The Glass Hotel: Chapter 3: The Hotel Summary & Analysis

The words “Why don’t you swallow broken glass” are etched in acid paste on the glass wall of the Hotel Caiette. The only guest to see the graffiti, a shipping executive who had checked in the day prior, drinks a whiskey and wonders who could do such a thing. It’s 2:30 a.m. Walter, the night manager, has taped paper over the message and moved a potted plant in front of the wall to further hide the vandalism. Vincent, the bartender, stands behind the bar and observes the scene. It’s nearly 3:00 now, and Walter’s shift is nearly over. He goes to Vincent, who is crying. Walter checks on the shipping executive, whose name is Leon Prevant, to see if he needs anything before returning to the front desk to write up an incident report.

The narrative flashes back to three years ago, when Walter’s general manager, Raphael, first told him about the job at Hotel Caiette: They meet in a coffee shop on the pier in Toronto to discuss the position. Hotel Caiette has been open since the 1990s but has recently been renovated in a “Grand West Coast Style,” with exposed wooden beams and grand glass walls. Raphael reiterates that the hotel is remote, accessible only by boat. Raphael hands a map to Walter, who’s never been as far west as Vancouver before. He points to an inlet at the north end of the island, showing Walter the hotel’s isolated location. Raphael explains that the fancy hotel is for rich guests who want to observe the wilderness without actually being in it, highlighting the “surrealism” of this contradiction. 

After the meeting, Walter trudges back to his small, depressing one-bedroom apartment. Somewhere across town, his ex-fiancée, a dancer, is living with a lawyer. He’d been with the dancer for 12 years, and the breakup was unexpected. Even though his friends cautioned him not to make any rash, sudden changes to his life, he decides to accept the position at the Hotel Caiette. A month later, on a cold, dreary day in November, he journeys west. As he waits at the pier to catch a boat from Grace Harbour to the hotel, Walter tries not to think of his ex and her new partner.

The boat docks and Melissa greets Walter at the pier. They make their way to the hotel as darkness settles over the water. Suddenly, Walter spots the hotel before them: it’s a grand, beautiful building whose supposed “surrealism” is immediately apparent, with the lobby situated behind a massive wall of glass. Walter shakes the doorman, Larry’s, hand as he makes his way through the entrance. He finds Raphael waiting at the reception desk. After dinner and signing contracts, Walter thinks about something Raphael said earlier, about the hotel “existing outside of time and space.”  

The narrative returns to the present day (2005). Although Walter was very happy all throughout his first year in Caiette, the graffiti he sees now casts a darkness over the place. He notes that the graffiti was written backward on the glass, implying that whoever did it intended for it to be viewed from the lobby. Later that day, Raphael commends Walter on his detailed incident report. He agrees with Walter that the graffiti is disturbing. They investigate the surveillance footage, though it’s not very useful, showing only a hooded figure approaching the glass panel and scrawling their nefarious message there before leaving less than 10 seconds later. Raphael asks if Walter has witnessed any strange behavior lately, and Walter admits that the night houseman, Paul, has been acting somewhat odd.

Paul has been at the hotel for three months. He doesn’t smile but does his job well. Walter recalls how, the night the graffiti appeared, Paul came back from his break at 3:30 a.m., his eyes immediately drifting toward the window. Paul asked about it, and Walter found there to be something rehearsed about Paul’s tone. Paul asked if “Mr. Alkaitis” saw the graffiti, gesturing toward Leon Prevant. Walter corrected him, informing Paul that Alkaitis’s flight was delayed and he had yet to arrive. Paul avoided eye contact before making his way to Vincent to see if she needed him to change the kegs.

Back in the present, Walter explains to Raphael that he found it unusual that Paul would have studied the guest list to know that Alkaitis was supposed to arrive that day.  He also found it odd that Paul’s eyes drifted immediately toward the vandalized wall. Walter’s shift continues that night. Paul continues to clean. Walter finishes his incident report and goes through his end of shift checklist. He tries not to think about the graffiti. Sometime after four, after Leon Prevant leaves to go to bed, Jonathan Alkaitis arrives at the hotel. All the staff pull themselves together to greet this important guest.

Walter will be interviewed on numerous occasions in the future about Alkaitis, though his answers will never satisfy his interviewers. There just isn’t much to say about Alkaitis: he’d first come to the hotel with his (now deceased) wife and had become enamored with and bought the place. He lived in New York and visited the hotel only a few times a year. Alkaitis “carried himself with the tedious confidence of all people with money,” dressed well, and was reasonably in shape. None of these details, though, would suggest that he would spend the end of his life in prison.

In the present day, Alkaitis sits down at the bar and strikes up a conversation with Vincent, who is trying her best to be magnetic and engaging. The narrative shifts to Leon Prevant’s perspective. At 4:30 that morning (shortly before Alkaitis’s arrival), Prevant returns to bed, beside his wife, Marie, who is sleeping. He’s had too much whiskey in an effort to fall asleep, but the graffiti has rendered him wide awake and fearful. He considers telling Marie he’s worried about money but thinks better of it.

Leon had booked a stay at the Hotel Caiette as a surprise for Marie to celebrate their anniversary. The couple was immediately enchanted by the hotel and spent their days soaking in the lobby’s live music and the allure of the surrounding wilderness. Leon planned to relax on the trip but now finds this to be an impossible feat as, right before he and Marie left home, he’d heard rumors of a merger at work. Leon has a strong feeling that he’ll lose his job because of it: Leon is 58, and “senior enough to be expensive, and close enough to retirement” to be fired without weighing too heavily on anyone’s conscience. He and Marie just bought an above-budget house in Florida, which they planned to move into after Leon retired to avoid the New York winters and taxes. Leon stays awake until nearly 7:00 a.m. 

Walter returns to the lobby the next evening to find Leon dining at the bar with Alkaitis. Alkaitis tells Leon that he owns the hotel and that he works in finance. The narrative flashes forward to Alkaitis’s sentencing. In her “victim impact statement,” a woman recalls how Alkaitis “made you feel like you were joining a secret club.” Leon will come to agree with the woman’s sentiment, though he also admits that it’s Alkaitis himself who is so captivating. Alkaitis’s trick, Leon will observe, is that he projects such an air of indifference around others that others can’t help but ask themselves what Alkaitis thinks of them.

Back in the present, Alkaitis asks Leon to elaborate on his career in shipping. Leon smiles, explaining that his industry is “largely invisible,” however critical it might be in distributing goods across the globe. Alkaitis asks if Leon ever gets distracted by all the shipping routes he has to keep track of. With a laugh, Leon admits that Alkaitis is only the second person ever to have guessed this. Inwardly, he reflects on the first person who intuited his relationship to shipping, Clarissa, Marie’s psychic friend from Santa Fe who had visited the couple when Leon was still based in Toronto. Over dinner, Leon had asked Clarissa what it was like to hear so many people’s thoughts in a crowded room. Clarissa compared it to shipping: you can choose to tune into conversations, or else let them “become background noise.”

Back in the present, as Walter passes by Alkaitis and Leon again, he observes that the conversation has shifted toward Alkaitis’s line of work. Walter engages Larry in conversation to do some more investigating into Paul’s demeanor earlier that night. Walter asks if Paul asked Larry about guest arrivals that night, which Larry confirms Paul did do. Walter tells Larry he’ll fill him in on everything later before running off to confront Paul, who he’s sure is to blame for the graffiti.

Walter finds Paul cleaning a window in the staff hall and confronts him about the graffiti. Paul feigns innocence, though he’s a terrible liar. Walter orders Paul to pack his things and leave, or else he’ll call the police. Paul tries to apologize, stuttering something about having “debts,” but he doesn’t reveal why he committed the act of vandalism. Walter berates Paul, demanding to know if he’d bothered to think of Vincent before committing the indecent act, as it was she who was kind enough to get Paul the interview at Hotel Caiette.

Walter trudges through the remainder of his shift and meets with Raphael in the morning. Walter tells Raphael he saw Paul loading his belongings onto a boat. As the men talk, Walter painfully realizes that Raphael doesn’t like him very much. The men part ways, and Walter thinks about what Paul said earlier, about having “debts,” and wonders if Paul meant that he needed the hotel job, or if someone paid him to write the message.

Leon Prevant and his wife leave the hotel that morning, and Alkaitis leaves two days later. When Walter comes in that night, he finds Khalil tending bar. Khalil informs him that Vincent took a sudden vacation. The next day, Vincent informs Raphael that she won’t be returning to the hotel. The vandalized glass panel is eventually replaced. A year passes. The following spring, Ella Kaspersky, a Chicago businesswoman who is a frequent guest, checks into the hotel. Alkaitis always goes out of his way to avoid Ella, though why he does so is a mystery. 

Upon Ella’s arrival, Walter makes sure that Alkaitis isn’t in town, and it’s at this point that Walter realizes that Alkaitis hasn’t visited the hotel in quite some time. Once things settle down in the lobby that night, Walter Googles Alkaitis and finds photos of him at a charity fundraiser, Vincent by his side. The caption beneath the photo reads “Jonathan Alkaitis with his wife, Vincent.”