At 3 a.m, long after the aging hippy therapists have fallen into deep, mindful sleep, the grey-headed guys with combovers forget all about covering their naked pates to emerge from their hotel rooms with tufted, rooster crests as they flee for their lives, heeding the screeching alarms and robotic voices that yell "There is a fire in the hotel! Please exit the building! Do not use the elevators!"
Mertis would relish a moment like this as she was certain it was inevitable. After all, what else do terrorists have to do in the middle of the night but set an historic building on fire?
We proceed to the crowded stairwell, which is when I see the poor, grumpy boomer trying to explain to his late-in-life progeny that no, we are not all going to die and no, this is not cool.
The other therapists forgetting their neutral objectivity, snicker.
No one panics. If they did, however, what better place to lose your shit? You could pick from any one of a number of therapeutic paradigms to soothe your savage beast. Hundreds would surround you, all having never successfully dealt with their need to be needed...which of course, would only spawn new panic or at least, claustrophobia.
There we sit, Darlene and me, our backs against the registration counter, unsuccessful in dealing with our own insecurities at this late hour because we have once again given in to our guilty vice...indulging in the sarcastic putdown of innocent people no better or worse than ourselves.
In the cold light of morning, I promise to feel bad about this...but in the moment, it keeps me from falling into a coma and drooling on Darlene's comfortable shoulder. I long for our wonderful room, the one that, if it had 2 beds, would be a double of the brochure picture:
Four bored DCFD guys clump through the crowd of us, stare around the lobby with resentful, disinterested gazes (because they too, were probably sleeping when the alarm went off) and stomp back out. The all clear sounds and 3000 people mob the 4 elevators.
I am sitting at a wrought iron cafe table with Darlene when I see them...
Two women, one dressed only in the hotel's white terry cloth robe and the other, completely dressed in jeans and a gray tee shirt. The dressed one has a bright, clearly awake smile and a short, spiky haircut that frames her features beautifully.
The bathrobe girl, her shoulder-length brown hair screaming sexy, bedhead, leans toward her obvious partner, relishing the feel of her lover's propriatary hand on her shoulder, and allows her spiky girlfriend to lead her back to bed.
They are the only two people in the entire hotel who remain cocooned and unaffected by this late night debacle and not one of us suffers the illusion that they are returning to their rooms to fall back into a dull, dream-filled slumber.
Damn. I decide right then and there, the late night alarm was totally worth the price of admission.
1 comment:
Sounds like you are having an interesting experience!
Keeping sharing :)
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