I'm sitting in my hotel room drunk on a Saturday night.  I went to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History which was a disaster.  I was there with "America," families from all across this fair nation.  It was ugly.  Babies cried, toddlers whined, school children acted out, but parents were the worst.  It was a very diverse crowd except for some things.  I mean. . . they/we were UGLY.  The Smithsonian was hot and humid and everyone was sneezing and coughing (and I'm sure farting, too).  Still, I soldiered on having walked half the day to get there.  Earlier, I'd been on Dupont Circle.  I wanted to go to Kramer Books.  When I got there, I was hungry and sat down in the cafe for brunch.  What an error.  Chaz Bono's little brother waited on me.  The table was sticky, the crowd ideological.  No wonder bookstores went the way of dinosaurs.  The Greek omelet was truly awful.

Worn out by walking and looking and taking pictures at the White House, I came back to my room and fell asleep.  I woke at four to the sound of my iPhone vibrating and ringing on the desk.  It was a model.  Were we shooting on Tuesday?  Hell, I said, I don't know.  I don't care, but I didn't tell her that.  But soon I will tell her "no."  I am going to begin telling more people that.  I am tired and don't want to shoot with them any more.  I have realized that I am doing them a favor now, not the other way around.  Unless they are ready for the brutalities involved in shooting with me, they can either pay me to shoot them the way they want or they can go to a fellow with a camera hoping he can take photographs of girls in bathing suits.  No no no no no.

Awake at four, I took a cab the short jaunt to Georgetown.  On a Saturday afternoon.  In Spring.  It was a mess.  What has happened to the world?  Everyone is everywhere.  The hipness of everything seems to be gone if not extinct.  And so I walked with the Hoi Poloi down narrow sidewalks bumping into them with vigor.  I thought to have my first Pink Berry (or whatever it is called), but there was a line more than a block long at the store.  Later, I walked by a line six or seven blocks long waiting to get into Georgetown Cupcakes.  There were two other cupcake stores within four blocks, so they must be really good.

I was frazzled and in NEED of a martini.  I'd had one at the hotel bar the night before and it was all I could think of.

By six, I was back at the hotel bar.  It is a nice bar, a pleasant bar, even clean and well-lighted.  But the bartenders are young, a boy and a girl, Nick and Hadley.  And believe me, they are swell.  They had both been there the night that Dione Warwick was so obsessed.  And while Nick is a nice fellow and from near my own hometown, it was Hadley who gave me the chills.  And it was she who had suggested our group dine at the Church Key the evening before.  She was swell, as I say, and in her bartender's habit of black pants, white shirt and matching black vest, she looked more than handsome.  I was glad to see them both there when I came late on this Spring afternoon.

It was Nick who made me the dirty martini this time around, and it hit the spot.  And while I was drinking it at the bar, a woman came up and asked if she could get a Stella for the room.  "Certainly," said Nick, and suddenly, I thought it a good idea.

"Hey, I'll do that as well."

So Nick poured me a Stella from the tap and I took a sip right there.  The woman next to me began to talk, and just then Hadley came in from a break.

"You did a wonderful job suggesting a restaurant last night for me and my friends, and you had mentioned a sushi place, too.  What was the name of that place again?  I mean. . . I trust you now even though last night I told my friends that we should not take a food recommendation from a nine year old whose taste buds had yet to develop.  Nine year olds usually say, 'Oh, I love Chichi's.  My friends and I go there all the time and they have the greatest nachos in the world. . . .'"

Hadley was laughing which was a good thing, as the other patrons were laughing as well.

"Zenten," she said.  "That is the name of the sushi restaurant just around the corner."

"Then that's the one for me."

A fellow sat down at the other end of the small bar.  There were three of us plus a couple sitting close by, and, of course, Nick and Hadley.  And of a sudden, it was a party.  A hotel bar, I thought, is a beautiful thing.

"Jesus, I'm glad I'm working tonight," said Nick.  "I haven't had this much fun working here ever."  Hadley, slightly bent with laughter, nodded her head in agreement.  I liked Nick, but I knew I was in love with Hadley which was a terrible thing.  And so beer long gone, I told the others that I needed to eat and that they were all welcome to join me.  But the woman who sold laser machines to dermatologists said she had to meet her family, and the man who said he was a seller of hedge funds and who had been complaining about his life with his American wife just shook his head.  Just then, two little boys ran up.  I could see his American wife coming as I got up to leave.

"Just in time," I thought.  "The party was over anyway."

Zenten was dark with illuminated bars.  One bar served drinks and was staffed by caucasians.  The other bar, the sushi bar, was connected and was staffed by Japanese.  I sat at the end of the sushi bar next to the liquor bar in case of emergency.  A fellow looking like Robert Redford, of the same height and build and skin texture, asked me what I would have.  I ordered a couple rolls and some sake.  The sushi chef grinned and began to work.

The disadvantage of sitting at the coincidence of the two bars was having the waiters and waitresses come to stand next to me.  It was also the advantage for I got to watch and hear what went into the very creative cocktails of the house.  There was much lighting of torches to burn sage that sat on top of drinks that were like a margarita but with more something or this or that added and then the burning of the sage to give it a slightly smoky flavor.  Etc.  Of course I thought the prettiest of the waitresses favored me, too.

Sushi eaten, sake drunk, I walked back to my room to begin to write a bit.  But a Saturday night in your hotel room can work on you even if the room is well appointed, so after a bit, I headed back to the hotel bar.  No one was there.

"What happened?" I asked in mock surprise.  But the room had taken a turn for the strange.  Just before the unhappily married hedge fund operator's wife showed up, he had asked Hadley if she would take a an unusually big tip and promise to use it only for illicit things.  He wanted to make an impression, of course, but there would be a thrill in it for him later as he sat in his lanai at home smoking a cigar while his wife watched "American Hoarders" on t.v.

Hadley and Nick were talking to one another in low tones now, but I could hear a word now and then. I surmised that the big tipper had given them something illicit before he left.  "I'm not taking this shit," I heard Nick say.  "I'll sell it to someone for twenty dollars who wants to try to kill himself.  Hell, I don't even smoke pot."  Hadley was saying little.

I asked a few questions about what happened, and just then the fellow with the wife walked in from a room beside the bar.  Perhaps he'd been in the bathroom.  He was very fucked up now, and was talking very loudly.

"Whoa, those brandy Alexanders really fucked me up.  I have to go back to the room.  Shit, I'm in trouble."

I pictured him staggering in, the two boys watching television, his wife arguing with him for. . . well, who knows.  Then he turned and walked over to where I was sitting and remembering my name which stunned me, he said, "Send me the link to your website.  I want to read it."  No, I thought, you don't.  You don't.

"Sure," I said, wondering how it had ever been brought up.  Why would I have told him such a thing.

When he was gone, Hadley poured me a scotch.

"This is nothing like I pour at home," I said, marveling at how skinny bar drinks could be.

"Drink it," she said.  "I was going to refill it."

And then she was gone.  Nick and I talked about this and that, the only two at the bar now.  He came to D.C. with Merrill Lynch, he said, but he hated the job.  I guessed it wasn't a good time to be cold calling on new customers.  He said it just wasn't for him.

"Here," he said putting a Hefeweizen down beside me.  "Some women ordered this and didn't want it."  Suddenly I was getting more drinks than I wanted.  I would take it back to the room, I said.

When Hadley came back, Nick said, "Jesus, the night flew.  It's time for me to go." And so he counted out the money in the drawer and the two of them did whatever exchanges they needed to do.  Then he came over and we shook hands.  Nice to meet you, etc.

When he was gone, Hadley came over.  She was too beautiful for me to look at for long periods, but she was standing in front of me now.

"So, you're leaving tomorrow."

"Yes."

"Do you have a card," she asked.

My heart bumped.  What was she asking me?

"No," I said, "I'm not the sort to have a card."

She stood looking at me.  Just then a fellow came up and asked for change for a ten.  She turned and went to the cash register, and that was when things went weird.  I watched her from behind.  She was having trouble counting out the ones.  Her hands were moving slowly, fumbling with the bills.  Something was wrong with her.  Finally, after counting three times, she put the ten in the register and handed the ones to the man.  When she came back over, I could tell her eyes were not so sharp as they had been.

"You're good," she said.  "You don't owe me anything.  Here." She was pushing a napkin toward me.  "You can write your information down."

"I don't have a pen," I said, and she wandered off to get one.  Just then, a fellow dressed in the same outfit as she was sat down at the bar and ordered a drink.  He must work there.  He must have just finished work.  He talked to her in the most certain of tones, asking her questions that I could barely hear, but I could see her fumbling, trying to maintain some sort of composure, trying to provide him with the answers.  But it wasn't going well at all, and I began to wonder something.  What had happened with the hedge fun operator?  He had given them something.  Had she taken it?  When I thought about where he came from and where she went when she left the bar, I began to wonder what had occurred between the time I left and the time I came back.  Nick had seemed more disapproving the more remembered.  I began to imagine the worst.

Then, while she was occupied by the fellow in the black vest and pants, I took my beer and left the bar without turning around.  I did not look back.

What?  What was she saying.