NEEDLING

MONDAY AFTERNOON AFTER A FIVE HOUR NAP

This is my first time off since last week sometimes about a million years ago. Five days one after the next doing twelve hour shifts at my favorite hotel. Was so tired I was having a hard time counting the register and things like that. Yesterday, I almost blew a fuse whenever I negotiated three rooms for four nights with six Turkish men. The negotiations lasted forty five minutes of arms waving, yelling, explications, last prices, won’t go lower… they visited the rooms in questions several times. The negotiations started out with two men, and slowly as time went on took place with all six… they kept going back outside and grabbing one of their fellow travelers to come in and join in the debates. One fellow, the one who spoke the best English, kept putting his hands together looking at me saying, “I’ll talk to them, I’ll talk to them, it’s good, this is good… but you know, we are six and we all have to agree.” Then another one would ad, “Democracy. That’s what we get for democracy, nobody can decide on nothing.”

Earlier yesterday...

This woman in her early thirties came in with a small luggage, pulling it along on its tiny wheels. She was tall, pretty, and looked like an airline hostess.

“I’d like a room till about nine tonight,” it was late morning.
“Sure… I’ll give you a little price, is this for one person or two?”
“One.”
“No problem.”

I gave her a nice room on the fifth floor.

Six in the afternoon, thus about seven hours later, she hadn’t called me for anything, hadn’t come downstairs or left her room, a man shows up with a pizza in one hand and a bottle of coke in the other.

“This is for room 54, I believe, a Mrs. So&So.”
“Sure,” I say and call up to the woman’s room, totally calculating the man for a pizza delivery boy. “Hello, mam, your pizza has arrived…”
“Good… but I certainly hope the pizza is accompanied by my husband…”
I hold the phone and look at the man whom I had taken for a pizza delivery boy, “You’re the husband?”
“Yes.”

I tell the woman that he’ll be right up. I’m all red, really embarrassed.

“I’m sorry, sir,” I look at him for the first time. Thin, tall fellow, but definitely in his late thirties, and not a pizza delivery boy look. He’s embarrassed as well. I try to catch my mistake. “You didn’t say anything when you came in… how could I know?”