Is there a man alive who doesn’t think Caddyshack is a laugh riot? If so, Alessandra hasn’t met him. “I’ve never seen it,” she lies. “Is it about golf?”
“Oh, just wait, just wait,” he says. “That’s the judge…” Alessandra closes her eyes. “You’re going to love it.”
When Alessandra awakens, it’s very late, nearly three a.m. The doctor is snoring beside her and Alessandra slips from the bed and gets dressed. She needs to get home. The good news is she can leave through the front doors rather than sneaking down to the lower level and going out the back because both Richie and Raoul will be gone. But when Alessandra enters the lobby, she sees Raoul just heading out. She comes to an immediate halt and ducks behind the corner but he must sense something because he turns and sees her. She’s caught.
“Hey,” he says. “What are you doing still here?”
She cocks an eyebrow. “What are you doing still here?”
He shakes his head. “There was a domestic issue in suite two sixteen. I had to call the police.”
Alessandra says, “Suite two sixteen? Did someone complain about the baby crying?”
“The baby was fine, it was the parents. They had dinner at the Galley tonight, then I guess they had drinks at Lola, whatever, they were all lit up, and they had a fight that got loud and suite two fourteen called down and I went up first but it was above my pay grade, so then Richie came up. The wife was crying and calling the husband a bastard, and he was calling her a psycho, and she said she didn’t want him in their room…it was a mess. They pulled it together a bit when the cops showed up. It’s fine now and they’re checking out in the morning, thank God.”
“You’re sure the wife is okay?” Alessandra says. “He wasn’t hitting her, was he?”
“The husband took me aside and said she’s not really supposed to be drinking since she’s nursing, but she made an exception because she’s on vacation, and then she bumped into an old friend who really triggered her.”
“‘Triggered’ her?”
“That’s what he said, yeah. And don’t ask me to clarify. I’m forty-two years old, I don’t even know what that word means.” Raoul musses Alessandra’s hair, which she’s sure is already pretty mussed. Raoul is the only person on planet Earth she would allow to do this. “What are you doing here again?” he asks.
“Oh, you know me,” Alessandra says. “I can’t get enough of this place.”
Later that morning, Alessandra places the folio for the Chung family in an envelope and hands it over with a smile. Sorry we didn’t get a chance to catch up…Me too, so busy…The baby…This stupid thing called work, only get a day off every two weeks…So much fun, thank you for hooking us up with the suite, here’s my number, call if you ever get back to San Fran, and hey, friend me on Facebook!
“I will!” Alessandra says. She won’t. “Bye!” Jamie and Duffy stroll cute baby Cabot right out the door. And that, Alessandra thinks, is that.
Except it’s not. A few days later, Alessandra and Edie are powering up their computers and getting ready to start the day when Richie suddenly pops out of the back office, terrifying them both.
“Whoa!” Edie says. “I thought there really was a ghost!”
Richie doesn’t seem amused, which is strange because normally he’s happy-go-lucky and always has a dad joke ready. But he’s clearly been here all night. Alessandra worked the graveyard shift her first few months in Lake Como; she understands how it splinters your nerves.
He shakes a piece of paper at Alessandra. “You comped a night in a suite for a guest named Chung? No code, no explanation, and no sign-off!”
“I…did,” Alessandra says. She was so happy to have the Chungs gone （Duffy was “triggered”—Alessandra still hasn’t processed that one; if either of them should have been triggered, it was Alessandra, and what was that crack about the nice normal home?） that she completely spaced on the fact that she would have to explain the comped night. The desk staff are allowed to comp a night if something goes wrong—if guests have an unusually bad experience or if they can’t check in until after five o’clock—but staffers are not allowed to do what Alessandra did and comp at will. Every single comp must be run past Lizbet. Still, Alessandra had expected Richie to let it slide. He has never said a word about her taking five or ten bucks every few days from petty cash to pay for her lunch, though it’s possible he doesn’t know she does this. “Is it really that big of a deal?”