My Endless Vacation

When it is over I will regret that I didn’t make better use of my time.  For the past seven weeks, I have been living in a hotel.  For a writer this should be a dream come true, no responsibilities, someone to clean every day, and all my meals paid for.  It could be seen as an urban writer’s retreat.

But what I am finding is that we are creatures of habit with certain routines and rituals some so ingrained that we don’t realize how deep they run until they’re gone.  Without preparation, I have to learn new ones that work for me.

The first couple of weeks were hard.  I couldn’t concentrate.  I didn’t know how long I would be here and while grateful for a place to stay, I just wanted to go home.  Each visit to my apartment reminded me that it would be a while.  I busied myself with shopping.  I bought a new printer and added the hotel to my Staples and Amazon “ship to” addresses.  I put New York Magazine and Time Warner Cable on vacation holds.  I bought new books, shoes, and a pair of sneakers despite the fact that it was no longer sneaker weather.  I even bought a pair of Uggs.  One day I went on a mission to buy a new bag. There was an urgency attached to it that made it seem as if finding the right one would restore a sense of normalcy to my life.  Buying a new bag is a big decision and usually the bag finds me.  I browse around until one practically shouts, “I’m your next bag.”  Not this time, though I did find one that I liked reasonably enough to buy.

In my room, I kept misplacing things; I would put something down and promptly forget where it was: my favorite pen, my morning notebook, and the pad where I kept ambitious lists of things to do.  Frantically I would search the suite to see where they were.  I hadn’t been here long enough to find a proper place for anything. 

At home my notebook and pens living on the end table next to a leather recliner where I sit for my morning coffee.  The commute to my desk sometimes feels long, but I make it, and when the words don’t come, I stare out of the windows at the trees in the gardens below.

The first round of my clothes came back from the various cleaners and I had to decide where to put them.  The only easy decision was socks and underwear.  I designated the smaller of the two bedroom closets for coats.

The living room portion of the suite is about a quarter of the size of mine and has a desk in one corner, a loveseat, coffee table, end table, and straight-backed armchair.  By the wall outside the small kitchen is a round table with two chairs.

By the end of the third week with no work having been done in my apartment I had to, in the words of a friend, “adapt or die.”

My routine had to change.  Mornings are hard.  I wake up in a bed that is not my bed. When I sit in the living room I am not looking at my pictures on the walls or at my books filling bookshelves, and even though I grab some music CDs during each apartment visit when I pick up the mail and check the progress, they are never the ones I want to listen to.  Don’t get me wrong, the room is not without charm and does come with a fabulous view but it is not mine.

Little by little, a new rhythm developed.  I have found places for the new books I bought, the binders that hold my work, and the new printer is sits on top of its packing box.  There is no DSL here only painfully slow Wi-Fi that I have adjusted to.

I have adapted to the daily maid service and try to be considerate by letting them makeup my room before noon.  Once I hear the rustling of the plastic bag that holds the clean towels, I take down the Do Not Disturb sign.  At home I don’t see anyone during the day, and I seldom leave my apartment until four in the afternoon when I take the day’s work out for edits and sit at a local bar with good light where they make a fresh pot of coffee for me and keep my cup refilled without additional charge knowing I will tip well.

Here when words don’t come there is the temptation to go out.  The desk is considerably smaller than my own.  If I sit on the loveseat, I see the kitchenette where the four-cup coffee maker beckons, but I am getting tired of the single flavor, pre-filled filters.  Since I can’t find coffee filters that fit the machine, I drink pot after pot of French Roast.

Even though the refrigerator is small, dorm size, I like to keep it full, the supply of Diet Coke, cheese and fruit is comforting.

I miss my things.  When I order food in and sit at the round table, I use paper towels as a placemat.  The hotel-provided silverware is thin and has a tinny taste.  I miss my dishes, my glasses, and the silverware I chose more with more care than my potential mate.

Each evening I wash the dishes before going to bed and prep the coffee for the morning, but unlike home, it will not start until I flip the switch. 

Both rooms have large flat-screen televisions mounted to the wall.  A size I would never buy as its very presence demands turning on. There is basic cable and HBO, but not BBCA or the guide channel, the handy grid to see what’s on.  Consequently, I miss most of the starting times for anything I might want to watch. 

Some days I feel on the verge of tears but the enormous emotional release I know will come will not happen here.  It will wait until I am safely back at home, and then I will cry.  For like my laptop and my Blackberry my emotions are not always in sync with my intellect.

What I can’t seem to shake is my feeling that I am living in limbo.  There is no check-out date, and each visit back to the apartment reminds me of the work still to be done.

I have picked out new carpeting for my bedroom, colors for the walls, and bought a new bed.

Like my apartment, the bedroom is colder than the living room.  But here in the hotel what I have discovered, as I start my eighth week, is I still don’t have a side of the bed.

My Room With a View

When I woke up Sunday morning, I knew instantly why I was sleeping on the king-size mattress in my living room.  The fire from the day before had rendered the bedroom unusable and the smell of smoke in the air made the rest of the apartment unlivable.

Living in New York for as long as I have, I’m often asked for hotel recommendations.  I don’t have any – I live here; but now I had to find a place to stay for the foreseeable future.  The only thing I did know was that I wanted to stay in my neighborhood on the Upper West Side.

My renter’s insurance would pay for my accommodations but they needed me to make a decision.  The Beacon was out.  It was filled with too many memories of the time I stayed there in the waning days of my marriage while the apartment was painted and floors sanded waiting for our furniture to arrive from San Francisco.  I tried calling On The Ave, a cool boutique hotel, but each time they transferred me to reservations I was put on hold for so long that eventually I hung up. 

In the meantime, I was busy entertaining.  The building’s insurance investigator arrived as did another city fire marshal.  I watched as they sifted through the charred remains of my bedroom window and wall, smelling each piece of blackened wood and asking me where it had come from as if I could recognize its source.  Some of the debris had landed in the backyard of the building next to mine but most was in the garden below.  I couldn’t see any of it because what used to be my bedroom window was now boarded up with plywood.  More guests arrived these two were welcome; sent by the service my insurance company used, there were here to pick up round one of my clothes to be cleaned.  Everything I owned smelled of smoke, and I didn’t know where to begin.

“It’s winter,” suggested one.  “It’s cold out.  Let’s start with your coats.”

I handed him my two furs, a mink coat that belonged to my grandmother and a raccoon jacket that the ex-law had given me.  I held back my shearling coat and down-filled ski parka; they could go in the next round.  In the bedroom, I took the clothes that hung in neat rows: suits, dresses, blouses, sweaters and slacks.  Each one was carefully examined for pre-existing conditions, like my favorite “at home” sweater, a heather cashmere crewneck with a small hole in the shoulder seam.  I had to provide a value for each item before the men logged them on a list then put them in the large laundry-style bags they had brought with them.  They also took my too-little-used luggage.  I hadn’t traveled in years.

It was dark by the time I finally went out for the Sunday paper, intending to stop at On The Ave to see if they had a vacancy.  Instead, I remembered The Milburn on West 76th Street, where the ex-law’s grown stepchildren had once stayed.  The front desk staff was friendly and amenable to being paid directly by the insurance company and they had a room.

I went back to my apartment, filled some Fairway shopping bags with essentials, packed up my laptop, and then walked around the block to formally check in.  Relief flooded me as I opened the door to the corner room and discovered a small suite on the top floor.  My fear of being stuck in one room with a bed, bureau, and a television as my only companions was unfounded.  Walking in through the small hall, what struck me first was how clean the air was.  Until then I hadn’t realized how toxic what I had been breathing was.  I was also happy that the windows opened, and I wouldn’t be hermetically sealed in.  The bedroom was far more spacious than I was used to and I couldn’t tell if the bed was queen-size or full.  I just hoped it was firm. 

Faced with too many choices of where to put my meager belongings, I fished around in the bag until I found my toothbrush and toothpaste, brushed my teeth, and washed my face.  Even though it was only 8 P.M., and I hadn’t eaten all day, I hung out the Do Not Disturb sign, closed the bedroom door, took off my clothes, and went to sleep. 

Fourteen hours later, I woke up.  I didn’t have a robe so I put on a T-shirt bracing myself for the chilly walk to the kitchen where I had noticed a small coffeemaker the night before.  Entering the sun-filled living room, I was warm.  It wasn’t just the sun, the radiator emanated heat.  My apartment, while cool in the summer, is never warm enough in the winter.  The living room radiator is in one corner of the room and while the bedroom is small, two of the walls are exterior, and I have often joked that I could hang meat there. 

Sitting on the loveseat, drinking hotel-provided French Roast, my fifteenth-floor suite had the most-coveted of New York City views – Southern Exposure.  Now I realized what a big deal it was.  Years of living in a northern-facing brownstone looking at the trees in other people’s gardens had inured me to what I was missing.  I could see the three side columns of the Ansonia and south to the spire and red-neon sign on the Essex House, and the dome-roof on Worldwide Plaza.  To the east was the Citicorp Center with its distinctive angled roof.  I could also see the Time Warner Center, and closer to home the Central Savings Bank Building, now converted to ridiculously-priced condominiums, looked small.  Cars traveled north on Amsterdam Avenue and in both directions on Broadway.

Later that night, I pulled up the living room blinds and looked out at the clear dark sky.  I could see stars, so many that I was sure I was looking at a constellation.  The moon, too, was within my sights.

I have been here long enough to see the lunar eclipse, coinciding with the winter solstice, the last one of its kind for 500 years, watched the blizzard blanket the city, and on New Year’s Eve, I saw the fireworks launched in Central Park.

The windows are thick so there is little noise and the view, originally a distraction, is now a reminder that there is life out there on the streets, unlike the barren winter gardens my apartment windows look out on.

It may not be home, but seriously, I have heat.