Storyville
“I’m a hoteller,” Harry would always say, beaming with mirth, after he had strolled up to the front desk, leaned on his elbow at one corner, and gazed across the lobby. “Not a hotelier. That’s the cursed fate of your boss,” he would always add, with a laugh.
Mick laughed, almost mechanically, at the old joke he had already heard so many times. He wished the old man would drift away, to the card game in the far corner or out to some bar for slow drinks, anywhere but the front desk where Mick wanted nothing more than to be left alone with his book. But he was under orders from Mr. Jorgensen, the owner, to engage and interact with the residents whenever they were around. And they were almost always around, chatting at the desk, sunk into the beaten armchairs nearby, playing endless games of nickel-ante pinochle.
If they were playing cards, or laying on the couch just beyond the armchairs, Mick could rationalize that the old men wanted to be left alone and he could keep reading, but if they were in the armchairs or at the desk he had to chat right along, listening with feigned interest to the stories and jokes he had heard too many times, keeping them happy with the old men’s hotel and paying the five dollars more a month than the hotel down the block charged.
The only positive Mick saw was that all of them went to bed early, starting to drift upstairs by nine p.m. and leaving the lobby empty by ten. By the time they woke and were ready for the day by five or six a.m., Jorgensen was behind the desk and Mick was comfortably home in bed. The hotel earned just enough for a night manager but not for daytime, leaving Jorgensen in charge when the old men were at their most lively and talkative.
“You wouldn’t catch me dead, playing with those swindlers,” Harry said, almost calling out at the others at the pinochle table, yet also confiding in Mick. The night clerk grunted, as if in assent, not seeing any need to point out that Harry was playing pinochle when Mick started his shift, and had probably been playing all afternoon. Mick knew the old man never drank; he never mentioned it—so many of the others would lament loudly about needing a snort, and that nobody was ever buying—or smelled of booze or even tottered across the lobby. He was never off at a bar in the afternoons or evenings, like some of the others, and spent most of his days at pinochle and his evenings on the couch in front of the TV or, when that finally bored him, where he was right now, leaning on his elbow at the end of the front desk.
“Besides,” Harry continued, his voice still half-calling, “pinochle is penny-ante stuff.”
“Nickel ante,” one of the others called back. “You wish it was a penny, you cheap bastard.”
“Just an expression, George. Meaning trivial, insignificant. It’s nothing at all like the poker games I used to get into.”
Mick glanced down at his book, tempted by the thought of submerging himself back into reading, but knew he had to listen to Harry’s story, which he had already heard several times before. The best Mick could hope for was some new detail, some embellishment or exaggeration, to draw his interest.
“They’d run three nights straight. Friday night, I’d leave the factory, grab a sandwich at the Jewish deli across the street and climb the stairs to this little room above the drycleaners. I’d play all night Friday, day and night Saturday, day and night Sunday, then back to work Monday morning with just enough time to stop at home and change clothes.”
All the same so far, Mick thought.
“Tony the dealer would send some kid out for food every few hours, just to keep us at the tables and playing. I won pretty regularly, a little over breakeven during the day and then cleaning up at night when the others steadily got drunk from nipping at the bottle all the time. I never touched the stuff. Kept me sharp.”
Same, Mick thought.
“One time, this old drunk, Schreiber, lost a fifty-dollar pot to me because he thought he had a flush but only had four clubs. The fifth card was a spade that he thought was a club, because he couldn’t see straight after draining a pint of Old Crow.”
Hmmm, that’s new, Mick thought, rising with interest.
“The dealer showed him his error, sliding the four clubs off of the spade, and Schreiber jumped up, crying foul, complaining that the cards were worn out and the suits were illegible. ‘You’d think,’ he said, ‘that with the house taking a buck out of every pot, they could buy a new deck of cards every now and then.’ Tony held his ground, and Schreiber crabbed a while longer, swaying side to side and struggling to focus his eyes, before he finally threw up his hands. ‘Enough,’ was all he said, and tossed in his chips to cash out. After he staggered out the door, I never saw him again, not at poker, or in the neighborhood, or anywhere.”
Harry paused, looked deeply into Mick’s eyes, then looked away.
“Somebody told me they fished him out of the south branch of the river. He jumped off a bridge.”
Mick swallowed, his mouth dry, finding himself moved by what the old man had said. But then he checked himself, wondering if the Schreiber story was real, or just the exaggeration of an old man who was lonely and looking for attention. Yet, either way, Mick suddenly realized, Harry was telling a story. True or not, that dried throat proved the story was a good one that had grabbed Mick’s attention. Mick could see Schreiber staggering out the door and down the stairs, maybe seeing the bridge a few blocks away and getting an awful idea.
Mick glanced again at his book, thinking of the story in there, and soon realized that its author was no more of a storyteller than this old man, who had never published a book and probably didn’t even write, but who leaned on the corner of the front desk almost every evening, telling stories.