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.
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 boothβthe first half circle to your left as you came inβand 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.
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. Then he would sunbathe for a few hours on the chaise. At noon, Irving would retire again to his cabana and change for lunch, which he would occasionally eat under an umbrella-shaded table in the Patio Club, or sometimes at the Bistro Garden, on Canon Drive, a favorite spot of his.
On any reasonably sunny day, the pool would by then be echoing with the names of well-known people being called to the phone, as well as with the names of unknown people being called to the phone by themselves in the forlorn hope that one day this would help them become well known, too.
