CHAPTER 4
From The Purging Of Ruen, Chapter 26
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In which Oscar returns to Hotel d”Ruen to find it’s in a much worse state than he left it, and that the dining room is still out of bounds because of said state.
When he trotted up the hotel steps, more guests absconded, their sobs bordering on hyperventilation. The stench that followed hit him like something very large, very fast and made entirely of steel. He staggered backwards, with the Dervy catching him before he sprawled across the ground a second time.
Bracing against her, he swallowed some phlegm that decided it would prefer staying in the car.
“I don’t think this is going to be as easy as I’d imagined,” he said.
“It never ith.”
Wiping his mouth, he fought back up the steps and pushed at doors. With a snarl of anticipation, he entered. The Dervy, morbidly fascinated, followed.
Inside, they stopped, stared and gagged.
The foyer smelt like greasy cheese mixed with sweetened sick, and they cringed when chunks of plaster fell from its ceiling as frantic patrons gathered luggage upstairs. Wallpaper peeled and congealed in thick, soggy lumps, looking like a sneeze from something even larger than the steel thing mentioned previously. Pot plants were nothing more than singed sticks in withered soil, and furnishings looked as though they’d been gone over with a blow torch and an assortment of blunted cutlery. Remnants of tattered cordon hung from the ceiling like streamers designed to celebrate despair, while other bits were glued across walls like besieged toilet paper.
Picking their way across a floor that could only be described as flammable, they edged toward the dining room. With his scarf positioned as it had been the previous evening, Oscar made his way with a disgusted curiosity, while the Dervy followed in chokes of sheer disbelief. Peering through its doorway, he saw it had fared even worse than the foyer, which left him realising how badly the sign had been misspelt after all. With muffled obscenities, he pushed what was left of the door. It fell from what remained of hinge and splattered to the floor, before sinking.
Oscar tried saying something, but gagged instead.
Lost for words, the Dervy did the same.
Upon its walls, singed wallpaper peeled in curls around crusting lumps of aerosoled manure. The dining table sagged alarmingly, and would have broken altogether had it not been cast in plaster, albeit brown and lumpy. Chairs lay scattered across the room, thrown when diners fled a sick-soaked floor. Paw marks were streaked though oily, sludge splattered tables, and a mound of pooh steamed nearby, presumably deposited while slippery paws grappled with door handles.
The guilt was all too much for the Dervy and she turned to retch, hoiking up a few mouthfuls of sick, which she dribbled onto similar excretions already congealing upon the floor.
“Can I help you?” a voice asked pleasantly.
Both cats turned, with the Dervy pretending she’d been putting something in, rather than letting something out, of her mouth.
Percival S. Minton smiled in a manner unbefitting the state of venue. “Would you like a room?” he asked, wringing his paws as though trying to unscrew the things.
“I beg your pardon?” said Oscar, noticing the dog’s paws were covered in excrement, the wringing rendering it into a lather of sorts.
“A room. Would you like one?”
Oscar and the Dervy glanced at each other. But before Oscar could utter some appropriate profanities, the lift on the foyer’s far side pinged. From it tumbled several sobbing animals clutching half-packed suitcases. Lunging for the exit, one screamed at another whose suitcase suddenly fell apart to leave it, before grabbing his paw and dragging him from the premises amidst chokes, wails and an inadvertent defecation.
“It’s just that we have some vacancies at the moment,” Percival said, turning back to them.
The Dervy, overwhelmed with guilt, turned from him with a groan.
“Are you in charge here?” Oscar asked, his astonishment deciding it should probably rent a room.
Percival nodded, having been given a promotion he was not in the least expecting. “I am a Hospitality Patron Logistical Support Assistant.”
They stared at him.
“I collect bags,” he said. “At least, I did up until this morning. But because I am currently the only member of staff present, I’m doing everything else as well.”
“The only member of staff?”
“Yes. All the others are either crying, mute or in hospital, you see. Which is not a big problem, considering I’ve only had to manage patrons checking out, and that doesn’t involve much more than dealing with flying keys.”
In a convenient illustration, one of the escapees returned to hurl a key across the foyer, which landed beside Percival in some drying lumps of sick. Picking it up, he waved a pleasant thank you to the already absconded patron, before wiping it on his paw and wading toward the reception desk.
“You can’t seriously think animals will want rooms here after all this?” Oscar said, following.
Placing the key upon a full rack of others, Percival turned to them with another unbefitting smile. “Why not?”
Struggling for words, Oscar gave up on any and gestured at the congealing filth around them.
Raising a paw to imply he’d already considered it, he said, “It’s ambience.”
“Amb—this isn’t ambience!” Oscar cried. “This is disgusting! You can’t offer rooms while the hotel’s in this state! This is the single most revolting state of affairs I have ever had the misfortune of witnessing!” He turned to the Dervy. “No offence.”
But she shrugged, agreeing with him.
Percival leant upon his desk, his chin upon clasped paws, which gave him a small beard of pooh. “When one has been in the hotel game for as long as I have,” he said, “one learns to take advantage of changing circumstance. You see, I don’t believe in misfortune, only missed fortune.”
“Missed fortune,” Oscar repeated flatly.
Percival nodded. “In this business, nothing is more invigorating than change. Getting the pot stirred, if you will. Such change needs to be embraced. One needs to work with it and evolve the management model. One needs to seize opportunity and move forward in order to stay ahead of competition.” He winked at them. “Moving forward is the best way to get closure.”
Oscar placed his face in paws and groaned. When he removed it, he said, “Does your business model take into account, Percival, that no other hotel in Ruen currently has its interior draped in thick curtains of erupted faeces?”
Percival winked again. “Ambience.” Reaching for an appointment book, he said, “Apparently it’s all about seeing things differently, which is the best way of getting closure.”
“Please don’t say that.”
He looked up. “Say what?”
“That stupid expression: getting closure.”
“Why not?”
“Because it makes you sound like a door.”
Percival offered him the appointment book and a pen to sign in with.
“What’s this?” Oscar asked, not believing he was being offered a room after all.
“I thought you wanted a room.”
“No, Percival. I do not want a room.”
“Oh.” Crestfallen, he retracted both and closed the appointment book. Wiping pen upon sleeve, he slumped behind his desk, his eyes misty and bottom lip wobbling in a sort of generic surrender.
Oscar glanced at the Dervy, who indicated that she was not getting involved, having done more than enough already. He looked at the little dog, who was either dreadfully naive, or so inexperienced he’d resorted to some appalling textbook on hotel management as a means to cope.
“Look,” said Oscar, feeling sorry for him, “I don’t need a room here because I already have one.”
“You do?”
Oscar nodded.
Percival’s hope withered back into surrender and he held out his paw for yet another return of ke
y.
“But I don’t want to return my key,” Oscar said, “because my room is nice, it has a nice view and even the window frame is nice. In fact, I would like to keep my room and go to it now.”
Percival stared, hope blossoming across his face like a meadow of well-fertilized spring blooms. “You wish to stay?” he whispered.
Oscar nodded again.
The little dog, thrilled beyond remark, agreed wholeheartedly about the window frame in particular. With a flurry through appointment book, he declared that not only would Oscar be Hotel d’Ruen’s Guest of Honour, but would also be the hotel’s only guest.
“Would you like room service?” Percival asked, following them across the sticky floor toward lifts.
“Er, no.”
“Are you quite certain? I can easily get the kitchen fired up, wipe down a few saucepans and wash a couple of mugs?”
“I’d be extremely cautious about firing anything up in that kitchen, if I were you,” Oscar said, pressing at the lift call button, before realising it was also coated in pooh. “Unless you’re planning to demolish the place and start again from scratch.”
When the lift opened, it revealed more sobbing patrons clutching hastily packed luggage. Embarrassed, their sobbing faltered, and they found the sort of intrigue with their suitcases that they ought to have found when packing the things. Amidst mumbles, they sidled from the lift and hurried across the foyer—but not before hurling a key at Percival.
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Hotel Scenes from the Velvet Paw of Asquith Novels Page 6
