Chapter 48 – First Evening
The valet had brought in our luggage and set it behind the registration desk, at which we now stood. I pointed to the brochure on the desk and said, “They have what they call The Presidential Suite and The Vice Presidential Suite. The Presidential Suite is the place in the Queen Anne tower we saw from the top of the bridge.”
The clerk waited while we made our choice. Tommy said, “If you can answer a question correctly, you get the Pres and I’ll take the Vice Pres. If you answer wrong, I get the Pres.” I smiled while the clerk looked puzzled.
“Deal,” I said.
“You mentioned paradox. That happens to me regularly. I see two things, two important things that appear to be equally valid, two choices both of which seem to be right, but they are opposites and can’t both be right or best. How do you choose? How do you decide?”
I said, “That’s two questions, which invalidates your challenge. I win.” I said to the clerk, “I get the bigger suite,” looked back at Tommy who was smiling, looked back at the clerk and said, “Just joking. Hold on,” looked back at Tommy, said, “Not many things as important as those two questions. Paradox is a bitch, and it’s all over the place. But, I think I have the right answer; the only one I’ve come up with.”
“And?” he said.
“Intuition. It’s the only way. You can’t reason out paradox, and people who let emotions dictate their decisions are idiots. So I use the thing that combines both. Intuition. Doesn’t always work right, but most of the time it does.”
Tommy looked at me for a moment, then looked at the clerk and said, “I get the VP.”
The bellhop escorted us up to the suites, which had their doors next to each other. He positioned the cart with the luggage between the doors, looked at us and said, “You the ones came in the Bullitt car?”
Tommy said, “How’d you know that?”
“Valet. Told everyone about the car and you.”
Tommy nodded at me and said, “He say anything about her?”
“Oh yeah.”
“What’d he say?”
“You really want me to say that, in front of her?”
“It was a nice thing, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“Well then?”
“He said, he said, one time with her, you know, and he’d spend the rest of his life working in the slums of Calcutta, helping the poor.”
“Kolkata,” I said.
“What?”
“The call it Kolkata now.”
“Oh.”
I said, “And did the valet have anything to say about him?” nodding at Tommy.
“Yeah.”
“What?”
“You sure you want me to tell that in front of him?”
“Was it nice?”
“Not exactly.”
I looked at Tommy, who said, “Go on.”
“He said he didn’t think you could handle her,” nodding at me.
Tommy looked at me and smiled, then said, “He may be right. That’s what we’re here to find out.”
We stood looking at each other, the bellhop getting nervous, us oblivious to him, him finally saying, “You guys really staying in both suites? Really? One for you and one for the luggage?”
Simultaneously we said, “I wish.”