Two ladies stood side by side in the doorway. The first wore a white cape, white pants, and a paisely scarf popping out from her white jacket. Trendy turquoise slippers graced her tiny feet and matching paisely earrings rested on her cheeks.
The second, about 12 inches the taller of the two, stood poised behind the first. Her skin was brown and wrinkled, falling from her jaw bone across her neck in thick jowls. Her hair rose up from her head like a wave, white with a purple stripe across the bangs. Two rings were on every single one of her fingers, and bracelets lead all the way up her arms into the folds of her ornately embroidered jacket. Beady eyes poked out from under false eyelashes and purple mascara, scanning the room. She oozed the distinctive fragrance of the bourgeois.
The first flashed into the room like a young girl would, smiling tightly with a practiced crinkling of the eyes. Maddie, Jacquelyn, Annie Landis, and I stood in the lobby of the albergue, credenciales half-stamped, gaping a little.
The hospitalario desk boy, although seemingly acquainted, also gaped a little.
The first woman slithered up to Maddie’s side and rubbed her shoulders, exclaiming in flamboyant Spanish how tan Maddie was. Lifting up a strap of Maddie’s tank top the woman examined the tan line and giggled patting Maddie’s shoulder lightly and bringing her face in very close. Maddie looked back at me with “what the heck?” written clearly on her face.
The second strutted in, smiling with lips pouted dramatically and asked Annie where we were from. When Annie told her both women became very excited, and the short one seemed to vibrate in place still grinning.
They hung around as we finished checking in. As I hoisted my pack upon my shoulder the shaky desk boy stabbed a bony finger at me and said, “You four?”
“Huh?”
“You four in group?”
“Oh. Uh, yeah.”
“Want room?”
This conversation was confusing me because I couldn’t see why we would be here at all if not to get a room. It became clear that the wispy hospitalero was offering us a private room.
The short zippy woman was the owner and had apparently taken a liking to us. She escorted us to our private, 8-bunk bedroom. She flounced from bed to bed picking up pillows and beaming at us, asking us if we liked it. The gang nodded shyly and we waited till she had flitted away to collapse onto our bunks.
I glanced outside. The tall woman and a staunch Spanish gentleman in a blue suit jacket followed the owner around chortling as she waved her arms showing them her facilities. The desk boy lurched a bit in the doorway, looking to make a good impression. I stepped back into our private bathroom to take a shower. Sometimes it pays just to be yourself, and to know someone with a good tan.