The Last Word On Nothing

This month I left Ottawa for the first time in years. It was marvelous to be somewhere else, doing something else, for once. It was not quite as marvelous to be in transit again.

There’s nothing as boring as travel delay stories, but here’s a flavour of the experience: People were taking photos of the security lineups to show social media how ridiculous they were and the announcements asked us to go and buy water because there wasn’t any on the plane. We couldn’t take off because there wasn’t any ground crew, then we couldn’t deplane because there weren’t any gate agents. Email after email delayed everyone’s flights and rebooked our connections while we were in the air.

By the time I was in Toronto, ready to fly home to Ottawa, the airline had given up on taking me there until the following day. But all of the hotels were full of people doing their quarantine. I’m not talking all of the airport hotels. I mean all of the hotels downtown, around the airport, and everywhere in between.

At 1:30am I had a glimmer of hope when my umpteenth phone call reached a hotel that could not, themselves, take me, but that could book me in at one of their other locations, some distance away. I made the reservation and then stood in line while taxis didn’t come.

Finally at the hotel, I found a lobby full of people who had made reservations and a 20-something night manager, Enoch, who had to say no, we’re full. The hotel’s computer system showed him there were now negative-19 available rooms. After midnight, the online reservations program had glitched out and allowed overbooking. Customers berated him that he had to “honour their reservation” but offered no suggestion as to how he could magic up rooms that didn’t exist.

Many of them left in a huff, making threats. I retreated to a corner of the lobby to find a power socket and continue my search for a place to lay my head, though by now it would be not so much a night’s sleep as an early morning nap that should last just long enough to disorient me for the next day.

Then, a miracle occurs. Enoch approaches. He has been thinking outside the box.

He leads me to a conference room that smells like the door hasn’t been opened for the length of the pandemic. Like the air is now comprised of at least 4% fire retardant. He hands me two bottles of water. He gestures to a wilted cot he has set up in the space between the boardroom table and the digital projector. He apologizes that it’s not exactly the Embassy Suites, says he won’t charge.

I suddenly realize how abandoned I have been feeling right up until that moment of humanitarian compassion. How often has a front desk served as a barrier to sensible problem solving? And here he was taking ownership of my homelessness. I slept the sleep of the cared-for.

That kid Enoch was going places. And in the morning, so was I.

If only my luggage had been, too.