Today when I came to New York for a conference I experienced the rare joy of early check-in, meaning it was 1:30 when they let me into my hotel room instead of 4:00. I'm writing this from my bed here in the Grand Hyatt hotel which is actually attached to Grand Central Station so that right at eye level out my window I can see the classical statues that hover over the great clock on the building’s exterior.
That’s the messenger Mercury standing up there in his underpants, trying to look like the boss. The literature I found down in the station says he’s supposed to represent COMMERCE, since this is America and all, and those two figures flanking him are one, Hercules, meant to suggest Commerce’s big-boy helpmate Physical Might and two, Minerva, designed to convey the idea of Wisdom in All That We Do but who I think you’ll agree looks a little depressed and pre-menstrual.
It’s pretty great to be so close to actual deities like this and I’m thinking to myself “Fan-CEE!” right? As in “I am in some fancy hotel!” But an older couple just entered the room next to mine and I can hear not just the television they snapped on but every SINGLE word they are saying and all I can think of is the time two years ago when a person was attempting to cough herself to death in the room next to mine in a Dayton Ohio hotel and I was seriously close to breaking down the door between us to get that pillow over her face in such a way as to cure that cough for keeps.
So there’s the outrage of being able to hear two people burping and flushing the toilet and asking each other where the toothpaste is, and then there’s the fact that there is NO COFFEE MAKER in the room and how can that be when even the most modest $49-a-night places supply these as a matter of course?
I’m worried about what I will do in the morning. Someone told me lately that millions of Americans leave their homes every day for the morning coffee and these must be the people you see in the loose-fitting flowery pants that really do look a lot like pajama bottoms come to think of it. They’re all heading for the coffee shop to get their daily fix and so MAYBE MAYBE I can do this too. MAYBE I can wake up at 6:00 and make my way downstairs to find a Starbucks but it seems mighty hard to me right now as someone who has just in the last year had to move her coffee maker up from the kitchen to a second-floor bathroom so she can get at it immediately on waking. Hell, some nights I bring it right into the bedroom and set it up 20 feet from where I sleep. Pretty soon I’ll be begging my nurse friend Mary to run a line for caffeine into one arm, using a timer to get the drip to start some 20 minutes say before my alarm clock goes off.
I'm feeling pretty crotchety about all this anyway - or at least I WAS, until just now when I heaved myself up off the bed and moved over to the chair here by the window. I opened the window (and God bless the Hyatt for having windows that open!) and up, up from the street came the roar of the city like a punch in the nose but I like it, sort of. And now here’s Mercury so close I can practically touch him and I sure do wish I had my camera so you could see him as I see him here, so cute and sort of Club Med in his little toga-slash undies, with the two seriously more powerful figures beside him letting him have the spotlight.
Even if he DOES think it’s his party I can tell that he really wants us to have fun at it. "So do that!" I tell myself. “Enough kvetching! Put on your high heel sneakers and go meet that boy of yours who’s coming in from East Harlem to have dinner with his momma. “And so I will. And so I will. And come home early enough to tap on the wall and tell my next-door neighbors all about it.
