Back at the hotel, around 0515, as I was throwing things back into my bag and preparing to decamp for Starbucks, I had decided to have a second cup of coffee.
The room featured one of the little one-cup brewers you see everywhere now. You tear open a little packet containing a disposable plastic tray and a tissue-papery pouch of grounds. The tray slots into place on the coffee machine, and you pour enough water for one cup into an opening on top, put your cup in place, and press a little silver button to start it brewing.
I grabbed one of the three remaining packets. Decaf, which I don’t mind later in the day but wasn’t what I was after now. I flipped through the remaining two and discovered my room had apparently been stocked with three packets of decaf and only one of regular. For a second the thought jumped to mind that that made it okay that I’d forgotten to bring cash for a tip, but of course it didn’t.
It had snowed the night before, just enough to coat the car under a half-inch of white, but the parking lots were clear and wet, no doubt percolating under some sprinkling of anti-snow poison. I started the car warming with my spare key, walked back into the lobby to get the luggage cart, and loaded all of my bags onto it in the room.
No formal checking out is ever required anymore, at least not from the hotel’s standpoint, they have your credit card information, they’ll get their money. But it feels weird to me to just leave the key cards in the room and walk out without saying goodbye.
I parked the luggage cart by the side door leading from my hallway out into the parking and walked back to the lobby.
There was no one at the counter, but I could see a sliver of a man’s oxford-shirted shoulders back in the office. I ahem-ed, and immediately regretted bothering him. He was up like a shot and hurried out to the counter, his hands together in a supplicatory posture in front of his chest, and actually apologizing for “making you wait.”
This excruciating awareness we carry around of how vulnerable, how expendable everyone is these days.
My mind went back to the laminated letter I’d found waiting in my room after I’d checked in the night before. It was from a man named Potts, the hotel’s general manager, the man—the letter informed me—who is “directly responsible for the room [I] have been given.”
It went on, in a tone I found uncomfortably abject:
“My goal is to exceed your expectations. If you feel that this is not the case or if there is anything I can do to make your experience her [sic] more enjoyable please contact me immediately, so I may have an opportunity to correct the problem and address any concerns.”
About a year ago, as I’d been checking into a different hotel, the manager had tried to hand me a chocolate chip cookie. According to a little plastic placard standing on the counter, which alleged that the cookie was “fresh-baked,” this was a standard Hilton practice at check-in. If it happened that I weren’t offered a cookie, I was apparently supposed to get some sort of discount. After I had demurred, the manager went on to make some similar points to those in Mr. Potts’s letter but ended with the direct request that—if there turned out to be anything I didn’t enjoy about my stay—I should tell him directly and not “write a bad review on Yelp.”
Mr. Potts’s letter didn’t mention online reviews explicitly, but I felt his terror of them emanating through the letter’s protective layer of plastic. As it happened, in the course of the evening, I did find myself somewhat unsatisfied with the hotel, namely because of two fruitless trips to the little alcove next to the front desk where snacks and beverages were arrayed for sale.
On the first trip, I was after almonds, which I’m almost always triggered to eat when I travel, especially when I’ve reached the discomfiting plastic environs of yet another hotel and feel the blank isolating anonymity pressing in on me. No almonds, so I went back to my room empty-handed.
Then, a little later, it occurred to me that some gum or mints might be just the thing, but after I’d walked all the way back down to the lobby again they turned out not to have any of those, either.
I went back to my room and made do with two hard-boiled eggs left over from the lunch I’d brought along in a little cooler. As I peeled and ate them with a little of the salt I carry with me in my possibles bag, I imagined being the kind of person who would contact Mr. Potts and ask him to “address” his lobby shop’s lack of non-legume-based protein and/or means of breath-freshening.
The strategy that came to mind was to mention the ennui and existential despair that had come over me as I’d walked up the long, empty, dimly-lit hallway toward my room, transfixed by the dizzying, amoeba-like patterns worked into the carpet, but then to let him off the hook by saying I’d forgive it all if he could run to the store and bring me a tin of Altoids, preferably the invigorating and life-affirming cinnamon-flavored variety.
I enjoyed imagining this phone call as I undressed, got into bed, and hoisted the immense weight of volume 6 of Knausgaard’s My Struggle onto my belly.
But back to checkout. I had handed the clerk my key cards and, thinking we were done, was already turning away, my mind on my unattended luggage at the end of the hall.
“Want to sell your hat?”
“What?” It had been off script, unexpected, so at first I didn’t understand what he’d said.
“Want to sell your hat?” he repeated, with the slight awkwardness of someone repeating a joke. “That’s a great hat.”
“Oh,” I mumbled. “Uh…thanks!”
“Have a great trip!” he said, with a great big cheerful smile.
“You, too!” I replied, trying to match his cheerfulness, not noticing what I’d said until I’d turned away and started down the hall toward the luggage cart.
You, too?