Of course, it’s Read Free Sunday (RFS) at The Diary.
It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Saturday, September 3
On arrival at the hotel tonite, Amy had words that would fill anyone with terror:
I did my drop.
Crap, we all know what that means: everything and nothing…Sure, it means she dropped the cash she had taken in during her shift – or, more accurately, the cash she thought she’d taken in during her shift – but those keeping score at home know that Amy dropping her cash – which she doesn’t always do, of course – in no way, shape, or form means that her drawer will contain the requisite $200 and, of course, the drawer didn’t balance tonite tho, in a mild upset, it was $20.50 short instead of being over.
A little after midnite my counterpart at a downtown motel calls, saying they’re sold out and there’s a woman there who needs a room…Put her on I say, but the lady balks at my quote of $250, plus tax, so I say how much do you want to spend and she says not that and then goes into this rather longwinded, dull tale about why she needs a room in the first place…It seems she owns a condo up here that she’d rented out for a month or so but when they got there tonite the place had been trashed and was not fit for occupancy…All right, I thought, you’re the one who needs a room on a holiday weekend and is calling me from a sold-out motel, go sleep in your car see if I care, and we repeated our query about how much she wanted to spend and she said $100 and I said no because this is not a reasonable figure on a holiday weekend in a mountain tourist trap, tho we didn’t tell her that…I did counter with $200, plus tax, but even this was too much and we concluded the woman is cheap…Plainly she owns two homes, so it is not unreasonable to conclude she could afford $200 for a place to sleep, especially at midnite when you’re not exactly overburdened with options and we put at even money she’d call back.
Which she did…When she got here she repeated her story, as if there had been breaking developments on the drive over, which there hadn’t been.
One of the keys to success in the nite audit humor racket (NAHR) is knowing when to go for the Line of the Year candidate and when to keep your yap shut…Tonite, ol’ Sparrow kept his yap shut and while we’ll never know for sure, it was probably a good call.
What happened was this woman, just back from her evening’s revels with her man, rang the bell and when we went out she asked if she could ask when the hot tubs closed…What we wanted to say was, sure, you can ask that and then stop talking, as if waiting for her to ask that…She seemed tired, and not particularly funny besides, so we kept filed one away for future use and told her the hot tubs closed at 2200.
Right after this a lanky kid walks in and says he has a reservation, which is great because there’s one arrival remaining…He’s with a band that is playing a wedding up here Saturday nite and while the rest of the band is checking in tomorrow, he’s here tonite…Unfortunately, neither name he gives is the name the reservation is under and, pleasantly enuff, he says he’ll look into it and walks outside.
He comes back in and he has his manager on the line and the manager knows the name the reservation is under and is surprised there’s a problem because he’d left instructions for each individual to be listed on their reservation, instructions which had not been followed…This was really no big deal, tho, because plainly this was the guy whom the room was reserved for…The manager tho, wanted to make sure everything was in order for the following nite’s reservations, so we took the time to double check those and they were squared away tho, again, the individual names had not been attached to each reservation, but I assured him that was not an issue and everything was OK.
The kid turned out to be the soundman for the band and I told him I was a mostly-retired sports official and the two trades were connected, telling him no one pays to see us, but the show or the game can’t go on without us, which he liked…It’s true, tho; the sound guy doesn’t make it and the band is standing around with thumbs up their asses and if your officials don’t show up, all you’ve got is a scrimmage.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 0900 Saturday until 1530 Saturday…6.5 hours for the week and 49.5 hours for the week, heartbreakingly close to the magic 50-hour mark, but what are you going to do???
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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.
Coming soon! Gaylon’s books in actual book form!
