Stephen King – Dedication
DEDICATION
1
Around the corner from the doormen, the limos, the taxis, and the revolving doors at the entrance to Le Palais,
one of New York’s oldest and grandest hotels, there was another door – this one small, unmarked, and
unremarked.
Martha Rosewall approached it one morning at quarter of seven, her plain blue canvas tote-bag in one hand,
a smile on her face. The tote was usual. The smile was not. She was not unhappy in her work – being the Chief
Housekeeper of floors Ten through Twelve of Le Palais might not seem like much to some, but to a woman
who had worn dresses made out of flour-sacks as a girl in Babylon, Alabama, it seemed a great deal. It was
just that, on any ordinary morning, a person arrives at work with an ordinary expression on one’s face – which
is to say, an expression that says most of me is still in bed and not much more.
Things had not been ordinary for Martha since she arrived home from work yesterday at three-thirty and
found the package her son had sent from Ohio. The long-expected had finally come. She had slept little last
night – she had to keep getting up and checking to make sure it was real, and still there. Finally she had slept
with it under her pillow, like a bridesmaid with a piece of wedding cake.
She used her key and went down three steps to a long hallway painted flat green and lined with Dandux
laundry carts. They were piled high with freshly washed and ironed bed-linen. The hallway was filled with its
clean smell, a smell that Martha always associated, in some vague way, with the smell of freshly baked bread.
There was the faint sound of Muzak from the lobby, but Martha no longer heard it, anymore than she heard
the hum of the service elevators or the rattle of china in the kitchen.
Halfway down the hall was a door marked CHIEFS OF HOUSEKEEPING. She went in, hung her coat, and
passed through the big room where the Chiefsthere were eleven of them – took their coffee-breaks, worked
out problems of supply and demand, and tried to keep up with the endless paperwork.
Beyond this room with its huge desk, wall-length bulletin board, and perpetually overflowing ashtrays was a
dressing room. Its walls were plain green cinderblock. There were benches, lockers, and two long steel rods
festooned with the kind of coat-hangers you can’t steal.
The door to the bathroom opened. Delores Williams and a plume of warm steam came out. Delores, fresh
from the shower, was wrapped in a Le Palais towel and just stripping a Le Palais shower cap from her head.
She took one look at Martha’s bright face and came to her with her arms out. “It came!” she cried. “You got it!”
Martha didn’t know she was going to cry until the tears came. She hugged Delores and put her face against
Delores’s warm wet neck.
“That’s all right, honey,” Delores said. “You let it out. You go on and let it all out.”
“It’s just that I’m so proud of him,” she said. “It’s just that I’m so proud.”
“Of course you are,” Delores said, and when Martha finally stopped crying, Delores said she wanted to see it.
“But you can hold it,” she added, laughing. “I ain’t gonna drip on it – I don’t want to be talkin’ through a hole in my throat.”
So, with the reverence reserved for an object of great holiness (which, to Martha Rosewall, it was), she
removed her son’s first novel from the blue canvas tote. She had wrapped it carefully in tissue paper and put it
under her brown nylon uniform. She now carefully removed the tissue so that Delores could view the artifact.
Delores looked carefully at the cover, which showed three Marines, one with a bandage wrapped around his
head, charging up a hill with their guns firing. BLAZE OF GLORY, printed in fiery red-orange letters, was
the title. And below the picture was this: A Novel by Peter Rosewall.
“All right – now show me what’s really important, Martha!” Delores said.