The Pink Hotel by Patrick Dennis & Dorothy Erskine Read Free Book Online

bills, and that all the big, robber nations were international thieves, ancient in dishonor. “Finest country in Europe,” she would say about each of the little fellows in turn. “Most corrupt people in the world,” about each of the powers.
    The new guy finished registering and came over to her window, asking her if she sold stamps, if 223 was a good room, what time she went off duty. She dimpled, twinkled up at him and replied demurely, “At eight.” He asked her if she worked all the time, if she liked seafood, where the bar was, where he could get a good seafood dinner, if she could meet him at eight for dinner, drinks. Dukemer said No with considerable satisfaction. She had another date, she said, and gave him the old eye so that he wouldn’t quit trying.
    She was almost thirty-one even if she could pass for twenty-four, on a dark night, she added, and it was fun to say No. It was a damned sight more fun to say No than it was to go out with most of these guys, she thought. Me, I’ve heard everything. Every once in a while she got lonesome or restless or something and went out and got plastered with the first guy that asked her, but it was never very satisfactory. “Still looking for Mr. Right, I suppose,” she told herself acidly, “even after Harry.” Sometimes she thought that there weren’t any nice guys in the world, the more harmless they seemed to be, the quicker they made a pass at you.
    Dukemer craned her neck, leaning over the desk to the little wicket of her cage, and regarded the great golden clock intently. She wished . . . she didn’t know what. Of course she wished it was three o’clock instead of only ten-thirty, but when she looked at the clock, she wished all sorts of things, things like she was rich and young and in love with a guy who was in love with her. The clock made her feel funny.
     

801-2-3-4
     
    In the living room of one of the large suites on the eighth floor, Gracia and Alicia Mellott eyed one another coldly over a can of crabmeat. Chiang had refused it, and both Gracia and Alicia felt that the other was at fault. Both Gracia and Alicia respected Chiang above themselves, honored his royal Siamese blood, enjoyed their association on terms almost of equality with an aristocrat. Chiang sniffed delicately, licked his immaculate forepaws, and stalked away.
    They remembered too well their own escutcheon, that label. Mellott’s Mulled Malt the label said from a greenand gule shield, a bottle of Mellott’s ale rampant on an argent field. It was actually a good label; it stood for More, like before, but Alicia and Gracia had spent their lives trying to get away from it, were embarrassed by it, apologized for it, even though they owed all they had, their comfortable amenities and annuities, even Chiang himself, to Mellott’s.
    Chiang was their life, their darling. He was ten years old and as fat as lobster and fancy white tuna could make him. He was old and fat, but he was still their baby. His intestinal upsets were the occasion for their complete hysteria. When Chiang was ill, Alicia cooked chicken livers in butter over a grill on the grand piano. She sometimes put a towel under the grill, but it was politic to keep a large vase of flowers on that end of the piano. Hotel managers were barbarians; they didn’t seem to care about Chiang, if he was happy or not. Their old furniture, that was all they cared about!
    Gracia stroked Chiang, ran her hand lovingly along the knot in his tail as he stalked past. “He wud a mudder’s baby,” she said. Gracia was the elder and she had certain rights and privileges for that reason. She permitted Alicia to cook chicken livers for Chiang, but it was an act of deliberate bounty. Gracia was just, though, even to herself. When Chiang missed his sand pan, made a mess in the bathroom, Gracia stood on her seniority. “A doot, booful darling,” Gracia would say happily from her hands and knees. “A poor,sick baby boy.”
    He was so beautiful,