The Givens & The Takens

They didn’t bicker, she just yelled at him when she wanted something. Or if she was angry. Or if she wanted to make Johnny angry.

Johnny first got a job at The Hotel Givens when Black men weren’t allowed to work at the front of standup joints. When all of the boots wanted that kind of gig and when telling people that he worked at The Hotel Givens got him some bell. Back then she was glamorous and he didn’t hate her, and if she had really been a broad, her nickname would’ve been “Gigi” because of her champagne personality. Now The Hotel Givens was a bitter woman fallen from grace and beauty. And everyone called her The Takens because the only “givens” about staying there anymore were bedbugs and bad dreams.

She used to be so sharp, with telephones in all of her rooms — first in Detroit — and a swimming pool in the basement that sparkled like diamonds with jazz coming from the attached closet-sized bar. Good people spent their money at The Hotel Givens, itching to be seen at this lavish inn designed by a French architect. The ornate wood paneling in the lobby was lined with white alabaster sculptures and the bellhops wore sharp, pressed uniforms with golden buttons, and the faceted, stained glass skylights looked like a kaleidoscope of beautiful futures. Suites featured high ceilings with elegant molding around bay windows facing the trendy north end of the street, and came with exclusive dinner reservations at The Mezzanine, the finest dining room in 30 city blocks. Babe Ruth stayed at the Hotel Givens more than once. Back then, Johnny was just one of her many minions.

That was before the city changed, before everything got dirtier and she got older and more and more of the guests became residents and suites were converted into SROs rented monthly. As she aged, in a thunderous testament of her former glory, The Hotel Givens took lives like they were sacrifices to a bold goddess who demanded blood: The first suicide happened in 1930, 20 or so years after her grand opening, after the high rollers and bill-droppers had been replaced by boosters and coasters and stashers. The Takens had lost her mink stole long ago but the Depression still felt new, like we would come out of it soon. But Lyle Creed’s wife wouldn’t take him back after he lost his job, and when he showed up at their apartment smelling like cheap hooch again, she told him that he wouldn’t see their child anymore either. Lyle went back to the hotel, gave his laundry to the front desk, and shot himself dead in his room. They gave Lyle’s clothes to Johnny because Johnny was closest to his size, but Johnny could never bring himself to wear them. Seemed too much tempting fate to walk around in a dead man’s clothes.

In 1931, a guest who had checked in under a false name was mysteriously poisoned. He was staying in one of the few remaining suites, and because they found such a flattering self portrait among his personal things, he received a lot of “whodunnit” news and gossip coverage for about a week. The crime was never solved. And later that year, a little girl fell out of a 9th story window that should not have been left open. “TAKEN FROM US!” her parents cried and the headline was plastered all over newspapers. That’s when “The Takens” began, spoken at first in hushed, sneering tones by people who maintained anger at the hotel’s neglectful actions that lead to the girl’s death. Johnny couldn’t help thinking that if he had been working that day, the window would’ve been closed.

By 1939, by the time she had taken 12 lives by suicide and 4 by murder, by the time fights and overdoses were too many to count and the papers weren’t even reporting her news, nothing surprised Johnny anymore. Not when he found another dead body, another life snuffed out at The Takens or when someone tried to rob the front desk or when pipes that had just been fixed burst again. But it’s hard to call the house boy-turned-manager a success story based on how it played out: all the white people left, and who else wanted to live at The Takens with her peeling wallpaper, trashy hallways, and derelict guests while also managing it? The Takens took Johnny like a prisoner and it showed on his face, in the rough patches on his hands. The pink waterline on his bottom eyelids drooped like they were about to drop fat tears, but never did. The manager’s coat that draped his scrawny frame was a relic of the past, dug out of some old closet even though none of the staff wore uniforms anymore. The keys on his lapel chain jingled with their own rhythm, announcing the only royalty left in this gilded jail.

And by now Johnny knew her better than anybody; better than the The Owners who never came around anymore, better than the tenants who thought Johnny didn’t know when they were partying on the roof or hoarding towels, better than the spiders and rats who made their kingdoms in the walls and under the beds. After most of his life working too many hours and too many bloody cleanups and too many sleepless nights, he could hear when she screamed at him to fix a hole in the roof, announcing herself softly with a trickle of water that only Johnny detected before it splashed down in a steady stream into almost the center of the lobby. He felt when one of the old wooden stairs was going to bust through, like she was reminding him that they were a shoddy substitute for the closed off, shuttered marble staircase at the front of the hotel that she really deserved.

When the smoking lounge and The Mezzanine closed, the maître d’ gave Johnny a box of 25 cigars that probably cost more money than Johnny made. He kept them in a sealed jar, stashed in the back of his closet with a little damp sponge at the bottom to keep them fresh. And every other day, when Johnny went down the hall to take a shower, he’d check on his prized, secretive stogies, make sure the sponge was still damp and that nothing was molding. Once or twice a year, when The Takens was yelling at him too much and the smell of the dried blood he’d cleaned up wouldn’t leave his nostrils, Johnny would walk up the 14 flights of stairs to the fire escape ladder that led to the roof and sit on top of the hotel, where the noise of the city was bigger than her demands, slice off the tip of a cigar with his pocket knife, and smoke the whole damn thing.

In the summer of 1942, Detroit was on sugar rations, women were sharing new recipes using syrup or honey instead, still wanting to be good housewives and also demonstrative patriots. With the threat of foreign aircraft invasion looming, the city was planning blackout drills, and the first one was on May 4. Giant “LIGHTS OUT” notices with catastrophic warnings of fines and The Enemy blasted from every media source for weeks. Citizens were expected to stop cars, turn off lights, and close windows during the 30 minute runthrough. The whole city would be under a brief cloak of darkness.

The afternoon of the scheduled blackout, Johnny kicked everyone out of The Takens, fighting with the long-term residents who said they had nowhere else to go as he marched through the halls, holding the little black registry book of names in his hand and shouting at people to get the hell out.

“Then lock your door and get yourself to Nowhere, as long as it’s not here,” he said, turning the lights out as rooms and floors emptied.

There was no sense in trying to take anyone’s key. Johnny didn’t want to be responsible for their piles of crap, so he let them leave their things in the rooms.

A week earlier, The Owners had offered him $20,000 to burn it down on the night of the blackout and then split town forever. They wanted to build a new hotel in a better area. A place that wasn’t The Takens and didn’t take a bad name with it. It wasn’t until Johnny was in his room later that he realized they had been planning to burn it down with everyone in it. But now since it would be empty anyway, why not have Johnny do the deed, just like he always did?

A few minutes before 10 o’clock, before the drill would start, Johnny walked down to the front desk, under the sign that said EXACT CHANGE ONLY, opened the black registry book with all of the names crossed out, looked through it briefly, and put it in his jacket pocket. He put on the manager’s coat for this last chore. He grabbed the satchel that he’d stuffed with the cash and walked through the quiet lobby, dragging his fingertips over the once-grandiose wood paneling, remembering for the first time in a long time how he had polished these walls in sync with the orchestra music that used to float through the lobby from one of the hotel’s restaurants. But now her walls were dry and cracked, making the sound of sandpaper on sandpaper as Johnny walked, as if she was recoiling from his touch. Her rouge was rubbed off and her lips were chapped and she bristled at Johnny because she didn’t like to be reminded.

He got to the old lobby bar, and in the dark, opened its heavy doors for the first time in years. Johnny’s eyes adjusted and he could see the empty space that used to be filled with furniture and people chattering, clinking glasses. The old fireplace that he’d attend to, it felt like she cooed at him when he stoked her flames. But now it was just a big vacant room, with the long mahogany bar top running along the side and no one to stand at it. He set the satchel on the bar and walked to the light switch behind it. Johnny checked the time, he still had a few minutes before the rest of the city would be turned “off”. The push-button light switches didn’t have plates on them anymore and it was easy to rip out the device, exposing broken wiring bits. Johnny checked the time again, pulled out the hot wire, and touched it against the ground. The copper edges arced and caught fire. Johnny grabbed a cigar out of his pocket, he had two left. He waited a moment until he guessed the city would be blacked out, and then lit his cigar on the flaming line. He stood there for about five minutes, smoking and leaning against the back wall as it started to get warm, and suddenly wished that he had a drink to pour for himself. He dropped the burning cigar on the bar and walked out, leaving the doors open behind him.

Back through the lobby, heading toward the back staircase, Johnny didn’t run his fingers along the walls this time. He didn’t have anything else to say to her. He climbed the first set of stairs, opened the door to the second floor, and wedged it there. Johnny wanted to make sure the fire had plenty of oxygen, so he’d opened every other door the night before.

When Johnny got to the 14th floor with all of the doors open and the smell of burning wood beginning to waft through the stairwells, he climbed the metal fire escape to the roof, and thought about how he’d never have to hear anything about or from The Takens ever again. He had the last word. He smiled, and lit the last cigar.