The Rise of the Hotel Dumort (The Bane Chronicles)

Author:Clare, Cassandra & Johnson, Maureen [Clare, Cassandra]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Published: 2013-08-19T16:00:00+00:00

October 1929

Magnus had lost interest in his bar somewhat. His planned closure of a few days stretched into a week, then two, then three. With Mr. Dry’s temporarily closed, a few of Magnus’s regulars found themselves with nowhere to go. So, of course, they simply came to Magnus’s hotel room every night. First it was just one or two, but within a week there was a constant stream of people. This included the hotel management, who politely suggested that Mr. Bane “might like to take his friends and associates elsewhere.” Magnus replied, equally politely, that these were not friends or associates. Usually they were strangers. This did not make the management very happy.

And this wasn’t entirely true, either. Alfie was there from the start, and now had taken up permanent residence on Magnus’s sofa. He had grown only more morose as time wore on. He went off to wherever he worked during the day, came back drunk, and stayed that way. Then he stopped going to work.

“It’s getting bad, Magnus,” he said one afternoon, waking from a whiskey-induced stupor.

“I’m sure it is,” Magnus said, not looking up from his copy of War and Peace.

“I mean it.”

“I’m sure you do.”

“Magnus!”

Magnus lifted his head wearily.

“It’s getting bad. It can’t last. It’s already starting to crumble. See?”

He rattled a newspaper in Magnus’s direction.

“Alfie, you need to be a bit more specific. Unless you are talking about that newspaper, which seems fine.”

“I mean”—Alfie pulled himself up and looked over the back of the sofa—“that the entire financial structure of the United States could fall down at any second. Everybody said it could happen and I never believed them, but now it seems like it could really happen.”

“These things do.”

“How can you not care?”

“Practice,” Magnus said, looking back to his book and turning the page.

“I don’t know.” Alfie slid down a bit. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it will all be fine. It has to be, right?”

Magnus didn’t bother to point out that that wasn’t what he had said. Alfie seemed appeased, and that was good enough. But now Magnus had lost the flow of what he was reading and no longer felt like continuing. These visitors were getting annoying.

After a few days, Magnus was completely tired of the company, but he was not inclined to throw them out. That would have been unseemly. He simply took a second suite on a different floor and stopped coming home. His guests seemed aware of this, but no one minded as long as the door to Magnus’s old suite was open and no one cut off the room service account.

Magnus tried to fill the time with ordinary pursuits—reading, walks in Central Park, a talking picture or a show, some shopping. The heat broke, and a mellow October settled over the city. One day he hired a boat and spent the day drifting around Manhattan, looking at the skeletons of the many new skyscrapers and wondering what actually would happen if it all fell apart, and wondering how much he currently cared.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.