Weekend Read Free

at the stage where Bobby Grant was crooning a love ballad. The flickering multi-colored spotlights distorted the shadows around the tables. Everywhere there seemed to be tapered fingers—reaching, touching, groping for each other. The young singer moved his body rhythmically to the beat of the drum. Sandi studied his hips and fantasized what it would be like to straddle him the way Margret Thomas had straddled Caesar. Looking around to make sure she was unseen, she let her legs part a tiny bit and moved her fingers along her thighs. Touching herself tenderly, she finally gave in to the uncontrollable ecstasy as Bobby Grant continued to croon, completely unaware of what was happening in the dark.
    “Dr. Bronstein, can you hold please. I have Mr. Lawrence on the line.”
    “It’s about time,” he said, immediately regretting his tone. He was standing in the corridor near the emergency room of the Community General Hospital. Some interns and nurses were carrying on a conversation at the nurses’ station and the emergency room doctor stood by a patient strapped down to a rolling bed. Bronstein looked behind himself instinctively. No one appeared to be paying him the slightest attention. Even so, he huddled closer to the phone.
    “Doc? Sorry it took so long for me to return your call. It’s been a bitch of a day.”
    “For all of us.” Bronstein gazed up at the IBM wall clock and noted he was an hour late for dinner. “Look, Jonathan, I can’t talk to you from here. We’ve got a major problem. Can you meet me at my office in fifteen minutes?”
    “It’s going to be hard. You won’t believe what’s going on up here. I’ve got a million things to do before the weekend. Can you come over to the hotel instead?”
    “Impossible,” the doctor said. “My office, fifteen minutes.” He hung up abruptly and started down the hall.
    The general manager was waiting in front of the doctor’s office when he arrived a quarter of an hour later. “I only have a short time so you better make it fast,” he said. “It’s like a madhouse up there, trying to get everything ready for tomorrow’s mass incursion.”
    Jonathan stood a good inch and a half shorter than the M.D. but his stiff appearance made him seem almost taller and stronger. The wind wouldn’t dare muss a hair of his prematurely gray trim. The knot in his tie was always just right, the crease in his pants too perfect. He never removed his jacket, indoors or out. It was rumored he ironed his shorts.
    He was a muscular well-proportioned man with hard sharp features that all too well reflected his abrupt personality. In dealing with people he maintained an arrogant coolness that usually annoyed subordinates and increasingly bothered guests, especially the old-timers used to the warm familylike atmosphere the Goldens had established at the Congress over the past fifty years. It was difficult to pry personal facts from him, not that many were tempted to try. His tight-lipped businesslike approach was ascribed by some as a side effect of a proper New England upbringing. Others considered his snobbishness downright anti-Semitic, an irony not lost on his colleagues at one of the Catskills’ largest “Borscht Belt” hotels.
    “Are you aware that your personnel director sent a man named Tony Wong down here an hour ago and I’ve had to have him hospitalized?” Bronstein walked into his office and offered Jonathan a seat.
    “Tony who?”
    “Wong. One of your custodial people. He works in the kitchen.”
    “Is that what you brought me down here to …”
    Sid had wanted to build up to it dramatically, to explain his theory step by step, but it was obvious the general manager was in no mood to mince words.
    “I’m almost certain Wong has cholera,” he blurted out. For a moment he felt relieved. He wouldn’t have to carry the burden alone. He looked expectantly at the manager, hoping for a reaction that indicated he might be as horrified as the doctor.
    Jonathan