JOB INTERVIEW

Jack Torrance thought: Officious little prick.

Ullman stood five-five, and when he moved, it was with the prissy
speed that seems to be the exclusive domain of all small plump men.
The part in his hair was exact, and his dark suit was sober but
comforting. I am a man you can bring your problems to, that suit
said to the paying customer. To the hired help it spoke more
curtly: This had better be good, you. There was a red carnation in
the lapel, perhaps so that no one on the street would mistake
Stuart Ullman for the local undertaker.

As he listened to Ullman speak, Jack admitted to himself that he
probably could not have liked any man on that side of the desk ---
under the circumstances.

Ullman had asked a question he hadn't caught. That was bad; Ullman
was the type of man who would file such lapses away in a mental
Rolodex for later consideration.

"I'm sorry?"

"I asked if your wife fully understood what you would be taking on
here. And there's your son, of course." He glanced down at the
application in front of him. "Daniel. Your wife isn't a bit
intimidated by the idea?"

"Wendy is an extraordinary woman."

"And your son is also extraordinary?"

Jack smiled, a big wide PR smile. "We like to think so, I suppose.
He's quite self-radiant for a five-year-old."

No returning smile from Ullman. He slipped Jack's application back
into the file. The file went into a drawer. The desk top was now
completely bare except for a blotter, a telephone, a Tensor lamp,
and an in/out basket. Both sides of the in/out were empty,
too.

Ullman stood up and went to the file cabinet in the corner. "Step
around the desk, if you will, Mr. Torrance. We'll look at the floor
plans."

He brought back five large sheets and set them down on the glossy
walnut plain of the desk. Jack stood by his shoulder, very much
aware of the scent of Ullman's cologne. All my men wear English
Leather or they wear nothing at all came into his mind for no
reason at all, and he had to clamp his tongue between his teeth to
keep in a bray of laughter. Beyond the wall, faintly, came the
sounds of the Overlook Hotel's kitchen, gearing down from
lunch.

"Top floor," Ullman said briskly. "The attic. Absolutely nothing up
there now but bric-a-brac. The Overlook has changed hands several
times since World War II and it seems that each successive manager
has put everything they don't want up in the attic. I want rattraps
and poison bait sowed around in it. Some of the third-floor
chambermaids say they have heard rustling noises. I don't believe
it, not for a moment, but there mustn't even be that
one-in-a-hundred chance that a single rat inhabits the Overlook
Hotel."

Jack, who suspected that every hotel in the world had a rat or two,
held his tongue.

"Of course you wouldn't allow your son up in the attic under any
circumstances."

"No," Jack said, and flashed the big PR smile again. Humiliating
situation. Did this officious little prick actually think he would
allow his son to goof around in a rattrap attic full of junk
furniture and God knew what else?

Ullman whisked away the attic floor plan and put it on the bottom
of the pile.

"The Overlook has one hundred and ten guest quarters," he said in a
scholarly voice. "Thirty of them, all suites, are here on the third
floor. Ten in the west wing (including the Presidential Suite), ten
in the center, ten more in the east wing. All of them command
magnificent views."

Could you at least spare the salestalk?

But he kept quiet. He needed the job.

Ullman put the third floor on the bottom of the pile and they
studied the second floor.

"Forty rooms," Ullman said, "thirty doubles and ten singles. And on
the first floor, twenty of each. Plus three linen closets on each
floor, and a storeroom which is at the extreme east end of the
hotel on the second floor and the extreme west end on the first.
Questions?"

Jack shook his head. Ullman whisked the second and first floors
away.

"Now. Lobby level. Here in the center is the registration desk.
Behind it are the offices. The lobby runs for eighty feet in either
direction from the desk. Over here in the west wing is the Overlook
Dining Room and the Colorado Lounge. The banquet and ballroom
facility is in the east wing. Questions?

"Only about the basement," Jack said. "For the winter caretaker,
that's the most important level of all. Where the action is, so to
speak."

Excerpted from THE SHINING © Copyright 2001 by Stephen
King. Reprinted with permission by Penguin. All rights
reserved.