Somewhere in Time Read Free Page A

have monthly rates but even so I'd probably be destitute before departed.
    How long has this hotel been here? There's a sheet of information in my room I'll look at later. It's an old place though. En route to the lobby via a basement corridor leading from the Prince of Wales Grille, I passed through a marvelous old bar room with a palatial counter; I must have a drink there tomorrow. Also saw an arcade with a barbershop and jewelry shop, peeked into a side room filled with game machines, glanced momentarily at some period photos on the wall. Will take a look at them as well. Later, when I've fed my ravenous body.
    Too dark now to see much outside. Shadowy trees nearby, some parked cars, and, beyond that, the multicolored lights of San Diego in the distance. Reflected in the window is the huge, hanging light fixture, a crown of lights suspended in the night. This is not like being in the beached and overrun Queen Mary. This is the Queen still ruling the seas.
    Only one thing wrong: the music. Inappropriate. Should be something more genteel. A string quartet playing Lehar.
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    I'm sitting in a giant armchair on the mezzanine above the lobby. In front of me is an enormous chandelier with tiers of red-shaded lights and necklaces of crystal dangling from its bottom. The ceiling overhead is intricate and heavy-looking, dark paneled sections polished to a high gloss. I can see a massive, paneled column, the main staircase, and the gilded grillwork of the elevator shaft. I came up by another staircase. There was a silence on it I could feel in my flesh. This chair is something else. The back is far above my head, two plump urchins flanking its scroll. Both arms end in winged dragons whose scaly serpent forms extend to the seat. Where the arms join in back, two figures loll, one a childlike Bacchus, the other a staring, fur-legged Pan, playing on his pipes.
    Who sat on this chair before me? How many have looked across that railing down into the lobby at the men and women sitting, standing, chatting, entering, and leaving? In the 1930s, '20s, '10s.
    Even in the '90s?
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    I'm sitting in the Victorian Lounge, drink in hand, staring at a stained-glass window. Lovely room. Lush red upholstery in the booths; looks like velvet. Paneled columns, paneled ceiling squares, a chandelier with hanging crystal pendants.
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    Nine twenty p.m. Showered, legs all tired, lying on my bed, looking at the information sheet. This place was built in 1887. That's incredible. And I knew that something about it looked familiar. Not deja vu unfortunately. Billy Wilder used it filming Some Like It Hot.
    Various quotations from the sheet:
    "Structure resembling a castle.'
    "Last of the extravagantly conceived seaside hotels."
    "A monument to the past."
    "Turrets, tall cupolas, hand-carved wooden pillars, and Victorian gingerbread."
    I'm listening to a sound I haven't heard since childhood: the thumping of a radiator.
    Astonishing silence in the corridors. As though time itself has collected in them, filling the air.
    Wonder if it fills this room as well. Is there anything inside it left from yesteryear? That speckled gold-brown-yellow carpeting? I doubt it. The bathroom? Probably didn't even have a bathroom then. The wicker chairs? Perhaps. Certainly not the beds or end tables nor the lamps; God knows, not the telephone. Those prints on the wall? Unlikely. The drapes or Venetian blinds? Nope. Even the window glass has probably been replaced. The bureau or the mirror hanging over it? Don't think so. The wastebasket? Sure. How about the TV set? Yeah, yeah.
    Not much of the past at all in here. A shame.
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    My name is Richard Collier. I'm thirty-six years old, a television writer by profession. I'm six foot two and weigh one hundred and eighty-seven pounds. I've been told I look like Newman; maybe they meant the cardinal. I was born in Brooklyn on February 20, 1935, almost 'went to Korea but it ended, graduated from the