My Fair Lazy - Jen Lancaster [27]
What I don’t remember is the stifling heat.
It’s not that I’m unfamiliar with hot. Sometimes I seek it out. Hot only becomes part of my Unholy Trinity of Unhappy when it’s involuntary. Seriously, I dig the desert, and I purposely vacation in Vegas on the Fourth of July. I ride with the windows open as often as I can in the summer because I love how a warm breeze feels on my skin. On tour last month, I even parked myself poolside for a few hours midday in 115-degree Scottsdale, Arizona.55 Yet none of these experiences has prepared me for how sweltering this city can be. Who knew that the second it hit eighty degrees, all the bricks and concrete would conspire to turn the city into the world’s largest pizza oven? I’ll take 115 degrees in Scottsdale over ninety-two degrees on the Upper East Side any day of the week.
There’s so much sweat pooling in my ears that I don’t even hear Poppy approach with her things. “Shall we?” she asks.
Since we’re at what I assume is a hotel, I expect someone in a scratchy suit and silly hat to swing open the doors and welcome us. Seems like the fancier they are, the more ridiculously the doormen are dressed. At one place in Vegas, all the guys were dressed like the Crocodile Hunter. Crikey! Judging by the number of Rolls-Royces lined up on the sidewalk here, whoever comes out to get our bags should be done up like an organ grinder’s monkey. Okay, fine, there are only two Rollses idling at the curb, but since I’m not sure I’ve even seen one before, two seems like a surfeit.
Turns out there’s no doorman at all. Instead of a delightfully costumed staffer rushing out and whisking away our things, Poppy has to ring a discreet little bell at the side of the door in the middle of a hulking brick building. From my spot on the sidewalk, I can hear her going through the same kind of ritual Dorothy performed before being granted access to the Wizard. Poppy answers a litany of questions while I try not to liquefy in the sun.
We’re finally ushered in moments before the heat kills me dead, splat. We bypass any sort of license-showing, credit-card-verifying sort of check-in procedure. The guy in the drab gray suit who opens the door knows exactly who we are and where we’re from. This’d be creepy if we hadn’t already played twenty questions.
This building’s enormous, and all of it seems to belong to the Colony Club. I always feel boxed in when I come to New York because everywhere I go is tiny and crowded, and everyone’s fighting for their square foot of space. But not here—the ceilings are high and the rooms we cross are vast and airy and empty, save for some really elegant groupings of fussy-footed fine furniture. What did the Colony Clubbers do, exactly, to merit so much prime Park Avenue real estate?
On the way to our rooms, we pass fastidiously appointed receiving rooms and tasteful touches like enormous porcelain bowls full of crushed lavender. Couple the meticulous decor with our prime Upper East Side location, and I begin to wonder exactly what I’ve gotten myself into. I mean, I don’t even know what a receiving room is, but this building is lousy with them. What’s everyone receiving? Other than checks, I mean.
This place feels less like a hotel and more like I’m staying at a great-aunt’s house. Correction, the house of a very, very wealthy great-aunt who smells vaguely of gin and isn’t terribly fond of, well, anyone. I’ll be honest, I’m not entirely comfortable here. Every inch of this reeks of old-world exclusivity, and I’m getting an intense “you don’t belong here” vibe from the furniture alone.
Stupid, intimidating armoires.
The premises are completely deserted and, save for the two idling cars with their blackened windows, I haven’t seen another guest or staffer since we walked in.
“Poppy,” I whisper, “is this really a hotel?”
“Yes and no. Basically, Colony Club was founded at the turn of the century because society women couldn