Winston K. Marks

“ He dashed the sand jar through the window, chipped off the jagged edges with his heel and climbed out. It was a twenty-foot drop to security, and he made it without hesitation. What could a man hope to do with a mess like—
Spang! His feet struck, not with a crunch on gravelled tar, but into a springy fabric that sagged under his 180 pounds, tossed him six feet in the air, caught him on the rebound and then juggled him down with diminishing bounces.
They were waiting for him, as he regained his feet on the quivering surface of a spring-loaded, canvas trampoline. ”

“ Even as he landed he realized it had an occupant, a gorgeous, strangely familiar blonde creature, touselled and asleep hugging her pillow with a creamy arm. A crash from the bathroom brought his head bouncing off the silken coverlet even as the girl awakened with a scream and tangled them both with the bed clothes.
Gary Gable charged from the bathroom, face dripping and a tuft of lather under each ear. "What in the Goddam hell—" He leaped for Sextus with his internationally famous shoulders knotted into bunches of muscular menace.
"I'm the hotel manager," Sextus blurted loudly. ”

“ There's a man in my bed!"
"What is your room number, madame?" Sextus asked with drowsy detachment.
"I'm in H-408," she said, and on the "8" her voice ran up the scale in a quivering crescendo that launched Sextus briskly from his bed. H-408 was his floor and his wing, luckily. He tore out of the suite and down the hall without shirt or shoes.
The door stood ajar, and he pushed it open. In the middle of the floor, still gabbling into the phone, stood a lumpy, pallid woman about his own age, naked except for a pillow which she hugged fiercely to her navel. ”

“ And finally word got around the eastern seaboard about Sextus. "A competent man, yes. Drinks on the job. Wouldn't have him as a busboy."
Worse than the mere prospect of unemployment was the notoriety. Coldly sober, Sextus had fled panic-stricken to the west coast, vaguely determined to become a beach-comber or an oyster-fisherman or whatever they did out there.
He stared now at the blue slip and turned in to a florist shop. He broke his last five-dollar bill to buy a pink carnation for his buttonhole then headed down the sunny walk to the hotel. ”

“ Sextus shrugged one shoulder and turned to leave. "Understand, we don't blame you a bit, sir. You know how these middle-aged women can carry on when they get out on the town. You must have dozed off before she slipped in." ”

“ Sextus nodded stiffly. "Here's an envelope Mr. Patterson left for you. He was the last G. M. Incidentally, sorry I was a little rough on the phone, but you can see our situation here. Understaffed and overcrowded. It gets thick, real thick, brother."
Sextus felt his belly muscles tighten. "Confusion is never improved by discourtesy or insubordination," he said coldly.
At that moment a bellman rushed up to the rebuffed captain who was regarding Sextus with a restrained loathing. "The guy in C332 keeps screaming for his beer, but the service elevator to 'C' vector keeps dumping me off in 'F'." ”

“ But this Bradford, who is a nuclear physicist, by the way, has installed some sort of field generator in each elevator shaft that gives entry to these rooms at ten different locations in time. Room 500, for instance, in Vector A is 10 years from Vector B. So when you run to capacity with, say, two people to the room, you have 5200 guests in 260 rooms! They all live by the same calendar, but in their rooms they are actually centuries apart. ”

“ Sextus padded silently back to his room in his stocking feet and took a long pull at the whiskey. Funny thing, this. People often got into the wrong hotel beds, but rarely with such impalpable excuses. He sighed and picked up the letter from his predecessor again. It read:
Welcome to the Phony-Plaza. (That name again.) You will be the fifth manager in 30 days. If you need the job as much as I thought I did you will probably ignore my advice, but here goes, anyway: RESIGN! BAIL OUT! ”

“ In the second damned place, you tell me where I can lay my hands on ten more boys before you go canning any more. I'm rehiring Jerry as of now!" He banged the receiver in Sextus' ear.
Unperturbed, Sextus finished his shower, dressed in a lighter weight suit and picked up the phone. The house switchboard apparently was jammed. It took a full minute to get an operator. "Forsyte here. Your new manager, that is. Instruct all department heads to be in my office in seven minutes. General conference."
Another short nip at the bottle served nicely to quiet a small hunger pang. ”

“ Sextus wriggled free, made for the door and off down the hall. To his horror, the automatic signal light on the vector "H" elevator was flickering and fading. The whole H-vector must be collapsing. He dashed for the stairwell and then reconsidered. ”

“ Sextus told him to hold the boy in the locker room for him. Then one of the room clerks rang to say that Gary Gable, the movie star, was raising hell in the lobby because he couldn't get the bridal suite and demanded to see the manager. ”