“I’m good at moving pianos,” I said, and asked him where I could find Palm Beach Hotel.
“Some joint,” he said, sighing. “You’ll like it there; even the food’s good,” and he gave me directions.
I reached the hotel in two or three minutes, and the reception I got would have satisfied Rockefeller himself. A flock of bellhops grabbed my luggage, somebody drove the Buick to the hotel garage, and a couple of pixies, dolled up in blue and gold fancy dress, would have carried me up the steps if I’d let them, and if they’d had the strength.
The reception clerk did everything except go down on his hands and knees and knock his head on the floor.
“We’re delighted to have you here, Mr. Cain,” he said, handing me the register and a pen. “Your rooms are ready, and if you’re not satisfied with the view you have only to let me know.”
I wasn’t used to this line of treacle, but I made out that I was. I told him I was pretty fussy about views, and the one he’d arranged for me had better be good.
It was good. I had a private balcony, a sitting-room and a bedroom with a bathroom attached that only Cecil B. de Mille could have designed.
I went out on the balcony and looked across the beach, the palms and the ocean. It was terrific. To my left, I could look into some of the other rooms of the hotel. The first one I looked into was as good as a peep-show you sometimes find in a back street in New York; only it had more class. The dame was an eye-stopper. She was wearing a couple of dumb-bells in either hand. Maybe she called it exercising in the nude. I caught her eye. Before she ducked out of sight, her smile said: “We could have fun together, big boy.”
I told the reception clerk who’d come up with me that the view was swell.
When he had gone, I went back onto the balcony, hoping to see some more of the dumb-bells, but I’d seen all there was to see.