It’s Read Free Sunday (RFS) at The Diary. Enjoy with Sparrow’s compliments.
It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Saturday, August 21
Busy tonite despite the fact we were far from sold out…Really far, actually, with 50 rooms to rent, a surprise considering it’s still a weekend in summer, tho it should be noted the Interstate south of here has reopened, tho it’s still one lane in both directions.
There were a handful of walk-ins, too…The first was this black lady and white guy who was straight out of Woodstock…Tie-dye shirt, long, hippie hair and beard, rail-thin – the woman, tho, had some substance – and it wouldn’t have surprised me if they’d driven up in one of those old VW microbuses…They were pleasant and funny and didn’t smell like weed.
Despite the fact we had vacancies out the wazoo, I was asking and getting $200 a nite, plus tax, a pretty good walk-in rate…Amy had advised The System was demanding $300 a nite, but I was officially authorized to go as low as $200, tho we all know ol’ Sparrow would’ve done whatever was required to move rooms…In fact, I was prepared for some resistance but got none at all: the announced rate was eaten up left and right.
It was relatively chaotic for a half-hour or so starting at 0230…I had checked a guest into 242 and then the Garcias arrived for the two rooms I had held for them…They advised the reservation they had had had fallen thru and they needed two rooms and later he advised it was for a Sunday checkout and what was the rate for Saturday nite???…I told him I’d be delighted to offer the same rate for each room for both nites, tho it should be noted this wasn’t out of any generosity on part (The System, of course, was probably asking $300 or so) but because this was easiest on ol’ Sparrow.
Right as Mr Garcia leaves the front desk a cheapskate calls looking for a room…I trot out tonite’s standard of $200, plus tax which he doesn’t like at all and he keeps spewing reasons why he’s entitled to a lower rate, the usual crap like “we’re just passing thru” or the tried, true, ineffective “we’ll only be in there a few hours”…I apologized and said no, the rate was $200, plus tax and then he cemented his cheapskate status by asking if there any discount chain motels in the area…No, there are not…There is one dump downtown, but I declined to tell him about it.
Then 242 calls to inform me she’d like to come down to the front desk and pick up two sets of towels and a comforter…Well, this is inconvenient because it’s unlikely I have all of this at the front desk and ol’ Sparrow would end up obliged to deliver some of it anyway, so I tell her it would be easier for me to bring everything by, which is neither completely true nor completely false…Then while I’m off attending to this the front desk cell rings and this guy IDs himself as being from an unnamed tho local security company…This after verifying both the hotel and the town we are in…This is moderately suspicious because why wouldn’t he tell me which of the two or three security companies in town he was with and why did he verify the hotel and location???…I provided both when I answered the phone…Plus, he hardly gets the Joe Friday Junior Detective Award because our phone number, of course, has the common local prefix.
Well, he had gotten a call from someone with lousy English who said we had a room available and he was looking to confirm that…This, too, makes some zero sense but uh, yeah, sure, I’ve told people tonight we had rooms…Had someone like that checked in???…Well, there were the Garcias, whose English was good, but otherwise, we all know the answer to that:
I’m sorry, I can’t give out guest information, sir.
So he starts back in on why he called and now all he’s doing is breathing my air so I interrupt him and with some curtness ask him if there is anything further I can do for him – not that I’ve done anything for him already – because there are guests in the lobby, which there was…He said no, took the point, and said goodbye.
We have guests with the virus in house…A guy – or gal, I don’t really know – who is part of a company with several rooms came down with it and I gathered everyone is stuck in their rooms until test results come back.
Dinner tonite was Broccoli a la Sparrow…Recall last week, by mistake, this contained the bleu cheese and bacon designed for Spinach a la Sparrow and that wasn’t all that good…So yours truly invaded the restaurant for some parmesan cheese packets and the usual butter was added and that wasn’t too bad…Better than the bleu cheese, actually, for some reason…I’m not a chef or even a cook, so it would be hard to tell you for sure.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 0930 Saturday until 1830 Saturday…9.0 hours for the day and an utterly splendid 52.0 hours for the week.
It was a wonderful rest, too…The usual, only, bathroom call came right about noon and after that a patented Sparrow Roll Over wasn’t even needed to get back to sleep.
The Diary of a Nobody is a novel. All elements are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Anything else is a coincidence.
It was inspired by the 19th-century British novel of the same name.
Gaylon’s books can also be found at The Reading Salon.
