Free Providence by Chris Coppernoll Page B

me, a light green minivan veered left on Wilson. I wondered what it would be like to pick a car at random and follow wherever it led. Perhaps my little green friend would take me to sunny Daytona Beach, where I could drive the Jeep onto the sand and sleep beneath the stars. Who would stop me? Certainly not the wife and kids. Bud Abbott would miss me, but I’d get over it.
    All along the streets giant candy canes hung from the lampposts. Christmas lights blinked in shop windows. The minivan turned left down Fulton, and I followed it. But what I was really following was a strange feeling. An impulse to break free from the pressures and uncertainties and loneliness. Another two blocks, and the Providence campus framed by my rearview mirror faded into the distance. Good-bye frozen students in wool hats and gloves.
    Past Fifth Avenue, the minivan turned down Carter, probably toward the I-74 feed, but I didn’t follow. I switched to a kind of instinctive driving, just going wherever seemed like the most fun. I found myself in a winter migration away from my snowy address on Sycamore, avoiding drive-time traffic trying to beat home the weather. I followed the nudge . The nudge didn’t want to go home. The nudge didn’t want to sit in traffic. The nudge wanted to escape. I turned down Ellison Parkway and found the destination I didn’t know I was looking for: the Hyatt Regency Hotel. I turned onto the horseshoe-shaped drive and stopped the Jeep at the revolving doors. A uniformed doorman opened my driver’s side door.
    “Good evening sir! Checking in?”
    “Yes,” I told him. And no, I didn’t have any luggage. A minute before, I didn’t even know I’d be here. I grabbed my book bag and climbed out. A valet hustled my Jeep away to underground parking.
    This was all new to me. I knew next to nothing about the high-end hotel experience. I pulled out three one-dollar bills, handed them to the doorman, and walked through the rotating doors into the hotel. Floor to ceiling, the grand lobby was a splashy, extravagant world of excess, a far cry from the dreary winterland outside. An enormous Persian rug covered most of the marble floor, and the sound of splashing water drew my attention to a huge, intricate fountain in the center of the cavernous room. Near the lounge, businessmen and women in suits mingled sociably, waiting to be seated for dinner. I approached the front desk.
    “Welcome to the Hyatt Regency, Mr. Clayton” the man at the front desk said. “Will you be staying with us this weekend?”
    For a moment I didn’t know how he could have known my name. Then I remembered that my face was on the cover of Time magazine. This kind of recognition could only happen downtown, miles from the campus, where any novelty of fame had worn off, mellowing into friendly, aweless greetings from students and visitors.
    The clerk’s recognition didn’t signify to me any sense of my own importance, far from it. Instead, it perpetuated a mild sense of paranoia, one that had been building all week and had spiked that afternoon with Bud’s phone call.
    “I’ll be staying the night,” I said, handing over my driver’s license and credit card.
    While he typed my info into the computer, I wondered what he might think about local guests who check in with no luggage. Perhaps he thought I was planning a clandestine rendezvous for the evening. A little dalliance to help the writer write. He rang the desk bell twice, and a bellhop appeared out of nowhere.
    “Suite 704,” he said, handing the bellhop my plastic card-key and wishing me a pleasant stay.
    When we reached the seventh floor, the bellhop walked ahead of me to the room, unlocked the door, turned on the lights, and explained the switches that controlled everything from lights to window shades inside the luxurious suite. I tipped the only other bill in my wallet, a five. When he was gone, I bolted the room’s heavy door and peered out the fish-eye lens at the middle-aged man