Monday morning my boss, Mr. Carey, tells me I’ll be a houseman, a very important job where I’ll be out front in the lobby dusting, sweeping, emptying ashtrays and it’s important because a hotel is judged by its lobby. He says we have the best lobby in the country. It’s the Palm Court and known the world over. Anyone who’s anyone knows about the Palm Court and the Biltmore clock. Chrissakes, it’s right there in books and short stories, Scott Fitzgerald, people like that. Important people say, Let’s meet under the clock at the Biltmore, and what happens if they come in and the place is covered with dust and buried in garbage. That’s my job, to keep the Biltmore famous. I’m to clean and I’m not to talk to guests, not even look at them. If they talk to me I’m to say, Yes, sir or ma’am, or No, sir or ma’am, and keep working. He says I’m to be invisible, and that makes him laugh. Imagine that, eh, you’re the invisible man cleaning the lobby. He says this is a big job and I’d never have it if I hadn’t been sent by the Democratic Party at the request of the priest from California. Mr. Carey says the last guy on this job was fired for talking to college girls under the clock but he was Italian so whaddya expect. He tells me keep my eye on the ball, don’t forget to take a shower every day, this is America, stay sober, stick with your own kind of people, you can’t go wrong with the Irish, go easy with the drink, and in a year I might rise to the rank of porter or busboy and make tips and, who knows, rise up to be a waiter and wouldn’t that be the end of all my worries. He says anything is possible in America, Look at me, I have four suits.
The headwaiter in the lobby is called maître d’. He tells me I’m to sweep up only what falls to the floor and I’m not to touch anything on the tables. If money falls to the floor or jewelry or anything like that I’m to hand it to him, the maître d’ himself, and he’ll decide what to do with it. If an ashtry is full I’m to wait for a busboy or a waiter to tell me empty it. Sometimes there are things in ashtrays that need to be taken care of. A woman might remove an earring because of the soreness and forget she left it in the ashtray and there are earrings worth thousands of dollars, not that I’d know anything about that just off the boat. It’s the job of the maître d’ to hold on to all earrings and return them to the women with the sore ears.
There are two waiters working in the lobby and they rush back and forth, running into each other and barking in Greek. They tell me, You, Irish, come ’ere, clean up, clean up, empty goddam ashtray, take garbage, come on, come on, less go, you drunk or sompin’? They yell at me in front of the college students who swarm in on Thursdays and Fridays. I wouldn’t mind Greeks yelling at me if they didn’t do it in front of the college girls who are golden. They toss their hair and smile with teeth you see only in America, white, perfect, and everyone has tanned movie star legs. The boys sport crew cuts, the teeth, football shoulders, and they’re easy with the girls. They talk and laugh and the girls lift their glasses and smile at the boys with shining eyes. They might be my age but I move among them ashamed of my uniform and my dustpan and broom. I wish I could be invisible but I can’t when the waiters yell at me in Greek and English and something in between or a busboy might accuse me of interfering with an ashtray that had something on it.
There are times when I don’t know what to do or say. A college boy with a crew cut says, Do you mind not cleaning around here just now? I’m talking to the lady. If the girl looks at me and then looks away I feel my face getting hot and I don’t know why. Sometimes a college girl will smile at me and say, Hi, and I don’t know what to say. I’m told by the hotel people above me I’m not to say a word to the guests though I wouldn’t know how to say Hi anyway because we never said it in Limerick and if I said it I might be fired from my new job and be out on the street with no priest to get me another one. I’d like to say Hi and be part of that lovely world for a minute except that a crew cut boy might think I was gawking at his girl and report me to the maître d’. I could go home tonight and sit up in the bed and practice smiling and saying Hi. If I kept at it I’d surely be able to handle the Hi but I’d have to say it without the smile for if I drew my lips back at all I’d frighten the wits out of the golden girls under the Biltmore clock.
There are days when the girls take off their coats and the way they look in sweaters and blouses is such an occasion of sin I have to lock myself in a toilet cubicle and interfere with myself and I have to be quiet for fear of being discovered by someone, a Puerto Rican busboy or a Greek waiter, who will run to the maître d’ and report that the lobby houseman is wankin’ away in the bathroom.