Strings Attached

View from a Room, NYC

13 View from a Room, NYC I’ve long liked the image of a fleabag motel and once stayed at one with the boy I was sure I’d marry. It had a spare charm with its thin walls and total lack of amenities. No Starbucks on a counter that doubles as a desk, no fitness room, no Vivaldi in the lobby. No lobby. There’s something seductive about those old neon signs glowing like beacons in the dark—a setting where secrets are written with stars on a chalkboard sky. Movie motels where the Sandra Dee/Tab Hunter couple who’ve been aching to play footsy insist they need two rooms (car broke down). But jeepers—there’s only one room left. The jaded clerk with a cigarette dangling from his pout barely looks up, says, “Yeah, yeah, sign here.” So Tab sleeps on the floor while Sandy squirms in the bed above like some angel about to take a fall. Cut to the Don Draper type: sexy voice, slick hair, custom suits. He walks in like a Do Not Disturb sign, scribbling the register with an alias so none—mainly Mrs. D— will suspect he’s bedding up with Chanel Le Bop, the floozy with a PhD in understanding. But my room tonight has none of that. There’s a window with a view of wet, lacquered streets rubified by signs that say Luigi’s Pizza, Tony’s Pizza, Joey’s Pizza, all owned by somebody who’s not Italian. And I’m feeling like Moll, not the sexy mistress of some gangster on the lam, just a girl in a tank top lookin’ for some shuteye in this room, where my companion is insomnia— and the wake-up call, sunrise wedging through the shades. ...