our dolphin hotel

When we tired of walking, we went into the first restaurant we saw, drank draft beer, and ordered some salmon and potatoes. We'd walked in willy-nilly off the street and gotten lucky. The beer really hit the spot, and the food was actually good.

***

"Well then," I said after coffee, "what say we settle on a place to stay?"
"I've already got an image of a place," she said.
"Like what?"
"Never mind. Get a list of hotels and read off the names in order."
I asked a waiter to bring over the yellow pages and started reading the names listed in the "hotels, Inns" section. After forty names, she stopped me.
"That's the one."
"Which one?"
"The last one you read."
"Dolphin Hotel," I said.
"That's where we're staying."
"Never heard of it."
"But I can't see us staying at any other hotel."
I returned the phone book, then called the Dolphin Hotel. A man with an indistinct voice answered, indicating they had double and single rooms available. And did they have other types of rooms besides doubles and singles? No. Doubles and singles were all. Confused, I reserved a double. The price: forty percent less than what I'd expected.

***

The Dolphin Hotel was located three blocks west and one block south of the movie theater we'd gone to. A small place, totally undistinguished. Its undistinguishedness was metaphysical. No neon sign, no large signboard, not even a real entryway. The glass front door, which resembled an employees' kitchen entrance, had next to it only a copper plate engraved with DOLPHIN HOTEL. Not even a picture of a dolphin.
The building was five stories tall, but it might as well have been a giant matchbox stood on end. It wasn't particularly old; still it was strikingly run down. Most likely it was run-down when it was buit.

This was our Dolphin Hotel.

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