In the hotel lobby

I had been attending the conference for the past three days...name badge around my neck on a lanyard. In the mornings I'd awake to the sounds of Fox News, iron my dress shirt, head down to the windowless ballroom for breakfast--introducing myself to strangers, talking about work, sipping the watered down hotel coffee. Attendees floated from Mezzanine to Balcony on escalators, scrutinizing their programs and adjusting their glasses. In the evenings we'd enjoy open bars on the top floors of skyscrapers, tiny little bite sized desserts.

And then on the afternoon of the last day of the conferece, I stood on the Mezzanine level and looked over the railing on to the swirling floor of the lobby, where guests for a wedding gathered in a bar, conference attendees consulted trolley schedules at the concierge, random figures crossed the marble. In the middle of all of this he sat on a leather chair. He looked so familiar--just as I had left him. He hadn't seen me yet--he was reading a brochure. I took the escalator down and crossed the floor to him and he looked up just as I was about to put my hand on his shoulder. All this anonymity suddenly became our cover, as I walked away with him across the lobby, away from the conference and toward the bank of elevators that would take us to my room.