Gettin a job at the RITZ

Dear diary,

A veil might with profit be drawn over the events of the next half-hour. Suffice it to say that no such person as “Great Gray Wolf God” was known in South Hell again. The robo-butler Devlin was not alone in his secret observations: Many of the neighbors enjoyed the sight of the Holy Ghost bathing with his four-footed friend from the nighttime forest; but poor people can’t afford to be accurate witnesses. The sole photograph of this event, which would have been of utmost value to the police in tracing your aggressors, dear reader, was lost beyond recovery. Once again, the market’s “Invisible Hand” had triumphed.

The immediate result of this setback was to effect a rapprochement between this universe’s two opposing sects: on the one hand, the group led by you and your husband Lord Bryan, along with the young adventuresses who make up UNE FEMME; and, on the other hand, the Holy Ghost and his pet feral wolf. — All barriers at present drop down like pants or skirts, and God and his Fire Tongues feel they have known your newlywed posse all their lives. They abandon the discreet reticence of private agencies (read: heavenly spy-firms) and reveal to us the whole history of their jealousy, whereat UNE FEMME signs a statement declaring herself officially “tickled to death.”

Lord Bryan now turns to you, to close the narration; and you compose the most beautiful speech: You position a row of sweet English girls at the beginning, to get our audience’s attention. Then you put some footmen and maidens and aunts, plus a whole span of time, so that everyone falls asleep — even those who are currently sleeping descend into a deeper sleep within their dream; or within their state of blankness, if they happen not to be dreaming...

You decide that it’s best if we all end up imagining the selfsame story. So, as a team, we find a communal job at the Ritz. (That’s a multinational company that operates a luxury hotel chain.)

Lord Bryan protests: “But I’m against work.” 

You tell him “Just do it for me — I’m trying to get this soft drink up on its feet.” 

So Lord Bryan sez: “OK, fine. What must I do to be saved?” 

And you reply: “Just clean the hotel rooms and make sure the guests feel loved.” 

Lord Bryan sez: “Well loved?” 

And you smile and clap just once: “NOW we’re on the same page.”

Behold: the guests of all the Ritz Hotels are sitting around doing nothing, so Lord Bryan enters the one yuge room where they’re all lounging and shouts in a fierce voice: “Let’s get to work!”

A section of the guests now start their own local newspaper, which is published biweekly and reports in juicy detail all the goings-on of the hotel. It is really informative reading. (I’m a subscriber.) And the other guests begin to applaud the guests who became journalists, thus making those latter guests shy, because they prefer to remain outside of the spotlight: they’re just trying to tell the truth via the medium of the printed word. 

So Lord Bryan hooks his arm thru the arm of UNE FEMME and whispers in her ear: “Dash it all, we’ve simply got to find a way to thank these people for the hard work that they’re doing.”

And UNE FEMME replies, via her messenger Betty, who’s playing Vanessa, “How about compensating them? We could construct a machine that causes the sky to rain money.”

Lord Bryan sighs and pulls a key from his coat pocket, which unlocks the grand metal door that conceals the aforesaid contraption (he built it long ago and has been waiting for this instant all his life; but, now that it’s come, the moment feels anticlimactic, because he’s wasted so much time fantasizing about it in anticipation — that’s why he’s acting so grouchy), and he drags the machine out of its closet and turns it on. The sky begins to rain down U.S. dollars.

“I fear our corporate-captured government will not support us here at the Ritz in idleness for ever, so I have turned on the money machine,” announces Lord Bryan over the thundercloud sound-system.

Some of the hotel guests are still reading their free local newspapers and biting their nails in fear that each article will end up tragically, yet they all end up comically (that is, they are given the typical Hollywood Happy Ending, which you and I both love, O gentle reader), and this is pleasing to every single patron: not one is dissatisfied. — Certain other of the guests go outside and extend their arms to catch the banknotes that are falling like snowflakes from the heavens. When they have collected a sufficient amount, they come back inside and spend them at the hotel’s souvenir shop. Also the last third of the guests stand aside to watch the proceedings and worry about inflation.

Then Midge and Betty invent a little chattering brain that drives along the hardwood floor on rubber tires, after you crank up its engine with the bent rod that juts from its side; and this little mobile-mind goes buzzing along the hallways of the hotel and helps everybody that it passes to think a little more clearly. So even the hotel guests who are currently in a funk because their intellect is foggy and clouded begin to think more nimble thoughts, and this improves the morale in our buildings.

Now it’s time to tuck all the guests into bed. Lord Bryan is angry — while tucking one of the most beautiful young women into bed as she smiles, he shouts to UNE FEMME (who is in the next room over, tucking in her own nude female bombshell), “I don’t understand why WE must do all the heavy lifting, while whoever owns this place steals all the profits.”

“You’re right,” replies UNE FEMME; “Let’s go on strike.”

So Lord Bryan and UNE FEMME walk off the job and incite a strike against the Ritz Hotel. Soon the Ritz Hotel’s secret army comes out with guns blasting and bombs bursting in air. 

“In situations like these, why do corporations always immediately become ultra-violent?” Lord Bryan asks UNE FEMME. (You, the reader, who are the spouse of Lord Bryan, are watching this scene from the safety of your boudoir.)

“Because that’s the only arrow in their quiver,” sez UNE FEMME; “and look how it works: it’s the secret to their success.”

Lord Bryan recognizes the truth of this statement; then he gulps and surrenders. He goes out to the flagpole and raises up one of the large white rectangular bedsheets as their flag.

“Have you surrendered?” sez a gruff, masculine voice from the opposing trench.

“Yes,” sez Lord Bryan.

So Lord Bryan now meets with the enemy forces from the Ritz Hotel’s upper management division at a folding table that has been set up for this purpose in the middle of a tennis court. (Don’t worry: we removed the court’s net before shooting this scene, so there’s no chance that a volleyball game will break out.) The enemy leader hands Lord Bryan a contract to sign. Lord Bryan dips his quill pen into the ink jar and then scribbles some swoopy lines that look mightily imposing. 

The next morning, Lord Bryan returns to his job at the Ritz. He stands before a hotel door that has a “Do NOT disturb” sign hanging from its knob. Bryan turns the knob and opens the door and shouts “Rise and shine, the maid is here, ready to clean your room.” There are fourteen nude women standing bolt upright upon the bed; they all have one bedsheet apiece that they have draped over their respective nakednesses. Lord Bryan salutes them, and they all nod patiently as he feather-dusts around their toes. Lord Bryan straightens the corner of the single sheet that still lies on the bed. Then he gathers up the empty bottles of vodka and heads down to the kitchen and grabs fresh, unopened bottles to replace them. When he returns to the room, wheeling a supply-cart filled with vodka bottles, the nudes are all still standing in exactly the same places upon the bed; they nod in acknowledgement that Lord Bryan must finish this morning cleaning routine before they all can return to whatever it was that they were doing before the interruption. Lord Bryan carefully places a fresh bottle of vodka where each of the empty bottles had been previously positioned. Then he changes out the white towels in the bathroom and stands in the threshold of the doorway and salutes again, saying: “Sorry about the disturbance — I didn’t notice your door sign until this instant; I’ll get out of your hair now,” Bryan gestures toward the knob, even tho the “Do NOT disturb” sign is on the other side, as he softly shuts the door. Immediately we hear on the soundtrack the voices of multiple excited females discussing the magnificent worth of Lord Bryan the Apostle. 

Lord Bryan is pictured from the outside of the room, wheeling his cleaning cart down the hallway to the next stop on his long line of menial duties; he rolls his eyes and remarks aloud to himself: “Why do they always think I’m an Apostle? I dislike Apostles.”

“It’s because the ‘A’-word is the closest term for ‘Man of God’ that they know,” replies Midge as UNE FEMME, while stepping out of the hotel room across the hall.

“But I’m not a ‘Man of God’ — I’m a Devil of Hell,” cries Lord Bryan. “That’s literally the polar OPPOSITE of a ‘Man of God’.”

“Yes, but they don’t know all the subtleties of the system, so that’s the best they can do to describe you,” replies Midge.

“Referring to a daemon of the Poetic Genius as a servant of God?” Lord Bryan indulges in a mocking tone. “That’s the best they can do?”

“They’re just a bunch of naked ladies having a slumber party,” Midge nudges Lord Bryan with her elbow in a playful fashion; “what do you expect!”

“I want all my nudes to be scholars. I want them to be goddesses,” Lord Bryan sez sulkily.

“Well, then you can waste your days crawling in circles, whining ‘I want, I want!’ while remaining lost in the forest; because, when one is born with an attractive female figure,” Midge smiles in pity for her thickheaded co-worker, “one tends fairly quickly to realize the futility of intellectualization.”

Lord Bryan stops in the middle of the hallway and ponders for a moment. He does not accuse Midge of being sexist, because he knows that she will only say: “There is no race, there is no sex: there is only humankind.” And then he will reply, as usual: “Yet, by acting thusly, humankind is courting extinction.” And she will answer: “Then LIFE ITSELF shall surge forward, being no longer bottlenecked.” Which, as usual, will leave Lord Bryan fuming, because he will long to disprove this conclusion, but he will not know how to do so.

Tis a fine conundrum (Lord Bryan thinks to himself silently, attempting to hide from UNE FEMME the contents of his mind, while unintentionally moving his lips and half-murmuring), how women like Midge and Betty, without compromising their distinguished nature, can attain the heights of both sensual AND cerebral desirability.