We have you in the Sunset Suite, Mrs—
Ms, she corrected absently. The Sunset Suite overlooking the sea, the waves like moments—learning to tie a bow, meeting P, breakfast, there must have been others, she imagined, as the clerk gave the rights and lefts, and indeed the grand hotel was something of a maze she seemed now to have been wandering inordinately, as if guided, as so often, by inept hands through the undreamed and graciously unremembered turns of life, thirsting, swiping untouched, buttery biscuits from trays outside rooms where other guests were already bathed, in plush robes, plush slippers—
“Ms. P!”—a young woman caught her up. “I’m sorry to bother you before the scheduled events, but I’m writing my dissertation, and it would be so wonderful…”
In the lobby again, after all that—at least the girl had brought her coffee—“Now, Ms P, I’d love to hear about your experience bursting onto the scene as a woman in those early days.” Fantasies of a former world dilated the young, doctoral eyes.
Ms P could hardly remember having been a woman in the sense she had been then, and seriously doubted she was up on the sense used by the young academic now.
“We devoured everything,” she offered vaguely, “P and I, insatiable. A girl like you, we’d have popped like an after-dinner mint.”
That worked anyway. The girl flushed, gratified.
“Never doubting,” Ms P went on, somehow meaning it in the moment, “running down power, fame, shooting the straightaways like lines of cocaine!”
That was it. The girl seemed to suppress a thrilled shudder as she persevered, “But as a woman, knowing what you do now, what would you tell a young Ms P?”
Prudently, Ms P took a long draft of the tasteless coffee. Did this person with her ruled notebook and intact jeans imagine herself, in some small, touching way, a young Ms P? The older woman grimaced, compressing her round face into what she hoped a forbidding extravaganza of fine lines.
“I would say,” said Ms P, “don’t listen to me, or you’ll be the one writing the dissertation. I’d say, put down that pen—”
The insufferable wail of an infant thankfully stopped her there. A young man, handsome, Ms P suspected, under the outlandishly boring, hip attire and ideal, all but computer-generated beard, approached with the wailing thing, hating to interrupt. The girl, the mother, put away her notebook and went off, dutiful, apologetic, though without making an appointment to resume the conversation.
Ms P sat on, finishing the coffee, watching the young family recede down the hall. “Boo,” she whispered after them. She had not noticed when she’d begun, at first slowly, to flicker, but distinctly she felt it stop. She leaned back in the deep chair, resting a hand, as she seemed to be falling asleep, on her suitcase, the necessities: a gentle cleanser, her lotions, a cocktail dress on the off chance.
But already the lobby was loud with convention attendees—it must have been check-in time—young people who didn’t recognize or even see her, although she knew there would be the old crowd too, thin, hunched men who had been children when she hit the scene, almost a child herself, dozing in passenger seats across state lines, driven to this convention by their sons or grandsons, along the maze of highways and backroads, papery, folded hands her presence was now guiding here, had always been guiding, her rights, lefts, downs—never a diagonal, however much they wanted one—what remained anyway of the million avid, plump, demonic child hands that had after all been hers, which she was bringing together now, perhaps—so she mused, before heading up to the Sunset Suite—finally, in applause.
I really enjoyed this!