Through the Door
The concierge seemed to know I’d never checked into a hotel alone before and watched me curiously as I left the desk. As I trailed suitcases behind me, I peeked over my shoulder for danger but saw no one. Checking into a hotel alone would not, as everyone always warned me, be the death of me. All the same, I was anxious to get out of the hallway and my hands shook hoping the key card would work, the first time, to avoid the embarrassment and public exposure of a trip back to the counter.
Slick. Click. It worked and the heavy door swung open to reveal a silent, dark room with thick red carpet, a white down comforter, huge pillows fluffed just so, and notepads by the bed. It was everything a hotel room should be. I was pleased. It was worth the money.
I threw my suitcases down. I should call home. I shouldn’t. Would they track my number? I was confused. I sat on the bed. I looked tired in the mirror, just an extremely pale girl with limp hair in a salvaged dress from Goodwill. I want to believe I’m fashionable for cheap, my clothes said. I never learned to use makeup, my skin said. What am I doing here? my face said.
Well, here I was, no use brooding about it. I got up and explored my hotel room a little more. There was a big desk with silky polished top. A TV with a guide I couldn’t begin to decipher. A huge overstuffed chair that I sank into comfortably, and no pale child-woman looked at me in the mirror.
Where does that go? I wondered suddenly. It looked like a closet door right beside the mirror; but no, there was the closet in a nook opposite the bathroom. I tried to pull it open, but it was deadbolted from inside my room. Opening this lock, I tried it again, and it swung open to reveal another door in the wall with no deadbolt. It leads to another hotel room, I realized.
Then my curiosity got the best of me, and I had to try this door to see if, by chance, the maid had forgotten to lock it from the other side. Then I could slip into that hotel room and see it, too… I put my hand to the door handle and pushed.
It swung open. An inch. Then two.
I drew back, hesitated. Let the door close again.
But… I wanted to see inside.
I pushed the door open enough to poke my head through. The room on the other side was exactly like mine, but still felt more cheerful than mine did. The rich red unexplored carpet welcomed me in. I stepped through all the way. Then I froze. Across the room, sitting in the overstuffed chair, sat a man.
It took my already skittish mind all of half a second to calculate how long it would take to jump back through the door, slam it, and lock it.
“Hello,” the man said. I gave him an awkward, terrified pause in response. Hotels. Hotels alone. Everyone had warned me.
“Well, welcome, adventurer,” the man continued. He had a small build, even for an older man; he looked my grandfather’s age with curly gray hair. He wore a new blue dress shirt, khakis, and loafers. He seemed old, but still energetic. He studied me with open curiosity. I felt ridiculous, but no longer afraid.
“Sorry,” I mumbled. Felt myself flushing bright scarlet. “I should go.”
“Don’t be sorry,” the man said. “I left the door unlocked on purpose.”
“Why did you leave it open?” I asked, confused and a bit resentful that I had taken some kind of bait.
“Why did you open it and come in?”
“I was just curious.”
“Ah,” he said, nodding. “Adventurous, like I said.”
“Why do you keep saying that about me?” I said. “This is literally the first adventure I’ve been on.”
He shrugged. “You don’t have to go on adventures to be adventurous. It’s likely that you will. But, I take it, you haven’t. What adventure have you chosen to be first?”
“I’m going Hungary tomorrow. There’s a lodge in the mountains…” It had been so long, and I hadn’t been able to tell anyone the secret, now it slipped out indiscreetly. Now that I actually found the boldness to talk about it, though, the vision of the castle-sized, turreted lodge in the mountains filled my whole mind.
“More than just a tourist attraction, I take it,” he said. He was right; it had been an obsession since I saw it in my grandmother’s travel guide years ago.
“Who are you?” I finally blurted. He was so odd, and so spot on.
“Not really important, is it?”
“But I asked you.”
“Wouldn’t you rather it go unknown?”
“I won’t have a name for you when I remember that terrible time I accidentally walked into some stranger’s hotel room.”
He chuckled. “But you’re here. There are so many more interesting things to talk about.”
“What do you mean?”
“People who explore the next hotel room have more inside them than meets the eye.”
I considered this. He wasn’t the only odd one in the room. That was probably true.
“I’ve stayed in hotels for decades,” he said. “I leave the door open every time. No one has ever opened it from the other side.”
“I wouldn’t have either, if I knew you were here!”
“There was always the possibility.” He smiled. “Why are you here?”
I groped for an answer. “I… I always wanted to.”
“You weren’t born wanting to visit Hungary.”
“No,” I returned. “I was born wanting…” Hesitation. What did I want? Why were the words so hard to come by? Why was I even digging for answers in this strange conversation?
“You weren’t born wanting,” the man said, crossing his knees. The immaculate khaki draped just right.
“Huh?”
“That is what you believe. That you were born wanting. In other words, lacking for something. You haven’t always believed it, but I think you do now.”
This conversation was uncomfortable.
“What do you hope to accomplish in Hungary?”
“Were you hired by my parents?”
He really did laugh at that – not a chuckle, not a creaky old-man laugh, but a deep, joyful laugh. “They don’t want you here, I take it.”
“I kind of ran away from home,” I said foolishly, to a stranger, to a strange man, in a hotel room alone. I gave up. Life was too ludicrous.
He shrugged. “You’ve come this far. You’ll be fine. You’re not the first to grow up sheltered by a loving, overprotective family and then overcorrect by running away.”
I reminded myself I could slip back through the door at any time. “So you think I’m silly to go?”
“No,” he said. “I think you’ll find what you want. I think you’ll find the knowledge that you don’t want – that you don’t want for anything, that is. Excuse me, it’s an old-fashioned phrasing.” He smiled, cheeks folding into cheerful wrinkles. “If you have to get all the way to Hungary to fulfill this dream, only to find out you didn’t really need to fulfill it, it’ll be worth it. Imagine never going at all, and then living your whole life thinking that if you were different, if parents or circumstances or life was different, then you would be awesome, adventurous, intelligent, independent, whatever it is you think you don’t have.”
“I don’t need to go, you mean.”
He looked at me shrewdly. “You need to learn to believe in your life as you live it everyday, not as it exists in some ideal world at a beautiful lodge in Hungary.”
I stood still. It was such a terribly introspective moment that I forgot the strangeness for a split second. I stood, I suddenly saw, on the threshold between a fantasy world and the real world. The fantasy world was beautiful, welcoming, and wise strangers gave me good counsel on my journey to fairyland. My world, though, my reality, was nothing so exciting, but it was the courageous choice and the one that held integrity.
“Yes,” I said.
“Call your parents,” the man said. “They’re worried about you.”
I rolled my eyes. “Of course they are.”
He grinned. “Hungary would have been good. But not as good as the decision you just made.”
“Maybe,” I said, and finally turned to go. “Thank you for the advice.”
“I’m glad I could help,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for years to have this conversation.”
I slipped back through the door, fished out my phone, and called my parents.
THE END