A middle-aged woman and her two teenage daughters had checked into the room next door to us at the Chelsea Hotel. The woman, blond, Midwestern, overweight, was cheerful and seemed open minded—good qualities to have around this place. Speaking to her in the hallway outside her room, I had to draw her out a little bit to get her to talk about her impression of the hotel. After I got to know her a little bit, I asked, “So how do you like this place?”
“It’s kind of idiosyncratic, isn’t it,” she said, tentatively.
“I’ll say! Although ‘Insane’ is more the word that comes to mind.”
“Well, that’s not exactly what I meant,” the woman said. “The people here have certainly been very nice. I was referring more to the physical state of the hotel.”
“Yeah, it’s kind of run down.”
“Mmm hmm. They showed me another room before I took this one, but for one reason or another it was unacceptable.
“Surely it couldn’t have been any worse than this one,” I said.
The woman looked at me askance. “Well, I hate to say anything, since you live here.”
“Oh come on, tell me,” I prodded her.
She kept her voice low. “They didn’t see it,” she whispered, indicating her daughters in the room behind her. “It was a nice room, nicer than this one, clean, and it had its own bathroom, which was a definite plus.”
“That’s for sure,” I said. The room she was in now shared a bathroom with our room and two others.
“But there were condoms scattered on the bed,” she continued.
“Oh no!” I exclaimed.
“No, listen, let me finish. I didn’t mind that. They were unopened. And my first thought was: Oh, that’s so sad, the poor people didn’t even get to have sex. But isn’t that nice of the maid to leave them for the next guest.”
“Yeah, that is,” I said.
“And then I looked on the floor on the other side of the bed and saw the USED ones!”
I cracked up laughing, and the woman, too, was unable to stifle her laughter. Hearing us, one of her daughters called out, “Mom, what are you doing out there?!”
We chuckled a bit more quietly. I asked, “Now was it Stanley who showed you this room?” I was rather hoping that it had been. Stanley Bard is, of course, our illustrious proprietor.
“Oh no, it was just one of the bellmen.”
“And did he see the condoms?”
“Yeah. He didn’t bat an eye,” the woman replied. “He just shrugged his shoulders and brought me up to this room.” (Ed Hamilton)
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