We heard them come in late last night; several people checked into the transient room next door and all had to go to the shared bathroom in the hallway, one after another. The next morning I met the last of them as he was clearing out, a thin man in his late thirties dressed in rugged winter gear with a Afghani hat and carrying a green army duffle bag. He said he was from Montana, which (maybe) would explain the getup, and that they had driven thousands of miles in 33 hours to get to New York. “Sounds peaceful,” I said, meaning Montana, not the drive. They had one more night in New York, he said—though not, apparently, in the Chelsea—and then it was back on road, back to Montana. (Maybe they came to see the Macy’s parade.) “I know this building has lots of history,” he said. “You have no idea,” I replied and took that opportunity to hand him a blog card. “Come here,” he said, leading me back into the transient room, “I want to show you a letter I left on the desk here.”
Ever the suspicious New Yorker, I thought, Oh shit, it’s going to be one of those goddamn 
chain letters and now I’m going to be cursed if I don’t send it to a hundred people. Instead, he had left a pen, a stamped envelope and a notepad with a note on it that said: “Write that letter today. You know which one I’m talking about. You’ll feel better if you do.” “That’s nice,” I said, thinking, hell, nobody from New York would ever think to do that, we’re all too selfish, too caught up in our own lives. The man said he had checked into a hotel several years back and had seen a note just like this sitting on a desk, and that it had led to a bout of soul searching with the end result that he had sat down at that desk and written a long, and long-overdue letter to his father (he left the details to the imagination). Since then, he said, whenever he checks out of a hotel room he always leaves the note and the rest of the stuff.
He asked if the maid would leave the note and I said yes, though actually I wasn’t quite so sure; it was just that I didn’t want to say no, since it was such a touching gesture in such a God forsaken place as this that I didn’t want him to take it back. For the next few hours I listened for the maid and when I heard her rustling around over there I rushed over just in time to see her closing the pen up in the notepad and getting ready to take it away. She said she didn’t know what that was about, but I told her she was supposed to leave the things and I believe she did.
Oh, one more thing: I told the guy that I had just been to my cousin’s wedding in Montana this summer, though I couldn’t remember the name of her town. Now I remember. So in case your reading, guy from Montana, it’s Lewistown. (Ed Hamilton)
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