My name is Harding and I am the registrar at Adams College. I keep student records. Adams is a small, old, Methodist school in Clark County. I started work at the college as a bookkeeper, right out of high school. I have been there for many years. I am old, now, too.

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Tomorrow, Thursday, the college is set to graduate three hundred and seventy-one students. They are excited to finish, ready to say goodbye, prepared to go out into the world. But Monday we ran into a problem that has complicated their celebration. The Adams gym is a red brick building where the college has staged its commencement ceremony for decades. Something set off the fire sprinkler at the gym in the middle of the night. Six inches of water was standing on the gymnasium floor by the time our custodian, Mr. Hancock, arrived at work early Tuesday morning. The floor is ruined, impassable. The varnished hardwood slats are buckled and lifted throughout. A strong, musty smell has taken hold. It is as though the flood freed what mops somehow missed: concentrated detritus from generations of active youth lodged in gymnasium crevices. A stained ring marked the perimeter of the whitewash walls as the water receded.

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College Chancellor Everett Mailer convened senior staff and faculty leaders this morning. We met in the trustee’s boardroom. Martha Rankin, our young assistant provost, reported that she had notified graduates and their families by email and text message of the problem and told them that the college was working to secure a new venue.

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The campus has no indoor alternative that could accommodate so large a crowd and still comply with the fire code. In fact, our rural county has no practical place of assembly of sufficient size unless you consider the covered yard at the state prison at Cambridge, which we did for a brief moment. An outdoor commencement seemed too great a risk. Heavy rains have been forecast through the week, and we couldn’t find a tent that is large enough or that could be delivered and set up in time.

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Dr. Mailer nervously groomed his eyebrows with the tip of the ring finger on his right hand as he asked the assembled for ideas. Two people spoke up.

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“We could purchase and overnight deliver to campus 1,200 umbrellas, and have the faculty and student procession line up and march in a circle under cover of the quad colonnade,” Faculty Senate President Joshua Blunt proposed. “We could shout out the graduates’ names, hand them dummy diplomas, and then let them get on with their lives!”

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Ms. Rankin suggested: “How about we delay one week and reorganize this as Adams’ first virtual graduation since the quarantine year? We adapted then and could do so again. We could livecast an invocation from Adams Chapel. Dr. Mailer, you could welcome and congratulate the graduates and their families from your office. Commencement and student speeches could be given on location from the speakers’ home towns or from wherever they are spending their summers.”

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None of this pleased Dr. Mailer. He wanted to keep things simple and practical. He did what he frequently had done when faced with administrative vexations: “Harding, I’m leaving this to you to figure out,” he said. “Everyone, please help Harding. Keep me informed.” He then stood and adjourned the meeting.

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I didn’t mind the assignment. the printed program for the commencement always included a musical transcription of the school alma mater – Adams ex horto Eden. Beneath the title was a parenthetical notation: “With reverence.” This tickled me. Surely, we could solve a flooded gym problem for this place which we revere.

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The wooden-paneled boardroom emptied onto a gallery, its walls covered with photographs and records documenting highlights of Adams College history. As I had many times before, I surveyed the material on the way back to my office. There was the original land grant for the college signed by provincial Gov. Cadwallader Kingston in 1821. There was the picture of the ribbon cutting, in 1971, for the new Pinksley Library, a group shot of Adams’ 1958 Amateur Athletic Union National Champion Fencing Team, and the photo of the official convening on campus of the 1935 General Conference on Weights and Measures, the one that was best remembered as the conference at which the lowercase “L” was approved as the metric symbol for liter.

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The centerpiece of the historic display though was the pictures of U.S. Vice President and Mrs. Vincent Vandergrift’s visit to Adams, when they stopped by the campus to see their niece, Mamie, an Adams College sophomore named for Mrs. Vandergrift. Old timers at the college used to say the visit was brief, as Mr. and Mrs. Vandergrift were en route to a reunion of the Army Tank Corps that the vice president commanded at Fort Philbin during World War I. The reunion, as I understood it, was held at the old Vienna Hotel and Resort, 50 miles to the west of the campus. I never had been to the Vienna, and what I knew of it was limited to what I had seen years ago on postcards, pictorial spreads in popular magazines, travel advertisements, and a few motion picture and television references from my youth, most famously the otherwise forgettable Tony Tampora teen movie Go Go Vienna! which was set on location at the resort and released in 1963.

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Then it struck me: How about the Vienna for the Adams commencement?

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The resort, after all, had once been world famous – a former A-list destination with clientele predominantly consisting of Jewish guests coming up from Port De Lys, the “old smokestack city,” to escape the summer heat. The Vienna once attracted movie stars, top entertainers, world champion and contending prize fighters and their entourages. The hotel’s monumental buildings were modernist marvels. They triumphantly rose above the Everstill Mountains, and were said to house more than a thousand rooms, each famously marked with a concrete balcony cast in a primary color, random blue, yellow or red platforms and railings set against and contrasting the hotel’s modernist cement gray exteriors.

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I searched online to see if the Vienna was even still in business. There was no website but I found a listing and phone number on a state tourism site. When I called, to my surprise, someone picked up before the third ring.

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*

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“Vienna Hotel and Resort. Mrs. Taub speaking.”

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I was thrilled to have made contact. I introduced myself and explained the college’s predicament. After a pause and the sound of a few keystrokes the woman on the other end of the line said, “As it happens, the Sovereign Room could be made available for tomorrow’s graduation.”

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The woman spoke in the cordial, competent, poised voice of a mature hospitality professional. Her tone had an acquired, practiced, yet still authentic plumminess. Perhaps, as a younger woman, she had been a personal assistant to someone of aristocratic stature.

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Seating was in place for up to 1,400, she said, and Vienna staff could add a podium and chairs for faculty, officials and honored guests. There were, however, a few constraints: The doors could not open before 8:30 a.m., and the program would have to be completed and the room cleared not later than 12:30 p.m.

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“It might be tight, but do you think four hours use of the facilities as I have described them would be sufficient?” she asked. It would, I said.

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“We can provide a guest room this evening for whomever is superintending the event for the college,” she said. I thanked her, and said that would be me.

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“The cost for the Sovereign Room, tomorrow, including the guest room for you, tonight, ordinarily would be $3,500 . . . although we could do it for $2,400, as an accommodation to the college, if you are able to make payment, not by credit card or check, but in cash by 1 p.m. today? That’s two hours from now. Does that interest you?”

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I told her yes, and that I would timely bring the cash prepayment. I packed an overnight bag and left immediately.

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Dark clouds and periodic downpours accompanied me on my drive from the college to the resort. It was just past noon when I pulled up the long entrance drive, surprised to see only a dozen or so scattered automobiles parked on the hotel’s main lot. The rain had blackened the asphalt, making it look smooth and uniform, muting potholes and broken pavement, interrupted by sprigs of weed grass that had grown up through a few of the cracks. The highrise towers and their balconies, meanwhile, were strikingly steep, even as their colors were faded by sun and weather.

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Outside the hotel’s main entrance stood three jitney buses marked Clark County Senior Services. They were empty and driverless. The cavernous lobby was still, except for the whir of conditioned air blowing cold and the presence of a handsome, middle-aged woman standing behind the front desk, working on her computer, handling paper and speaking quietly into the phone, the receiver balanced on her shoulder and held in place by her cheek while her hands were occupied.

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Something about her appeared off kilter. At first, I couldn’t put my finger on it, but then I saw it and tried not to stare. As the woman spoke on the phone, her teeth seemed to shift ever so slightly to one side, creating a slight bulge in her top lip. It was as though she was wearing a set of dentures that fit imperfectly and had a small amount of give.

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She had finished her call by the time I stepped up to the desk. She greeted me with a smile, her teeth properly aligned, as she reached for a folder on the counter behind her. Her thick auburn hair with traces of gray was neatly arranged on top of her head. She had a pleasant, matronly shape and a face whose skin had the smoothness of a much younger woman.

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This was Mrs. Taub. The name tag pinned to her eggplant-colored, cashmere cardigan confirmed it.

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“Mr. Harding. Welcome to the Vienna.”

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“Mrs. Taub,” I said.

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In my jacket pocket I carried a letter-sized Adams College envelope containing 24 one-hundred-dollar bills. I’m not sure I ever before had carried this much cash. The closest I had come may have been by way of the cards my late wife and I were handed at our wedding reception. I had put those envelopes in the pocket of my morning coat, although I am quite sure they contained far less than $2,400.

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I handed Mrs. Taub the envelope, which she accepted with thanks, but without opening it.

“Please forgive us for the awkward lapse in hospitality, but except for your room we have no other lodging available. We’ve had to hold open all rooms for overnight guests. Tomorrow afternoon, after the Adams commencement has concluded, we are expecting our largest gathering of the season. It’s a national convention of funeral directors, although they now call themselves ‘death care executives,’” she said with subtle raising of her eyebrows signaling suppressed amusement.

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“You will also see a small group of long-time, year-rounders moving about the resort,” she said. “They live in the efficiency apartments in the three-story building behind the highrises. They’ll be excited by the presence of all of your young people.”

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Mrs. Taub walked from behind her desk and ushered me across the lobby to oversized double doors above which appeared the words “Sovereign Room” in gold leaf on framed black painted glass. She pulled open one door, kicked down the large door stop, stepped inside and flipped on what seemed to be twenty switches. They turned on an array of lights that dramatically revealed an immense room, far larger than what we needed. The Sovereign Room had served as a nightclub. The stage was a semi-circle whose rounded side extended into the audience. Long rows of narrow banquet tables with white table clothes radiated from the arc of the stage like rays of light from a half sun. Massive chandeliers were suspended from a 20-foot tall ceiling, the room also appointed with gigantic wall sconces, gaudy tapestry drapes and crimson carpeting, all a diverting contrast to the spartan confines of the Adams gym, with its wooden grandstands, temporary stage, caged light fixtures and metal folding chairs.

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I felt relieved, even giddy. The Vienna was strange, but in a fossilized way Adamites should find appealing. The set-up wasn’t ideal for an academic procession, but it would do.

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Mrs. Taub invited me to wander the grounds, although she warned me that “the outdoor amenities are in mothballs” pending plans for renovation. She pointed past the lobby doors, in the direction of what she called the “main path,” suggesting I follow it past the movie theater marked with an old style marquis, to the “Starlight Ballroom,” which she described it as an open-air dance floor and a part of the Vienna’s “magical traditions.” She explained how, for years, the resort had organized waltz classes for teenagers, lessons that culminated in a much-anticipated ball held every other Friday, at which the dance floor would be filled with young men and young women dressed in gowns and costumes fitted and kept by an expert crew of tailors and seamstresses.

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She described how intently the nervous youngsters prepared for the fortnightly affair. Mid-sentence, she paused and turned away. It was hard to tell whether she had been moved by the remembrance, and needed a brief moment to maintain her composure, or had been suppressing a sneeze. In either case, she soon started back up with a lively step, this time leading me to the distant elevator she said would take me to my room on the fourth floor of the south tower.

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Mrs. Taub spoke of the weather while she walked. “Skies are expected to clear,” she said. “We should have a sunny morning for the graduation.”

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We proceeded past the lobby down a wide concourse to an arcade of small, apparently long vacant shops. Fancy signs outside of the former storefronts indicated there once had been a candy store and newsstand, a jewelry store, a men’s haberdashery and ladies’ dress shop, a barber shop and shoe shine, a beauty salon, a record store, a small pharmacy, a deli, an ice cream parlor, bookstore and toy shop.

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Boys and girls used to meet up and mix around these shops, Mrs. Taub said. “Here, they learned to make plans – some for the evening, others for a lifetime.”

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The largest space apparently had been occupied by the delicatessen, which, according to its sign, was called Herschel’s. “Heshy Itzkowitz was the greatest kosher butcher in Port De Lys,” Mrs. Taub said. “He was renowned for spice cured cow tongue which, by the way, is not organ meat, but is muscle, and therefore is kosher. It is also delicious and was very popular,” she added, with a sweep of the hand suggesting a confident knowledge of a kosher kitchen.

An older woman was seated alone on an upholstered bench further down the hall. “That’s Mrs. Gottlieb,” Mrs. Taub whispered. “She has lived here for more than 40 years. She was a great beauty, and was courted by, and married to, the violin prodigy, Milton Gottlieb. Have you heard of Milton Gottlieb?” she asked.

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I had not, I said.

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“He was a Hungarian refugee,” she said. “He studied at Julliard. He performed here during summers, with the house orchestra, before occupying the first chair at the philharmonic. The Gottliebs were one of the Vienna’s many famous romances. Milton died young.”

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Mrs. Gottlieb was dressed in once-stylish resort clothing, a salmon-colored suit appropriate to the late spring, decorated with navy blue piping on the pockets and lapels, which seemed ever so threadbare. Her hands were folded in her lap, her lips pursed, and I could see she wore rings on many fingers, set with large brightly-colored stones. As we drew closer to her, I became startled by her appearance. Her face was covered with a frightful mask of make-up that, while conventional in its basic composition, might have been the most copious application of facial cosmetics ever amassed on a living woman. Her cheeks, chin, and jawline and ears, her nose and forehead up past the hair line, her eyelids, lashes, brows and lips were coated with intricately-layered, coarsely-textured, impenetrably-thick deposits of tan, brown, beige, yellow, pink, red, and black mud, powder, paint, wax and ink.

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Mrs. Taub wished Mrs. Gottlieb a good afternoon. Mrs. Gottlieb acknowledged with a dignified nod.

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At the end of the hallway, next to the elevator, was a small coffee shop, open for business. An elderly couple sat silently at one of the tables. A walker with a folded seat was leaning on the wall next to them. Neither looked up as we waited for the elevator. A man wearing a white apron and paper hat finished scraping grease from the griddle with a spatula. He set a styrofoam cooler on the counter and started to load it with the contents of the refrigerator. Bacon, eggs, hamburger patties, a half empty plastic jug of milk. Latin music played softly from a battery-powered radio set next to the cash register.

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Mrs. Taub told me the coffee shop would close at 3 p.m.

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*

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I spent much of the afternoon in my room on the phone with colleagues at the college. The room was clean and had a double bed. The bathroom had fresh towels, a tub but no shower, and a sink with separate hot and cold faucets. The hot faucet had a slow drip leaving a mineral stain on the white porcelain.

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The Vienna was “a go,” I said to cheers from a speakerphone at the other end of the line. Dr. Mailer’s mood brightened. He said Mr. Mathews of the music department had agreed to accompany the commencement march on his Deluxe Weltmeister Supita accordion. That elicited another cheer. Ms. Rankin excused herself so she could immediately inform the trustees, faculty, and soon-to-be graduates, their families and guests of the new plan.

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I could see through the glass door to the balcony that the sky had cleared and indeed glowed with the last of the long light from the setting sun. I rode the elevator back down to the lobby. The coffee shop was closed. Mrs. Gottlieb and the older couple were gone. Mrs. Taub was still on her feet at her post at the front desk. She was on the phone again, looking distracted with paperwork, as I headed through the empty lobby and stepped outside.

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The jitneys had left. I walked the main path, past an immense complex of drained, dormant swimming pools with multiple diving boards, including a high dive. I was tickled to discover that "Welcome Adams College Graduates" was up in lights on the cinema marquis.

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Then around the bend, a bit further down the path and set against a sheer rock face at the base of Mount Montgomery stood a raised bandstand surrounded by an expansive terrazzo dance floor. This was the Starlight Ballroom. It was bounded by long rows of lilac bushes, botanical wonders, 10 feet tall and half again as wide, partly blighted but mostly covered with lush, fragrant blooms. As darkness fell, ground lighting marked the perimeter. I stood in the empty plaza beneath a clear night sky as a warming breeze passed through the spring foliage on the surrounding hills, sounding as I imagined the crinoline might have shushed against the floor as the young women moved in unison. I pictured them looking up at their dance partners, looking down at their feet, all striving to move to the time and strains of a waltz… 2-3.

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*

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 There was no dinner service at the Vienna. Mrs. Taub had suggested a place called Chicken Sinatra off of Route 17, nine miles to the west. But I had packed a sandwich, an apple and a bottle of water, which I ate at the small desk in my room.

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The day must have taken more out of me than I had realized. I awakened to find myself lying on the bed, table lamp on, fully dressed except for my shoes. I glanced at my phone, and saw the time was 10:12 p.m. I changed into my pajamas and, lights out, quickly fell back to the edge of sleep. I remember hearing a distant honking of a car alarm – a muted horn sounding two beats followed by four long beats of silence, and so it continued, loud enough and long enough for me to take note, but not so intrusive as to pull me out of my slumber.

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I dreamed, fitfully, about the Vienna as it once might have been. I dreamed of men conducting business behind closed accordion doors on the bank of wooden phone booths at the lobby’s back wall, their voices projecting muffled anger about reversals in the real world. I saw the faces of husbands and wives in the lush settings of cocktail receptions, late night nightclub acts, and intimate after parties, some emitting carefree laughter, others bitter talk or worried, jealous tones.

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I dreamed of Mrs. Gottlieb in one of the modest guest rooms, getting ready for bed, dressed in a simple, cream-colored nightgown. She stood over a large, old fashioned basin set on a washstand. It was filled with murky waste water and grayish brown silt. She was drying her forehead and cheeks with a plush white towel. She raised her chin and patted her neck. Her face was that of the elderly woman I had seen earlier in the afternoon, except her skin was pink and young, and she wore an expression of peace. She then bowed her head as though in prayer.

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*

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My phone sounded a jarring alarm of marimba music at 5:00 a.m. Though I had plugged it in the night before as I got ready for bed, the phone barely registered a charge. The black sky not quite but soon would be giving way to the first light that precedes the dawn. I bathed, shaved and dressed. Everything was still. The only sound I heard was a quavering, reedy timbre of a single melodic note calling intermittently from outside, a lone cicada’s farewell to the night before it separated from and left behind the new day.

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I stepped out of my room and pressed the call button on the elevator at the end of the hall. I waited, and pressed it again, and waited some more. I impatiently opened the fire exit and trotted down three flights to a metal door with a crash bar. It took me outside, onto a concrete pad. I followed a paved walk to the front of the building.

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The Vienna’s lobby was dark and empty. Its glass doors were bolted closed, a padlocked chain wrapped through its handles. I called the hotel phone number. No answer. I called 911. It did not ring through. I searched for the direct number for the Sheriff’s Department. A dispatcher answered. “Please state your emergency.”

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I explained that I was a guest at the Vienna Hotel and Resort. I told her something had happened, I was not sure what, but the place was empty and appeared to have been abandoned by the staff.

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She paused. “Please repeat your emergency,” she said. I repeated what I had told her. She paused again and said she would see if she could send a car around. My phone then went dead.

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I stood outside the lobby for more than an hour. All was silent and still. The graduation caravan soon would arrive. I had been suppressing pressure on my bladder, and soon I had no choice but to find a place hidden by shrubbery. The dawn had passed and the sun was full in the sky when, at last, as I was relieving myself, I heard but could not yet see the first vehicles approaching.

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