Chapter 23
23
A dark-haired woman with a name tag that says “Hello, I’m Janice. Ask me about our Bratwurst” waves at us from the hotel lobby’s concierge counter. “Mr. Teller left this for you.” She hands me a note: “ Wunderbar to meet you both! I cannot wait to begin a fruitful partnership. Our penthouse suite is free for the evening. Please enjoy the best Heimach Hotel has to offer!”
As I finish reading aloud, Janice slides two key cards across the onyx desk with a dramatic flick of the wrist. Everything finally starts to click; is this why Christoph booked us into the couples’ yoga sessions?
“Ummm, I think there’s been a misunderstanding. We’re not together, we’re just colleagues,” I clarify, glancing briefly at Bancroft for backup.
“I’m so sorry about that,” says Janice. “Maybe just one of you could take the suite for the evening? Mr. Teller put room service credits on the room.” Her head flicks between Bancroft and me.
Bancroft smirks, dragging a bronze key card across the shiny black surface toward him. “Remember when you said Egyptian cotton sheets were ostentatious and pretentious? You wouldn’t want to go back on your word, would you?”
I slap my hand down on the other card. “Someone recently told me I should start being open to new experiences.”
My mind drifts to the thought of being spread out across a super king bed, soaking in that huge bathtub, and having my own space for the night to work on my Ditto presentation in peace.
Janice backs away as we stand off, both with a hand on one of the key cards. Half joking, but also completely serious. This has always been our way. We are like the same person in two very different bodies: we want the same things and we can’t help but compete. We’re dancing again, both refusing to admit you can’t win a dance.
He looks at me under hooded eyes. “As much as I would love you to have this... I think we can both agree I secured this opportunity.”
I meet his stare, eyebrows raised. “And I think we can both agree that I was the one who won Christoph over.”
“I had the contact,” he says.
“You wanted to back out of couples’ yoga,” I say back.
“Don’t you have work to do for Susie tonight?” he guesses.
“Don’t you literally live five minutes away in a gorgeous apartment?” I guess back.
Bancroft holds his hands up. “OK! Neither of us is going to win. So, in the spirit of our truce... maybe neither of us should take it.”
I consider for a moment and then nod. “Equal misery—seems fair.”
“It famously loves company, so I think that works with the friends thing.”
We both step out of the glass revolving doors onto the gray-speckled pavement, and I watch Bancroft walk away for a few seconds before a rumble from the sky tells me it’s time to go home. Dark clouds loom like marshmallows forgotten on a bonfire, spitting tiny droplets of rain on my cheeks as I descend the slippery stairs into the tube. My post-yoga thighs shake lightly as they hold my weight down each step. Commuters lower their umbrellas as we hit the cover of the station, causing a torrent of liquid to spill onto the cracked and faded tile floor. The smell I can only describe as fresh mildew wafts around the turnstiles. Water has already seeped through the mesh side panels of my trainers; I hope I can get home without contracting trench foot.
There’s a weird sort of camaraderie in weather like this; instead of fighting the sweat and heat everyone lets it wash over them and we all become one giant breathing organism, arms intertwining and grasping for purchase. For a few minutes a day, we’re just cells tucked in tightly and swaying in tandem, hurtling through the city bloodlines.
When William and I first moved to the city we would commute together for half the journey and then separate, him joining the suited masses while I continued with my bright, patterned peers. I loved spending time imagining everyone else’s lives. Where are you going? What is your job like? Do you want to add a redhead with self-esteem issues to your friend group?
I didn’t have friends, but when I was with William, I felt as if I didn’t need to create space for those kinds of relationships. Of course, that idea was brought to a screaming emergency stop when he left me. When I realized he liked me needing him and only him.
My phone dings with an email notification.
ERIC BANCROFT MADE EDITS IN THE FOLLOWING DOCUMENT:
“DITTO PROJECT REPORTING. ”
How does he do these so damn quickly? I fling open the document to add my feedback before I lose signal on the tube, quickly glancing at his section.
I enjoyed participating in this experience:
Strongly agree.
Additional comments:
He left the comment section blank. So he strongly enjoyed the experience but doesn’t care to comment? Or maybe he just hasn’t completed it yet? My hand fumbles around my jacket pocket for my debit card. I mindlessly pull it out and slap it onto the yellow sensor, moving forward with the queue like a sheep being herded into a muddy field. My body bumps against the closed barrier and I slap the card again. The barrier beeps and I look down to see not my card, but a shiny bronze card in my hand, the overhead lights of the underground bouncing off its slick surface. It’s one of the key cards Christoph left us for the penthouse suite.
“Miss, if your card’s not working, you’ll need to buy a ticket,” a large bald man in an official-looking vest says to me in a monotone voice.
“Sorry,” I mumble instinctively, squeezing back past the hordes of nine-to-fivers boxing me in. I wind my way through the crowd, the words strongly agree replaying in my mind as I scowl at the card—until the realization dawns on me. We never declined the reservation, and I left with the key card in my pocket. The empty room is still there. Standing in the middle of the moving crowd like a boulder in a raging river, I stare at the thin piece of plastic. Parts of a plan fall into place like a Jenga tower going in reverse.
Would Charlie Bucket just hand back his golden ticket if one of the other kids renounced theirs? Bancroft’s words after the cooking class swirl around my head like lukewarm vodka in the bottom of a paper cup.
“You’ve just got to grab an opportunity when it presents itself.”
If he didn’t have a quiet, comfortable, luxury apartment with air conditioning and an ice machine in his fridge, would he really have gone home? He is used to that kind of lifestyle, so it probably means nothing to him. It’s barely a special occasion for him to stay in a penthouse. For me, this opportunity is presenting itself in the form of the words “TAKE IT” repeating over and over in flashing neon lights. And Christoph would probably be upset knowing he’d booked us his “favorite place in the world” for the night and neither of us took him up on it. Really, I should stay there for the good of the partnership. Go above and beyond to accommodate the prospective client’s requests.
Maybe I’ll bump into Christoph and continue some individual discussions to add to my presentation. The idea stews inside me as I mull over my options and the consequences.
Door Number One: spend thirty minutes wedged in a hot tube carriage until I’m coated in a stranger’s sweat, drink rosé in my tiny bedroom and trawl through Susie’s emails and go to bed too drunk for a Thursday, feeling bad about myself.
Door Number Two: spend the night alone in one of the most beautiful hotel rooms I’ve ever seen, with prepaid room service and a giant bathtub, possibly adding to my growing black book of contacts by making a good impression on a powerful and influential hotel-owner.
Spinning on my soggy trainers, I run out of the tube and back to the hotel.
By the time I arrive, the rain has subsided. Lances of summer are trying to break through the rolling clouds, and I’m taking this as a sign from the gods I made the correct decision. The evening sun warms my face as I stare out over the city from the gold-soaked penthouse balcony: the sounds of beeping horns, scuffling feet and commuters talking about their day rising like ivy up the edges of the building. Blues, oranges and pinks pile up like a Rothko painting in the sky. The hotel room, or I should say the series of interconnected hotel rooms, is a glorious meld of cozy patterned cream rugs, buttery brown leather sofas and shiny onyx surfaces. I hadn’t truly appreciated the space when Christoph gave us the tour, but now it’s all mine for the evening I could cry. Padding through from the living room to the bedroom I resist the urge to jump onto the crisp white sheets like Macaulay Culkin.
Peeling the cotton-spandex-blend cling film leggings from my body, I open the temperature-controlled smoky-mirrored wardrobe to find two white fluffy bathrobes. I hang my clothes to dry and slide into my new sheep cosplay outfit, sinking my sore feet into the doughy cushioned matching slippers, revelling in the new experiences.
It’s not as if this is the first time I’ve ever stayed in a hotel, but this is the first time I’ve ever stayed in a “capital H” hotel. My first girls’ trip to Mallorca before all my friends and I separated off to different futures was in a hostel that smelled different every night but somehow always reminiscent of vomit. The student-friendly long weekends in shitty Airbnbs in the country William and I took when we were at university. Then finally the trips to budget hotels, which in comparison to the shitty rentals of uni days felt like living in luxury. After William and I moved to the city and started careers our schedules hardly ever lined up, and when they did it would always include me having to answer emails at least once a day. My “out of office” autoreply exuded “no worries if not” energy, rendering it pretty useless. This would inevitably turn into an argument with William about how I couldn’t be “present and in the moment.”
William’s job in the finance industry was a cut-and-dry nine-to-five. Every day was the same: clock in, push some spreadsheets, clock out, collect ￡350 and pass go. When he wanted to drop everything and have some R countering my exhaustion by pounding espresso at breakfast with a fake peacekeeping smile plastered on my exhausted face.
My slippers slap against the shiny wood floors and thump on plush wool rugs as I make my way over to the kitchen. Yes, this place has a fully stocked kitchen. Black lacquered cabinets with brass handles and onyx countertops veined in gold and gray span the room, the shiny surfaces reflecting a floor-to-ceiling window’s view of the cityscape. I watch as familiar dark clouds begin to block out the sun once again, a rumble crying out in the distance to announce an encore of earlier potent thunderstorms.
I practically dance around with excitement when I see free champagne in the wine fridge, and grab the chilled bottle. Due to the sheer amount of events I manage for Fate, I have become a pro at popping any form of sparkling wine. I sip from a crystal flute feeling fancy as fuck as the bubbles immediately ride down my throat and back up to my brain. Maybe Bancroft is onto something with his whole “grabbing opportunities” mindset? I write a mental note to make it my new mantra.
I check my phone to find an Ignite notification:
Jack: Looking forward to tomorrow :D
Feeling content for the first time in weeks, I reply Me too :) and flop onto the bed with an oomph. The combination of a plush robe and five-star bedsheets is better than I ever could have imagined, like lying down on top of a giant soufflé and being enveloped by warm, soft sweetness. Struggling to move, I convince my body to roll over toward the hotel phone and call down to room service. I order dinner and an ice bucket for the champagne, then I flop to the other end of the comfiest surface on earth to run a bath.
While the steaming water fills the marble bathtub in the even more marble-coated bathroom, I pull out my laptop and notebook to assess the state of my Ditto presentation. We’re two weeks out from the deadline and it’s bare bones right now, lacking the visual flair it needs to pull ahead. I study the notes on each slide, breaking down my thoughts about how Ditto’s target users thrive off more than a sit-down dinner and don’t want cookie-cutter experiences. They don’t want to feel as if they are going on the same first date over and over and over. They don’t want massive chains and copy-and-paste encounters that everyone has experienced. They just want dates as interesting as they are, just as varied as their lives are, and just as eclectic as their taste in music, film and art. My thoughts are like kernels of corn in a blazing hot pan.
Maybe that’s it? I type out first dates as unique as you in bold font, smile at the words and for the first time since that day in Catcher’s office think to myself: I could win this.
I spend another few minutes flipping through the black and white slides, splicing in Yemi’s data from Fate and Ignite in graph form to back up my claims until a noise jolts my head toward the penthouse entrance. I hear what sounds like shuffling feet right outside the door and my mind flashes with horror stories from women alone in hotel rooms. I push the fear down and remember my order. This must just be very speedy room service—it is a five-star hotel after all. Pushing off the bed and pulling my robe tight, I see off the rest of my champagne glass, turn off the bath and glide through the mid-century living room. Attempting to flatten my frizzy post-rainstorm hair, I fling open the door to find a familiar black leather duffel bag and Bancroft bent over looking intensely at his shiny bronze key card, as if trying to work out which side to swipe first.
My mouth immediately opens wide to chastise him for going back on his word. That is until I descend from my high horse into my white robe–clad body and realize I’m standing in the penthouse suite of the Heimach Hotel half-drunk on one glass of very expensive champagne when he has just arrived. His narrowed eyes gather a glint of amusement as they slowly make their way from the key-card scanner up my fluffy torso, over my just-emptied glass and land on my sheepish, beetroot face, soaking up the view.
“Fancy seeing you here, Hastings.”