by Pat Henshaw
And the hotel? It hadn’t stolen his life like it had mine. Alcohol and drugs had stolen his life, not a building filled with old memories. I loved the guy but knew his limitations. The hotel was not only his heritage but also his albatross, and in the end, although he’d saved me, he’d anchored me to the hotel’s responsibilities too.
But I got the gist of the messages, so I’d resolved this year to seriously look for love, and refused to let the hotel steal my potential happiness.
Because of my management, the hotel—for decades a refuge for victims—was nearly self-sufficient these days. Unlike the days when it seemed like a constantly leaking dike, the hotel was siphoning less of my money and time, and practically ran itself with a layer of capable employees and a surplus of cash to keep it happy. I’d established a realistic chain of command even though my employees acted like the place was going to crumble around them if I wasn’t around to be boss.
They all got edgy when I handed over the reins on the occasionally slow Tuesdays and Wednesdays to visit my fuck buddies in the Bay Area—even though my crew knew I’d return to “run” the hotel, and I knew the place would be standing and in one piece when I got back. My organization meant I got a sex life of sorts and they got a confidence builder. It had been a win-win for the past few years.
But I wanted this year to be different. This year I would find my prince. Maybe not the handsome prince I’d always dreamed of, but an average prince who I loved and who loved me. Someone with an overload of patience and support, but maybe not dauntingly handsome like Vic or Hayden. I was looking for much more than a Grindr romance. I was going to give it my best shot. I refused to become my adoptive father, who had let the thought of responsibility overwhelm him into becoming a regretful, if loving drunk.
Night desk supervisor Greg ambled up, his old eightysomething legs wobbling more tonight than most times.
“Boss, there’s a boy came to the door. He say his uncle be staying at the Bandy, and he need to talk to the girls. Miss Justine, she waitin’ on you yonder near the back stairway. She know more than me ’bout him.”
“Did you call the sheriff?” Lloyd Campbell was my go-to guy when wayfarers arrived and needed help. He and Yarnell Grace, the nurse who worked the night shift at the downtown clinic. Without the two of them, I wouldn’t know what to do sometimes.
“Oh. No, boss. Maybe somebody else did?” Greg plucked at his sleeve with his head bowed.
“Don’t worry. We’ll get it straightened out,” I assured him.
As I walked down the ancient hallway, my hip and leg sending shockwaves of pain through me, I listened to the grumblings of the past. What was I walking into? Justine and Raynetta had relied on shelter here before, during, and after their years of coming to grips with their sexuality. Now I could feel the ghosts of long-dead Bandys stirring and making me wonder about this new visitor. For more than a century, so many refugees had walked these halls.
The hotel had been part of a frontier fort, a three-story clapboard way station for pioneers who braved the rocky Sierra Nevada Mountains on their way to a new life. After the wooden fort burned and was deemed unnecessary, the original structure was rebuilt of sunbaked bricks and dubbed Bandy’s Finest Hotel.
The hotel back then had forty rooms per floor above the opulent ground floor. After its modernization in the 1940s, when in-room bathrooms and closets were added, the rooms per floor went from forty to twenty.
The elaborately detailed hallway I walked down featured a ceiling embossed with angels and clouds, heavy gilt light fixtures on flocked wallpaper, beautifully polished mahogany wainscoting, and an intricate terrazzo floor. And this was the plain hallway. The rest of the hotel boasted more grandeur than little Stone Acres deserved. I was the lord of a nineteenth-century museum piece.
Justine, one of the permanent boarders on the third floor, hovered near the back stairway. Both she and her other half, Raynetta, towered well over six feet tall, rising as skinny as fence posts. Justine put an arm around me as I walked toward the lift.
“Honey, we just knew you’d be rushing too hard for those legs of yours.” The chattier of the two, Justine hitched me up to take the weight off my bones as we walked past the stairs to the lift. Her close-shaved white hair glistened in the moonlight pouring through the windows.
The boys, as my dad used to call Justine and Raynetta, had been permanent residents since they visited my granddad after getting out of the Army following the Vietnam War. The three of them became their own mental health support group, Justine and Raynetta running the Old Town barbershop and my granddad overseeing the Bandy. While I was growing up, I’d basically had three granddads until two of them had transformed into women. Then my family consisted of two grandmas, one granddad, and my father.
When Justine and I stepped out of the lift onto the third floor, I heard quiet sobbing, which got a little louder as we neared room 305. Justine’s hold on me had lessened as had the pain in my hip, so now I could walk quicker.
Inside 305, another Army vet named Letty Fire and Justine’s lover, Raynetta, were bent over the bed, holding a young teenager and trying to keep him wrapped in one of the hotel blankets. Letty’s basso voice muttering “hush, hush, my baby” wound in and out of the boy’s gasps and gulps between his sobs. Raynetta cried almost in time with the kid.
Letty looked up at me. The kid was a wreck. Large patches of dried blood discolored his plaid shirt and his pantless legs sprawled awkwardly, one on the bed, one hanging off, the blanket ineffectively covering him. His socks looked like he’d walked miles in them. I couldn’t see any shoes on the floor, but a dirty, ripped pair of jeans was heaped near the wall.
“My love,” Letty crooned, “the boss is here. Everything’s okay now. Don’t you worry, child. The boss will take care of you.”
Abruptly the kid shut up, and silence resounded in the room. The boy turned. His two blackened eyes stared at me, and his fear clutched at my heart. Drops of dried blood dangled from his lips and from one ear.
I laid my hand on his head, running my fingers through his dirty brown curls.
“Everything’s going to be all right,” I whispered. “I’m calling my very good friend Lloyd, and you’re going to see another of my good friends named Yarnell who’s a nurse and can help you get cleaned up. They’ll take care of you. All you need to do is relax and let us help.”
I started to hum “All Through the Night,” an old nursery lullaby, as I slid my phone from my pants pocket. As I hummed, the boy’s eyes shut and he leaned into Letty, who cuddled him.
“Don’t let him fall asleep,” I cautioned Letty. “And see if you can get his name and where he came from.”
Raynetta coughed. “I know who he is and where he’s from. He’s my nephew, Calvin.”
I looked down at her in surprise, only to be met with her belligerent stare. I rolled my eyes and nodded, which seemed to comfort her. Carefully, I rose from the bed. “Okay. Right. Keep him calm.” Then I bent to talk to the boy. “I’ll be right back with my friends Lloyd and Yarnell. Let’s see if your aunt can find you some clean pants before they get here, okay?”
At his slight nod and muttered thank-you, I walked into the hallway and called the sheriff. As a night of surprises went, this wasn’t exactly the one I had been praying for.
3
LLOYD AND Yarnell arrived while I was talking to Raynetta, trying to get her to tell me in some coherent way what was going on.
“I got a text from my nephew Hayden saying my brother Tobias, a real dipshit of astounding proportions, and his wife, Faith, a real browbeaten sweetheart, who should have divorced the craptastic Tobias years ago…. Where was I going with all of this?” She sighed, then looked away from me. I was about to remind her when she took a deep breath.
“Oh yeah, the text said he and his brother Victor were in town for a wedding when Hayden got a call from Tobias saying his son Calvin had run away from home. Tobias said Calvin might be headed our way. He said if any of us hear
d from Calvin, we were supposed to send him home. Like I ever would. Send him home, I mean.”
She sniffed, stopped, and took an even deeper breath, putting one hand on her chest while the other dabbed at the tears on her cheek.
Raynetta was related to Vic and Hayden? My world had suddenly shrunk, and I was reeling to keep up with it. But I didn’t interrupt, instead urging her to keep talking.
“After I got the text from Hayden, Calvin texted me to say he was in the park. He said he needed to talk to me. So I went to pick him up. He was slumped over in the bandstand. I don’t know who beat him or how he got here from their farm in Salinas. I haven’t kept up with Tobias, but I bet he’s the one who beat Calvin.” Raynetta glared at me and bit her lip. “I haven’t told Hayden that Calvin’s here yet, but I refuse to send the boy home. You and Hayden can fight me on this. I’ll even move out of the hotel. I refuse to send that poor boy back to Tobias.”
Considering Raynetta and Justine were stubborn and often tried to butt heads with me, I knew they meant to fight for Calvin. I had no battle with them on this. It had dawned on me that the much-too-handsome Hayden at the Stonewall party and his heart-stopping brother Vic might also get involved in the Calvin drama of this disaster of a family.
Bandy’s Finest Hotel had a long history of sheltering runaways and strays, those abused and hurting, those outcast and abandoned. Other parts of the country had their underground railroads and other organizations helping those who were escaping abuse. The foothills had the Bandy, and those in trouble not only seemed to know its name but where to find it in a pinch.
As I set my shoulders, ready to do whatever I could to help Calvin, and reassured Raynetta that I was on her side, I could hear footsteps approaching.
Oblivious as always to the possibility that someone might be trying to sleep in the hotel, Lloyd stomped upstairs, asking questions of Greg and evidently not getting answers. I told him what I knew, then turned him on Raynetta. After years of being abused by law enforcement in the past, she’d slowly been accepting the sheriff. This time she gave him a slight smile and nod, then slunk back away from him.
I stood next to her, putting my arm around her. “It’ll be okay. Just tell him what you told me.” She gave me doe eyes, and I gave her a hug. “Go on now.”
Behind us, I heard the lift moving. The grilled box had started life as a manually operated lift, but when I’d taken over the hotel, I’d had it motorized. After I decided to have the operation to make my legs even, the doctor told me that while the procedure would correct my birth defect, it would also put extra strain on my once-longer leg and the attached hip. So I knew I’d be using the lift more often and fixed it to be faster and more efficient.
Lloyd turned to me as we stood in the hallway. “Yarnell’s bringing up a collapsible stretcher and his emergency bag.”
I nodded.
As we passed number 306, hotel caretaker Jax Sax stuck his head out of the room, his arthritic hand clutching the door.
“You got things under control, boss?” His salt-and-pepper hair stood at attention, and his rheumy eyes blinked. “You need help?”
“No, Jax, We’ve got it. Go back to bed. It’ll be quieter now.”
The old man nodded, took a long look at the sheriff, and then closed the door. None of the other residents on the floor came forward, so I guessed they either had slept through the ruckus or were hiding behind their doors, waiting until daylight to find out what was happening.
Yarnell and Lloyd questioned Raynetta and Calvin for about two seconds before bundling up the boy and carrying him down the stairs. I followed them along the hallway, wondering if there was something more I could do to help. Then I remembered the boy’s pantless legs and made a pit stop at the lost-and-found pile in the closet next to the lift. I grabbed a pair of sweats and handed them to Yarnell.
“Thanks. I’ll be keeping him at the clinic overnight,” Yarnell told me. “You got a place for him to stay when I release him?”
I nodded. Number 305 was the kid’s for as long as he needed it. I felt a little bad that it wasn’t much bigger than a walk-in closet, but with the number of guys from Sam and Ned’s bachelor party and wedding here, we were filled up. After that, Max Greene was holding a fly-fishing clinic and then the summer season would be upon us. We wouldn’t have another slow period until mid-August. Room 305 was as good as it got for quite a while.
I’d planned to be manning the desk when the guys from the bachelor party checked in later tonight, but now I was too tired to move. I was ready to drop. So I asked Greg to watch the front desk and call me if anything came up that needed my attention. Then I quickly cleaned up 305, stripping the dirty linens and towels and throwing them down the laundry chute. In a stupor, I made the bed with fresh sheets, adding a new blanket and a bedspread, restocked the towels, soaps, and shampoos, and closed the door with a yawn.
As I waited for the lift to take me to the first floor, I wondered about the kid. I hoped he’d be okay. I knew Yarnell would take care of the scars from his beating and Lloyd would write up a case against the person—his father?—who’d done it. But where the kid would go next bothered me. I refused to think about him returning to a home where he was being abused. But what could I do about it?
As I descended, I could feel the hotel settling around me. Those who’d cowered behind their doors, unsure what they were supposed to do about the unexpected noises, and those who hadn’t followed the sheriff and Yarnell out would be crawling back into bed and breathing sighs of relief before they went back to sleep.
I checked the front desk to make sure the room keys were ready for Greg to hand out and the credit card machine was working properly for the guests signing in later.
“Be sure to come get me if there’s any problem,” I told Greg. “Don’t worry about waking me. Okay?”
“Sure thing, boss.” Greg’s chest puffed out like it always did when I left him in charge. Since he’d retired from the railroad, Greg’d had trouble sleeping. He said the floor was too still for his feet. He needed the rock and roll of a moving train at night. Giving him the back bedroom on the ground floor behind the lift and occasionally putting him in charge of the check-in desk had been two of my best decisions when I took over after graduating from California State Sacramento. I liked to think that I’d not only saved the hotel but also a lot of the retirees who’d had nowhere to go and nothing to do before I took them in and gave them homes and jobs.
Tonight I was exhausted. I couldn’t worry about the boy or the hotel or my dismal love life. It was all I could do to stagger to my apartment that took up a little over a third of the ground floor.
The door to my suite shut loudly behind me as I shuffled toward the bedroom. The sound jolted me enough that I partially woke, turned around, and walked back to lock the deadbolt. A large group of drunken, rowdy men would be staggering across the alley to check in and wander around finding their rooms, most probably with unauthorized guests in tow. If I weren’t sound asleep, they’d wake me up, and I’d be treated to the sounds of them having a lot more fun than I was having, which would depress me even more. I didn’t need them rattling the door as they tried to get into my room too. The deadbolt made the door immovable.
As I snuggled down under the covers, all I could think about was that the luscious Vic would be staying here tonight and for the next few days. I could always thank Vic for helping me get out of Stonewall tonight. Maybe more could come of my thanks.
Then I blanked out until later when I heard the dim sound of happy male voices and loud footsteps. The two or more going at it directly above my bed made me clutch my dick, but I was too tired to do much. I fell back asleep until sunlight barged into the room.
Still tired, I grudgingly rose and got myself ready to meet the day.
4
BESIDES FIXING the lift when I took over as manager of the hotel, I also turned what had once been a frontier dining room into a sitting and breakfast room. The swagged velvet drapes, lace
curtains, peacock wallpaper with gold-leaf eyes, and intricately carved mahogany tables and chairs stayed. After that, I didn’t have enough money to hire a chef and service staff to make a dining room self-sufficient, and I wasn’t about to let a national food service come in and make a mess of my room.
Instead, I agreed when Jax Sax suggested I hire his friend Gloria to manage the morning fare. She appeared every morning with rolls and donuts from Monique’s Bakery. She also made pots of coffee, put out the sweets, and lately had added an assortment of yogurts and some hardboiled eggs to create a morning buffet. After she got everything set up, she would fix what she called “a real breakfast” and bring it to my suite.
This morning I’d gotten up early and was going to eat in the breakfast room with the rest of the guests. For one thing, I wanted to find out what had gone on at Stonewall after I left the bachelor party. Even though I knew it was too early to hear, I was also waiting for the sheriff or Yarnell to call or stop by to tell me how the kid was doing and when I could expect him to move in upstairs.
“Oh man, Zeke, too bad you left early. You missed a good one last night.” A guy I couldn’t remember meeting greeted me in the foyer on the way to the breakfast room. “Hey, someone told me you play the fiddle. I woulda liked to hear you. My grandpappy played, and I haven’t heard one for years.”
“Well, come by Stonewall tonight, and I promise some fiddle tunes. How’s that?”
He beamed at me and nodded. It was little enough, and I’d planned to do it anyway.
