Dry Bones
“THE CLOCK IN THE HOTEL LOBBY WAS FIVE minutes shy of one. The only other guest, a tweedy, professorial type, slouched next to the softly playing radio in the corner. Dunne caught a few lines of a BBC commentary on “the spirituals of the American Negro.” Uninterested in the radio as well as the copies of the London Times and the Tribune splayed on the stub-legged table in front of his chair, Dunne signaled for the waiter.
Black swallowtail coat hanging from curtain-rod shoulders, the waiter turned out to be the same one from a year ago. He approached with a slight limp. His parchment-like skin tautly stretched from crown of head across sharp jut of cheek and awkwardly prominent Adam’s apple. He replaced the used napkin with a fresh one and served Dunne’s scotch and side of water from a tray the same tarnished silver as his thinning hair. Decidedly less harried than he’d been the year before, he lowered the glasses onto the table with the solemnity of a priest placing a chalice on the altar.
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