Hotel

They were in Brennans Restaurant in the French Quarter. An hour earlier, driving a car he rented from the Hertz desk in the St. Gregory lobby, Peter had collected Christine from her apartment. They parked the car at Iberville, just inside the Quarter, and strolled the length of Royal Street, browsing at windows of the antique shops, with their strange mixture of objects d'art, imported bric-a-brac and Confederate weaponry, any sword in this box, ten dollars. It was a warm, sultry night, with the sounds of New Orleans surrounding them - a deep growl from buses in narrow streets, the clop and jingle of a horse-drawn fiacre, and from the Mississippi the melancholy wail of an outbound freighter.

Brennan's - as befitting the city's finest restaurant - had been crowded with diners. While waiting for their table, Peter and Christine sipped a leisurely Old Fashioned, herbsaint flavored, in the quiet, softly lighted patio.

Peter had a sense of well being and a delight in Christine's company. It continued as they were ushered to a table in the cool, main floor dining room. Now, accepting Christines suggestion, he beckoned their waiter.

He ordered for them both: the house's specialty combining Oysters Rockefeller, Bienville and Roffignac, flounder Nouvelle Orleans, stuffed with seasoned crabmeat, choux fleur Polonaise, pommes au four, and - from the hovering wine steward - a bottle of Montrachet.

"It's nice," Christine said appreciatively, "not to have to make decisions." She would be firm, she decided, in throwing off the sense of unease she had mentioned a moment ago. It was, after all, no more than intuition, perhaps simply explained by the fact that she had had less sleep than usual the previous night.

"With a well-run kitchen, as they have here," Peter said, "decisions about food ought not to matter much. It's a question of choice between equal qualities."

She chided him: "Your hotelship's showing."

"Sorry. I guess it does too often."

"Not really. And if you must know, I like it. I've sometimes wondered, though, what got you started to begin with."

"In the hotel business? I was a bellhop who became ambitious."

"It wasn't really that simple?"

"Probably not. I had some luck along with other things.

I lived in Brooklyn and in summers, between school, got a job as a bellboy in Manhattan. One night, the second summer, I put a drunk to bed - helped him upstairs, got him in pajamas and tucked him in."

"Did everyone get that kind of service?"

"No. It happened to be a quiet night and, besides, I'd had a lot of practice. I'd been doing the same thing at home - for my old man - for years." For an instant a flicker of sadness touched Peter's eyes, then he continued, "Anyway, it turned out that the one I'd put to bed was a writer for The New Yorker. A week or two after, he wrote about what happened. I think he called us 'the hotel that's gentler than mother's milk.' We took a lot of kidding, but it made the hotel look good."

"And you were promoted?"

"In a way. But mostly I got noticed."

"Here come the oysters," Christine said. Two aromatic heated plates, with the baked half shells in their underlayer of rock salt, were placed dextrously in front of them.

As Peter tasted and approved the Montrachet, Christine said, "Why is it that in Louisiana you can eat oysters all year round - Y in the month or not?"

He answered emphatically, "You can eat oysters anywhere, at any time. The Y-in-the-month idea is an old canard started four hundred years ago by an English country vicar. Name of Butler, I think. Scientists have ridiculed it, the U.S. Government says the rule is silly, but people still believe."

Christine nibbled an Oyster Bienville. "I always thought it was because they spawned in summer."

"So oysters do - some seasons - in New England and New York. But not in Chesapeake Bay, which is the largest oyster source in the world. There and in the South spawning can happen at any time of year. So there isn't a single good reason why northerners can't eat oysters around the calendar, just as in Louisiana."

There was a silence, then Christine said, "When you learn something, do you always remember it?"

"Mostly, I guess. I've a queer sort of mind that things stick to - a bit like an old-fashioned flypaper. In a way it's been lucky for me." He speared an Oyster Rockefeller, savoring its subtle absinthe flavoring.

"How lucky?"

"Well, that same summer - the one we were talking about - they let me try other jobs in the hotel, including helping out at the bar. I was getting interested by then and had borrowed some books. One was about mixing drinks." Peter paused, his mind leafing over events he had halfforgotten.

"I happened to be at the bar alone when a customer came in. I didn't know who he was, but he said, 'I hear you're the bright boy The New Yorker wrote about. Can you mix me a Rusty Nail?"'

"He was kidding?"