Concierge Confidential Read Online Free Page B

she needed, and she had it because of me.
    Whenever Charlie came in, he’d go into her office and shut the door. I could hear them talking and I could smell him smoking. I just sat behind my desk with my electric typewriter, dying to know what was going on in there.
    As he left one day, Charlie pulled me aside. “I’ve been putting out my cigarettes in her coffee mug,” he told me. I knew that, of course. I was the one who had to clean them out. “Do me a favor. Get some joke ashtray, something really tacky. I want an ashtray in that office tomorrow.” He handed me a twenty-dollar bill and left.
    I stared at the money and thought about what to do. I could have gone to the drug store and gotten any old ashtray. But the service bug that I had discovered in me had only grown stronger. What can I do that will just blow him away? I wondered. What will make him see—make them both see—that I’m creative and fun?
    After work I went up and down Melrose, for hours. I went to thrift stores. I went to supermarkets. I went to disgusting old antique stores. I went all over, trying to find the exact right ashtray. Forty dollars later, I wound up buying four different ones so I could make the right choice.
    The winning selection was a plastic snow globe with a little Hollywood mountain in it and everything—and in 3-D! I waited for Charlie to come in, glancing at the door whenever I heard the slightest sound. Finally, he arrived. “Here you go,” I said, handing the ashtray to him.
    â€œCool.”
    But from the way that he looked at me, I knew that I had gotten him the right one. Yes, I had spent my own money. Yes, I had wasted my own time. But I showed him that I’d go the extra mile and I showed him that he could count on me.
    Now that he knew that he could rely on me, Charlie took it up a notch.
    Many Monday mornings, the phone would ring. “The Liberty Company. This is Michael.”
    â€œOh,” said the girl on the line. “Oh, I’m sorry. I think I have the wrong number.”
    â€œNo problem.” I hung up and waited for three seconds, until she called back. They always called right back.
    â€œIs Charlie there?” she said.
    â€œNo, he’s not. Can I take a message?”
    â€œCan you tell him that Susan called?”
    â€œOf course,” I told her.
    â€œThanks!”
    He walked in not long after. “Susan called,” I told him.
    He stared at me blankly.
    â€œYou know. Susan .”
    He tried to remember what and who he did over the weekend. “Oh yeah!” he said, laughing. “Right. Oh, I forgot my bag at Hamlet. Could you go get it?”
    It was five minutes away, so I just ran it. “Has Charlie Sheen left something here?” I asked the host.
    â€œI don’t know. I don’t have anything.”
    â€œWhere was he sitting?”
    â€œOver there.”
    There were people in the booth he had been in, with a small paper bag scrunched in the corner. “I just need to grab that,” I said to them. As I left the Hamlet I couldn’t help but notice that the bag was unusually heavy. I opened it up. Inside there was something wrapped in packing paper, like it was going to be shipped. I gasped.
    Charlie Sheen had left his gun at Hamburger Hamlet.
    I carried it back by my fingertips, scared that it was going to spontaneously discharge. Is he weird? I asked myself. Where has this gun been? I had gone through a million questions by the time I had returned to the office—but I asked Charlie none of them. Good service means that you don’t ask why, even when someone tells you to go get their gun.
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    THE MASTER MENTALITY
    A friend of mine who worked for Martha Stewart had an experience that illustrated our plight. His name is Robert. Nobody calls him Bob—except Martha does, always. He was frantically running out to grab lunch one day—frantically, because he could never leave his desk. Without