You think it’s easy. Let me tell you, friend, this time of year, with all the ho ho ho and tinsel, this place goes crazy. One minute I’m replacing a bulb in the fairy lights across the bar. The next I’m overseeing the disembowelling of the turkeys.
Then this guy comes in with a sob story about a pregnant wife and everywhere else full up and ‘is there any chance of a room?’. Small stocky fella with blackened thumbnails and a line of fine white wood shavings in the turn-ups of his trousers. He caught me at a weak moment. I’d just learned that we’d hired a convicted child molester for our Santa’s Grotto, so when the fella came up to me and said his wife was about to pop any minute, I felt a bit shaky. I suppose that’s what made me follow him outside.
And there she was. Big as a house, just like he said. Sitting on top of a donkey. The donkey, grey as three day old slush, was chewing on a family pack of Dorritos. The woman was a looker, that blooming full bellied look, and when she smiled her baby blue eyes at me, I felt my spleen melt.
So the best I could manage was
‘Look, you‘ll have to talk to G.O.D. himself. I only work here’.
But even saying that I knew I’d succumbed. Last thing I wanted was that lady’s waters breaking all over the donkey, right in front of the hotel.
‘Round the back. Round the back.’ I said. ‘Look, there’s a shed we used for the taxi dispatcher. The hotel is full. Same as every where else. You can use the shed.’
Then I went back inside and sacked the paedophile Santa and forgot about them. As you do. Another crisis beeped on my pager and I lifted a house phone. A guest in 113 had oh-deed on brandy snaps. When I got there, it wasn’t pretty. His face was red and flushed, lumpy cream dribbled from the side of his mouth, his chest was covered in soggy biscuit bits. I felt like kicking him. Hey, you expect an amount of excess, but this?
My pager beeped again and I took a call from one of the bouncers who told me the ground floor of the multi-storey carpark was full of sheep farmers. I told him to lay off the Goldschlager until I got down there. I took the service lift. I thought it would be quick and quiet. But the muzak penetrates everywhere at this time of year. By the time I made it to the car park I was humming ‘Jingle Bells’ and had developed a twitch in my left cheek.
The bouncer met me as the lift doors opened.
‘No Goldschlager. Just sheep,’ he said.
He was right. There must have been about a dozen fellas standing around with lambs draped across their shoulders, like white fox stoles. And more sheep
maaa-ing and shitting around the shed. I went towards it and looked in and saw the stocky man fussing about and a sheep farmer down on his knees in front of a Moses basket, beaming in at a wean with a screwed-up prune kind of face. Then the woman appeared and flashed those baby blue eyes at me and, with her ruby red lips, mouthed ‘it’s a boy’ and I got that honey feeling in the pit of my belly, the one that makes a man’s knees tremble and his eyes water.
I turned to the bouncer and said
‘Lose the sheep. Leave the lambs. But lose the sheep. Keep me informed.’
Then I headed back across the carpark just in time to see the choir waft in, looking like some kind of leftover from Halloween. Ghostly white they were, with wings and flowing gowns and giving it loads with the ‘glorias’ and the ‘halleluliahs’.
I swore to myself I would take few days off. But not yet. This was not a time for relaxing. Especially with the pager going ballistic and news that the rooftop laser light show was stuck. I got back in the service lift and kept my palms pressed over my ears until I reached the roof.
We only got this thing because the place across the street has had one for over a year. Our’s beams circles, whirls, droplets and spirals in all sorts of patterns in the sky. But not tonight. No circles. No whirls. No droplets. No spirals. Just one big star-shaped blaze, fixed above the multi-story carpark. I kicked the gizmo a couple of times, threw the switches back and forth and then made a strategic management decision that it could do whatever the fuck it liked just so long as we got through Christmas.
And we did. At the end of the day no one got killed. Not even the guy with the brandy snaps. Seems someone turned him upside down after I left and whacked him on the back. He came to, and began demanding creme de menthe filled chocolate reindeer. He survived. We all did.
The sheep farmers moved off. The choir continued their pub-crawl. I forgot about the whole thing for a while until I was outside one afternoon, watching the street lights sway in the wind when three limos pulled up and three wise-guys got out, with a flunky carrying something gift-wrapped behind each one of them.
The head wise-guy snapped his fingers at me and said
‘Where’s the King? We’ve come to see the King.’
I said ‘The King is dead man. Long time ago now. But we’ve got him on the system in the bar...it will be lonely this christmas... and we could put it through to your room if you wanted.’
They just ignored me, got back into the limos and drove round the back to the carpark.
I forgot about them too once I realised they weren’t checking in. Last I heard they spent some time with the baby in the shed then headed back east again.
The bouncer told me the shed is empty now. Said the trio just vamoosed one day, in a bit of a hurry. I can’t say I miss them. Too much on my plate. I mean we’ve got Valentine’s Day coming up and we’re going to mount a thousand vodka filled red roses across the ceiling of the bar and release them at midnight. Something simple and tasteful for a change.
Still. Whenever I think of those baby blue eyes and those ruby red lips I get that honey feeling in the pit of my stomach. My knees tremble. My eyes water.
Jesus Christ. There goes my pager again.
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