Carol knew she was being foolish, but, no matter, she couldn’t go back to Estelle’s, she would rather die, simply die. She went up the steps of the Hotel St Crispian. An aged doorman opened the door for her.
“Good evening, Miss.”
“What?”
I said, ‘Good evening, miss.’”
“Oh. Yes. Quite. Tell me, sir -- may I ask you a personal question.”
“I am an open book, ma’am.”
“Have you been working here long?”
“I have had the honor of working at the St Crispian for -- oh, my, let me just do the maths for a moment --”
“Take your time.”
“Minus nine -- um, let me see, that would make it thirty-, no, forty-, forty-one years. Yes, forty one-years this autumn.”
“Oh my, that is a long time.”
“A lifetime, madame. But a rich lifetime.”
“I admire your attitude.”
“My attitude?”
“Your outlook, shall we say.”
“Oh. Yes. My -- my Weltanschauung.”
“Yeah. I would go mad if I had your job.”
“Perhaps I have gone mad.”
“Yes, perhaps. But let me ask you since you’ve been working here so long, do you happen to know a man named Stanley Slade?”
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3 comments:
I really like the doorman....
I once said, "Good morning," to the lift man at the Myer centre. He said, "So they tell me," and just pulled his levers.
Lxx
Horace P. Sternwall tells the stories that lesser writers don't tell.
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