“Would you like to push the button? Many of our guests prefer to push the button themselves. All the fun in a self-service elevator comes from pushing the button.”
“Does it?” Lome said nervously. “Yes, I suppose it does. Only I don’t know what floor I’m supposed to be on. I haven’t registered yet.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, in that case.” I hid the panel with my body and pushed number two. When the automatic doors opened I peered out. I could see no bellboy in the corridor. I pushed three.
“Must have decided to walk up,” I said to Mr. Lome. The elevator stopped and again I peered out, but there was no one on three either. I pushed four. “Must have caught the one going down,” I told Lome. When the elevator stopped there was no sign of a bellboy on four.
“Why does it keep stopping?” Lome asked.
“It’s a safety device, sir,” I said.
“Oh.”
The doors slid open at the fifth floor. A bellboy holding a key was staring at me.
“Front, boy,” I said. “Ah,” I said, “Mr. Lome’s key. Thank you very much.” I pulled the key from the fellow, pushed him into the elevator and then reached inside quickly and pushed fourteen.
“Don’t call me boy,” the bellboy hissed as the doors closed on him.
“Ah,” I said, looking at the key. “Five-twelve. Of course. Our very best.”
I pulled Lome along behind me through the corridor. “Five-twelve. Five-twelve,” I muttered, looking for the arrows on the wall. I turned left. When we came to the end of the corridor there were some numbers painted on the wall. “545–560. 560–590. Come, Mr. Lome, it’s the other way, I think.” I turned him around and we walked past the elevator again and into the opposite corridor. “Ah,” I said, reading the numbers on the doors, “five-eighteen. We’re on the trail now, I think, Mr. Lome. Five-sixteen. Five fourteen. Here we are. Five-twelve.”
I opened the door. “One of our—” It was a tiny, shabby room. There was a commode next to the bed. “There must be some mistake, sir,” I said.
“No, no, it’s fine,” Lome said. “Just fine. What’s Hecuba to me?”
It struck me at once: he was cheap. Tight. A millionaire-skinflint bastard. It was death to my fortune. Yet again, frog beneath frog. Ugly duckling, ugly duck.
“Well,” Lome said, bouncing on the bed, “thank you very much.”
I saw that I would not even get a tip. “Service of the hotel, sir,” I said.
“Appreciate it,” Lome said.
“‘In the Palace All Guests Are Kings,’” I said.
“Service has improved then,” Lome said. “Terrific.”
“‘In Dallas in the Palace There’s No Room for Malice,’” I said.
“That’s good,” Lome said. “Well, thank you again. Now if you’ll just leave my key.”
I had to act. The room clerk would be up in a minute. There wasn’t much hope for success, but I had come this far and I couldn’t back off now. I turned around suddenly, closed the door and locked it, and pulled off my bellboy’s cap.
“I’m not the bellboy, sir,” I said.
“You’re not?” he said.
“No, sir. I’m a live—”
Someone was pounding on the door.
“—wire.”
“There’s someone at the door,” Lome said with relief. “Perhaps we’d better see who it is.”
“A go—”
“The door,” Lome said.
“—getter.”
“My God,” the clerk was shouting outside the door, “he’s probably killing him. He’s his cousin from Muskogee, Oklahoma, and he bears him a terrible grudge.”
“‘In Dallas in the Palace the Guest Doesn’t Even Carry a Grudge,’” I said miserably.
Lome opened the door. The clerk was standing outside with a policeman and a man I had never seen, probably the house detective. Behind them the girl from the bookstore was holding my rubber raincoat over her arm.
“Ah,” I said, “thank you for bringing that. I thought I must have left it someplace. There’s been no rain, but—” I took it from her and started to move through the small crowd that had gathered outside Lome’s door.
“Just a minute,” the policeman said, “the Border Patrol wants to speak to you.”
“Mr. Lome,” I said, turning to him, “can you lend me ten thousand dollars, usual terms?”
“Well, no.”
“Well, could you put up bail?” I asked.
They took me away and questioned me for five hours. Eventually, I thought, they would have to let me go. All I had done, after all, was to lie to people, and there’s no law against that, is there?
It was the hotel that gave me the most trouble. They wanted to get me for impersonating one of their bellboys. Even after the man from the Border Patrol decided that he had no case and that I was harmless — that was the word he used, “harmless”—the hotel was determined to press charges. “As an example,” the hotel clerk said, as though they had a lot of trouble with people impersonating their bellboys. It looked pretty serious, but that night Lome came to visit me in my cell.
“Say,” he said, “those slogans you kept quoting, were those the hotel’s?”
“I made them up,” I said glumly.
We worked out a deal. I signed a paper saying that I had no right to the slogans and that they belonged to Mr. Lome now and forever in perpetuity — or until he decided what to do with them. In return, he promised to get the hotel to let me off; he would tell them that I had actually given pretty good service and that I had been particularly cautious in the elevator, always looking both ways at each floor.
“‘In Dallas in the Palace There’s No Room for Malice,’” Lome quoted. “It would make a very snappy towel.”
Inside an hour I was free to go.
Lome was delighted, the hotel was delighted, Dallas was delighted. When I dropped by this morning to thank the manager for not pressing charges I was told that in exchange for some slogans Lome had thought up, the hotel was holding a free room for him in perpetuity (this is evidently one of Lome’s favorite phrases — and there is, indeed, something awesome in it; I was reminded of those promises cemeteries make to prune graves or plant roses on them every June, through war, through peace).
The manager tells me that Lome’s assured stay there is good publicity for the hotel and that now that he can stay in Dallas for nothing he’ll probably come more often, which will be good for business in the city.
Only I am not delighted. I have come to make my fortune and have instead added to the fortunes of others. That’s the role of most men, I suppose. However, I cannot believe that Lome’s presence in Dallas can be of any long-range good to the city. I’ve been watching him. He is, I think, one of those absentee landlords of the spirit — a depleter of resources, leveler of forests, drainer of seas. Where he smiles, trains cannot long continue to stop.
This is nonsense. I have no real knowledge of the man. What can there be sinister in him? He is just a very successful businessman, a middleman to need. But he knows something, I keep thinking. He said it himself: what’s Hecuba to him? Having followed him this far, I must follow him further. My fortune is in that man. Why should he yield it up without a countersign?
I continue to follow Lome.
I am waiting for him when he comes out of the hotel in the morning. I wave. He sees me, frowns, and walks to some appointment. I walk behind him. When he turns to see if I am following I am still there, smiling and waving. He changes his mind and urgently beckons a taxi. I am prepared for this; I have instructed a driver to follow at my pace. When he gets into his cab I get into mine.