Entangled in Ivy - Final Installment

The End

I can’t believe we’re on the fifth and final installment of Ivy. Quick recap. In the first Ivy post, we talked about hotel adventures of the past. In the continued post, we met Ivy. She tried to charge me $1,048 for four nights stay. During the contd again post, I made it to the room to find no light in the living/bedroom and no HBO. I can’t believe there was a next to the last post, but in it I got three lights, HBO, and we ended with Ginger calling asking me what I was charging on our credit card for $1,048.

I sang, I danced, and eventually convinced Ginger that there was nothing at that hotel I’d pay $1,048 for. She agreed to let me live until the Visa bill came.  Then we would revisit my punishment. After I hung up, but before I could make it out the door, Ivy called.

“Mister Lewis, we need to run your credit card through again.”

“Ivy, I can’t afford for you to run my credit card through again.  I can’t afford what you’ve already charged, and the jury’s still out on whether or not you caused me a divorce.”

“I promise, after we straighten it out, you won’t have but one charge on your card, and it should be littler.”

I agreed to stop by on my way back to the room that night, and I was off for the evening.

When I made it back to the front desk, Ivy, another young lady, and the assistant manager spent twenty minutes getting my bill straight.  Just before I left the desk, I asked the assistant manager to set me up for a wake-up call the next morning.

When I arrived back in my room, I had three lights, HBO on a TV programmed in Spanish, and a coffeemaker that worked.  Through experience I felt it necessary to inspected all of the condiments. The call had to be made.

“Ivy.  How you doin?”

“Mister Lewis.  How are you?”

“I’m good, but I don’t have any coffee or shampoo.  Can I come down and get some.”

“I don’t have coffee or shampoo.”

Visions of forks crossed through my mind.

“But housekeeping has some.”

I wondered if housekeeping had forks too.  “Where is housekeeping?   I’ll run down and pick them up.”

“Mister Lewis, I’ll send them right up.”

I knew that even with her promise, there was a good chance I would wake the next morning with greasy hair and no coffee.  Plus, I was stuck in higher math.  The coffee’s probably worth fifty cents, the shampoo thirty.  That’s a total of eighty cents.  If Housekeeping actually created the stuff, I’d owe them eighty cents. What should I pay someone who just rides an elevator to bring it to me?  Especially since they did my room earlier and should have left them then.

Even though the stuff was only worth eighty cents, I hated to tip anyone a buck.  It just sounded cheep.  I could tip her five bucks, but five bucks for eighty cents worth of stuff would make me stupid.  One buck, cheap; five bucks, stupid?  Greasy hair and no coffee wasn’t sounding so bad.  When the knock came on the door, I still had the storm in my mind.  One buck, five bucks, cheap, stupid.

I did what anyone would do. I split the difference. I shook her hand, and closed the door.

Apparently, wake-up calls are harder than I thought, because even though the assistant manager promised it, the next morning I woke without one.

My last evening at the hotel was fairly uneventful.  Ivy wasn’t on the front desk when I passed on the way to my room, but I found her in the elevator. Carrying a set of cooking knives.  One of them looked suspiciously like the knife used in those Halloween movies.  

I had to ask. “Ivy, how you doin?”

“Good.  And you, Mister Lewis?”

“Good.  Where you goin’ with the knives?”

She explained that the staff had suites on the top floor, and since it was her day off, she was going to do some cooking.

I had shampoo. I had coffee.  I had three lights that worked, HBO, and a TV programmed in Spanish.  Even with all of that, I woke four times during the night sniffing the air for smoke.  What woke me wasn’t smoke.  It was the memory of Ivy above me in charge of fire.

Most people say they would have changed rooms after the first, dark night. But if I had, just think of what we would have missed.  All I would have to blog about is Jacuzzi as a spectator sport, what people actually do in their hotel rooms when they don’t expect you to walk in on them, and how fire alarms will cause some women to evacuate in Victoria Secret outfits.  How much fun would that be compared to Ivy?