Concierge Confidential (14 page)

“Well, we can
make
it romantic,” I insisted. “You can take the train again, and I'll have musicians waiting for you.”

“Where, in Penn Station?”

“No, like on the platform. She obviously would never expect that. Talk about a movie! It'd be this big huge gesture and make a spectacle like when the credits begin to roll and our hero and our heroine finally get together.”

“I
love
it,” he said. “Then we can go to dinner at someplace fancy.”

“Oh, that's easy. I'll have the white roses waiting on the platform and the musicians can hand them to her. So what do you think?”

He smiled. Now I could see that the gears had stopped turning. “Just go for it. This is it, this is
totally
it.”

“I'll take care of everything.”

“Thanks.” He passed me a tip and left. I watched the smile on his face grow larger and larger.

That afternoon, I went to Penn Station to get permission for the performers. There's a police precinct right there, adjacent to the escalators that go down to the tracks.
They probably control the whole thing,
I reasoned.
I'll go and ask them first.
I opened the door and three cops looked up at me. I didn't seem particularly aggrieved, so right away they seemed to be on guard—they could tell that I was probably some sort of nuisance and not a crime victim. “I've got a
crazy
request,” I told them, in an icebreaker that I regretted immediately. “I'm a concierge at the InterContinental Hotel, and one of my clients would like a string quartet to meet him when he gets off the train.”

I totally fell flat. The energy in the room turned to total poison. “What are you talking about?” one of the officers finally said.

“It would be really romantic. He's recreating the route where he met his wife. Do you think there's some way?”

The cop rolled his eyes, not interested in parsing what I was telling him. “Go talk to the guy at the head of the escalator.”

“Which guy?”

“The Amtrak guy who's in charge of tickets. You'll see him,” the officer said, wanting me to be out of there as quickly as possible.

I took the hint. I found the guy the cop was talking about. He had on his Amtrak hat and was watching over the entrance to the platform. I meandered up to him as he watched me approach out of the corner of his eye. “Hey there,” I said.

“Can I help you?” he replied immediately, in a tone that didn't sound like someone who actually
did
want to help me.

“Okay. I bet you've never heard this before.” I explained the whole scenario to him, while he stared at me with no change in affect whatsoever. “This would be so great. Isn't it such a
crazy
idea?”

“I'll give you that,” he said, chuckling to himself.

One of the tricks that often works in cases like this is to act nice and beg for mercy. It definitely helps to present yourself as a peer, who is in danger of getting in trouble at work. “If I can't say yes to this person, it's going to make my life miserable. You know how that is.”

“I guess.”

“Come on. It's good PR for Amtrak.”

He shrugged and looked away. “Maybe so.”

It was that awkward moment where I should have walked away and bought tickets for the musicians to get them access to the platform. But even if I did that, I wasn't assured that they would be able to bring their instruments—let alone play them by the trains. “Look at how cool this would be,” I insisted. “This is bringing the romance back into train travel!”

He looked me right in the face, and now he started to crack a little bit. Clearly bringing the romance into train travel was not one of his priorities, and we both knew it. He started to laugh at me, but in a friendly way. “You're nuts.”

I knew that I was winning him over. “When do you work? What's your schedule? This would be on a Thursday at six
P.M.
”

“I don't work at that time,” he told me.

“Do you know who does?”

He gave it the least possible amount of thought. “Nope.”

“Can I give you a call and maybe you can find out for me?”

“I'll try to find out,” he said.

“Can you give me your number?”

“Just come back and I'll see what I can do,” he said. He wouldn't give me his phone number but I knew I had made the slightest bit of an ally.

“Okay,” I said, “I'll find you another time.” I didn't really feel like he was good for it—and he wasn't.

I went back three or four times, chatting him up and checking to see if he had done any research for me. “How's it going?” I asked him. “Did you have any luck? I'm sorry, I know I'm bothering you.”

I thought that I should call human resources and simply just go over his head. But at that point I was too afraid that if I did that and went outside of his circle, I would be screwed. All he would have to say is, “There's some crazy person that wants to get on the platform,” and it would be all over for me. He
had
to be my guy.

Instead it was me asking, “Do you want a coffee? How are you doing today?
Do you like candy?
”

Eventually, I was in the right place at the right time. “That's Elipto,” he told me. “Go talk to him. He's got that shift.”

I went up to Elipto and introduced myself.

“So
you're
the guy that keeps coming here,” he said, laughing.

I gave Elipto my whole spiel. I didn't take credit for the plan; it was the “wacky client” who wanted to do this. It was amusing for him that there was a person out there who was willing to enlist this much effort to pull something off. Now it was like we were on the same team. I could tell that he felt invested in seeing this through.

“I don't really know what to tell you,” he finally said.

“I just want to make sure that there aren't any issues.”

It wasn't like he could give me some certificate in writing. “Just tell them to come and see me. It'll be fine.”

“Thank you
so much
!”

Now all I had to do was find a string quartet that would be willing to do this.

HIRING PERFORMERS FOR CHEAP

There are obviously far more “artists” of every kind than there are paying jobs for them. The supply far outweighs the demand—which makes it a buyer's market of sorts. The problem is that many self-described “artists” are not very good, and many of the good ones charge a premium as coaches, consultants, and the like. Just as with any other service, the ideal scenario is to the get the best possible person at the lowest possible price.

I once had a client that needed violin lessons. I reasoned that recent music graduates had no money, and they would be
over
qualified to teach someone how to play the violin—especially at the beginner level. They might not have had the roster or the résumé, but they definitely had the ability and passion. Not only that, but they'd be willing to work cheaper than someone who was an established tutor. Instead of sitting around looking for temp jobs, they could work in their own field, earn some cash, and spread their knowledge. It was win-win-win.

I had called the Juilliard alumni association in the past, and they happened to have a list of recent grads available for work. That's how I met Vicki. Vicki was a cellist who mostly did chamber music, moonlighting in little orchestras. I had a vision of these beautiful angelic women with long wavy hair and chiffon evening gowns, playing “My Funny Valentine” as the train pulled into the station. Vicki herself was attractive in a very classical music sort of way, with her black hair slicked back in a tight ponytail. She looked
sophisticated
.

“So can you help me out?” I asked her.

“Well, I don't really know a string quartet per se. But I can put one together myself. That won't be too hard. Where should we be standing?”

It was two cars down from the dining car. But I had no idea where on the platform that was, and if I estimated incorrectly then the effect would be lost. It would seem like the band was playing there at random, instead of putting on a show specifically for Julian and his wife.

I didn't want to go back to Elipto at Penn Station and figure out where it was. It would be like when a salesman keeps pushing after you've agreed to buy something, and ends up talking you out of the sale. Elipto and everyone else must have been joking about me and my attempts to bring romance back to train travel, and I was walking a tightrope between endearing and irritating.

I looked through the phone book and I called the number for Amtrak, working my way through the phone directory until I got to someone who oversaw Penn Station. I didn't want to risk having to explain the whole story for the twentieth time, so I just lied. “I'm meeting my cousin coming from Washington, D.C.,” I said. “He's handicapped and I want to make sure I am precisely on the platform where he will be getting off. He's going to be two cars down from the dining car. Can you tell me how far back that would be?”

“Uh … I'm not sure.”

“Well, can you tell me how long each train car?”

A very, very, very long pause. “I don't know.”

“Is there someone else there who can help me?” I said.

“I'm not certain who would have that information,” he said.

You know what?
I figured.
I'm just going to go back. I've come this far
. I went back to Penn Station and dropped Elipto's name to get myself down to the platform. There was a train docked there already so I could see exactly where the people would be getting off. I found the nearest landmark—a garbage can with a big sticker on it—and counted the paces until I reached the door of the train. With flashbacks to Rosie Perez, I knew I couldn't leave anything to chance when it came to the directions.

The day of the event, I faxed Vicki an itinerary. I told her to ask for Elipto, and to mention his name if he wasn't there himself. I told her how many paces down from the garbage can, and which garbage can, and which track, and what Julian looked like. It was an entire flowchart to anticipate every possible problem.

Every possible problem except for my having forgotten about the white roses.

Oh, crap
. There was a place right by Penn Station that dealt with roses and
only
with roses. I called them in a mad panic.

“We're already closing for the day,” the guy told me. “Sorry.”

“No, no, no, no, no!” I said. “You
have
to. You have to, you have to, you have to! This is a very big deal.”

“I'm locking up.”

“I'll send money right now.
Right now.
In a taxi. Please!”

“Fine. But if he's not here in fifteen minutes, we're leaving.”

“He'll be there.” I hung up the phone and went out into the street to hail a cab. I gave the driver a twenty-dollar tip, took down his medallion number just in case, and sent him down to the flower shop with an envelope full of cash.

The flowers made it to the platform. Vicki and her string quartet made it to the platform. Everything went off without a hitch, and it became a big deal. Julian was delighted, and his wife had the biggest surprise of her life. It even got some press attention—I really did bring the romance back to train travel.

Now part of me began to feel like I was some sort of concierge cupid. Instead of saving these great ideas for the guests who really appreciated it, like Julian, I started being more proactive in my advice. I obviously had never refused to offer service in the past, but now I brought up what I felt were better alternatives. Almost every single time, people took my suggestions—and they came out seeming wonderful in the process.

It wasn't that hard to make the hotel guests seem impressive, because most of them were so generic to begin with. Very quickly, the businessmen that stayed at the hotel all began to look the same to me. They were all so
polished
in how they acted and how they thought and how they dressed. Their hair was always smoothed back, like airline pilots. They wore Brioni shirts—with monogrammed cuffs—under Canali suits. The hive mentality even went a step further with some of them.

As a service to our guests—and a commission for us—we had tailors come to the hotel and set up shop for three or four days. The businessmen would go in and get measured and the tailor would make custom suits for them at a cost of upward of $3,000. Custom suits—that all looked the same. We even had a shoemaker. He would make custom shoes made to fit, for exorbitant prices. The plain, shiny oxfords would really stand out in a crowd, in the same way that Where's Waldo stands out in a crowd.

Their thought processes were often the same as well. Though it's the most obvious choice that anyone could possibly think of, each and every one of them believed that they invented the idea of strewing rose petals about the room to create an air of romance. I used to keep rose petals on hand just for that very purpose. It got to the point where, after an event, I'd go scour the flower arrangements. I'd even pull roses out of the garbage and just take the petals off. The chances were very high that, at some point, a guest was going to ask me—a complete stranger, mind you—to throw rose petals in a path from their hotel room door to their lover's bed. I had a couple of days before the petals smelled not so fresh. I'd go in the back room and find a cold corner to keep them chilled. If I got
really
desperate, I could pull out the moldy ones and use the rest. There would be no magic if I revealed that I kept a garbage bag full of secondhand petals, so I would charge twenty-five dollars to the guest as if they had come from a florist, and everyone was happy. It was like recycling!