It was March 1964 when the cleaning staff began to ignore the fifth floor at the Wilksbury Arms in Allentown, Pennsylvania. All my attempts to discover why were met with dismissal precipitated by apathy on behalf of the front desk people. Among the myriad ironies of my life, the sheer impossibility of actually communicating with people when I wasn't on the clock has got to be the most crushing. It's like a cook who can't so much as boil water when he comes home at the end of the day. I dunno, maybe it's one of those psychological blocks my shrink friend Harry keeps telling me about. Of course, he's usually referring to my distaste for whitefish. I was in town coaching this toy manufacturer on the topic of internal memorandum effectiveness. In other words, real riveting business. I normally didn't try to speed up my contracts given the per diem, but I had a real dread of indoor allergies and it was only a matter of time in that dusty room.
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