But instead, she was met with silence. Absolute, complete and mind-numbing silence.
The doors started to close, and Beth realised that she had to act. She could delay no longer. She threw a hand out and the doors parted again as the machine registered her movement.
This time, Beth got out without further ado. The lift doors closed behind her and it departed to find a new passenger. But what was she supposed to do now? What was she looking for?
Taking a few tentative steps forward, she peered around the area. In keeping with the rest of the hotel, the hallway was elegantly decorated, the carpet plush and spotlessly clean. But nothing looked out of the ordinary. Everything appeared normal. There wasn’t an object out of place.
Curiously, Beth looked back at the other lift, wondering if suddenly those doors would open and she would understand the hunt’s intent, and what she was doing here. But no, the other one stayed silent, closed. There was no secret to be had.
At least not in this area.
Beth began walking along the hallway to where the bedrooms were located, realizing that standing around like this definitely made her look suspicious. And she guessed that if anyone happened to see her – and deduce that she wasn’t a guest here – they would report her to security in less than a New York minute.
She straightened her posture and began walking with purpose. There was no reason to ‘creep’ around the hallways at the Waldorf – not unless she wanted to be escorted from the building. And that is something I definitely need to avoid,she thought, imagining the scene and how embarrassed she would feel if she had to face being ‘perp-walked’ out the front doors.
Beth wandered down the quiet hotel hallway, her steps barely making a sound against the plush carpeting. She passed each individual door, with the hotel’s signature carving above the room numbers, wondering who was staying in each room, contemplating if it was anyone famous or well-known – movie stars, maybe. So many had stayed here over the years she knew: Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Grace Kelly, Katharine Hepburn – pretty much all the greats of Hollywood’s Golden Age.
She paused a little, soaking in the building’s long and prestigious association with something so close to her heart. Whoever had organised for her to be here today would surely have known that, too; understood that someone like Beth would appreciate the weight of that history more than most.
At this, her mind wandered ever so slightly, but still she felt on high alert, focused on her quest, searching for a clue. Keeping an eye out for any type of indicator that would tell her she was on the right path.
But so far, there was nothing.
Beth made a complete sweep of the twenty-third floor, but when, a few minutes later, she returned to the bank of lifts, she was no further along in her quest.
She sat down for a moment in the regal-looking chair that was positioned across from them, waiting for a sign, for anything.
But nothing happened. It was so quiet Beth could have heard a pin drop.
She rubbed her temples, trying to regain some clarity, when just then she heard a noise in the hallway from whence she’d come. A door opened, and a moment later closed with a resounding thud. She looked up to see who would emerge from the hallway. No doubt it was someone leaving their room and heading for the lift.
However, thirty seconds passed and then a minute, and Beth was still alone. What’s more, the silence had returned and she couldn’t detect any footsteps or other sounds coming from the hallway. When she realized this, the hairs on the back of her neck stood up.
Her inner tuition told her that something had just changed. That the game had begun. That she wasmeantto hear that door open and close.
It was a sign.
Beth stood up and headed back down the hallway. She turned left and found the corridor deserted, but she also knew without a doubt that this is where the noise had come from before.
Purposefully, she took off down the seemingly endless corridor, passing the doors to rooms on either side of her, knowing for sure that what she had heard came from further, deeper down the way.
As Beth neared the end of the corridor, she was faced with a set of double doors, the kind that usually signalled a suite. Even though she had passed this same location just minutes before, now she realised that something had changed, and she had no doubt that the door that she had just heard open and close had been this one.
Because on the floor, just outside the doors, lay a glove. A single, black cashmere glove.
She knew that this was no coincidence. Thiswasserendipity.And she meant that in the truest sense of the word.
In the movie, Jonathan and Sara try to buy the same pair of gloves from Bloomingdale’s, and, a little while later at the Waldorf, they split the pair of gloves up, each taking one. The gloves were the central part of the fate aspect of the plot, in which they agree that if they can reunite the gloves, they are meant to be together.
But then at the hotel, they lose each other in the lifts, and don’t reunite (with each other, along with their singular glove) until the end.
What Beth was now looking at was the exact kind of black woollen glove, and even though it was highly likely that any random hotel resident could be wearing a pair of cashmere gloves in New York at this time of year, she knew in her heart and soul that this wasn’t dropped by accident. She bent down to pick it up and looked around. She was still alone. So there was only one thing left to do. She had to knock on the door.
Whoever had dropped this glove had wanted her to find it. They knew that she was here. And no doubt, further answers – or clues – were about to be revealed.
An inexplicable chill ran up Beth’s spine and her thoughts returned to Ryan. What if he was behind that door – in a suite in the Waldorf – arguably the most romantic movie-themed hotel in New York? What would she do then?
Beth didn’t know, but in true Hollywood movie heroine tradition, she was going to find out.
