Free A Key to the Suite by John D. MacDonald

everybody else’s suite. By my count there are twenty-three hospitality suites. One drink in each would be a masterful accomplishment. But many will try. Our little men are up there, bracing themselves for chaos. Miss Barlund shouldn’t miss this sturdy tradition. She’s over there with Stu. Sue, trot over and nab her and we’ll make a group effort.”
    After an hour and a half of smoke, handshakings, short elevator rides, incompleted sentences and inadvertent animal contact, Hubbard worked his way across a fourth floor suite to where Cory was hemmed in by two admiring bald men.
    “Miss Barlund,” he said briskly. “They want you down at the main desk immediately. Come with me please.”
    He walked her briskly out of the suite, taking her glass from her and putting it on a table near the door. Fifty feet down the corridor they slowed their pace.
    “Did it show that much, Floyd Hubbard?” she asked.
    “Not too much. Your eyes kept rolling up out of sight and you kept dropping to your knees. But you got up every time.”
    “Where is this rescue party headed?”
    They had arrived at the elevators. “It’s midnight and your option, Cory. Want to try yet another suite?”
    “Lord, no! You’ve seen one and you’ve seen them all.” She looked at herself in the wall mirror in the elevator alcove. “I even look as if I smell like cigars. I want a dark little corner to sit in, with a place to rest my head, and a vodka stinger to drink slowly, and somebody who will talk to me and finish every sentence, and require very few answers.”
    “We take care of our journalists.”
    He found them a banquette corner in one of the smaller quieter bars in the hotel. It was called the Suez Lounge. A lean woman in silk harem pajamas played a listless, noodling piano. Cory took a sip of her drink and sighed and said, “And they’re still up there, milling around. It’s a scene I won’t have to make twice. Do you think anybody is enjoying it, really?”
    “Some of the drunker ones, maybe. But everybody thinks everybody
else
is enjoying it. But don’t put that in your story.”
    “Sir, it is not my purpose to tear down honorable American institutions. I have a simple theme. Conventions are lovely.”
    “Is that what you want to write?”
    “Not especially.”
    “So why don’t you write about something where you can say what you want to say?”
    “I’ll tell you my horrid secret, Floyd. I’m strictly no talent. And I’m a horrible ham. I’ll do anything to see my name in print. So I write little things people will buy. And once in a great while they actually do. Don’t tell anybody, but this is my first crack at it in a couple of years.” Her smile faded. She shrugged. “Call it busy-work. Restless female. Bored, I guess. Bored to the teeth.”
    “Because you don’t have to earn the money?”
    “Possibly.”
    “It wouldn’t be alimony?”
    She sipped her drink and put the glass down and turned toward him. In the shadowy corner he could see the gleam of her eyes and her teeth and a highlight of moisture on her lip.
    “Rather than have you labor away at the personal history bit, Hubbard, suppose I just shovel it all out in one hideous chunk and then we can forget the whole thing forever. Okay?”
    “If you want to. But I was only …”
    “I’m a spoiled brat from way back. I went to a good school. I made a very bad marriage, and worked like a damn dog to keep it going, but it fell down dead. I have one child, defective, institutionalized. I have money coming in from a couple of places. I live well, and live alone, and try to like it. It helps to get all involved with idiot projects, like the one I’m on now. I am not the least bit sorry for myself. Now you can stop prying.”
    He sat for a full minute of silence. “I suppose two can play. I went to a good school, and I made a very good marriage, and we both work like dogs to keep it going, and it seems as if we will. I have two kids and one salary. I