Is it Sunday? Then it’s Read Free Sunday at The Diary.
It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Saturday, April 9
Busy tonite, and from the get-go, too.
Ol’ Sparrow was in the back office, with coffee, limbering up for the shift when some broad wonders aloud if anybody’s back there…Well, I am but crap, where the hell’s Amy???…Wherever she was, she wasn’t at the front desk, so yours truly heads out and there’s a gal, fake blonde, with knockers – there was really no other word for them – that almost need a separate introduction who oozed mystery and exoticness and it wasn’t the Upset of the Year when some stalking, er research, yielded the tidbit that she was Italian.
Anyway, she needed a room…All right, so ol’ Sparrow is thrown into the fire; no easing into it tonite…It turns out she has a local address and I later saw her enter with a guy and, I don’t know…Yours truly, of course, has significant (professional) experience dealing with hookers, but she wasn’t really dressed like one and I ended up concluding they were desirous of a neutral site for their night’s revels.
Then there is another walk-in, a mother and son and while we are out of rooms with two queen beds we are able to put them in a suite with one queen bed and a trundle bed in the living room but the kid decides the trundle bed is too small and they request one of the rooms with one king bed and we have plenty of those.
Then all three arrivals decide to show up within 30 minutes of each other and there were sundry stand purchases and whatnot and it was busy enuff so that ol’ Sparrow didn’t get back from walking the hotel until after 0130.
Then there was this pretty clueless couple at the sundry stand…They were looking at stuff as if they were looking at a car they were considering buying…I walk up:
– Friends, can I show you something in a Cheez-It, or perhaps something from our frozen selection???
A pretty funny line – par for the Sparrow course – but it went above their heads and they ended up not buying anything, tho before heading to the rooms they stopped at the front desk…They looked confused, as if they weren’t sure which way to go.
– What room are you in???
– You know, actually, we want to go outside and smoke.
– Oh…That would be that way, then, outside.
Somehow, they were able to negotiate their way thru the doors and outside without nite auditor assistance.
The big news is there is going to be another major remodel at the hotel…Recall that since yours truly started here in October 2019 there has always been something going on in the offseasons…It started with all the rooms getting remodeled and that was completed this past December and now I have definitive information that they are going to remodel the entire lobby, to include the front desk…I saw the pics: it will be moderned up considerably with two check-in stations being installed, replacing the long front desk we have now…You know, few appreciate Brand Standards as much as ol’ Sparrow does, but the lobby will now look like every other hotel lobby regardless of location and that’s bad, but what are you going to do???
My treasured sundry stand will be completely redone, and this is good…The soda/water refrigerated area will be upgraded and enlarged and my sacred freezer compartment will be moved and enlarged as well…The dry goods section will be expanded, too, but who cares about dry goods???…Unknown, however, is the effect this will have on morning coffee service…It is currently offered at a table opposite the front desk, immediately to the right of the main entrance…
The restaurant appears to be in line for a remodel, too, which I don’t understand at all because it is a pretty inviting place to eat right now.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 0930 Saturday until 2130 Saturday…12.0 hours for the day and get this, a new personal best: 55.5 hours for the week I am not making that up…This is only a few minutes shy of exactly one-third of the week spent asleep, making this, perhaps the greatest week since creation or the first moon landing or the first time someone deep-fried cheese.
———
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.
