the diplomat, spy + hairdresser hotel

brittleblood

the diplomat, spy and hairdresser hotel - independently managed for 130 years - considered the town's offer to sell (in order for said town to demolish it and place a modern-style skyscraper in its occupied space) and, while humored, quickly turned its temperament to outrage.

we will never sell replied the hotel in a terse message delivered to the mayor's office.

shortly thereafter the mayor gave up all hope - left town and was never heard again.

20 years passed and the diplomat, spy and hairdresser hotel set a course to honor its 150 year milestone.

to be continued

cafreema

The hotel's owner, xtrev, called together it's long time manager, Katrina, and recently hired assistant manager, ScissorMan, to discuss the big anniversary party scheduled for Valentine's Day. It had long ago been decided that the party would be a costume ball and invitations had already gone out to all of the town's most important people as well as the hotel's best customers, but the details of the party still needed to be firmed up.

Just as the gathered hotel leadership had begun discussing the all important issue of who would provide the music for the party, all three of their cell phones began to ring simultaneously while showing an "Unknown" number. Each excused themselves to answer their phone, with Katrina ducking into the hallway and ScissorMan stepping into the bathroom.

After about 5 minutes, the meeting reconvened, but something had changed. A strange electricity seemed to permeate the room.

ScissorMan

Yeah, you won't want to use that bathroom for another, I dunno... 30 or 40 minutes...

brittleblood

while owner, manager and evacuation expert took to what amounted to nothing more than mundane marketing initiatives, the diplomat, spy and hairdresser hotel readied its own rooms, culled through the fine china reserves and, of course, arranged for the lounge act.

for their part, diplomats and spies had long had the date marked on their calendar - the three days designated as the celebration weekend we're prominent and travel plans had been booked far in advance. the foppish direct-mail invite each received from the owner-manager-evac expert team struck each as superfluous

the hairdresser

greg

xtrev, katrina and scissorman got back together. The wanderer - What is he doing now? Who is he? Where's he from? What's his purpose? were the words on their lips

brittleblood

the sole response from the several hundred invites, predictably, registered from the french ambassador. sent on something along the lines of linen and noticeably perfumed, the response attempted to, once again, pick the locks on the English language. in the end, the french would attend but requested the hotel be referenced somehow with the femine, rather than the escapist "l'hotel" or suffer the outrage of an entire french-speaking nation.

the hairdresser.

there is no hairdresser of course..."hairdresser" being a metaphor for any and every mechanism deployed to pry some diplomatic secret from the proper channels.

still the same, the owner-manager-evac expert team convinced their collective self it was high time to staff the hotel with a hairdresser - and advertisements were posted through the dailies.

brittleblood

penelope, accustomed to being on the outside looking in, feigned no surprise when she rounded persimmon street (which follows the mighty kite creek) and saw no less than 25 women, roughly in age from 23 to 29, lined outside the hotels administrative entrance. after all, this was the job of a lifetime! to be the hairdresser at the diplomat, spy and hairdresser hotel! she thought to herself this must be how james coburn felt when he read the script for the president's analyst...

she came back down to earth and took her place at the end of the line.

Germanprof

Due to the strategic error of employing as a copy-writer the authors of an advertisement for a one-arm drummer that had caught their eye, the team found that the creative spellings of their advertising copy also drew in a modern-day John the Baptist dressed in a camel-hair shirt and an eccentric chef who specialized in the culinary preparation of rabbits.
([Edit]Somehow this leapfrogged Brittleblood's post. Edited to restore the profound logical coherence of the narrative.)

Brighternow

- Drumwhirl. . . . .

brittleblood

sorry for the delay. there's no two ways around it. the journalistic content which follows is somewhat purloined, i admit. i know it's petty and weak-knee of me to loosely explain my source as "someone who doesn't want to be named for fear of reprisal", but the wall i've run into is the wall i've run into. a brief description of the person originating the content might be in order, but fear of reprisal doesn't limit itself to reprisal...the fear becomes pervasive.

you will not be getting a description.

the material which follows centers on the mayor who took flight.

as you probably guessed, the mayor didn't simply give up hope and split town. he is at large and his last known whereabouts have been exposed: a subterranean structure within the larger bonneville salt flats.

brittleblood

reading someone else's research notes can be at either end of the spectrum. the "fear of reprisal" researcher's notes are quite orderly, neatly hand-written and cross-referencing is damn near immaculate. the only novel item being small notes in the margins serving as reminders to replenish a depleting supply of spearmint gum. i see no harm with any of you drawing inferences from the fact, so there you have it...the researcher chews gum. spearmint.

using all the organization, cross-referencing and tidy handwriting i can quickly sum the circumstances leading to the mayor's flight. the mayor simply fled town after a stern confrontation involving the head of a contracting firm. the implication being the mayor had used his political connections to quid-pro-quo payola from the firm - with the hotel refusing to play ball, no over-the-top construction project would be in the offing.