Late Night Grande Hotel (Part 1)

At 6,000 words, it seems too long to be a short story, too short to be anything else...I've tinkered with this piece off and on for a while. I've worked on it a bit more this past week in order to make it presentable for entry in a contest I became aware of last week...a contest where it, oddly enough, indeed fits at its unweildy size.

It was, like Seven Days, an experiment in non-linear storytelling. Not sure if it works completely but I'm fond of it just the same. It was inspired by listening to the Nanci Griffith song of the same name (though only the second part of the story references that directly.)

One not-quite seedy hotel...one not especially unusual night...fifteen disparate characters...

Late Night Grande Hotel, part 1 (of 9) :

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Part I: Lobby (Red)

If Red O'Malley had a real first name it was damned if anybody knew what it was. Not that he was a particularly close-mouthed fellow. He was in fact affable, in his own quiet, respect-inspiring way...the subject of his Christian name just never came up.

Every night he sat behind the sturdy, ornate reception desk...oak stained and weathered to impersonate mahogany...of the Grande eating submarine sandwiches built with loving precision along with chocolate bars, apple turnovers, and ice cold classic Coke (Red hated coffee and tea but liked caffeine rushes.)

Red O'Malley was an immense bear‑like presence behind the desk of the Grande. He was 6 feet, 3 inches, 325 pounds yet he possessed surprising grace and agility. Red had deep-set blue-green eyes and copious amounts of Lucy-red hair almost everywhere on his body. He had a full, wavy beard that some people had to restrain themselves from reaching out and caressing.

His body hair was a fiery expanse that could be seen to cover his shoulders and go down past his expansive belly underneath his neatly pressed white shirts. It cascaded along his brawny, tanned arms down to the back his evocatively tapered hands...everywhere on his body it seemed except on top of his massive head, its freckled dome smooth and always immaculate.

Red O'Malley spent every Wednesday through Sunday...5 PM to 2 AM...at his post. He never called in sick. He was never late. He never made or took personal calls. He never lingered when his shift was over.

No one knew exactly how old or young he was...but to most it seemed like he'd always been there. And to most, this was true. Red O'Malley had worked with a dozen managers and with God knows how many maids, bellboys, and custodians. Turnover was high at the Grande... but Red was eternal.

Like the Grande itself.

The Central City Grande Hotel had seen better days. She was vaguely shabby and shopworn despite the occasional paint job and wholesale changing of her rugs and drapes that her secession of absentee owners bestowed upon her. But there was, despite the fact that she now kept uneasy company with more saloons and tattoo parlors than swanky nightclubs, something eternally noble...bittersweet but still vaguely glorious... about the old girl.

And, like Red O'Malley, there were so many tales...some quite magical, some quite mundane...that she could tell.

This night was no different. Red looked over at Jerry, smirking humidly and skulking back to the kitchen after his second third-floor service run, and shook his head slightly. He knew that look all too well...315, who had come in before Red's shift, had to be a woman...a woman Jerry would never have except in the fertile realm of his imagination...