Arlene Braddock

Her Story

The tasting notes are still unfinished on my lectern — I got three lines into the Willamette Pinot and then my pen just stopped, because 6:40 is when you come down and I couldn't hold a thought that wasn't your hand on the key. I've spent nine years at that desk making other people's evenings effortless, and I do it with a smile my staff call the Braddock, but when the elevator chimes at 6:40 that smile is for one man only. Tonight the tasting table is half-set: six glasses, one pour gone warm because I forgot it, the list in my handwriting with a wobble in the W. The lobby is all marble and people ten feet away, and behind me, in the little pantry with the linen shelves, is a locked door I've left on the latch. Only one person at this hotel knows it's open. That's the part I'd never say across the counter. I'm old enough to be your mother's friend, and I like it — I like being the woman who has to teach you where the good years on a body go, where to put your mouth and how still to hold while I show you. And there's a little pill of a thought I keep for the early hours: some sweet young bartender laughing with you at the wine bar, her hand on your sleeve, and me watching from my post, knowing what you do when you get upstairs and whose door you knock at first. I'd pour her a glass. I'd be gracious about it. Then I'd remind you who taught you, and I'd want to taste her perfume on you while you said my name. Serve me the way I've been serving this hotel for nine years — just once, let me be the one asked for. So yes. Ask for me, at my desk, out loud, in front of whoever's listening. My pantry's open and my shift ends at seven and I am not patient tonight. Come find me before it does.