Have a Warm Stay, Sir

A man makes the wrong choice in accommodations while on a business trip.

Have a Warm Stay, Sir. (Mill Revision)

 

By: Derek Streidl

 

 

 

 

 “Allow me to disturb you for a moment, sir,” The aging bell waiter inquired to a tall, squeamish looking man drenched in rain from the storm outside.

 

“May I move your bags to your room, sir?”

 

Allan stared at the old, Alfred-looking butler for a brief moment before uttering a response, one that came out as weak as he was as a man.

“No, no sir. Um . . . I have no problem carrying these upstairs. But, uh, thank you, I got it.” He stuttered out in his typically paranoid fashion. The sweat pouring off his brow was even noticeable to the almost blind bellhop, who nearly made a comment, though held off from such an obvious observation, which would surely make Allan nervous.

 

“Which way would the elevator be, fella?” Allan questioned the bellhop, briefly glancing at the tarnished nametag, which revealed his name to be Gudsley.

“Right ah that-a way sir, just cross through the foyer here and behind those, yep. Have a warm stay with us tonight at The Red Dog sir,” replied Gudsley in a broken Cajun accent.

“Yep, yeah thanks, and uh, have a good night,” Allan responded half-heartedly. Feeling satisfied with such a measly response, he picked up his leather bags and made his way towards the first floor room’s hallway.

 

This hotel was unlike any that Allan had ever stayed in before, full of creaks and groans he was unaccustomed to staying in while overseeing the deals he had been captaining for the past decade. However dangerous and scuzzy, there was always someone who had to be the connection for the rest of the country’s swiftly deepening heroin demand.

Allan had finally gained his rooftop access so to speak, becoming well known and well respected throughout the industry, despite his presented demeanor as a half-schizoid skeptic, always believing someone was not who they claimed to be, but after all, you have to be in this line of work. Allan knew how to divert the trail suspicion away from him; this was a market of impersonality, one of general carelessness for anyone who was harmed by his product. Allan distributed the brown mama, the H-train, the one drug that America abhorred as much as it loved it. This dirty powder made Allan one rich man; in fact he had been riding a Rockefeller type wave since his inception into the gritty world of distribution, becoming so acclimated to the lavishness of 5-star lodgings he had forgot what it felt like to stay in a daft little shack such as “The Red Dog.”

 

Allan reached his hotel room, number 18. As he made a shameful attempt to stick his rusty key into an even rustier lock, he noticed a couple having similar issues in the room next to his.

“Damn place has locks as old as the help don’t you think?” Allan prodded towards the plainly dressed couple, who were both staring at their door.

 

“Little bit of good old jimmying usually does the trick there, kind a like finding vein, just look for the right spot and bam, you’re home,” The dully-suited man answered in a similar fragmented Southern accent as Gudsley, as he shoved his key into the rickety lock, still shying his face from Allan, “Well, gotta buzz bud, you have a goodnight now.”

 

“Yeah, yeah. You too there guys. Have fun with, whatever it is I suppose you’re going to do,” Allan replied, winking his right eye at them as if to say I will keep your secret. The couple said nothing back and went into their room, promptly shoving the door shut behind them.

Hmm, Allan thought, never looked at me once. He shrugged his shoulders and entered his displeasing hotel room, one that perturbed him based on initial appearance. A shabby looking room, adorned in cheap window curtains and Big Lots style comforters made him an unpleased guest. The full-size mattress was ridden with stains as yellow as a smoker’s teeth.

“I don’t need to take this horse crap,” he thought as he scanned the shabby room with a scowl. “One call down to the front desk should fix up this obvious mistake.”

 

The phone rang in the most irritatingly elongated tone he had ever before had to be subjected to in his life, rings which continued on in the same droll pattern for five painful tones, the type of which elicit immediate hair pulling.

“Hello welcomed guest, this is the front desk, and how may I help you this evening?” answered a familiar old voice.

 

“Um, yes. I want to ask if you had any other rooms that would be less, how you say, appalling?” Allan asked sternly, showing a quick inflection in his voice. “I refuse to share a room with insects, or put my head down on a pillow that most obviously had a murder happen all over it. This will not do, simply will not do.”

 

“One moment sir,” Gudsley replied. As soon as Allan heard the phone click off, there was a rapping at the splintered door of room 18.

Nervously, Allan approached and opened the flimsy board, wrapping a handkerchief around the diseased looking doorknob to reveal the wrinkle-faced bellhop.

 

“You requested another room, sir?” Gudsley stated in a flat tone.

 

“I…I did, it is um just… this room is very…” Allan attempted to convey in a sudden state of shock.

 

“But, sir, this is our finest room. The best for the best sir! Just have a look at the amenities!” He responded raising his hand to point Allan in the opposite direction.

 

Precipitously, Allan spun his head around to find a scene that did match the one he had just been inside of; hand-carved posts and Egyptian cotton sheets adorned the beds, golden inlet paint covered every perfectly plastered wall. The carpet his Italian loafers stood on, was soft and inviting. As warm as the olive green curtains hanging over each of the lavishly grand windows that opened to the most breathtaking sunset you have laid your eyes upon. Unable to comprehend what he had just witnessed, Allan rubbed his eyes several times in an attempt to shake loose the obvious hallucination he was experiencing.

 

“Anything else, sir? Some Aspirin perhaps?” Gudsley inquired sporting a devilish smile.

“Ah no, I um, I think I am pretty good … now, mister um, mister?“ Allan stuttered in shock.

 

“Gudsley, sir. I’ll be here all evening. I am sure I will see you later Mister Calloway. Take care,” he said interrupting Allan’s understandable bewilderment. 

 

Allan, still fixated in utter disbelief pushed the oak varnished security door tightly shut and fell with his back up to it, sinking to the floor heavily breathing as he descended slowly.

“Okay, okay. Breathe. Breathe. Just forget it, it was obviously some sort of illusion he used on me. He must have heard my comment about the locks being as old as him, just wanted to get me back. Forget it. You have to stay here one night, and then you meet with Gus, lock down this new pipeline, and get the hell back to California where no ancient Louisianan busboy is playing visual tricks on you. No matter how good it was,” he pondered to himself. “Damn �" that was too good.”

 

The now even more anxious supplier began to lose his cool. Pacing the room, he began to worry if it was some sort of setup, some weird Twilight Zone themed sting operation. That maybe the feds had finally figured out his whole grand scheme or his boss, Mister Rod, had finally given him up in some kind of plea bargain half the organization had been gossiping he was involved with anyway.

Hell, Allan was no simpleton. In fact, he had been into the business of dealing death for dollars since he was a twelve year-old selling his Ritalin on the playground to the eighth graders. He knew that it was a job for a young man, and now he was no longer one. At 40 years old, Allan knew his days were limited. Besides, we cannot all be Escobar; we are not all capable of affording payoffs to every anti-criminal organization pretending they are involved in that Nixon era coined “Drug War” that seemed to be all the rage these days.

 

Just when his blood seemed to boil to the highest point it could before bursting from his eyes, came the next perturbing segment of Allan’s stay at The Red Dog. More screaming than one would encounter at a political protest began to arise from the next room. Banging on the walls was the least of the clamor, which sounded as if a literal hand grenade had gone off inside the room. As if World War III had just erupted between all nuclear-armed countries and the groups of protesting, stoned college kids who enjoyed rallying against such wars outside the White House, stood in the exact same place creating a cumulous cloud of unbearable, migraine-inducing racket.

 

“What in the hell is WRONG WITH THIS PLACE?!” Allan began screaming as he flew towards the wall, mashing both fists into the exquisite wallpaper. “Would you please KEEP IT DOWN? GOD D****T JUST SHUT UP!!”

 

Then as quick as the rambunctiousness had initiated, it desisted followed by a knock at the lavish door, which was much to Allan’s terror of course.

 

“I haven’t even called the desk,” Allan pondered. “How would he know…?”

 

“Complaints yet again, sir?” Gudsley again inquired in his timid old voice.

 

Startled once again by Gudsley’s promptness even when he had not been called, Allan responded, “Um, no. Well, I mean yes. The people next door to me, right there in room 19, were being so unbelievably loud I could not hear myself think. Please, can you go tell them to hush up please?”

 

“Sir, it would be my duty to go and handle any sort of guests making too loud a noise that it disturbs other guests,” Gudsley replied with an extremely worried face. “But you are the only room on this floor, sir.”

 

“What? What the hell are you talking about? I watched them walk into there not even an hour ago.” Allan hissed back, now knowing this Gudsley was a conniving trickster.

 

“Have a look sir,” Gudsley said stepping back from the doorframe to allow Allan’s curious head to poke itself out. “No other rooms as I said before.”

 

The scene was just as the old man had described it: an entire hallway full of nothing but blank walls in both directions. Allan was in the only room on the whole floor. Now becoming even more inflicted with agitation, he thanked the old bellboy and slammed the door in his battered, timeworn face.

 

Now in an even deeper state of panic, Allan realized he found himself right in the center of what was surely a Hitchcock film, or an extremely well-planned and elaborate joke of which was more than just some eerie old man pissed off about an age joke. This must be some sort of stupid prank, or a raid by the Feds.

Either way, Allan was ready to vacate the uncanny little house of horrors.  His mind was settled, now all he had to do was call his boss, set up a rain check on tomorrow’s deal using some sort of “I think this place is bugged” excuse, and get out of the real life Bates Motel. He scrambled around the lavish room for his cellular phone, finally locating it under the bed where it must have landed during his freak out over the noise. He hit the number and dialed, to which he received nothing but long beep after long beep, followed by an automated voice indicating that the number was no longer in service. He repeated this process several more times, each ending in the same manner as the previous attempts.

 

Realizing that he very well may be the target of an F.B.I. battering squad in a few minutes, he made the only decision in which he felt he had still possessed: hit the dusty trail with no looking back. He’d find a town that the Cartel had no pull in, meaning he now had to become an Eskimo, but anything is better than sitting the Federal penitentiary. He quickly gathered up his belongings and bolted out the heavy door. He stepped into the hallway with no other doors; in fact, now he couldn’t even find the entrance into the grand foyer that he had entered through at the night’s beginning.

 

“Okay, okay so no visible exit. That’s fine, that’s peachy,” He trembled to himself in a nervous clamor, wiping the perspiration running down his reddened face out onto the floor in front of him. “Okay, get it together, Allan. Think. I’m on the first floor, so I’m not above safe jumping distance. And what is at the end of nearly every hotel hallway in history? A window. A nice little, sealed shut window that gives you a glorious view of the parking lot you were just overcharged to acquire the pleasure of seeing. That is it; get to the window, Allan. Get to the damn window.”

 

He began pacing the seemingly infinite hallway, sweat running off of his head as if he had just finished a marathon.

 

“Allan!” cried the old voice of Gudsley. “Allan, sir! You forgot to close your door! That is not hotel policy, Allan. Please see the front desk.”

 

“No! Get away from me now!” Allan shouted hoarsely as he began sprinting for the hall’s end in which he still did not see.

 

“Allan, sir. Please return to the front desk,” Gudsley repeated once more.

 

“Screw off you old devil!” Allan responded with his head turned back. As soon as he twisted his neck round to see forward again, Gudsley appeared.

 

“What the hell �" what the HELL are you?” Allan furiously spat out, dropping his things in a state of pure catatonia.  “Leave me be! I never hurt you! I didn’t hurt anyone!”

 

“That you can see, sir,” Gudsley said in a harsher tone than he usually spoke in.

 

“What? What are you talking about you confused old demon?” he replied to the ancient man’s accusation.

 

“You have never hurt anyone you can see, sir. But those to which your eyes do not befall, the hurt you have caused is as widespread as plagues, as infectious as cancer, as unforgiving as death’s icy grip,” Gudsley recited in a more draconian manner. “Why do you think I wear these gloves sir? Hmm? It is because my hands never warm up. My job, this job, the only job that should include the fixation of death is mine. Yet you have weaseled your way into my industry. You and all the scummy rodents that pass through my halls; you’re vermin, and I am the expiratory force you have not yet met.”  

 

“Now, now listen. I don’t know who you think I am. But we can work this out, see?” Allan begged subtly, pulling a wad of hundred dollar bills from his mangled pants pocket. “We can come to an understanding, make a deal.”

 

“The deal was made from the first moment you took your current job, Mr. Calloway. The minute you moved that brown toxin from a Mexican car to the hands of a street distributor, you signed your deal,” Gudsley retorted.

 

“What, seriously, because I am a dope dealer?” Allan jokingly replied, mixed a strong essence of paranoia in his trembling voice. “You’re torturing me because I sold a little H to live my life on? It’s harmless dope if you’re not an idiot and don’t do it wrong, people just load the f****n’ needle the wrong way, put too much in it.”

 

“Yes, Allan. For the hundreds of thousands of mothers and fathers who go to sleep tonight, not knowing what heinous act of debauchery their child is currently engaged in just to score some of your harmless dope. For the hundreds of thousands of parents who will never touch their children again, because you’re harmless dope killed them. For the hundreds of thousands of children, who will never see their parents’ smiles again because they needed your harmless dope to simply make it through life?  The fact that you push a product, which results in thousands of deaths daily, and the fact you see nothing despicable with what you do. This is why I have come for you, Allan,” Gudsley said as he dropped his head to the ground.    

 

Infuriated beyond another statement to the demonic old fool, Allan decided what he must do. Pulling a front assisted-opening pocketknife from his left jacket pocket, he rushed with full force towards the awaiting monster keeping him trapped. Just as he lunged his weapon-readied hand towards Gudsley, the apparition vanished into thin air and with the momentum of his forceful thrust took the man known as Allan Calloway straight through the window he had been pining to find all along, plummeting thirteen feet down and landed promptly on his head’s right side leaving his neck to snap and his weapon to be inserted into his left arm, same area an addict might insert a needle.   

 

A few hours later, as police and EMT were cleaning up the scene, an aging bellhop named Gudsley stood silent, watching the hectic commotion.

 

“Nasty way to go, isn’t it,” said a finely dressed Latino male said with a thick, Columbian accent.

 

“It most certainly is, Mister?” Gudsley inquired as to the newly arrived guest’s name, eyes gazing up and down his expensive looking suit.

 

“Oh, Rodrigo, but you can just call me Rod,” He responded.

 

“Well, Mr. Rod, they say, the nastier the dirt you play in, the thicker the mud they bury you in,” Gudsley recanted with a small smirk. “Have a warm stay, sir.”

 

 

 

Author's Note

Recently published in The Mill by Baldwin Wallace