The door opened and on the dry side stood a tall man with a welcoming smile. “Hi,” the man said. “Welcome. You must be Joley? That’s quite a storm out there. How was your drive?”
Joley walked into the lobby and set down his overnight bag. “Jesus Christ, even in a drowning rain this place still stinks to high heaven. Who are you?”
“I’m Casey. I’m your host. I’m the hotel manager. I live here.”
“Well, I own this place,” Joley said. “So I guess that makes me your host. And in case my sisters have misinformed you, Hope Springs is not a hotel.”
“Not yet,” Casey said. He picked up Joley’s overnight bag. “I’ll show you to your room.”
———
Diana put dinner on the table at six-thirty. She had lit the lamps and set the longest table in the dining room to seat fourteen: all ten staff members including herself, plus Casey, plus Karen and Nellie Hope and their brother, Joel Hope, Junior. Joley brought two bottles of wine to the table and said, “How many of you folks want a glass of wine? I have another bottle of Pinot in my car.”
“Thanks, Mr. Hope, but nobody on the staff drinks,” Diana said.
Nellie quickly added, “Diana’s referring to the staff only, Joley. I’ll certainly take a glass or two of whatever you’re pouring.”
“Same here,” Karen added.
Joley said, “Right on. Diana, honey, would you happen to have a corkscrew?” and when she nodded, he asked her, “Will you do the honors, then? These two babies need to breathe. They’ve been closed up in these bottles since nineteen seventy-four, and they’re just aching to get drunk.”
Karen added, “Same here.”
Diana carried the two bottles of red back to the kitchen to open them, and when she brought them back and set them at the head of the table in front of the Hope family, Joley told her, “Thanks, doll. How about you, Casey? You up for a glass of Santa Barbara Pinot? Santa Barbara wineries are top notch. I should know. I own one. Pour you a glass?”
“No thanks, Joley. I’m not a drinker either.”
“Suit yourself,” Joley said. “Whatever.” He filled his sisters’ glasses and then his own. “Don’t start sipping till I say so. Good Pinot needs to breathe. So, Casey, how did you happen to come to join this hippie commune? I see you’re not dressed in yellow, which sets you apart from the rest of the congregation.”
“I was brought in to tune the Steinway,” Casey said. “I fell in love with the piano, and one thing led to another.”
“It probably didn’t need much tuning,” Joley said. “None of Karen’s friends play piano, or so I’ve been told. My sisters like to do ‘Heart and Soul.’ At least they used to when we were kids. God, what a racket. Even in tune, they sounded out of tune.”
“Casey plays the piano beautifully,” Diana said from the other end of the table.
“He’ll be entertaining our guests after dinner,” Nellie said. “Once we get our hotel up and running.”
Joley said, “If.”
Karen said, “When.”
“Whatever. So, Casey, what kind of music do you like to play? Please don’t say rock and roll.”
“Don’t worry.”
“No classical, either.”
“Fine.”
“Nothing by that asshole Randy Newman. Or that other faggot, Bobby Dylan.”
Casey shrugged. “Fine with me.”
“You know ‘Happy Birthday’?”
“What key?”
“How about ‘New York, New York’?”
Casey shook his head. “I don’t do that one.”
“Thank God,” Diana said.
“What’s wrong with ‘New York, New York’?” Joley asked. “My favorite song. Old Blue Eyes. He’s a personal friend of mine.”
Yeah, right, Casey thought.
“You do any Barry Manilow? He’s another personal friend of mine.”
“Nope.”
“How about Kenny Rogers? I sold him a house once, a million four. You know any Kenny Rogers?”
“Oh for God’s sake, Joley,” Nellie said. “Quit name-dropping. I could name-drop you under the table anyway. Could we please start drinking?”
Joley rubbed his hands together and said, “Well, this wine should be drinkable by now.” He took a sip, grinned, winked across the table at Casey, and declared, “Can do!”
Diana, at her far end of the table, clinked her spoon against her water glass and said, “Please, everyone, please dig in. Don’t let the food get cold. Nels, would you take some green beans and pass the bowl this way? Herbert, the green salad? Larry, why don’t you start the curry tofu casserole.”
When the casserole reached Casey, he served himself and then offered the serving dish to Joley. Joley raised his eyebrows. “Tofu? Okay, what the hell. I’ll give it a try.” He set the dish beside his plate and took a small helping. As he picked up the serving dish to pass it on to Nellie, the dish bumped against the nearest lamp and tipped it over. The globe rattled off the lamp, but Casey righted the base before any kerosene could spill out and catch fire.
“That was a close one,” Karen pointed out.
“Well Jesus Christ,” Joley answered. “Why the hell don’t you get this place wired for electricity? You just saw what might happen if someone accidentally—”
“Are you sure that was an accident?” Karen asked.
“Oh, come on, for God’s sake!”
“In the ten years my friends and I have lived here, nobody has ever knocked over a lighted lamp.”
“Same for my ten years before that,” Nellie added. “Besides, the lamplight is part of the charm of Hope Springs, just as it was when our parents lived here.”
“Whatever.” Joley took a bite of tofu. He chewed, frowned, and swallowed. “I don’t get tofu,” he said. “I mean, what’s the point? What are we trying to prove here?”
No one answered. Diana tried to respond, but felt intimidated by this intrusive bundle of aggression. She was well aware that her fellow yellow people, usually a chattering lot, were just as speechless. They hadn’t said a word since sitting down.
Casey took it upon himself to break the silence. “So, how often do you three Hopes get together?”
“The three of us haven’t been together in the same room for exactly ten years,” Karen answered. “Right here in this hotel. We’re not what you’d call a close family. But we do meet once a decade, on New Year’s Eve, here in our parents’ home, to talk business.”
“Which is what we’ll be doing this evening,” Joley said. “In the library, for our regular once-a-decade business meeting. Nine o’clock sharp. Just me and my adorable twin sisters. Pass the green beans, please.”
“Plus Casey,” Nellie said.
“Plus Casey what?” Joley said.
“Casey’s coming to our meeting tonight,” Karen said. “Like it or not, Joley.”
Joley took his time taking a serving of beans. He sipped his wine and set the glass down carefully. He looked up, first at Karen, then at Nellie, and said, “Bullshit.” He turned to Casey and said, “Sorry, my friend, but this is a private meeting. Strictly family business.”
Nellie said, “That’s why we want Casey there. He’s our business manager.”
“Your business manager? Ladies, I’m the business manager in this family.”
“What gives you the idea that you’re our business manager?” Karen said.
“Because I’m the only one of the three of us who has any business experience,” Joley said. “Or any business sense. Nellie spends more on parties and clothes and new cars than her money earns, and Karen just gives her money away, buying brown rice for a bunch of hippies in yellow. No offense, people. Meanwhile, I’m up in Santa Barbara, working my ass off making money in real estate, and I’m the one who pays the property taxes on this useless old monster of a hotel, not to mention the insurance on what is clearly a five-alarm fire hazard. That’s why I’m the family business manager.”
“Casey’s coming to ou
r meeting,” Karen said.
Nellie said, “It’s two against one, Joley.”
Joley glared. He drank. He shrugged. “Okay, whatever. As long as he keeps his mouth shut. And now I’d like to lighten things up and propose a toast. As you yellow people may not know, my lovely sisters were conceived exactly fifty years ago tonight, in that goofy bathhouse across the road, or so our father always claimed. So this is a special anniversary, and I’m going to celebrate it in style by giving Karen and Nellie each a rather generous gift. If they’re good. That’s all I’ll say about that until we have our family meeting.” He drank what was left in his wine glass, refilled it to the brim, and raised it for a toast.
“To the Hope sisters! Happy conception day, girls.”
———
After supervising the dishwashing brigade, Casey gave Diana a hug and told her, “Happy New Year, you.”
“Will you kiss me at midnight?” she asked.
“If we’re both still awake. Right now I have a meeting to go to.”
“Well, if you want to claim that kiss, you’ll find me in the bathhouse. Around midnight.”
———
Casey walked into the hotel library and closed the door behind him. He found the Hope siblings spread out as far as they could sit from one another, in armchairs in three corners of the room. Casey took the chair in the fourth corner.
Joley checked his Rolex. “Nine o’clock sharp. Good. At least you can tell time. That’s something. Shall we begin?”
“This meeting won’t take long, actually,” Nellie said. “As you already know, Joley, Karen and I will be turning this ‘useless old monster,’ as you called it, back into a hotel. A classy, elegant, successful, and profitable hotel and hot springs spa. There’s nothing we need to discuss, and we won’t need your advice, because we have our own business manager.”
Joley turned to Casey and said, “What’s your business experience, my friend?”
Before Casey could come up with something to say, Karen said, “Never mind that, Joley. Nellie and I have made up our minds, and you can’t stop us. It’s two against one.”
Joley rubbed his cheek and chuckled. “So you gals are ready to take over paying the property taxes and the insurance. How about a business license? Business liability insurance? Permits. DBA. State Board of Equalization. Bank account. Then there’s that environmental impact crap. And that’s just the beginning. You’ll have to manage a payroll, withhold taxes, provide benefits. Kitchen will pass inspection, will it? Who’s going to stand up to the county planning commission and jump through all the right hoops? This piano player?”
“You shut up, Joley.”
“Yeah, shut the hell up.”
Joley laughed out loud. “Well, I must say it’s a pleasure to see you two twins agreeing with each other for the first time in fifty years. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to present a solution to all the hassles I just brought up, plus dozens more I can’t even think of but are bound to get in your way. And I want to give you the gifts I mentioned at dinner. Okay if I do that now?”
“Okay,” Karen said.
Nellie said, “Your move, Joley.”
Joley grinned at one sister, then the other. “I am going to give you, for your fiftieth birthdays next September twenty-first, fifty million dollars apiece. If you’re good.”
After a stunned silence, Nellie burst out laughing. “Aw go on, Joley! You don’t have a hundred million dollars to give away, and if you did, you certainly wouldn’t give it to us.”
“Just a minute. I said if you’re good you’ll get fifty mill each. If you’re good.”
Karen said, “Fine. We’ll be good when you show us the cash. In the meantime we have a business to launch. As you’ve pointed out, that will be a lot of work and we may not have time for being good. Are we finished here?”
“Let me explain,” Joley said. “I’ve been working on a deal, and I’ve been offered a hundred and fifty million for Hope Springs—the whole two-hundred-acre property, including the hotel and that bathhouse. That’s fifty million dollars for each of us, and I think I’m entitled to a little gratitude here. So, girls, how about it?”
“You’re dreaming, Joley. Hope Springs is a nice place, but it’s not worth that kind of money.”
Joley smiled. “If I produce papers will you sign them? That’s what I mean by being good. Sign the papers and get rich. I assure you, this offer is for real. The Pacific Power Company is buying geothermal property all over the state, and SoCal Development wants to build the first planned community entirely heated and powered by geothermal energy. The whole mountain will be clear-cut and covered with homes using the cleanest, safest, cheapest energy in the world. It’s going to be beautiful, and we’re going to be rich. End of discussion. What do you say?”
Karen said, “No thanks. I have my community to think of, and my heart and mind are made up. Hope Springs will be a hotel again.”
Nellie didn’t speak, and her face said nothing.
Joley turned to her and said, “What about it, Nell? Want to make it two against one?”
Nellie took her time, then said, “It already is two against one, Joley. The Hope Sisters will have their hotel. And their mountainside, full of trees, not ticky-tacky.”
Joley was obviously ready for that one. “Okay, girls, I tell you what. SoCal Development’s offer is guaranteed for six months. We’ll give it half a year. Go ahead and open your hotel and see if you can make it work. If on July one you can present books that show the hotel is making a profit, cool. You have a hotel. If not, that is to say if the hotel’s still in the red after six months, you’ll sign on the dotted line, collect your fifty million each, and go on with your lives. Is it a deal?”
Karen said, “I guess that works for me. I’m confident this hotel will be a success.”
Nellie said, “I have people signed up for reservations already. Okay. Makes sense.”
Casey said, “Horse shit.”
“Huh?” Joley said.
“Makes no sense at all. This is a trap. You asked me what kind of business experience I’ve had. Well, most of my experience has been playing pianos in restaurants and saloons. I happen to know that nobody who owns a bar or a restaurant expects to break even the first year. I expect the same is true for a hotel. You have to spend far more than you earn for at least a year in order to get the business up and running. Ladies, don’t agree to these terms unless you’re ready to lose the bet, in which case you might as well quit now.”
Karen smiled and blew Casey a kiss. Nellie stood up and walked across the room to deliver her kiss to Casey in person.
Joley stood up, his face twitching and red. “You have no business in this room,” he told Casey. “Get out of here. This is a family meeting.”
“Aw can it, Joley,” Karen said. “This family meeting is adjourned. There are some nice warm baths across the driveway. Why don’t you go over there and soak your head?”
———
At half past eleven, Diana, wearing only her yellow robe and a pair of flip-flops, stepped out the front door of the hotel and into a cold north wind. She could see through the steady rain that the lanterns in the bathhouse were not lit, so she checked the pocket of her robe to see if she had matches. She did. Holding the robe tight about her body, she hurried down the front steps and ran across the gravel driveway, losing one of the flip-flops in a muddy puddle along the way. Inside the bathhouse she felt her way to the hook where a lantern hung, the lantern most protected from the wind.
She lit the lantern and watched the dark wooden walls warm up with light. As she took off her robe and hung it on a peg, she saw a pile of clothes resting on a bench. A man’s clothes. Good, she thought. He came. She looked around and saw the back of his head. He was sitting in bath number one, where the water was body temperature. Waiting for her.
Her teeth chattering and her body shuddering from the cold, Diana stepped down into bath two, 105 degrees, to get warm. She wanted to be warm for Ca
sey. When she was warm enough, even warmer than warm, and tired of waiting for Casey to join her in bath two, she climbed out of bath two and walked around to the front of bath one, where she stood naked in the lantern light, looking down at the face just above the water. The face was in shadow, so she couldn’t see if he was smiling or not.
God. Why am I so nervous? “Mind if I join you?” she asked.
“Be my guest.”
Not Casey. Oh shit. “Joley?”
“I could use some company about now,” he said. “And you look like great company, I must say. Diana, right?”
“I thought you were somebody else,” she said.
“Well, I’m not. Come on in. The water’s fine.”
Diana sat and dangled her legs over the edge, into the warm water.
“Come on. I won’t hurt you.”
She slid the rest of the way into the water. She was opposite him in the long trough of water, and his face was still in shadow. She felt him grasp her ankle, and she moved away, but he held onto her ankle.
“Let go.”
“Hey, I thought hippies didn’t have hang-ups. Come on. I could use a little comforting. I took a beating in that meeting. Those Hope sisters play rough. Care to give me a foot massage?”
Diana reached down and pried Joley’s fingers away from her ankle, but then he grabbed her hand and gave it a yank.
“Joley, stop it!”
“Oh shut up, sweetheart. I said I wouldn’t hurt you, and I won’t. Now c’mere.”
“No.”
“Yes!”
Diana’s eyes filled with tears, and through her tears she had a watery vision. There at the back of the bathhouse, a black body rose up and crawled out of bath number four, where the temperature was 120 degrees. In all her years at Hope Springs, Diana had seen only one person enter bath four, and he was the strangest, most remarkable person Diana had ever known.
“Look, I just want a little hug,” Joley pleaded. “Is that too much to ask?” Fingers clasped her thigh.
The black man stood up. Tall. Diana could see his black face in the lantern light when she blinked the tears from her eyes. His white hair and beard.
“Baby, I won’t take no for an answer. Now—”
Hot Springs Eternal Page 9
