Hotel

As he did most mornings, Curtis O'Keefe showered first and prayed afterward. The procedure was typically efficient since he came clean to God and also dried off thoroughly in a towel robe during the twenty minutes or so he was on his knees.

Bright sunshine, entering the comfortable air-conditioned suite, gave the hotelier a sense of well being. The feeling transferred itself to his loquacious prayers which took on the air of an intimate man-to-man chat.

Curtis O'Keefe did not forget, however, to remind God of his own continuing interest in the St. Gregory Hotel.

Breakfast was in Dodo's suite. She ordered for them both, after frowning at length over a menu, followed by a protracted conversation with room service during which she changed the entire order several times. Today the choice of juice seemed to be causing her the most uncertainty and she vacillated - through an exchange with the unseen order taker lasting several minutes - over the comparative merits of pineapple, grapefruit, and orange.

Curtis O'Keefe amusedly pictured the havoc which the prolonged call was causing at the busy room-service order desk eleven floors below.

Waiting for the meal to arrive, he leafed through the morning newspapers the New Orleans Times-Picayune and an airmailed New York Times. Locally, he observed, there had been no fresh developments in the hit-and-run case that had eclipsed most other Crescent City news. In New York, he saw, on the Big Board, O'Keefe Hotels stock had slipped three quarters of a point. The decline was not significant - merely a normal fluctuation, and there was sure to be an offsetting rise when word of the chain's new acquisition in New Orleans leaked out, as it probably would before too long.

The thought reminded him of the annoying two days he would have to wait for confirmation. He regretted that he had not insisted on a decision last night; but now, having given his word, there was nothing to do but bide his time patiently. He had not the least doubt of a favorable decision from Warren Trent. There could, in fact, be no possible alternative.

Near the end of breakfast there was a telephone call which Dodo answered first - from Hank Lemnitzer, Curtis O'Keefe's personal representative on the West Coast. Halfsuspecting the nature of the call, he took it in his own suite, closing the communicating door behind him.

The subject he had expected to be raised came up after a routine report on various financial interests - outside the hotel business - on which Lemnitzer astutely rode herd.

"There's one thing, Mr. O'Keefe" - the nasal Californian drawl came down the telephone. "It's about Jenny LaMarsh, the doll ... er, the young lady you kindly expressed interest in that time at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

You remember her?"

O'Keefe remembered well: a striking, rangy brunette with a superb figure, coolly amused smile, and a quick mischievous wit. He had been impressed both with her obvious potential as a woman and the range of her conversation. Someone had said, he seemed to recall, that she was a Vassar graduate. She had a contract of sorts with one of the smaller movie studios.

"Yes, I do."

"I've talked with her, Mr. O'Keefe - quite a few times. Anyway, she'd be pleased to go along with you on a trip. Or two."

There was no need to ask if Miss LaMarsh knew the kind of relationship her trip would entail. Hank Lemnitzer would have taken care of that. The possibilities, Curtis O'Keefe admitted to himself, were interesting.

Conversation, as well as other things with Jenny LaMarsh, would be highly stimulating. Certainly she would have no trouble holding her own with people they met together. Nor would she be torn by indecisions about things as simple as choosing fruit juice.

But, surprising himself, he hesitated,

"There's one thing I'd like to ensure, and that's Miss Lash's future."

Hank Lemnitzer's voice came confidently across the continent. "Don't give it a thought. I'll take care of Dodo, same's I did all the others."

Curtis O'Keefe said sharply, "That isn't the point." Despite Lemnitzer's usefulness, at times there were certain subtleties he lacked.

"Just what is the point, Mr. O'Keefe?"

"I'd like you to line up something for Miss Lash specifically. Something good. And I want to know about it before she leaves."

The voice sounded doubtful. "I guess I could. Of course, Dodo isn't the brightest . . ."

O'Keefe insisted, "Not just anything, you understand. And take your time if necessary."

"What about Jenny LaMarsh?"

"She doesn't have anything else ... ?"

"I guess not." There was the grudging sense of concession to a whim, then, breezily once more: "Okay, Mr. O'Keefe, whatever you say. You'll be hearing from me."

When he returned to the sitting room of the other suite, Dodo was stacking their used breakfast dishes on the roomservice trolley. He snapped irritably, "Don't do that! There are hotel staff paid for that kind of work."