The argument over breakfast had been about banquet seating — round tables versus long ones, centerpiece heights, the kind of details that made me a nightmare client and her a very patient events manager. Her name tag said SLOANE. Her patience, by 9 AM, had worn visibly thin.
At 9 PM, the lockout happened. Shower, towel, laundry run down the hall because the in-room hamper was full — and the door clicked shut.
She rounded the corner with her master key before housekeeping did. Crisis management was her job, after all. She opened my door, handed me the dropped laundry, and said, with complete professionalism, “Goodnight, Ms. Voss.”
Then, at the threshold, completely unprofessionally, she kissed me.
“Room 1107,” she whispered against my mouth. “Same time tomorrow. Wear the towel.”
We were together for the rest of that conference. Then the next one, in a different city, where she wasn’t working and I wasn’t a client, and neither of us wore a name tag.
The banquet seating ended up being long tables. Low centerpieces. Nobody remembers the details except us.
Every anniversary, we stay in a hotel — any hotel — and one of us locks the other out of the room in a towel at exactly 9 PM. It’s the only tradition we’ve kept.
The staff always look confused. We never explain.
