One of Ours

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“I’m not eating in this fucking dump,” said Red, whose gaze flickered past Sophia as though her chair were empty. Even though La Fontaine’s name had been plastered all over opera billboards for the past twenty years, she knew women her age tended to be invisible. “Fucking place makes me fucking puke.”

“Yeah, I noticed, turd,” said Long Hair. “Where’s Zero?”

“Upstairs puking. Fucking room smells like your fucking mom’s.”

“Fuck you.” Long Hair pranced toward the door — maybe he couldn’t walk quite right wearing those flip-flops — and pushed his way through, nearly knocking to his knees an elderly man who’d just entered the hotel.

“Oh!” said Sophia, as her hand flew to her mouth. Red paused neither to offer the man a helping hand nor to apologize for his friend’s callousness.

Oh, dear. Why did this establishment permit… hooligans like those two to roam the premises, carrying on in such a vulgar — and quite limited, at least in terms of expletives — manner? Clutching her handbag to her chest, Sophia approached the front desk.

“May I help you, madam?” the polite young lady inquired, placing her cell phone on the counter. She’d been photographing the freak show.

“The name is Fontaine. I have a reservation, and I wondered if by any chance my room is ready yet? I’m dreadfully tired after —”

“I’m so sorry,” the ill-mannered clerk interrupted with a grimace that pretended to be a smile. “Not till two o’clock, I’m afraid.”

Sophia stood there, furious. How dare they treat La Fontaine like a pitiful beggar!

“Now, see here,” she said. “I am Sophia Fontaine. I have rehearsals tomorrow at Covent Garden for Il Trovatore. I have just been on an airplane for seven hours, and I’ve been forced to sit here in this — this barely accommodating lobby for another two, and I’m reaching the end of my patience. Surely at least one of your rooms is ready by now.”

“Let me see…” Unfazed by this new knowledge — or perhaps she was an opera ignoramus? — the clerk ran her fingers over the computer keyboard. These young people were so quick with electronic devices. “Well… We do have something, but —” 

“I’ll take it.”

The woman paused, looking at Sophia. “The room we originally assigned for you is much bigger, Mrs. Fontaine. It has large windows overlooking Baker Street, and the bath is —”

“I don’t need a large room, and I don’t care a thing about Baker Street. All I want is someplace to lie down.”

Sophia’s wish was granted. Yes, the disgusting odor of vomit permeated the hallway, but once she was inside the room and with the window cracked open, that was soon dealt with. The bellboy placed her bag on a luggage rack. “If they make too much of a racket, call the front desk,” he said, as she handed him a tip.

“They? Racket?”

“The rockers. They’ve got a concert at Wembley tonight. They’ll be tearing this place apart when it’s over.”

When the yelling and smashing of furniture and the shrieks of women undoubtedly of the species known as groupies — if not hookers, or possibly both — finally brought Sophia out of her bed at two in the morning, she not only called the front desk, she called 9-9-9 to report a murder in progress. Then she belted her satin bathrobe and marched next door where the mayhem was in full swing. The delicate champagne flutes littering the tabletops seemed oddly out of place in a room full of fishnet stockings, body piercings, purple hair, random sexual couplings, marijuana, and probably other mood-altering substances, as well. But the glasses gave Sophia an idea. The F above Middle C ought to be just about right. 

Taking a deep breath, La Fontaine filled her lungs and let ’er rip. It was hard to tell if it was the volume or the shattered glasses that got the party goers’ attention, but a blessed silence settled on the room just as a big, beefy man wearing a dark blue uniform beneath a bowl-shaped helmet barreled through the door and grabbed Sophia’s elbow.

“Thank heavens you’re here,” she said. 

“Are these blokes bothering you?” The bobby gestured at the grungy rockers and their guests. 

“Hey, man! Wasn’t us that broke the fucking glasses,” said the one called Zero.

“You got a fuckin’ set of pipes on you, lady,” added Red. “Shit. You didn’t even need a mike!”

The bobby marched Sophia toward the door. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to arrest you for disturbing the peace, ma’am.”

This could not be happening to La Fontaine. Why, she had rehearsals tomorrow!

“Wait!” said Long Hair. “She’s one of ours. She wasn’t disturbing our peace.” Strange. His accent was suddenly as upper crust as George Plimpton.

“I’m talking about the hotel guests,” said the bobby. “Somebody complained about a murder being committed.”

Sophia suppressed a groan. All she’d wanted was some sleep. Was that a crime?

“Then you’ll have to arrest all of us,” said Long Hair, throwing out a tattooed arm to include the room’s revelers. He put that arm around the bobby’s shoulders and shoved what appeared to be a wad of money into his hand. “I’m terribly sorry we weren’t as decorous as we ought to have been. I suppose you could say we were swept away by our celebrations.”

“Fuckin’ A,” said Red. 

“Celebrations of what?” The bobby shoved the money into his pocket, releasing Sophia in the process.

“Il Trovatore,” cooed La Fontaine, smiling up at him beneath a pair of flirtatious eyelashes. “You’ve heard of Verdi’s opera? I play Azucena, and these young folks are in the cast. Their performance of the Anvil Chorus was so fantastic tonight, we got at least three —”

“More like five,” Zero interrupted.

“— curtain calls.”

The bobby scratched his head. “I’m not really into opera. Anyway, you lot look more like rockers. You know. The kind who trash hotel bedrooms?”

That got a chorus of “no fuckin’ way,” from various band members and groupies and Sophia herself, who had to admit the “f” word felt rather appropriate under the circumstances.

La Fontaine’s final trip to England didn’t go at all as planned. Luckily, thanks to her new-found allies, Sophia had been spared a night in jail and the resulting career-ending embarrassment. To express her heartfelt appreciation, she helped them finish off the champagne, even if all they had to drink from were the plastic cups that the hotel furnished for guests.

Like many stories, this one stems from a real-life encounter with a rock band in a London hotel.

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