The New Yorker:

Nearly every day for decades, Irving V. Link tanned by the luxury pool. Then his idyllic life style came under threat from the hotel’s owner, the Sultan of Brunei.

By Adam Gopnik

Until just a few weeks ago, no American seemed on better terms with fortune than Irving V. Link, who had spent most of the past half century playing gin rummy by the side of the pool at the Beverly Hills Hotel, in Los Angeles. For forty-two years, from the time he discovered the hotel, in 1950, until it closed, last December 30th, Irving’s days had been as well ordered and as predictable as the Sun King’s. At seven o’clock every morning, wearing one of the many perfectly fitted tropical-weight suits that have been a special affection of his since a memorable day in the nineteen-thirties, he would stroll over from his house, in the lower reaches of Beverly Hills; enter the hotel under the long, sloping green-and-white striped awning that extended all the way from the driveway, above Sunset Boulevard, to the main entrance; turn right in the lobby; and arrive at the Polo Lounge. Often he and the hostess, Bernice Philbin, would be the first two people there, and they would have a polite conversation before Irving took his place in his booth—the first half circle to your left as you came in—and ordered breakfast: scrambled eggs back in the days when people ate eggs, and, more recently, banana and granola with skim milk.

Occasionally, when the weather was particularly fine, he would take his breakfast outside, under the great Brazilian peppertree on the curving flagstone Polo Lounge patio. Then, at around nine, he would stroll back through the lobby and follow the curving, carpeted stairs down to the lower hallway, where he would stop to say good morning to all the people in the downstairs shops: to Tony, the barber, for instance, who would just be laying out his razors and scissors, and Amir, the haberdasher, who specialized in cashmere coats with chinchilla linings, and who would often be at work on a new suit for Irving. Then Irving would walk out through the glass door at the end of the hallway into the allée of jacarandas and bougainvilleas that led to the Beverly Hills Hotel pool. He would wave good morning to Sven Peterson and his pool crew, who would be scrutinizing visitors from the safety of a small, tollhouse-style booth, and walk down the concrete steps toward the pool itself. One of the pool boys would scamper ahead to “set up” a chaise for Irving—that is, drape a flamingo-colored towel over the chair’s buff-colored vinyl—on the south, or sunny, side of the pool while Irving went over to his cabana, on the opposite side, to change into his swimming trunks. 

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