The Queen Anne

Our hotel in San Francisco (guess the name . . . go ahead) is everything it adevertised, plus more and less. We have a refrigerator in the room, but the fridge makes a lot of noise. We have a television (had to get our fix of 24), but it whines most of the time it is on. We have great drapes that don't close all the way. We have windows, but no screens.

All of that may seem a little to the bad, but the Victorian appointments are certainly worthwhile and comfortable. I am in a back parlor right now, where a British man is teaching his son chess. A young girl is using the wireless connection in the next parlor, and a few minutes ago a couple was consulting with the concierge (who has already been immensely helpful to us) about something or another.

Whether or not we are to accept as authentic the little nicknacks and chachkis spread about the place is not really a matter I wish to take up. Indeed, they create a wonderful sense of being someplace other than where we are used to being, and what more can one really ask of a hotel while on vacation?

Most interesting is the liberal use of mirrors. On the secoond floor there are a couple of floor-length mirrors that reflect images almost spectral in their aspect. The deep glass provides not only the expected reflection but a visible ghost, distinct enough from the main image to be unnerving the first few times. If I may paraphrase a paraphrase from within a piece of fiction, mirrors and copulation are abominable: both multiply the numbers of men. How true that seemed earlier as my head floated above the top step of a staircase and looked back down a hallway to my own eyes. Or maybe his.