Page 2 of Peter

ChapterTwo

Peter:

I am at the hotel this morning since the symposium begins today and I want to make sure everything is in order before I leave for the day. I am getting ready to shut down my computer when I hear my name being called.

“Mr. Bennett, there is a guest here for the symposium and someone cleared out her reservation, and we are completely booked.” Dawson, my hotel manager says.

“See if one of the nearby hotels has any rooms and we will cover the charges,” I tell Dawson.

“It’s one of the keynote speakers, sir.”Dawson tells me.

“There are no rooms at all? And who was in charge of this? Because their ass is going to be officially unemployed.”

“I am not sure.”

“Who do you think you are talking to? I know the computer systems in my hotels, and I know you can tell who fucked up the reservation. Now you can tell me who or your ass can be unemployed with them. My hotels are built on the customer service we provide, and this is unacceptable.” The symposium is for the doctors who are the best of the best.

“Isabella was the last person in the reservation sir,” Dawson says.

I release a deep breath because she is in the management training program. She is a young single mother and has been an exemplary employee up to this point which is how she managed to get into the training program. I will not fire her; she needs the money. I can remember when Dawson called her in the office and told her she was accepted. She burst into tears and began telling us how she has been looking for a part-time job to help her make ends meet and the new salary will allow her to not have to work more than one job.

Once she and Dawson were gone, I began to evaluate the pay scale in my hotels and adjusted them based on the true cost of living, and then doubled that. My hotels are bringing in pure profits and I can afford to pay my employees handsomely.

“Give her my penthouse suite and comp her stay.”

“Yes sir, I’ll take care of that right away,” he says and scurries out of my office.I keep the penthouse suite for myself or for VIP guests and situations like this one. The room cannot be reserved without my permission. I decide to stay until I am sure everything is good before I leave for the night.

I go to the front desk to help Dawson get the guests checked in. The foyer and restaurant are full of the attendees for the symposium, I am helping check someone in and I look up and see a ghost, or at least I think I saw her it only lasted a matter of seconds. I call Isabella over to finish the check-in and come around the booth and go where I thought I saw her, but I cannot find her at all.

I go back to an empty check-in booth and pull up the guest records and enter St. James in the computer but nothing comes up. I’m pretty sure she got married, in that case, I have no idea what her last name could be. I check with her first name, after all, how many Lennox’s could there be, but my search still turns up nothing. I walk back through the foyer and even through the restaurant and lounge and still don’t see her. It’s been more than forty years and I am probably just seeing things, but I stay at the front desk.

Before I know it, hours have gone by, and I am starving. I head to the restaurant to get a table before the doctors take their first break. Even though we have provided food for them I am sure there will be some who will prefer to eat at one of the restaurants instead. I am almost there when a voice stops me dead in my tracks. Without my permission, my feet move to find the owner of that voice. I turn into the main ballroom where the doctors are in the middle of a presentation, and I see a face I have not seen in over four decades. Lennox St. James.

42 years ago

Peter

Thank God, it’s the last year of school and I can’t get out of here fast enough. I have had my life planned out for me since I was a child. I’ll go to school for journalism and take over the newspaper my mom started to give my father something to do.

My mother Grace Lynn Bennet nee Fairchild was born into money. My dad had supposedly come from money too but what my grandfather did not realize is that the Bennetts lost their money during prohibition and never made it back. By the time my mother’s family realized they were broke, my mother was already pregnant with me and stuck in a marriage with a man who was resentful and useless. She started the newspaper to give him something to do and although it worked for a short while he lacked the motivation and education to do much with it.

When my mother stepped in to run the paper it made him even more resentful and the drinking and cheating eventually started. He wouldn’t leave because, well he didn’t have anything without her, and he knew it. So, it’s up to me to get my degree to run the business.

I don’t really want to take over the newspaper, but I don’t have the heart to tell my mom. And my dad, well he doesn’t care if I want to or not.

I look up when Emma gets in the car. I don’t even remember the drive over here. She leans over and kisses me as I pull out of her driveway and head to school. Emma is like me; her life has been planned out for her too. But unlike me she is not expected to get a degree, she’s expected to get a husband and become the perfect housewife.

It’s 1980 and that is supposed to be her sole ambition. She has strived her whole life to be perfect, dress perfectly, act perfectly, get perfect grades, and snag the perfect husband. That’s the public version of Emma. The version she shows me and her friends is anything but perfect. She actually wants to go to school, get a degree and have her own career and I support her doing just that.

Emma and I have known each other since kindergarten and started dating in junior high school. It is assumed that she and I will get married and have a perfect life. House, kids, dog, yada, yada, yada. We have been the first for each other for almost everything, first kiss, first and only person we had sex with, first date, etc., etc.

“I can’t believe we are finally seniors! After we graduate, we can finally get out of this town,” she says as she checks her makeup in the mirror. Emma is a beautiful girl, and she knows it, she has long brunette hair, gorgeous brown eyes, and freckles. She’s about five feet four inches tall and one hundred five pounds on a heavy day. She is captain of the cheerleading team, on the student government association, and the national honor society. I’m the catcher on our school's baseball team, I have had scouts come to recruit me for the major leagues but once again my life has been planned out, and I honestly don’t know if I want to play baseball for a living.

We finally get to school, and I park my red Dodge Charger in my normal spot and get out to help Emma out. Our town is pretty small and ordinary, but our claim to fame is our schools. We have some of the best schools in upstate New York, the tuition is akin to college tuition so even though we are not an all-white school we are definitely predominately white. Most families cannot afford to pay the tuition for many of our schools, I guess that’s a way to keep certain demographics out. But even if you go to our public school, it’s still better than most other public schools. So that is why our little town with some of the best schools in New York State is ninety-eight percent white.

We make it inside and head to our lockers. I walk Emma to her first class, give her a kiss, and head to my own class. I hope and pray this day goes by fast. I ran into Brad on my way to first period.

“Bennett, can you believe we're seniors finally!” Brad says.