Denizens of Places Named by Marketing People

Like many who have made their living as consultants, I find myself ensconced (literally, surrounded by sconces) in the liminal place between home and home, the not-this, not-that of the suitcase existence. For some this is a comfort zone, anonymous and noncommittal; for others, it's a trial. I'm somewhere in between these two extremes, in my hovel at the literal-mindedly-named Staybridge Suites.

The cats climb on piles of boxes while I self-medicate with a pint of (low-fat!) Ben and Jerry's. DVDs of Ben Stiller films and last week's issue of Rolling Stone cover the veneered coffee table. I take two baths and one shower per day, plus swimming in the pool. I am waterlogged and desperate, giddy and exhilarated about the future, all at once. I am overloaded on fresh berries. I have flipped too many channels. My bed is ridiculously large. I have too many pairs of pants, folded up in drawers in the spare bedroom.

My fellow transitional tenants act out too, in poolside tantrums, fitness-center snits, and laundry-room tiffs. We eat too many paninis at the sundowner hour on Tuesdays through Thursdays from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m.. We imagine ourselves in the next, similar transitional existence in which cereal is dispensed in large hoppers with turn-crank doors - that of the nursing home or rehabilitation center, where we will spend our own sundowner hours, days, weeks. Frightened by this spectre, we dry off our chlorined, pruney legs and toss our towels in piles on the commercial rugs. We leave our trash in the halls. We eat french fries and wait, wait.