During the summertime one year at the Inn, years ago, yet etched in my memory as if it were yesterday - I experienced, as if by fate, the most fortunate of  chance meetings. I recall clearly how the pastel pink and orange colored afternoon sky seemed to darken more quickly than usual; in no time at all, the day had turned to a coal black and starless night. It seemed the evening could not wait to begin, though my thoughts were focused squarely on its end. Merely seven hours into a double-shift, which would include the overnight shift to follow, I was already weary and restless from sheer boredom and limited human contact. My arrivals list (very much in need of life-support), showed one lonely name for its sixth consecutive hour of the seven, which was not much less bleak than the first hour, having maxed out at two arrivals total before coming to an abrupt end when an old married couple checked-in and disappeared soon after. The main topic of stimulating conversation was kept to a brief discussion about the dining room’s breakfast hours and a request for a 5:15AM wake-up call.

So there I sat for hours, turning figures of speech like “twiddling your thumbs” into literal avenues of passing time. The evening that had come so quickly now seemed to linger, refusing to allow time its natural passage. I visited the snack and beverage machines more often than I’d care to admit, checked my e-mails, read every word on OSHA posters and various memos that hung in the back office and won four paper football super bowls against myself before midnight struck.

At this point, I stood for a ceremonial AM stretch and headed towards the lobby’s front doors where I met with Earl, the Inn’s night watchman. He leaned on a plastic smoker’s post and sucked a few hard drags from a filtered cigar as the sliding doors opened. He promptly scraped away the fiery red tip against the grated side panel of the post and tucked its remains into the front breast pocket of his navy blue uniform. Earl handed me a clipboard and together we walked to each of the main entrances; I watched and signed-off for each door as he latched and locked them one by one – the usual protocol.

After Earl was on his way, off patrolling the shadowy parking lot (or more likely catching a nap between late night talk radio shows), I found myself refilling staplers and paper trays to keep from losing my sanity. With office supplies readily stocked, I then settled back into my comfy captains chair in the back office, dug my cell phone from my pocket and pulled up Tetris. At level five or so, the silence was pierced with the blare of the ringing phone at the front desk. I felt like an island castaway spotting a plane in the distance; I paused my game, picked up the receiver on the switchboard phone that sat next to me and pressed the blinking line.

“Good evening, Guest Serv…” I managed to get out before I heard a click and a dial tone. “What a tease,” I thought. I hardly had time to hang up and return to my game when another ring let out from the front desk. Again I picked up the blinking line, “Good evening, Guest Services, how may I…” - another click and dial tone. “Kids are getting lazy. At least when I prank called people when I was younger there was a joke to go along with it,” I complained to myself as I slammed down the receiver.

A full two minutes went by in familiar silence, then more ringing. This time I looked more closely at the incoming description text on the phone before I answered the line and saw that the call was coming from the Inn’s front entrance. I slid my chair to the surveillance monitors and enlarged the feed coming from the front sliding doors, aimed quite directly at the phone mounted near the key card reader. “Some drunk has forgotten his key,” I figured.  I picked up the blinking line and tried again, “Good evening, Guest Services, how may I help you?” I said as I watched the monitor. A man held the phone in his hand about a foot from his head, he starred and studying it for a moment, showed it to a woman who leaned in and shook her head, then – click and dial tone. “What is wrong with these people?” I wondered.

I made my way around the corner and back to the Front Desk where I looked through the lobby to the large glass sliding doors at the main entrance; the man lifted the phone from the hook and it rang immediately to the front desk again. At this same moment a third person, a little girl no more than eight or nine, stepped forward and leaned against the door with her hands raised to block the glare; she saw me and began to wave. I reached for a rectangular metal button on the right wall of the front desk, which flew the sliding doors open, allowing them entry. As they walked through the lobby and towards the desk, I could hear them murmuring to each other, but I could not make out any specific words. Their tones suggested some type of impairment or disability and I began to hope they weren’t upset or confused with the delay at the door.

“Mommy, Daddy – it’s just like Zack and Cody,” the little girl said as she gestured quickly with her hands. I realized that her parents were deaf when I recognized several of her gestures as American Sign Language. As luck would have it, my mother had studied and instructed sign language throughout my childhood and exposed my sister and I to its value. Since the beginning of my career I had listed it as a fluent second language on resumes and prided myself on my ability to hold a coherent conversation (as well as hand-sing ‘I’m dreaming of a White Christmas’ if the moment presented itself).

The father dropped two sepia brown suitcases at his feet and reached into his back pocket to reveal a small red spiraled notebook and a thin BIC ink pen. He placed the notebook on the front desk and flipped through page after page of hand written messages, no doubt a map of sorts, documenting his family’s journey through endless moment-by-moment written conversations, questions and directions. I smiled and waved at his wife and daughter then reached over the desk and gently touched his wrist. As he raised his head I removed my hand and signed, “Good evening, how are you?”

The relief that rushed across his face reminded me of a lottery winner holding an over-sized check on the local news or an island castaway who has actually gotten the attention of the plane in the distance.

“You sign?” he asked.

“You can sign,” the daughter echoed with her hands and voice.

“Yes, I little,” I replied humbly, no need to profess my fluency to this family.

“Daddy, he can talk to you,” the girl said reassuring her father.

The couple smiled widely and confirmed themselves as Mr. and Mrs. Kern, the remaining name on my arrival’s list. I ensured they were assigned an ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliant room, which came standard with benefits like assistant listening devices, closed captioning televisions and light/vibration signal enabled fire alarms, telephones and alarm clocks. We chatted for a while about the weather and nearby locations to shop and eat. They shared that they were visiting Mrs. Kern’s parents, the first quality visit for their daughter Ally to have with her grandparents in nearly two years.

All the while, through the check-in and hand chatter, little Ally spun in circles studying every corner of the lobby and repeating “Just like Zack and Cody” and asking “Do Zack and Cody live here?” She went on to explain with great joy that The Suite Life of Zack and Cody was her favorite show “in the whole wide world,” and described in her own way that it was a child sitcom of sorts starring twin brothers living in a hotel. I could see that this trip to visit grandma and grandpa was being trumped a bit by the mystique of Inn through her wonderment for these Zack and Cody guys.

As I passed the couple their keys and pointed them towards the elevators, I regretted having to lose the privilege of their company, especially after so many hours of solitude, but I wished them a wonderful stay and waved good-bye. As Mr. Kern lifted his bags and walked away, Ally stood in place, rummaging through a little yellow pocketbook that hung from her right shoulder. Its pink strap twisted around her neck as she dug deeper and the smiley-face flower on the front flap contorted as she searched even more thoroughly than that. She signed to her mother intermittently, though she was much too quick for me to read or understand the words. Finally, she pulled out a small white sea shell and reached her miniature hand just barely above the surface of the Front Desk.

“What’s this?” I signed.

“She collects shells,” Mrs. Kern replied, “she wants to give you one,” she added.

I thanked them both with one hand over my heart and waved again as they rushed to catch-up with Mr. Kern as he entered an elevator. I spent the remainder of the morning shuffling paperwork from one side of the Front Desk to the other and reflected dearly, as I still do to this day, about the sweet family that brightened my otherwise dreadful double-shift and turned a night to be forgotten into a night to be remembered. They reminded me that it takes very little to have a positive effect on others and that sometimes the best conversations are those had in silence. A part of me is sure that I was able to brighten their night too - and perhaps remain in their memories as a welcomed surprise along their travels, filed somewhere between Grandma, Grandpa, Zack and Cody.  

(Ally’s sea shell remains in my personal collection of keepsakes and mementos to this day.)

~The Innkeeper     

 & Subscribe Here!