Devastating Denver Drama

If I seem a little frazzled as I write this at 8 a.m. it's because I am and am just getting my latte after rising nearly four hours ago. Just as I was enjoying a deep sleep, the phone rang, and it was "Mr." Sullivan demanding that I fetch him at the Brown Palace in downtown Denver and return him to our room at the Lotus Club of the Rockies.

"Can't you hail a cab yourself?" I asked.

"Oh, that's so unseemly," he replied.

Duty. Sleepiness. Slavishness. Which trait or was it all of them that took me down to the other end of downtown where I saw Mr. Sullivan sitting on a pumpkin colored velvet settee while a Guatemalan housemaid vacuumed the carpets with a mustard colored Dyson.

"Oh, I thought you'd never arrive," Mr. Sullivan exclaimed, throwing his arms around me for the first time during our journey just east of the Rockies. His mysterious disappearances and late night frolics were forgiven as the pleasant brush of his bear rubbed against my cheek.

"How could I stay here," he sighed. "Only after my second drink did I realize I was staying in a hotel of a Frank E. Edbrooke design*"

(Frank E. Edbrooke is said to have been "inspired" by the Chicago School architecture of Adler and Sullivan. Those from Chicago had a more randy word for "inspire".)