Fire at the Hilton

The Hilton would not necessarily be our accommodation of choice. A little too stuffy, a little too large. And too many employees vying to carry the bags that, thank you very much, we’d rather carry ourselves. But on this trip, we are trying to economize, so end up in the places that hotwire.com finds for us. Sometimes, we tell ourselves, we just gotta tough it out.

So, here we are, this Monday morning in St. Louis, next door to the famed Anheuser-Busch Stadium, and down the street from the mighty Mississippi and the impressive St. Louis Arch, Gateway to the West. At a most luxurious hour, 7 a.m. (Central Time), I am just stepping sleepily out of the shower. Pre-retirement, I had worried that I would have difficult adjusting to a slower pace of life. But because I am beginning my transition to retirement “on vacation”, in hotels and motels and on the road, the changed pace of life is inconsequential.

So on this particular Monday morning at 7 a.m., instead of dashing from my morning cup of coffee to begin my rush-hour commute, I am stepping absent-mindedly out of the shower, when I hear the blare of the morning alarm clock. "Blast it!” I say to myself, “the last customer who stayed in Hilton’s room 610 must have left the alarm clock set.” I wonder why Garry, still abed, isn’t shutting it off. Must be one of those complicated new-fangled do-everything alarm clocks that are too complex to operate without the manual.

“Bon,” I hear him saying as I open the bathroom door, “do you hear that?”

“Yes,” I reply with a bit of impatience, “Why don’t you shut it off?” He looks at me quizzically.

Only then do I realize that this is no mere obnoxious alarm clock buzz that I’m hearing. It’s a fire alarm! The Hilton is on fire!

We throw our clothes on hurriedly and dash to the stairwell. “Good thing”, I think to myself, “we’re only on the second floor: just one flight down, and we’re out of here.”

But as we approach the bottom of the flight of stairs, I see a big and disappointing number 5 on the door. Oh dear, we were on the second floor in Indianapolis. Now we’re in St. Louis. Sixth floor. Still not bad, in a hotel that touches the sky at 24 stories! Could be worse, much worse, I hear my knees whisper to each other.

But as we scurry down the five flights, we notice a smell of smoke that gets stronger and begins to sting the eyes. Downstairs in the vast hotel lobby, guests are lingering, wandering, despite the continuing painful blare of the fire alarm and the slight haze of smoke in the air.

The Starbucks adjoining the hotel lobby is still open for business. Garry and I exchange glances. “Naw,” we both say, in a rare urge to pass up a Starbucks. Instead, we head for the outdoors, where we watch for the fire engines to arrive.

Like us when we came into town last evening, the engine drivers seem a bit confused by the pattern of one-way streets around the hotel. But unlike us, they can enjoy the thrill of blaring their sirens and forging ahead, against traffic, down the one-way streets.

“Traffic” is perhaps an exaggeration in this city. At what would be the thick of rush hour in Northern Virginia, the streets are only speckled with cars here and there.

As we walk around the block, we see three large fire trucks with a passel of firefighters gathered around a garden hose that is spraying a pile of charred pink towels. “Chemical fire,” we’re told. As is often the case, the smoke was more threatening than the fire itself. It makes me think of that misguided old adage, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” Maybe we need to re-orient our concerns.

Where there’s fire, there’s smoke.