She shrugged. "It's one of the best things about me." Indeed, one of the hardest parts of her job was helping to comfort women who lost their hair in thick tufts after the first few rounds of chemo. Sylvia, one of the nurses who wore hair extensions, was much better at doing that.
They arrived at a room marked "923" and Stephen dipped a key card into a slot to unlock the door. A pleasant scent of bayberry greeted them and inside Linda could see a king sized bed with a soft pad built into the wall above it, and crisply clean, inviting comforters and pillows atop of it. Stephen hauled his luggage inside while Linda still stood out in the hallway. Stephen, who had hunched down over one of his suitcases, looked up at her. "So, are you coming in, or what?"
"Well, I want to put my things in my room first."
He straightened up, and looked puzzled. "This is it."
"What? I thought you said you reserved two rooms."
He smiled wryly. "Well I did, kind of. It's a two-room suite."
Linda hauled her luggage inside and found that he was right. The first room was equipped with a desk, a small refrigerator and a bar. There was a small table with two chairs. A large door on the far wall led to a communal bathroom, with the second room of the suite beyond a doorway on the other side. She took her suitcases there. "Check out the view, Lin!"
She used a twirling rod to part the drapes and all she could see were buildings on the other side, across the street from them. "All I see are buildings!" she told him.
"You have to come out here on the balcony."
Linda had not even noticed the sliding glass door on her first trek through that suite. Stephen had opened it and waited out there for her. When she joined him she felt a cool breeze and smelled grilling steak and pretzels wafting up from the street below. Still, she could only see the buildings across the street, at first. He told her to look sideways. When she did she saw the twin towers of the World Trade Center in the distance, with the afternoon sun hanging over them. They could see them through a corridor of buildings, including the shimmering spire of the Chrysler building.
"And the United Nations is right beside it," he said. "Maybe we can go there, tomorrow or the next day."