preview-the couple

preview-the couple

fiction
edward w pritchard

Most people, even if they are not married, have someone who functions as their partner, and when I worked as a night manager at a hotel I met an interesting such couple.

He wore white shoes, gold jewelry, expensive clothes and drove a bloated American car. Polite and refined he was the consummate salesman; always on, a little too charming, sometimes, and attentive to the names and peculiarities of those about him; even those of us who worked at the hotel. He stayed extended stay at the hotel and kept odd hours coming in often at 5AM, glib and fresh, and then tipping with twenty dollar bills, real money in those days. He was very popular with the hotel staff and he insisted that we all call him by his first name although he was nearly sixty, and he called us all by our first names as well which he always remembered. I was the only employee who he called Mr. and then my last name, although he did often call me green shoes, implying that I was like a New York stock broker, a little stuffy for a nineteen year old but he trusted me and often gave me little jobs to do of a confidential and furtive nature.

Primarily the jobs consisted of helping to pass the appropriate message to his in town girl friends, of which there were many, since he was generous with his money. Beautiful each, but past their prime and aging in our small unimportant city. He was undependable
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