Free Hotel Indigo by Aubrey Parker Page B

it’s the happy that matters, not the massage. So if someone wants a hot towel wrapped around her face during a massage, it’s your job to give her one. And if some shriveled-up old cooze feels happiest when you touch the places her husband ran away from decades ago, then that’s what you do. I don’t really care about your preferences, Marco, and I sure as fuck don’t care about your pride. If it amuses some VIP for you to run and get them drinks every five minutes until they pass out while yelling at you to move faster, then that’s exactly what you do. Are we clear? ”  
    I fantasize about standing up, plucking Thomas from his chair, and hurling him through the window into the Zen garden. But then I think of Mimi, counting on me. And I say, “Yes.”  
    “Say it, Marco. Say that we’re clear.”  
    “We’re clear.”  
    “I don’t know what you did to Lucy White.”  
    “I didn’t do anything!”  
    “And maybe that right there is the problem. No anything at all. I’m thinking you just went up there, still pissed off at me, and went through the motions. You set up your table, said, ‘Get over here and lay down,’ then started beating her up like one of your old athlete clients. I think” — He makes a little pincer gesture by pressing his right thumb and forefinger together — “that you treated this hotel’s best and highest-profile guest like just another in the assembly line. No finesse. No niceties. And I think — let me know if I’m way off base here — that because of it, no matter what else is true, that Miss White did not enjoy her massage.” He enunciates the last three words carefully, as if they’re very important but hard to fathom.  
    “I didn’t—”  
    Thomas holds up a hand to stop me. “Do you feel,” he says, waving away all other concerns that might possibly enter the equation, “that Lucy White enjoyed her massage this afternoon.”  
    “She stopped it before I could—”
    A bit more impatiently, hand still raised: “This isn’t a difficult concept, Marco. Did she enjoy her massage? Do you think that after you left, if there were someone else in the room, she’d have turned to that person and said, Wow, I just had a really enjoyable massage! I can’t wait for the next one. Do you?”
    I want to keep fighting, because what he’s asking isn’t fair. If there was no massage, she couldn’t have enjoyed it. But I know Booth, and he won’t let me win this. The sooner I say what he wants to hear, the sooner it’ll all be over.  
    “No.”  
    His face is faux-surprised. “And why not?”  
    I meet his eyes, not replying. But finally he rolls them as if exasperated by my stupidity, then turns in his chair and stands.
    “Our job, in hospitality, is to know what a client wants better than she knows it herself. And perhaps more subtly, our job is to give her what she wants even if she’d deny wanting it . You’ve been here long enough, Marco. I wouldn’t think I’d need to spell these things out for you.” Booth glances toward his closed office door. Then, in a quieter voice, he says, “Maybe you’re not aware of this. But these women? They want to fuck you.”
    “Good for them.”  
    “Now of course, there’s ‘what they want but won’t admit’ and there’s ‘what’s reasonable.’ I’m not saying to give them all of what they want. Just make it safe for them to accept the core of their desires. Don’t make them ask, because they won’t. Just give . Be generous, Marco. You can be generous, can’t you?”
    When I don’t respond, Booth goes on, now pacing.  
    “They want a big, sexy man. So be a big, sexy man. They want you to compliment their bodies, compliment their bodies. If they respond to something you’re doing, do it better. There are lines you shouldn’t cross, I suppose, but even if you crossed them, I’d never know.” He doesn’t wink, but he might as well. “You need to deliver on the experience they sincerely,