Wednesday, June 06, 2007Part V - The Door Here’s the first moment: Two people racing through the rain, towards the opera house. The rain is dancing over the plaza. The paintings in the opera house lobby are glorious through the windows. The lights and glass open to the world with aching grandness. Take that moment and freeze it. Two people dashing through the downpour. Racing headlong towards art. Racing towards one of the world’s great manifestations and tributes to opera – one of the most improbable and magnificent of arts. A monument that embraces, respects and reveres the creative imperative. Here's the second moment: Same two people. Standing in front of the Waldorf-Astoria. She wants to show him the inside. He pauses, put off by the opulance. She grins and steps into the revolving door. She hears him say her name as she goes inside, looking back with a laugh. He pauses a second, and then follows her through the door. Inside, the beauty of the lobby. The mosaic floor, the flowers in the atrium, the people moving back and forth without impunity. No one knows that they're imposters. No one is kicking them out. There is no reason they can't belong there as well. Those are the moments. Here's the situation: I have been bouncing back and forth between hotels this trip, never quite knowing whether I will stay, return to LA, stay at a friend's apartment while she was out of town, or what. For some unknown reason known only to Expedia, the hotel rates in the Doubletree where I'd been staying more than doubled over the last two nights. More than doubled. But then they were going to go back down. So all I needed was a place to stay the two expensive nights. I went to my friend's apartment. Nice apartment but small, even by New York standards. I stayed there last night but tonight was going to be a problem as she was returning to town late this evening. Her place is too small to actually sleep two people, so I was looking at a night sleeping in her twin bed with her. Which seemed like a bad way for either of us to sleep. I was heading downtown for a meeting and stopped at the Doubletree to use their business center. While there I swung by the front desk. Because I've been booking and extending and checking in and out all week, we're all pretty familiar to each other by now. I explain my quasi-vagabond plight to one woman (we'll call her "Laura") and she checks the rates. Nothing less than something that begins with a 5. Which, I'm sorry, is a fuck of a lot of money. I go into the business center and find that the same room, online, is in the fours. And not the low ones either. That's better but let's not go nuts (yet.) It's still a ton of money, and twice what I'll be paying for the same room tomorrow night. Laura promises me all sorts of amenities if I end up booking it because she understands I'm a ronin samurai and need a place to lay my sword. I say I'll keep it in mind but it's still a lot of money. We say goodbye, au demain, etc. and I go off down towards my meeting. I walk down 50th and turn left at Park, right past the Waldorf-Astoria. I realize that I forgot to ask the Doubletree about where an electronics store might be to replace the cell phone adapter I apparently lost, and I figure that's as good an excuse as any to revisit the scene of our escapade a few days ago. I go through those revolving doors and up the lobby stairs. Beautiful beautiful. I head for the concierge and then I get a thought. Like... what the fuck. Let's see what they've got in the way of rooms. I go up to a woman (whose name, coincidentally, is also "Laura") and ask her about the rate. She looks it up: it's actually in the fours. And the low fours at that. Wow. That's interesting. Cheaper than the Doubletree! But still... it starts with a four. Which is still ridiculous. But wait. She frowns as she looks at the computer and then tells me to hang on. Says that she has to check something out, and she walks away. I look around the huge lobby. There's some kind of meeting going on here. All the suits are out milling around. We just don't see that many suits out in LA. They all look like cookie cutter men, with the same sharp jawline, the same slightly cruel eyes. They are all good-looking, actually. But ageless. Trapped in their world. Then she's back. And gives me a figure that starts with a three. Yes, it's expensive as hell. But then again... wow. You only live once. So I say done. And mentally put it in the stack called "we'll deal with that later." I go upstairs to the prettiest little room you've ever seen in your life. With all the amenities you could want, and terry cloth robes in the closet (if I could wear both I would... instead I've been in just one all night.) I go back to the apartment and bring my stuff back to the room, feeling like the richest and luckiest girl in the world. And then I go to my meeting with a skip in my step and a song in my heart. Maybe I deserve some of the bounty this meeting has to offer, too. Maybe I can someday work at something I enjoy and stay at nice hotels with impunity. And this is what I realized: In order to completely change my reality, all I did was ask. I asked the Lauras behind the counters if this was going to be possible. I asked nicely. And it worked out. What happens if we don't ask? Nothing. What happens if we do? Sometimes nothing, at least not immediately. But if we don't ask, we're guaranteed to never find out. It's the revolving door. You have to go through it to see what's on the other side. You have to dare to run pell mell towards your art. You have to embrace the passion of your calling. And then you have to to nicely ask if it can all be yours. And then, eventually, it can. # posted by Katherine Doughtie Nolan @ 9:32 PM  
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