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Earlier that day a man checked in to the room next to mine. He looked wealthy and ill at ease and I worried that the man hacking and coughing all night long must have kept him awake through the loud night.
I knew nothing of who slept in the other rooms, which were midnight quiet, but from the room by the elevator came the sounds of two young women laughing and giggling. They laughed with absurdly thoughtful quietness, interrupting their giggle-convulsions with reminders to "be quiet!" and "shhhhhhhh!" Staring at the door to their room I caught dream-like visions of their faces, their perfect teeth and weepwheating eyes, their index fingers crossing their lips in the "shhhh" position and accidentally picking their noses -- but I caught no indication of what made them laugh themselves into soreness. It was cold and drafty in the hall, and I stood up from my studious cross-legged position outside the girls' room and returned to bed. The Mary Hopkin song had ended, and Danny Stiles was on to other matters (half-hour commercials for restaurants and magazines). That song had evoked in my mind memories of things that never happened, of anguish for failed relationships I never knew. These empty reminiscences inform my personality and actions and lie behind the sometimes incongruous comments and courses of action I take. It manifests itself in absurd ways. That Rod Stewart song "Maggie Mae" opens unexplored recesses of my mind. Any time it reaches the radio airwaves I clench my fist "YES!" and turn it up with the righteous assurance of someone who's been there and done that. But I'm getting older and to my chagrin have never been with a domineering, much older woman or had any experience described in that song. Not even the rock & roll band.
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