Appointment in Samarra by John O'Hara

Joe, you want to do me a favor, you can put the chains on the Studie. Okay? Swell.” He hung up, and addressed Irma. “Well, that’s settled.”
    “You can call Willard later,” she said. “I told him we’d call if we couldn’t go, so he’ll take it for granted we’re going.”
    “What about liquor?” said Lute.
    “Well, it’s Willard’s party. I should think he’d supply the liquor.”
    “Oh, yeah? Do you know how much liquor costs at the Stage Coach? Seventy-five cents a drink, baby, and they won’t sell it to everybody. I don’t think Willard intends to supply the liquor, not at six bits a shot. I think I better make some gin and take a quart along, just in case. It wouldn’t be right to expect Willard to buy all the liquor and everything else for a party of twelve people.”
    “Maybe there’ll only be ten.”
    “All right. What if there
is
only ten? They have a cover charge of a dollar and a half or two dollars, and there goes twenty bucks already, not including ginger ale and White Rock, and sandwiches! You know what they charge for a plain ordinary chicken sandwich at the Stage Coach? A
buck
. If Willard gets away under forty bucks he’s lucky, without buying a single drink. No, I better make some gin. Or on second thought, there’s that quart of rye the boss gave me. I was going to save it, but we might as well use it tonight.”
    “Oh, the gin’s good enough. You make good gin. Everybody says so.”
    “I know I do, but gin’s gin. I think I’ll turn square for once in my life and take the rye. Maybe the others will bring their own, so we won’t have to get rid of the whole quart.”
    “I don’t want you to drink much if you’re going to drive,” said Irma.
    “Don’t worry. Not over those roads. I know. I’ll put the quart into pint bottles and keep one pint in my overcoat pocket when we get to the Stage Coach. Then the others will think I only have a pint and they’ll go easy. But I imagine everybody will bring their own, if they have any sense.”
    “I imagine,” she said. “I’m going upstairs now and make the beds. I’ll see if the pants of your Tux need pressing.”
    “Oh, God. That’s right. Do I have to wear that?”
    “Now, now, don’t try and bluff me. You look nice in it and you know it. You like to wear it and don’t pretend you don’t.”
    “Oh, I don’t mind wearing it,” he said. “I was just thinking about you. You’ll be so jealous when all the other girls see me in my Tux and start trying to take me outside. I just didn’t want to spoil your evening, that’s all.”
    “Applesauce,” said Irma.
    “Why don’t you say what you mean? You don’t mean applesauce.”
    “Never mind, now, Mister Dirty Mouth.” She left.
    What a girl, he thought, and resumed reading his paper; Hoover was receiving the newsboys for Christmas….
    III
    It was about two o’clock, U. S. Naval Observatory Hourly By Western Union time, when Al Grecco appeared in the doorway of the Apollo Restaurant. The Apollo was a hotel and restaurant. There had been a hotel on the site of the Apollo for close to a century, but the Pennsylvania Dutch family who had the restaurant before George Poppas took it over had not kept the hotel part open. Then when George Poppas, who actually was wearing those white Greek kilts when he arrived in Gibbsville, began to make money on the restaurant, someone mentioned that the building had been a hotel for nearly a hundred years, and George spent a lot of money on making the place a hotel again. The rooms were small and had a fireproof look about them, with steel beds and other furniture. The hotel was clean, the rooms were small and cheap, and the Apollo gota big play from salesmen who had their swindle sheets to think of. The John Gibb Hotel, Gibbsville’s big inn, was expensive.
    Al Grecco was one of the few permanent guests of the Apollo. He had a room there, for which he paid nothing. Ed Charney had some kind of arrangement with George Poppas,