How to Say Our Final Goodbye novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: The Roses

I stood at the grave until the sprinklers came on and soaked my shoes.

I didn't call him.

I drove back to the city and went to work.

For two weeks I didn't call him.

The Bellmore had never been busier.

The rehearsal dinner video had been watched four million times, and half the people who watched it wanted to stay in the hotel from the video.

We were booked solid through Labor Day.

We were also short four bellmen.

Two had quit when my father fired me, before I could get them back. One had broken his ankle at a softball game. One had won a little money on a scratch card and gone to Michigan to fish.

The doorman handled hiring for the front.

He'd handled it for forty-nine years, and I wasn't going to start telling him how.

On the last Tuesday in July, at four in the afternoon, I came out of the back office with a stack of invoices.

A bus tour from Ohio was checking in.

Sixty people. A hundred and twenty bags.

And in the middle of the lobby, in a borrowed green bellman's coat two inches too short in the sleeves, Wyeth Wainscott was loading suitcases onto a brass cart.

I stopped dead.

He saw me.

He touched the brim of his cap.

Then he went back to the suitcases.

I walked straight over to the doorman's post.

"What is that?"

"That's a bellman, Miss Clem."

"That's Wyeth Wainscott."

"He came in on Thursday and asked if we were hiring. We were." The doorman settled his gloves. "He knows the knock. He lifts with his legs. He doesn't take the tips."

"What does he do with the tips?"

"Puts them in the jar for the night cook's kid. College fund."

I looked across the lobby.

A woman from the tour was holding out a five-dollar bill.

Wyeth thanked her and folded it into his pocket, and pushed the cart toward the elevators with four suitcases and a cooler on it.

The cart had a bad wheel.

It always had a bad wheel.

He'd figured out the exact angle to lean on it.

"How long has he been doing this?"

"Six days. Doubles, mostly." The doorman looked at me sideways. "He asked me not to tell you. I said I wouldn't lie to you if you asked."

"I'm asking."

"Then he's been here at seven every morning since Thursday. On Thursday he came straight from the cemetery."

I didn't say anything.

The doorman went back to his door.

At eleven that night I found Wyeth in the staff locker room in the basement.

He was sitting on the bench in his shirtsleeves, with the green coat folded beside him, and he was rubbing his shoulder.

"You're doing it wrong," I said from the door. "You're carrying with one arm. You'll be useless in a week."

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