Fantasy Du Jour

Pictures of the Algonquin Hotel in New York City, with the famous Algonquin Roundtable, where prominent writers met weekly for lunch. It's a literary and historic landmark famous for having a resident cat (Hamlet, if male, or Mathilda, if female) who rests on a red velvet chaise lounge in the lobby.

I'm taking just 20 minutes out of my busy schedule to write this complaint on behalf of spouses of people who travel "on business."

You have to know, first, that I am 44 and have never spent a single night alone in a hotel room. I fantasize about it, but I haven't actually done it. I've spent a lot of nights in hotel rooms with one or both of my parents, my husband, friends, children, even alone with my children, but I have never spent the night in a hotel room alone.

This is what I'd do if I were to stay at the Algonquin Hotel in New York City, for example: I'd pull my wheeled suitcase past the concierge and a row of potted palms to approach the check-in desk, where I'd identify myself by name and tell them I have a reservation. They would key something into the computer and produce a key card for a room on the twelfth floor with a view of Central Park. Once in my room I'd remove the comforter from the bed (I always do this) and admire the view from the window for a while. I might leaf through the room service menu and flip through the channels on the television. I might take a nap. I might read a book or pull out my laptop and start writing one. I might change into tennis shoes and go for a walk or out to dinner or shopping. I'd probably take a lot of pictures of unfamiliar things.

After dark, I might study the evacuation procedures for the hotel before going to sleep without asking for a wake-up call or setting the alarm. And the next morning, after showering and getting dressed and putting on my favorite perfume, exhilerated from surviving my first night alone, I'd go to the Metropolitin Museum of Art and the Natural History Museum and maybe the Cloisters and Battery Park. I'd eat lunch at Tavern on the Green or the Russian Tea Room. (In this fantasy, it's spring in New York, the weather is perfect, and my feet never get tired.) I'd buy fresh fruit, a baguette and some butter at a corner grocery store somewhere (Mom and I did that in Amsterdam) to take back to my room, which by then would feel like home, and I'd spend my second night ever in a hotel room alone. After the second or third (possibly fourth) night, I'd probaby be ready to go home.

Why this solitary fantasy? Maybe it has to do with the fact that Scott is in San Antonio right now staying at a lovely hotel on the Riverwalk while I am going to choir and piano recitals and doing double carpools, boomeranging, as I call it, all over the place. (My fingertips actually hurt yesterday from gripping the steering wheel.) Oh, sure, he has to attend a mostly boring conference, and in a couple of months he'll have to go to Boston to another conference, and he tells me it really isn't as glamorous as it sounds to me here at home. I'm sure it's not...

But I may need to go to a conference myself soon to do some relaxation research. When I dropped Scott off at the airport before he left, he said I really should go to a writing conference somewhere...hmmm. Maybe I will. But probably not at the Algonquin.