A concert for one

Sundays in the hotel restaurant are usually pretty slow. Okay, let me rephrase that. They are painfully slow. Nearly all the hotel guests want to sleep in as late as possible and arrive for breakfast at 10am (the same time we usually start taking down the buffet)--though I don't blame them. If I had the option of staying in bed past 5:45 am, you could find me still wrapped in a cocoon of the feathery goodness that is my duvet, reading a book and sipping my second cup of coffee. But instead, Christiane and I take some chairs from the tables and sit upstairs chatting and reading while we periodically check our watches and wait. . . and wait . . . and wait.

After all chores are finished and we are clean and prepped for lunch, we move the party to the downstairs part of the restaurant and continue playing the waiting game there. And today while I was searching for something to do other than counting cracks on the floor or staring out the window and daydreaming about waves and sand and the dance floor at Comber, I made my way to the kitchen to polish silverware. Exhilarating, yes indeed.

The kitchen staff was still downstairs loitering on their third and fourth cigarettes, so the clanking of pots and pans, exchanging of vulgar jokes, and blaring hip hop music were not echoing off the white tiled walls like most days. Today there was almost an eerie calm in the air, as if anticipating the noise and chaos that would later ensue.

And that's when I heard the music. Piano notes sprung into the air and eagerly danced in through the side door that connects to le Grand Salle--the largest seminar room reserved for weddings and banquets and other elegant events. If there ever was a remake of "Beauty and the Beast," this room would be the perfect setting. Huge crystal chandeliers hang from the ceiling that is artfully carved with swirls and painted with warm, creamy colors and gold.

I put down the knives and spoons I was holding and let the notes lure me in like sirens. At the far end of the room just against the windows that open to face the now charcoal-colored lake and sky was a grand black piano. The man playing sat alone in the nearly dark room, the only light coming from the cloud covered sky outside. As I listened to him play, I pictured his hands, fingers gliding across the keys patiently but with purpose and necessity, the silences and piano notes twisting around one another like professional ballroom dancers twirling in midair, their bodies indistinguishable but their harmony unmistakable.

He continued playing and I continued standing there, letting the music take me away to some far off place where the kitchen and hotel and thought of work was a distant and forgotten memory. And when the dance finally ended, the golden notes still lingered in my veins like tiny glowing fires keeping me warm for the rest of the day.

I went back to polishing forks and knives and spoons amidst the harsher sounds of the kitchen, but not without feeling a little lighter. Maybe it was not the most exciting or interesting of work days, no crazy clients or dropped plates, no new friends 50 years older than me or strange requests. But there was still something there to make it, hmmm . . . what's the word? Enchanting. And that it undoubtedly was.