Midnight Baron

Welcome from the ferry

Samir Vale can tell which ferry brought a guest to the hotel by the shape the water makes at the bottom of their suitcase. He brings the right towel before setting out a registration slip. On the evening the shift became his, three people arrived looking for a waiter who'd failed to start that morning and a fourth needed him to find a boat that had left an hour before. Samir managed to give everybody somewhere to sit. In three rooms upstairs there are chairs he has had recaned because he can remember waiting a long time on one hard bench as a new luggage porter. He works on the booking desk himself because he dislikes letting somebody choose a seat for him.

His sister Sana keeps a photograph of the two of them in the laundry, putting up a sheet to play at hotels after their mother had folded it. Samir got to play the guest that day because he took the bookings.

The answer from DGM

The request for a private pit bay beside his Mercedes-Benz 1989 560 SEC AMG was polite enough to read aloud in a dining room. He'd put his timings on it and the names of the two people likely to come watch. Somebody at DGM slid a bucket over the floor and offered him half the nearest bench. He asked if there was somewhere to leave his second bag. They let him put it under the bucket after he turned it over. Once he was sitting he felt that he could handle three short runs before anyone found out he'd come intending to find faults with the arrangements.

He brought hand towels the next time. They had laundry tags. Ray from Formally Ray asked him which one could get properly dirty. Samir heard himself say the smallest one, then unfolded the big one and laid it over the tools so nobody would feel obliged to carry it back clean. Ray left a crease in it as hard as the tags.

A place saved

Priya Soke offered him a space after calling his attention to the way everybody was using the same bench to mean three places. Samir had expected a whole stretch of empty top. She was able to get him in at one end in a gap with room for the Mercedes keys, a tool tray and the shoulder of somebody climbing down from the shelf beside him. He had a good view of the corner where he liked to set the front wheels early and wait through the rest of the turn. His runs feel best when he's kept the first input small and let the car finish its movement. They feel worst when he discovers he's given himself no way to change the line.

Sana's first visit

Sana has traded a shift to see how her brother spends his afternoons. He set aside a large blue towel before remembering his own rules about seats. His ambition is a full circuit in stages with the same line across the middle of every section, and he wants to know whether it will be the first time she sees him unable to anticipate where he'd like to be. There is a heavy tray on the good end of the bench at the moment. He has put the bucket alongside it and loaded the spare towel into the Mercedes where anybody can find it.