But she wasn’t there.
‘Diane!’ I shouted, and heard my voice drowned out in the multitudinous cries of the crowd around the Wallow. ‘Diane, where are you?’
No answer.
‘Something wrong, buddy?’ asked the Earthie. But I didn’t have any answer for him. There was something wrong - plenty was wrong, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it.
She was gone. Search as I did, I couldn’t find her. Quayle. It had to be Quayle. Somehow, in the minutes when I left her out of my sight, he had begun his revenge.
3
Frantic, I hurried back to the hotel. Where else was there to go?
The room clerk looked at me funny. I don’t know how else to say it. It was the kind of look I got from everybody when I first came to Venus, but I hadn’t seen it since I got conditioned to live here and took off the brassard.
I went up in the elevator, and the room clerk’s look went out of my mind like a nobody vanishing into the fog. There wasn’t room for it. The only thing I had space for in my mind was Diane, Diane gone. I hurried down the corridor and unlocked the door, my fingers shaking. ‘Diane!’ I cried.
But there was no answer.
She wasn’t there. The room was empty - our room. We had checked into it that morning, then gone out to file for her divorce, eaten, wasted a little time, then decided to visit the Wallow since we were in a holiday mood.
But that mood was gone. It had been the slimmest of hopes, that she might have come back to the hotel, but now even that hope was gone…
And then I took a longer look at the room. It was incredible, as if someone had struck me.
The cigarette butts were still in the ashtrays.
A soggy towel hung sloppily across a rack.
Across the back of a chair Diane’s afternoon thermosuit lay slackly, its empty arms reaching out to the wastebasket.
The room had not been cleaned.
I turned slowly and looked at the back of the door, but I knew before I looked what I would see.
There was a pink slip taped on the door - pink, the colour of the complaint forms of the Maids, Butlers and Domestics. I read it with cold attention, though I knew what it would say.
Grievance Report
Re: Room 1635, Mr. and Mrs. Oliver Sawyer.
From: Joyce Trulove, 16th Floor Chambermaid.
As of this date, above persons spoke rudely to the undersigned on the phone, demanding service. Said: ‘This room is a disgusting mess.’ Also: ‘Get the hell up here and clean it up.’
The undersigned intends to prefer charges before the Grievance Committee, pending which time undersigned refuses to deal with persons again.
Signed:
J. Trulove, MB&D 886
I opened the door and went back down to the lobby, fast.
The desk clerk was all smiles, with a sneer folded into every one of them. ‘Yes, Mr. Sawyer. The room? Oh, I’m sorry, Mr. Sawyer. That Grievance Report - some sort of mistake, I’m sure. But the chambermaid...’
I said tightly: ‘What about the chambermaid?’
‘Oh, you know, Mr. Sawyer. They don’t like to be ordered around. You can’t blame them.’
I got a grip on myself: ‘Look. We didn’t even speak to the chambermaid. Don’t you understand? We were getting married. We came in, dropped the suitcases; grabbed something to eat down here in the dining hall, and that’s it Outside of that we weren’t even in the hotel.’
‘Oh. The dining hall, yes.’
I stopped short. ‘What about the dining hall?'
He shrugged faintly. ‘You know, Mr. Sawyer. I’m sorry to have to tell you, but there’s been a complaint in the dining room too.’
‘It isn’t possible!’
The clerk whispered thoughtfully: ‘Mr. Sawyer, are you telling me that I lie?’
I said fast: ‘It’s just a mistake, I mean. I remember everything that happened in the dining room. The waitress was perfectly wonderful. Why, we talked to her! And I left her a big tip! And-’
‘Excuse me, Mr. Sawyer. I’m rather busy.’
I took the warning.
There seemed to be only one thing to do.
I walked across the lobby of the hotel. It was like walking through a mushy daiquiri - ice floated on all sides of me. The atmosphere was congealed. The bellboys looked but saw me not; the elevator men glanced through me at the room clerk, but never realized I was alive. At the entrance to the dining room, the hostess sucked a tooth and stared at the wall and hummed quietly to herself.
I walked right past her. She didn’t blink.
I found a table and sat down.
In about fifteen minutes a waitress came up to my table. ‘Miss,’ I said eagerly, ‘I -’
But she checked the setting with a practised eye and walked away again.
I stared at her. More minutes passed.
I cleared my throat. ‘Miss,’ I said again to the waitress as she came to the table next to mine to take an order. ‘Miss!’
But she didn’t respond and, after one quick, curious glance, neither did the customers at the table.
It was the deep-freeze, all right; they were cutting me dead.
I turned back to the table, and just caught a glimpse of the back of another waitress. For a moment I had the crazy notion that she had been about to serve me. But that notion was wrong. She had been to my table, all right; the proof was on the table before me, a sheet of bright green paper.
I read it.
It was bad.
The pink slip from the chambermaid had been bad enough. It meant that no member of the local would ever clean a room for me in a hotel while the Grievance Report was outstanding. But all that meant was that I couldn’t live in a hotel, and there were, after all, other places to live if I worked at finding them. It wasn’t fatal.
But the green one was more serious. It was on the stationery of the Cooks, Waiters and Restaurant Workers:
Complaint
Re: Oliver Sawyer
Offense: Deliberate undertipping
Miss Gina Sortini of this restaurant served the above mentioned Customer luncheon. Customer seemed well satisfied with the service and made no complaint. Nor, according to affidavit of headwaiter, hostess and cashier, had Customer any just cause for complaint.
After Customer left, Waitress found two pennies under plate. It was not absentmindedness. Waitress distinctly remembers seeing Customer put money under plate, whereupon Customer’s Guest, a young woman, commented upon said gratuity and both Customer and Guest laughed and made several joking remarks.
Matter referred to Grievance Adjuster this date.
And that meant that eat I could or starve I might, but I would do neither of them in any public restaurant in Grendoon.
I remembered Diane’s comment and how we had laughed - it was true! But it had been because the tip was large; I was extravagant, she said.
There was no mistake here. It was deliberate. There was no longer any possible doubt.
I got up and walked slowly away from the table. I was the Invisible Man. I went out into the lobby, hesitated, crossed it to the door. I was still wearing my thermosuit; I hadn’t stayed in my room long enough to take it off. I walked hopelessly out of the door and into the hot grey night.
There was a pile of luggage on the broad steps outside the double-paned door. I tripped over it, hesitated, then looked more closely.
It was mine.
4
I rented an armoured car and raced out to the spaceport. Thank heaven it was only the hotels and restaurants so far!
But it would be more - Quayle would never stop - I would have to face it some day and find an answer or live through the total extinction of my personality that came with being shunned like any other nobody. But I wouldn’t face it now, no, not until I had found Diane.