The sun had set over the Jersey skyline. From the roof, she could see the mighty Hudson River. Technicolor pinks, oranges, and periwinkle. Even if it was pollution, what a show. She took another hit.
Installment 19: Pincus exhaled ecstatically. “You know what the German poet Heine said about cholent? ‘The heavenly food that our dear Lord God himself once taught Moses to cook at Mt. Sinai.’ ”
Installment 18: "Leah walked to the stairwell, up the stairs to the Penthouse. She unlocked her door. Walked in and fell face first on her bed. She began to weep. Maybe the world wasn’t totally cold and cruel. Maybe Fred thought he could get laid."
Suite 42: “Simmering in a thick iron pot overnight, the potatoes, onions, garlic and kidney beans had melted with the beef, creating a cholesterol paste made for masonry, not a mortal mouth. Chicken shmaltz was the secret ingredient in her cholent.”
Suite 52: Amber, who isn’t what she seems and encourages illusions in others. And Faye, who proclaims: “Oh, to be a sexual siren at 60…” she told her reflection. “The not being put out to pasture quite yet. Keeping it up, pulling it in, the body dancing.”
Saul could’ve bought the Last Hotel in 1972. Saul recalled that Otto Stern, the original owner, offered to sell it to him. “I can’t take the aggravation no more,” he had told him. He wanted $125,000 in cash. It was a steal.
Installment 13: Fred, the scavenger in Suite 62, on his daily round: "On the street, Fred hopped on his bike. As soon as he started pedaling, the wind and car exhaust in his face, he got the feeling. He was totally free! Free as a NYC pigeon. Neither rain nor snow could keep him off his bicycle, the best fastest and cheapest way to get around the city."
In this, the 11th installment of "The Last Hotel," there's a New Year's Eve party going on in Suite 49, when an unexpected visitor appears and is shot, just as midnight strikes and the decade of the 1980s is ushered in.
For several minutes, they crawled on the carpet, feeling for the lens with their fingertips. Next to Lenny, Esther looked slight, feminine, even delicate. Once their heads met. They gazed at each other on all fours. Esther burst into a fit of giggles. “Will you look at us? I feel so stupid.”
This is installment seven of Sonia Pilcer's novel "The Last Hotel: A Novel in Suites," in which we meet Monica Parker: "People said that she resembled Vivien Leigh. Her pale, white, never-exposed-to-the-sun skin, her dark shoulder-length hair, red lips and cheeks."
Installment 6: For once in her life, Hana had been in the right place at the right time, after having been in so many wrong places at the right time and right places at the wrong time.
Installment 5: "Most hotels and boarding houses have a certain place where the habitués hang out, the professional tongue-waggers. Theirs was the turquoise vinyl couch near the elevator, chained to the wall so no one stole it."
Slowly, stealthily, they opened Pincus’ door, turning to look in each direction to make sure none of the neighbors saw them. They snuck from his place to hers, tiptoeing like teenagers out after their curfews.
