Ruined by Two or Three

“Growing old isn’t a battle.  It’s a slaughter.”  So says Philip Roth in the 2006 novel “Everyman.”  Flying down over China’s eastern seaboard I’ve just finished up the work.  I was looking back over the text when the Air China recording, which I’d been waiting for now, for some tim, announced that our plane would be landing in thirty minutes.  The son of watch-shop owner, the son of a jeweler, with a life of compromises and regrets, which ends, before the protagonist expects it to.  Well, it is certainly nice to spend time with someone who is in their seventies longing for the time I now occupy.  “Fifty” isn’t old at all, I learned.  It’s the time when everything, for this protagonist at least, was still possible.  As a fifty year-old he committed his pivotal mistake.  This “now”-time will be looked back on fondly, before long.  Certainly.  I know how fast twenty years can pass.  Not yet.  But soon.

I’ll have to shed this sweater and maybe even my coat.  The Shenzhen airport is approaching.  It will be full of young ladies springing about in spring outfits, not a winter coat in sight. The dread winter of Beijing I’ll leave behind now for twenty-eight hours or so.  I’m anxious as I’ve finished my book and don’t have another handy to begin.  Typing is now prohibited.  Two stewardesses have looked me over sternly.  I’ve ignored them both but it’s clear that my time with electric devices is up now.  We’ll pick it up later after we’ve long left the airport. 

Later is now.  We’re on the ninety-sixth floor to check in.  Every other Starwood property here in town was sold out.  Apparently Volkswagen has some kind of event that’s required a thousand rooms.  It must be a global blowout that brings them here, because the other hotel chains, my friend informs me, are all sold out as well.  This morning there were rooms that remained at the Four Points, which is less expensive and feels that way.   They play very bad music very loudly in all the public spaces, among other crimes.  But I’d have taken it.  It too waxed ‘sold out’ though when I returned a few hours later to secure it.

And so we have checked into the St. Regis, which has secured the top-most floors of this astoundingly tall building.  I remember being a kid and visiting the Twin Towers.  It was, as I recall, quite something to race up an elevator that high.  Now it seems commonplace.  It’s cloudy outside and the view isn’t much to consider.  The room itself has a pair of super binocular telescopes, tantalizing me to stare off into the clouds.  We head to the lounge, which is opulent and utterly ruined by two or three enormous television screens.  Someone has decided that it would be ever so classy to run an interminable loop of a Victoria Secret event with Lady Gaga prancing about among a score of models with breasts and butterfly wings.  I consider strongly asking them to turn it off.  I’m your preferred guest after all.  Wouldn’t everyone else simply prefer the quite and the view outside, which that army of people worked so hard to provide us with?  I note that many other preferred guests are gaping at the screens.

As we head down stairs I tell my colleague:  “May your morning view be worthy of your binoculars.” 

Wednesday, 01/18/17