My Fair Lazy - Jen Lancaster [77]
The elevator lurches to a stop and we exit on her floor. We weave down narrow, confusing catacombs of hallways and finally get to her door. Stacey places the electronic key in the lock, the green light flashes, and she turns the handle . . . yet the door doesn’t open. She tries again, with the same result. She tries fifteen more times and the door remains closed. I cannot currently assist her, as I’m (a) sticking my clenched fists in my armpits in order to avoid any germs and (b) attempting not to laugh out a lung.
Finally, in a move worthy of Agent Jack Bauer himself right before he finds/stabs an insurgent in the thigh, she inserts the key and hurls her entire self against the door. She flies in the air, feet leaving the floor, and body-checks the door, resulting in a thump heard round Midtown. The wall surrounding the door gives a bit, yet there we stand in the hallway.
“Hey, what if you pull the handle up?” I gasp, between guffaws.
“That’s ludicrous. When have you ever seen a door handle open up instead of down?”
I counter, “When’s the last time you stayed in a hotel where the entire staff was infected with the bubonic plague?”
“You make an excellent point.” Stacey yanks the handle up and, like magic, the door opens, revealing the majesty of the accommodations and thus prompting me to double over once and for all.
The carpeting’s an unnatural shade of green and sprigged with big bouquets of peach roses, which was probably the height of style when it was installed in 1982. Coincidentally, that’s exactly when the television was manufactured, so it’s nice to see they found a theme and stuck with it. I wonder if when we turn it on, we’ll see nothing but Dukes of Hazzard and Cheers reruns?
There are two beds in here, which is one bed too many for the available square footage. As I make my way over to sit on the tiny horseshoeshaped chair across the room, I soundly slam my hip into the sharp edge of the writing table, as there’s only about a six-inch passage between it and the first bed.155
Once I finally stop hyperventilating, I suggest, “Maybe you have a nice view?” pulling a sheer curtain back only to come face-to-face with the building’s industrial air conditioner. Then I realize her room is dark not because of cloud cover, but because the HVAC unit is blocking out all available light. “By the way, I would check those sheets for stray p-u-b-i-c hairs right now.”
“Think you’ll ever be able to say any vaguely sexual words without spelling them?” Stacey asks as she turns back the paisley bedspread.
“Probably not.” What can I say? I’m m-o-d-e-s-t.
To be fair, the crucial parts of the room are clean—sheets, toilet, floors, et cetera. The bathtub is spotless, but I imagine it’s not hard to sanitize something that’s only three feet long. “You could wash an Oompa-Loompa in that tub!” I exclaim.
“Well, not a full-sized Oompa-Loompa,” Stacey disagrees, before pointing out the sponge painting on the bathroom walls, composed of both the yellow color found exclusively on roads dividing traffic and the safety cone orange.
Stacey throws her bag on the spare bed, and the window catches her attention. She points to the oddly shaped pleated valance hanging over the sheers. “It would appear that Paris Hilton has lost her skirt.”
I break out into fresh peals of laughter. I’ll be damned if that thing doesn’t look exactly like a skirt’s been cut in half and then stapled into the wall.156 “Well, I really like the art in here.”
Stacey swivels her head to inspect the naked walls. “But there is no art.”
“Aha! That’s where you’re wrong,” I disagree. “You’re not taking into account the chair rail of dirty footprints over there.” Stacey pales for a moment as she sees the ghosts of the feet of hundreds of travelers past all over the far wall. “Seriously, I can get a bigger room if you want to stay with me.”
Stacey shrugs philosophically. “Listen, if I can live in a mud hut in Kenya for three months, I can handle a less than ideal hotel room.157 This’ll be fine. No misunderstanding,