Naked in Dangerous Places - Cash Peters [66]
And my suite was terrific. Three rooms: bedroom, well-stocked kitchenette, and a large living room with automatic drapes—ooooh!—that opened to reveal a quick glimpse of the Manhattan skyline and then closed again like one of those old amusement arcade slot machines, leaving me wanting more. Once I'd done playing with those—and I'll be honest, it was a while—the porter showed me how the lights worked and where the remote for the TV was, slipping in at the end that “every suite at the Trump has its own personalized phone and fax number, it's not an extension.”
How about that!
“Oh, look, there's even a business card here with my name already printed on it!”
“Yes, sir.”
Excellent.
Thin and cheap-looking, admittedly, but excellent. I still have a stack of them. Next time you meet me, ask for one. We can keep in touch.
Also, on the nightstand I found a bag with a free iPod in it. A present from the network, apparently. Well, how very generous of them.
Anyway, I slipped the porter two bucks, which he stared at for a moment, before thanking me, but in a neutral tone perfected after years and years of not being impressed by things, and left.
The moment the door closed, I leaped to my personalized Trump phone to call Mandy, an old friend of mine from London, who was in town for a couple of days, and invited her to come see my swanky New York pad.
A beautiful, diminutive ball of love wrapped in a black knee-length leather coat and topped off with an explosion of fiery red hair, she was suitably impressed by the suite, though less so by my business cards, which she surveyed with discerning peppermint green eyes, doubtless thinking, “But they're so thin and cheap-looking,” before putting them down without comment.
Once we'd chatted for a while and caught up, I went off to play with the drapes again and make a couple of extra calls on my personalized phone, while Mandy occupied herself out of sight in the kitchen, where she cracked open a complimentary can of peanuts and stuck a corkscrew into a complimentary half-bottle of Chardonnay, pouring herself a generous glass, maybe even two. In fact, I only know she did this because, two days later, when it came time to check out, I received a whopping bill for incidentals. The wine and peanuts weren't complimentary at all, it turns out. Far from it.
But hey, that's okay, I thought. It's the network's problem. Those guys were footing the bill, so what did I care, really? That's what expense accounts are for—right?
Er …
Shortly after, I discovered a letter. It was stuffed into the bottom of the same bag that the iPod came in, and explained in very clear legal terms that the room was being paid for by the network, but the incidentals most definitely weren't.
I don't fully remember, but I think my hands began shaking at this point.
Bottom line: that's the last time I ever let a friend of mine out of my sight. If I'd known Mandy was going to switch inadvertently from the free stuff to the stuff hotels make you pay through the nose for, believe me, I would have thought twice about inviting her up to my swanky pad in the first place. I'm serious.
The show premiered four weeks later. On my birthday, as a matter of fact, June 6. A coincidence everyone was quick to label a lucky omen.
It's hard to encapsulate in a single word the myriad feelings that surge through you when you first appear on TV in your very own series, but, after much thought, I can honestly say that “YIPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPEEEEEEE!!!!” probably comes the closest.
Quick off the mark, The Thumb sent me a congratulatory note. In it, he went to the trouble of listing some other significant events that had taken place on the same date throughout history, which I thought was a wonderful