Revision: The Wellcrest

The Wellcrest

At one point in time the Wellcrest was a beautiful hotel. Or so it’s been said. In its better days it was most popular hotel in the city among the elite. There were banquets with tables covered in white linen and gold accented china. The doors to the ballroom were always open and big band, swing music flooded the lobby. Somewhere between then and now, something changed. Some say it was the war, but some say the employees got lazy. It’s hard to imagine the employees working at The Wellcrest during its prime, escorting guests in the right direction and smiling kindly.

There are only a few employees left and they are unexceptional to say the least. Dave Carter is the hotel manager. One can often find him leaning up against the front desk, with his right foot crossed over the other, using his tongue to get something stuck out of his teeth. Frank is the bartender and spends his days and nights serving dry scotches to men in moth infested su

gin to women wearing too much lipstick. Ron is the hotel cook and often spends more time in the back alley smoking Marlboros than he does in the kitchen chopping onions and prepping the hotel’s signature pot roast. Max is The Wellcrest’s latest addition as the new bell boy. He follows Dave around and caters to all the tasks Dave is too lazy to do himself. He welcomes guests, carries luggage, and is the only person in the hotel that calls Dave, Mr. Carter. The owner of the hotel visits often but is usually undetected.

Days and nights at The Wellcrest seem to run together. The schedule is the same. Max rolls out the dusty green carpet that lays under the awning over the front door of the hotel. Frank dries glasses behind the bar before stacking them on the cherry wood shelf behind him. Ron sneaks back into the kitchen through the side entrance patting fallen ash off his apron. While Dave stands by at the front desk, Max leads men and women to their rooms while carrying their luggage behind him.

In the early evening, Sheila, the hotel’s piano player, arrives. She always nods to Frank behind the bar as she pulls white sheet music from her purse and arranges is on the wooden stand above the keys. Her blonde hair falls over her shoulders in thick waves before she tucks it behind her ear. She sits down at the piano and the wood of the bench creaks. She always smooths her dress in her lap before her fingers hover over the keys and she starts to play. All the men watch her from a distance. All but one. He usually arrives ten minutes after she’s begun playing. When he walks through the doors her relaxed shoulders grow stiff. He’s older and his hair is starting to gray. His suits are always shiny and fitted around his gut. He walks promptly to the bar and sits on the first stool with a direct view of Sheila. Frank always brings him his drink without being asked and the man takes a sip without taking his eyes of her.

The employees tend to ignore much of what goes on in the hotel. Earlier this week, the front door yanked open and a lanky woman headed toward Dave who sat on a chair behind the desk using one of the room keys to clean his ear. She wore a short, orange dress with a black peter pan collar that covered only half of her protruded collar bone. Her black boots made her taller than Dave and reached the middle of her thigh. Dave threw the key onto the desk in front of him and straightened up.

        “Stay here and man the desk,” he told Max through gritted teeth, “I’ll be back in about an hour.”

         Before Max could protest Dave swung himself around the front desk and headed for the elevator where the woman was already standing. He wrapped his arm around her tiny waist and looked over his shoulder before slipping into the elevator. While he was gone Max checked in a man in his 50’s, and a woman who could have been his daughter, with no luggage. They only stayed for thirty minutes.  Then, he brought a scotch to an older man sitting in the dining room when Frank asked him to and organized the room keys behind the desk. An hour later the elevator dinged and out stepped Mr. Carter and the orange dress. She walked to the front door with a black duffle in one hand as she fixed her hair with the other. Mr. Carter smoothed his lapel from behind the desk and looked out into the lobby.

“Who was that, Mr. Carter?” Max asked as he watched her move through the revolving door.
“No one special,” said Dave.

      Very little changed from the day to day at The Wellcrest. The next night, Shelia had on a red silk dress and the man who watched her wore the same suit as before. And when the boney woman arrived she wore white. This time when Dave went upstairs with her he took something wrapped in a brown paper bag from under the desk with him. As he left, Ron came into the lobby with a cigarette dangled from his fingers. He asked Max to run out back and bring in crates of potatoes that were delivered. When he got back he stood and listened to Shelia play from behind the front desk.

There was an unspoken truth about why Sheila came back to the hotel to play each night. Tonight, the man who watched her got up from his seat at the bar and moved closer to her. He walked over to the piano slowly with his drink in his hand. The gold liquid rocked back and forth against the sides of his glass coating them in shimmer. When he reached the piano he put his drink down hard on the bench she was sitting on. Standing behind Shelia he bent over so his face was next to hers. She tried to move, but he grabbed her bare shoulder, his fingers making dents in her skin. Her fingers slid against the wrong keys altering the melody.

This man had an odd hold over her. She never got up and always showed up the next night. He dipped his head into her neck and whispered something in her ear. The music stopped entirely until he stood up straight. She inhaled and her fingers began to move. Gershwin. He traced his finger from one shoulder across her bare back to the other before retrieving his drink and walking back to the stool where he sat, with a smirk on his face, to watch some more. He looked around the rest of the lobby and eventually met Max’s gaze. His smirk disappeared and he returned a cold stare. Max looked down quickly and began fidgeting with papers that had been left under the front desk.

What was first a diversion tactic had now caught his attention. Bills and letters covered in red stamps had been shoved under there. Past due notices, foreclosure warnings, money transfers. Max felt a hand on his shoulder and  jumped.

        “What are you doing?” Dave asked.

        “Nothing, nothing. Looking for… a key,” he stammered.

        “Well, it’s not under those,” he said as he gathered them up while he watched the white dress walk out of the hotel, with the black duffle in hand. He took the stack and placed it under his arm walking around to the other side of the front desk, like he was a guest, and leaned over.

        “If you’re smart, you’ll keep quiet about these,” he whispered to Max.

        Avoiding his stare, Max nodded and glanced past his shoulder into the lounge where Sheila played Irving Berlin and the man had disappeared.