August 31, 2006:
The hotel has a problem which has forced you to sleep outside. They've put you on a pallet of thin white blankets on the hard sidewalk before the revolving doors. In the morning the passers-by are cruel, mistaking you for homeless. A businessman stops, scowls, grinds the street dirt from his shoes into the blankets, like wiping his feet on a mat. Later that day at a black-tie reception you have some words with him.