He went to the closet and took out his trench coat. He had bought it when he became a lieutenant three years before.
It was almost eight o’clock now. Robert Holton opened the door of his room and stepped out into the corridor.
There was a difference in smell. The corridor smelled old and dusty as though no one had walked down it in years. Robert Holton in the one year he had lived in this hotel had never seen anyone else come out of a room. Sometimes he wondered if he might not be the only person living on this floor, or in this hotel, or in the world.
The ceiling of the corridor was high and he enjoyed walking under such a high ceiling. He walked to the elevator and pressed the button marked “Down.”
There was a large pot filled with white sand beside the elevator door. He had always wanted to put something into that white sand. A cigarette butt, anything at all to spoil the white smooth surface. One day he would spit on the sand; he made himself that promise.
There was a clatter as the elevator went past his floor. That always happened. He pushed the button angrily.
Robert Holton tried to recall what he was supposed to do that day at the office. He could think of nothing very important that had to be done. In the afternoon he was supposed to go to a cocktail party and he looked forward to that. Mrs Raymond Stevanson was giving it and she was a very proper person to know. She had been a friend of his mother’s and she had been nice to Robert Holton when his mother had died several years earlier. His father thought Mrs Raymond Stevanson was stupid but his father was often harsh and she was, after all, important socially. When one was starting out in the brokerage business contacts were important. He began to map his day in detail.
There was a loud rattling and the elevator stopped at his floor. The door opened and Robert Holton stepped into the elevator.
“Good morning, Mr Holton,” said the elevator boy, a young man in his middle teens.
“Good morning, Joe. What kind of a day is it?”