The East Wind Hotel

Anderson Cobbs was an excitable man, who owned a hotel that exploded.

Well, not often.

He fancied himself a junior alchemist, though he had barely made it past the second semester in the local Underground University, called the “W”. He had a hotel with a hundred rooms, a basement filled with alchemical qualities and elements, very few guests, and no sense. He was lamenting the fourth sad, but reasonably lucky, fact to one of his friends (of two) one day.

“I’ll tell you, Harv, this is getting supremely disappointing.” He was sitting behind the somewhat charred, and worse for wear, clerk’s desk in the newly carpeted lobby. His friend, Harvard Balestra, was a common gunfighter, not an entrepreneur, but he was sympathetic; and besides, having someone who could pin a blackhat down at thirty paces, in a sandstorm, was a pretty good bargain, even if he did mostly grunt, spit on the wall and ride a mule. (He was too poor to buy a horse; times were hard for gunfighters.)

It was at this moment that the telephone rang, a brazen jingle of bells and clappers. Anderson picked it up.

“The East Wind hotel.” He said, eyes widening expressively at the half-asleep Harvard. Harv propped two dusty boots on the desk.

“I’m sorry, we don’t have any vacancies.” Anderson said, winking happily at Harv. Harv pulled his hat down over his eyes with one hand, settling his gun belt with the other.

“You need it? Very well, I suppose that we can cobble something up. It’ll be pretty expensive.” He waited a moment. “Thirty arias a night. Very well. How long shall you be needing this room? Two weeks?” Anderson made the yippee sign: one fist swung in tight circles by the right ear. No response from the gunfighter.

“Very well, I shall ready the room for you. Until tomorrow.” Anderson clicked the telephone down with a flourish. Then he rose and spun around the room, laughing with glee.

“Two weeks! And at twice the norm!” He seemed almost about to explode. Harvard rose in a jingle of spurs, muttered something about peace and quiet, and shuffled lazily out of the door.

The next day a rather damaged stage rolled into town. The wheels looked less than perfect, the once pretty paint scuffed by the careless fist of the desert, a few odd bulletholes peppered around the cash box. No way to tell if they were real. Sometimes the coaches would put them in just to make them look like they’d been around, seen some action.

Quite unexpectedly, and to the mild, hazed surprise of the few observers sitting on various porches, the coach stopped in front of the East Wind Hotel. An old timer watched it a moment, and then spat appreciatively at his companion’s boot.

“East Wind got a visitor.” He said, as though he had, through some superhuman feat of his own, engineered this fact.

“That so.” His companion muttered behind the brim of his hat.

“’s a girl.” He said, curious.

“That so.” His companion said again.

“A fresh little daisy.” He said, and then added “And it is so.”

Anderson was frantically picking up bits of soot blackened glass from a quite recent accident when an elegant young lady walked in the door of his hotel. Anderson was only twenty six, she looked a few years younger than that, and his heart gave a thump, as his head went Retirement!