Read Up in the Old Hotel (Vintage Classics) for Free Online

which as a matter of fact was less than a year before the death of my father – he had worked himself up to where he was head bookkeeper. And so, anyway, when Harry came home that night, I said to him, “Sit down, Harry. I’ve got something very serious I have to discuss with you.” I filled him in on the situation in McSorley’s, and then I said to him, “Harry, I know how much you love your job, and I hate to ask this, but do you think you could possibly find it in your heart to give it up and take over the management of McSorley’s?” “Well, Dot,” he said, and I remember every word he said that night, “first of all, I don’t love my job, I pretend to, but I hate it. And second of all, Dot, why in the name of God did it take so long for this thought to occur to you? You’ve heard me talk a lot about Staunton’s back in Ballyragget, and most of the customers in there were hard-to-get-along-with old men, and I got along with them. I not only got along with them, I enjoyed getting along with them. I enjoyed observing them and I enjoyed listening to them. They were like actors in a play, only the play was real. There were Falstaffs among them – that is, they were just windy old drunks from the back alleys of Ballyragget, but they were Falstaffs to me. And there were Ancient Pistols among them. And there was an old man with a broken-hearted-looking face who used to come in and sit in a chair in the corner with a Guinness at his elbow and stare straight ahead for hours at a time and occasionally mumble a few words to himself, and every time he came in I would say to myself, ‘King Lear.’ There were good old souls among those men, and there were leeches among them, leeches and lepers and Judases, and I imagine the cast of characters down in McSorley’s is about the same. In other words, Dot,” he said, “in answer to your question, yes, I’m willing to take a chance and go down to McSorley’s and see if I can handle it.” The changeover didn’t take long. Early next morning I went to Joe Hnida’s apartment and had a heart-to-heart talk with him and begged him to forgive me for getting him into all of this, which he did, and he went back to the limousine service. And the very same day Harry gave notice up in the Bronx. And two Mondays later, he started in at McSorley’s. I remember that day so well. I was worried half sick that I might’ve made another big mistake, so in the middle of the afternoon I telephoned McSorley’s and asked to speak to Harry. “Everything’s O.K., Dot,” he said. “I’m amazed at how much I’m enjoying this. I feel like I’m back home again – back home in Ballyragget, back home in Staunton’s.” And when he got home that night and opened the door, the first thing he said was, “I think I have finally found my right and proper place in the world.”’
    Like Old John and Old Bill and like his father-in-law and his wife, Harry Kirwan is strongly opposed to change, and since he took over he has made only one change and that was a fiscal one and long overdue. He gave raises to the old bartenders, Eddie Mullins and Joe Martoccio, and he gave a raise to Mike Boiko, the cook, who is an old Ukrainian, and he gave a raise to Tommy Kelly, who broke down and cried when Harry told him about it. Tommy Kelly is perhaps the most important member of the staff of McSorley’s, but his duties are so indefinite that the old men call him Kelly the Floorwalker. When business is brisk, he acts as the potboy – he carries mugs of ale from the bar to the tables, hooking his fingers through the handles of the mugs and carrying two in each hand. He is sometimes the fill-in bartender. He makes an occasional trip to the butcher or the grocery store for Mike. He answers the coin-box telephone. In the winter he keeps the fire going in the stove. When he shows up, around 8:30 A.M., he is just a sad-eyed little man with a hangover, but by noon lukewarm ale has given him a certain stateliness;