The gentlemen in the light blue sports coat glides on down the stairwell. I never actually look at him but can feel his descent and then he is curving around the wall and tucking into the alcove under the stairwell that the receptionist appeared out of.

“Checking in?” the receptionist says. Her hair is softly pinned up in a lovely seashell shaped gathering and she has pearl earrings peeking out from tassels of brown hair. She is wrinkle free; even a scowl of intolerance is absent. She has small hands that make no noise and is wearing a rich, deep hunter green sweater that is not a uniform, yet she matches so well the worldly décor. I think the hotel made her. I think she a young ghost of the library that once stood. I find myself staring trying to picture her oozing out of the books that the library in the downstairs study that remains must have contracted as part negotiation for subscribing to being a hotel instead. She is this compromise to commercialize. I find her to be an extraordinary character in this attempt to romanticize hoarding books and sharing books and sleeping with books in rooms dedicated to writers and people of important and pivotal interest. I am fully staring when I hear her say, “Checking in Madam?” again softly like a book opened to a book marked page.

“Oh, yes,” I say but there is more I want to tell her like a statement that wants instead to ask a million questions including is she real and did she know she looked and felt like a librarian but one that every patron would gently crush on.

She slowly flutters on the computer and I lean on the desk in various awkward ways. The table top is so tidy my hand or elbow resting seems to clutter the perfect presentation. There is a bell that hand rings, a stack of bookmarks specifically a hotel calling card, and a small succulent orphan.

She so softly requests something and I lean in to ask her to repeat, “I’m sorry?”

“Your passport, please?” she request.

I hand over this library card I have that says I can travel the world and now travel the rooms and pages of this unique hotel. She flutters on and scans my image. I look around not wanting to stare at her perfect steward appearance. I feel as if I was again a child checking out a book and I am filled with nervous excitement I might be reading a great one someone recommended soon.

“We have you in the Fidel Castro room,” she announces and offers to show me around the hotel.

Growing up I had no esteem for Fidel Castro so I laugh a little and she tilts her head. I assume I have a lot of perspective to learn about Fidel Castro so I agree to the room. She walks me through the sitting room which is an incredible continuation of the entry and I stop to look at a chair that is a matching set but closes to me as I pass. It has on the seat an envelope much like a greeting card.