Peter said thoughtfully, "I've never been quite sure. I owe a lot to Herb Fischer, but sometimes I wonder if people didn't do things, including giving him business, just to get rid of him. After it was fixed about Cornell I only saw him once again. I tried to thank him - the same way I tried to like him. But he wouldn't let me do either, just kept boasting, talking about deals he'd made, or would. Then he said I needed some clothes for college - he was right - and insisted on lending me two hundred dollars. It must have meant a lot, because I found out afterward his commissions weren't big. I paid him back by sending checks for small amounts. Most were never cashed."

"I think it's a wonderful story." Christine had listened raptly. "Why don't you see him any more?"

"He died," Peter said. "I'd tried to reach him several times, but we never seemed to make it. Then about a year ago I got a phone call from a lawyer - Herb didn't have any family, apparently. I went to the funeral.

And I found there were eight of us there - whom he'd all helped in the same kind of way. The funny thing was, with all his boasting he'd never told any of us about the others."

"I could cry," Christine said.

He nodded. "I know. I felt I wanted to then. I suppose it should have taught me something, though I've never been quite sure what. Maybe it's that some people raise a great big barrier, all the while wishing you'd tear it down, and if you don't you never really know them."

Christine was quiet through coffee - by agreement they had both ruled out dessert. At length she asked, "Do any of us really know what we want for ourselves?"

Peter considered. "Not entirely, I suppose. Though I know one thing I want to achieve - or at least something like it." He beckoned a waiter for their bill.

"Tell me."

"I'll do better than that," he said. "I'll show you."

Outside Brennan's they paused, adjusting from interior coolness to the warm night air. The city seemed quieter than an hour earlier. A few lights around were darkening, the Quarter's night life moving on to other cantons. Taking Christine's arm, Peter piloted her diagonally across Royal Street. They stopped at the southwest corner of St. Louis, looking directly ahead. "That's what I'd like to create," he said. "Something at least as good, or maybe better."

Beneath graceful grilled balconies and fluted iron columns, flickering gas lanterns cast light and shadow on the white-gray classical facade of the Royal Orleans Hotel. Through arched and mullioned windows amber light streamed outward. On the promenade sidewalk a doorman paced, in rich gold uniform and visored pillbox cap. High above, in a sudden breeze, flags and halliards snapped upon their staffs. A taxi drew up. The doorman moved swiftly to open its door. Women's heels clicked and men's laughter echoed as they moved inside. A door slammed. The taxi pulled away.

"There are some people," Peter said, "who believe the Royal Orleans is the finest hotel in North America. Whether you agree or not doesn't much matter. The point is: it shows how good a hotel can be."

They crossed St. Louis, toward the site which had once been traditional hotel, a center of Creole society, then slave mart, Civil War hospital, state capitol, and now hotel again. Peter's voice took on enthusiasm.

"They've everything going for them - history, style, a modern plant and imagination. For the new building there were two firms of New Orleans architects - one tradition steeped, the other modern. They proved you can build freshly yet retain old character."

The doorman, who had ceased pacing, held the main door open as they strolled inside. Directly ahead two giant blackamoor statues guarded white marble stairs to the lobby promenade. "The funny thing is," Peter said, "that with all that's individual, the Royal Orleans is a chain hotel." He added tersely, "But not Curtis O'Keefe's kind."

"More like Peter McDermott's?"

"There's a long way to go for that. And I took a step backward. I guess you know."

"Yes," Christine said, "I know. But you'll still do it. I'd bet a thousand dollars that some day you will."

He squeezed her arm. "If you've that kind of money, better buy some O'Keefe Hotels stock."

They strolled the length of the Royal Orleans lobby white marbled with antique white, citron and persimmon tapestries - leaving by the Royal Street doors.

For an hour and a half they sauntered through the Quarter, stopping at Preservation Hall to endure its stifling heat and crowded benches for the joy of Dixieland jazz at its purest; enjoying the comparative coolness of Jackson Square, with coffee at the French market on the river side, inspecting critically some of the bad art with which New Orleans abounded; and later, at the Court of the Two Sisters, sipping cool mint juleps under stars, subdued lights and lacy trees.

"It's been wonderful," Christine said. "Now I'm ready to go home."

Strolling toward Iberville and the parked car, a small Negro boy, with cardboard box and brushes, accosted them.

"Shoe shine, mister?"

Peter shook his head. "Too late, son."

The boy, bright eyed, stood squarely in their path, surveying Peter's feet. "Ah bet yo' twenty-five cents ah kin tell you where you got those shoes. Ah kin tell you th' city and th' state; and if ah kin - you give me twenty-five cents. But if ah cain't, ah'll give yo' twenty-five cents."

A year ago Peter had bought the shoes in Tenafly, New Jersey. He hesitated, with a feeling of taking advantage, then nodded. "Okay."

The boy's bright eyes flicked upward. "Mister, yo' got those shoes on yo' feet on the concrete sidewalk of New Orleans, in th' State o' Louisiana.

Now remember - ah said ah'd tell yo, where yo, got those shoes, not where yo' bought them.

They laughed, and Christine slipped her arm through Peter's as he paid the quarter. They were still laughing during the drive northward to Christine's apartment.