The House of Illicit Pleasures
By K. B. Thomas
All Rights Reserved
.
.
James Purcell Hoffman, a gentleman approaching sixty, neatly coiffed and clothed, walked past the revolving door of the modest hotel three times before entering.
“A room, please,” he said to the desk clerk. “A single.”
“Certainly, sir. If you would just sign the register.” The clerk swung the book around with an expert hand. “Mr. Smith,” he said, reading the signature upside down, a specialty of his. “Welcome.”
James shut his eyes. This was the moment that he had been anticipating, dreading, dreaming of. “I, uh. That is, Walter sent me.”
The clerk deftly exchanged the key in his hand for another. The brass fob was engraved with the hotel name and room number: Hotel Elite, #44
He tapped the bell on the counter twice. “Raoul will see you to your room.”
A bellboy appeared, tall and blond, more than half James’s age. He wore a matching dress shirt and fitted vest in tones of ivory and cream and black tuxedo pants with a satin stripe. He took the key and James’s suitcase.
Upstairs, Raoul unlocked the door and set the luggage on the rack at the foot of the bed. He dutifully checked the bathroom, looked under the bed, then behind the curtains. “Shut the door,” he instructed.
James shut the door.
Raoul held a sheet of paper and a stub of a pencil in his hand. “You want,” he said, the perfect rendition of a gangster movie gangster, except that he was the exact likeness of a basketball varsity team captain, “some special services?”
James wasn’t sure how these things worked. Was Raoul the fixer? It seemed so.
“Yes. I can pay cash.”
“We need to be quick,” Raoul warned. “First, the bathroom. The toilet is full flush and the shower head restrictor valve has been removed. If there’s a raid you go down the fire escape. Got it?”
“Yes.”
“Single use shampoo and conditioner?”
“Yes.”
Raoul checked a box on the paper with the stub pencil. “Fresh soap and towels daily?”
“Yes.”
“Check. The bed. Complete change of sheets and pillowcases daily?”
James felt the weight of the roll of cash in his pocket. “Yes.”
Raoul raised an eyebrow: Big Spender. “There are things I can get for you they don’t know about downstairs. I work it out with the maids. Things like single use pre-packaged cleaning heads for their mops. Leaves a scent kind of like Pine-Sol.”
James’s mother had used Pine-Sol. A quick spill of it into a bucket of hot water. “Do it,” he ordered. “I also want single shot, single use bottles of whiskey and vodka. You know, those little ones…”
“Miniatures,” Raoul said. Check.
“And an ice bucket.”
“Ice’ll cost you extra. It’s the clean water that’s the problem. Single use plastic glasses sealed in cellophane for your protection?” Check. “Anything else?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never done this before.”
“A lot of gents get their shoes polished. You put them in the hallway at night and they’re returned in the morning. Our polish contains Naphtha, made of course with petroleum distillate, lanolin from real sheep, turpentine from real pine trees, and beeswax from real bees.”
The ingredient list was obscene, like a menu concocted for a Roman emperor.
“What about the dining room?” asked James.
“Opens at eight. I can make the reservations for you.”
“I’ve heard, that is I mean…” James paused, not certain how far he should take this adventure. Ice, plastic wrapped plastic cups, fresh towels every day —
Raoul looked at the closed door in a meaningful way. “You want beef?” he asked in a whisper. “Just order the asparagus. Medium rare.”
“Asparagus,” James repeated. “Medium rare.”
Raoul tallied up the checkmarks on the sheet of paper. Cash, large amounts of it, changed hands.
James, feeling more confident now that the transaction was over, loosened his tie. “One thing, my friend,” he said. “I don’t believe your name is actually Raoul.”
“It’s not,” Raoul admitted. “It’s Phillip. I paid the real Raoul to let me work his job for a month. I’m doing a sociology paper for my degree. Double major with ecology. I must say you’ve been a real help.”
“Aha,” said James, thinking back to his own college days. “Just make sure I appear in the paper as ‘Exhibit A’ or ‘Subject B’. What’s the title?”
“‘Studies on the Illicit Pleasure in Plastics We Know to be Harmful and Other Products Derived from Severely Endangered Species.’ I’m not sure where to fit in the obvious lust people seem to have for fresh linens. That’s more of a water-resource-studies specialty.”
“What must you think of me?” asked James, in a way that made it clear he wondered what Raoul/Phillip must think of him.
“Oh, well,” Phillip shrugged. “We get all kinds. Honeymoon couples. People who can no longer afford Disney World. Cruise addicts.”
“So, I’m…?”
“Typical. Yes, sir.”
“That’s a relief,” James said. He might be perverted in some ways, uncaring in others, but he was not alone.
“I’d best be getting back,” Phillip said, heading for the door. “I don’t want to get Raoul in trouble. He’s a stand-up guy. Hey, take a look on the counter in the bathroom. I left something for you.” Then, with a wink and a nod and what might have been a locomotive hand signal, he was gone.
It was a plastic shower cap, elasticized, in its own polymer pouch.
A gift he would treasure for minutes.