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A dying poker king has one more game to win. A love-sick mechanic with scars and Jesus issues. A mysterious Black woman on the run from a man who wants her dead. Money and sex, love and death and a serious showdown in the Sierra Nevada snow.
Genre: FICTION / Action & AdventureGood reviews, slow sales, 4-5 stars.
A Desk Clerk Dressed in Black
The woman in the yellow sun dress enters the revolving door of the Hotel Pyrenees.
Years of fingerprints smear the glass. The door squeaks as I shove at the brass bar. The door spins like a merry-go-round. Palm prints, fingerprints, oil smudges stain the brass that has seen a thousand women with fur collars around their necks climb out of Packards. Women with slit skirts, women wearing flapper hats and feather boas, women dripping with diamonds, women draped in silk dresses that slithered over their hips as they danced to the beat of the big bands.
The woman in the yellow waves at the desk clerk who hands her a key -- 206. Still swinging her shopping bag, the woman waltzes across the terrazzo floor. She punches the elevator button. The door opens. She steps into the elevator and turns. Her skin is golden. I see her face then. She reminds me of Sister Gloria Mercedes with a big sunny smile and tender eyes. But the hair is wrong. The woman’s hair is curled. The mouth is wrong. Sister Gloria never wore lipstick like fire on her mouth. Sister Gloria never danced to the big bands. Laurie Smith never wore a feather boa.
The floor of the lobby is worn terrazzo. The tiles are small white and black hexagons with flat edges. The edges lace into larger hexagons webbed into stripes.
The walnut front desk is chest high. The desk clerk raises her head. She is tall and thin. Forty-ish. Horn-rimmed glasses as black as soot straddle a sharp nose. Thin lips—unpainted—a narrow, pointed chin, and tied back gray hair. The plain mouth frames yellowing teeth.
