Spitting off tall buildings - By Dan Fante Page 0,10

and refrigerator and a heavy old dinette table with chairs.

We sat down in the kitchen and Shi talked some more, always remembering to nod and smile at the end of each barely audible sentence.

He himself did not live at the hotel. He lived in an apartment in the Bronx with his wife and kid. Shi’s main complaint about being the General Manager/Day Manager for Jeffrey M. at the hotel was the turnover in the job I was interviewing for. He had fired the last night guy three days before, a person named Bill. A sixty-year-old retired post office clerk on a 3/4 pension. Bill had seemed responsible. Well-spoken. A non-drug-user. He’d looked okay too. The hidden deal about Bill was that he was divorced from a crazy twat who, when she located him at his new gig, began arriving in the middle of the night, banging on the front door with the hotel’s heavy lion iron knocker and screaming deranged shit about Bill for the world to hear. Shi had been forced to give the guy the bag because of his ‘X.’ Shi went on to say that he had stayed late for two weeks of evening shifts to train Bill and firing him had been Mistofsky’s idea, not his.

The man before the last guy had lasted only two months. His name was Isaac. Isaac was okay too, Shi said, except Mistofsky began noticing that receipts were down on the night shift. One night, worried that Isaac was running a game, stealing, Jeffrey M. sent a ringer in as bait. A fake guest. The ringer watched Isaac slip the cash into his pants’ pocket instead of the receipt drawer. Next morning, ba-boom, Isaac is history.

Shi paused for effect, looked me up and down, then bent across the table. ‘I’ll be direct,’ he said, always remembering to whisper. ‘I want to fill this position. I’m looking for the right man. Are you that man?’

I felt the question was stupid so I didn’t answer.

Shi took out an expensive-looking gold pen from the inside pocket of his suit coat, then pushed it and a piece of paper across the table to me. He told me to give myself a grade from one to ten as an employee on my hospitality industry job in California. Then, he said, he wanted me to write that grade down on the paper and pass it back to him. Another jelly-dick management maneuver acquired at hotel college.

I looked Shi in the eye, nodded up and down for effect the way he did, then gave him a big grin, the biggest grin my face would make. ‘I’m a goddam ten,’ I said. Then I wrote the number ten down on his paper in big numerals, circling it a few times in a flurry, then pushing it back. ‘I’m your guy, sir! Hands down! I’m ready to begin work immediately! Today, if you want me to.’

I was pretty sure that I had the gig. That afternoon in a pre-celebration mood, on the way back to my room, I purchased a jug of Mad Dog and nipped at it from the bag while riding back cross-town on the Forty-ninth Street bus.

My first day of on-the-job training began the next afternoon at shift-change time. Four p.m.

I was at the desk with my new boss. We’d been going over the check-in and housekeeping forms when a good-looking woman walked up the front steps to the hotel entrance. She was pulling a yellow dog which Shi informed me was a pedigreed Lhasa Apso dog.

The woman began searching in her handbag. Seeing this, Shi abruptly stopped what we were doing, left the desk and ran around to open the entrance door for the woman.

Her name was Tonya and her dog was named Bobo.

Tonya was in her late thirties. Tall, with long legs and flowing red hair. Fifteen or twenty pounds too heavy but very classy; wearing a sexy, outstanding, green dress.

For the first time Shi’s fake composure disappeared. He introduced us, beaming like he’d just won the lotto, talking in a real voice instead of his regular dufus management whisper: ‘Tonya,’ he said, ‘this is Bruno, our new Night Manager. Bruno this is Miss Von Hachten. She’s a resident of number three-sixteen.’

Miss Hot-shit did not stop or turn her head from tugging at Bobo, she mumbled something condescending like ‘Oh, hello,’ or ‘How nice,’ then continued across the faded yellow tulips patterned into the lobby carpet. To me the communiqué was clear; she had no