One of the coolest places in the hotel is the El Quijote, the Spanish restaurant in what used to be the Chelsea’s dining room. One night we were drinking at the bar, when in walked a girl in her mid-twenties whom we had seen earlier that night in the hotel. She was scantily clad and heavily tattooed, which was why we had noticed her. In particular, she had a huge tattoo on her arm of a naked devil girl: bright red, voluptuous, with horns and a tale. We complimented her on that: it really was a fine piece of work. She said her name was Courtney and though she wanted eventually to become an artist, in the meantime she was a nanny “by trade.”
It’s a good question as to on earth would be crazy enough to hire this woman to care for their children, though I guess by now the answer is apparent: somebody who lives at the Chelsea.
Actually, however, she seemed perfectly nice, if a bit self-absorbed. She did most of the talking, and we listened, happy enough to be entertained for the moment.
The bar was filling up. A family came in and stood behind us: a father and mother, and three children, the oldest a teenage boy. As they waited for their table, Courtney struck up a conversation with them. In particular, she seemed interested in the teenage boy, and started flirting with him, at one point actually asking him to come visit her later that night in her room at the Chelsea.
The boy was much to shy to talk to her, though he did smile, and seemed to relish the attention. But she was making the rest of the family extremely uncomfortable, and they were visibly relieved when the waitress finally came to seat them.
We thought Courtney had just been joking, and we laughed and told her that had been pretty funny. But after a few minutes she said, “I’ll think I’ll go over and talk to those people some more.” And though we assured her that was not a good idea, she went anyway, and sat at the family’s table with them. We couldn’t hear what was going on, but after about five minutes the father stood up and appeared to say something cross to her. Courtney came back and sat down beside us once more. “What happened?” I asked. “Oh nothing,” she said. “They invited me out to their home for Thanksgiving.”
While Courtney had been at the family’s table, an artist we knew from the hotel, Dexter, a man in his late fifties, sat down at the bar a few stools away from us. He seemed depressed, and when we waved and said hi, he muttered something about it being his birthday. Courtney squealed with delight, and ran over to him and gave him a big birthday kiss, right on the mouth. She’ll have better luck with him, we figured. Not surprisingly, this did manage to cheer Dexter up. He promptly tried to buy Courtney a drink, but for some reason that pissed her off. “Who the hell do you think you are?” she asked him, and stormed away. “He’s a dirty old man!” she told us, disgustedly.
The funny thing is, Courtney was right: Dexter had a girlfriend who was almost as young as she was. (Copyright Ed Hamilton 2006)
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