“Death of a Hotel Manager” by Gordon Brown / The Baltimore Review
- Short Story Shoutout
- May 6
- 4 min read
The Mob Point-of-View
“Because he served the tourists too well, we threw the hotel manager into the pool."
This is where we start in Gordon Brown’s short-but-sweeping “Death of a Hotel Manager,” (650 words) in the Spring edition of The Baltimore Review. And I use we advisedly. We are a mob. This story’s point-of-view is the mob’s point-of-view.
Many great stories are rooted in what seem like simple choices, like choosing a point-of-view. “Where you place the camera” in the world of film. From whose perspective is this story being told?
In Citizen Kane, Orson Welles and his cinematographer Greg Tolland placed the camera below floor level, shooting up at now-imposing characters and getting ceilings into frame, making tense scenes feel more claustrophobic.
Authors do similar things with P.O.V. to move us. Would we feel the way we do about Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan if we didn’t get them filtered through Nick Carraway’s thoughts? About Sophie and Nathan—and Sophie’s choices—if they weren’t seen through Stingo’s eyes?
To my experience, P.O.V. choices are seldom simple choices. The best of them are usually hard won. Our instinct is to take on an individual’s perspective. I’d bet cash money that Gordon Brown voiced this story in many ways before he landed (and landed well) on The Mob.
Putting the title aside (a heavy lift, I know), there’s something playful about the idea of throwing someone in a pool. The next couple of lines reinforce this. It’s a beautiful night. Spanish guitars play on the radio, the wind smells of flowers. The closing line of the opening paragraph slaps us awake, though, with “revolution” and “machetes” and “the sound of panicked splashing in the water.”
Oh yeah, that title…
The first detail we get about the hotel manager is his “crisp suit jacket.” As a uniform, it’s a signifier of status, of class. For the time being, he thinks it’s protecting him. He doesn’t even try to take it off once he’s treading water, even though it’s a physical liability. He’s actually mad about being thrown in the water.
“Naturally he was angry at us. Had always been angry at us”
Us. We. Our.
After a paragraph that gives us the hotel manager’s origin story, a story that separates him from his countrymen—one that’s rich and evocative with mentions of “straightened teeth,” “manicured nails,” “tin-roofed shacks,” “a UN school,” and “pirated DVDs that taught English”—we’re back in the pool.
While attempting to swim to the shallow end, the hotel manager is struck on the head with a long, metal pole. By who? By one of us, of course. He glares, still angry, despite his predicament, despite blood in the water. He’s still playing the role of hotel manager, assuming it gives him power to wield. He’s still above the mob, even as he sinks deeper.
Then, a bracing shift in the telling.
“We were not entirely certain that the figure […] was indeed that selfsame hotel manager or merely one of his staff.”
I’ve italicized “figure” above. What a fantastic choice. If we’re not sure the man we’re after is who we think he is, he can’t be a man. That’d be too much to bear.
As we approach the story’s close, one brave soul—finally, an individual—kneels down at the pool’s edge and extends a hand to the manager.
But the mob is quickly in his ear. “Don’t be a coward,” the brave soul is told, “or even worse a fool.”
Then it’s the mob speaking. To the brave soul, to all of us, to the world, to you:
“There are, on this island and in this world, no shortage of men with straightened teeth, manicured nails, and crisp suit jackets […] who are ashamed of you, who hate you, because they are the same as you, who of course we must all hate back.”
Finally, the mood changes. It gets quiet as the hotel manager meets his fate. Why the quiet? An acknowledgement of the wrong doing? Or just a sating of bloodlust?
That’s not for us to say. That pronouncement, reader, is on you.
Full disclosure: The Baltimore Review gifted me with my first short story acceptance, so I’m completely biased about their fine work. Gordon Brown’s “Death of a Hotel Manager” is a great indication of what they do.
The Baltimore Review was founded in 1996 as a literary journal publishing short stories and poems, with a mission to showcase the best writing from the Baltimore area, from across the U.S., and beyond.
Here’s what founding and managing editor Barbara Westwood Diehl is looking for in fiction:
“I lean toward the traditional narrative form but like to see some risk-taking, at least some real inventiveness, in the content. I want to be riveted. I want to be bowled over by a writer’s ability to immerse me in another world with compelling characters, good use of setting, great scenes, and, finally, a sense that something has happened and the world is not the same world it was on page one. Sometimes, I want a good laugh.”
Current and past issues are available online for your review.
The Baltimore Review is open for submissions through May 31st. Word count limit is 5,000, but shorter is better. There is no fee for submission.
TBR is also running a Summer Flash Fiction Contest (up to 1,000 words) with an $8 entry fee and a $400 prize.
Gordon Brown’s work has appeared in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Weird Horror Magazine, Hunger Mountain Review, and elsewhere. His horror haiku chapbook, Skin Crawls, was recently published by Cuttlefish Books.
Many thanks to Gordon Brown and The Baltimore Review for the gripping “Death of a Hotel Manager.”
~*~
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