If holiday cheer is what you seek, look no further than the Fireside Room at the Sorrento Hotel—a
surreal assault of cozy, posh joy. The geographical and temporal
dislocation peculiar to hotel lobby bars is compounded by this one’s
crazy octagonal shape, walls of Honduran mahogany, and general
opulence. Things are tasseled and gilded and overstuffed; lamp shades
are beaded, surfaces gleam, ottomans create almond-shaped islands of
squishy leather. It takes concentration to discern that one side of the
octagon isn’t a mirror, but a portal to the reception desk. Upholstered
chairs wear stripes of varying widths and colors, while already puffy
couches bear embarrassments of bonus cushions. Add some amber and white
lights and a flock of poinsettias, and it’s as if you’re somehow
wallowing comfortably at the bottom of your great aunt’s dish of
hard candies on a low dose of a strong hallucinogen.
Midway through a long winter’s night, the patrons are carefully
polished. Three women with lacquered hair and impeccable posture
exchange gifts, one of them exactingly winding up the ribbons. The
requisite lone businessman socks away a couple of Irish coffees,
his tie barely loosened. He looks as if he might commit suicide upon
returning to his room, but he won’t. Two well-heeled women depart,
their twinned coats varying only in pattern; they seem to have been
sent to the same upholsterer as the chairs they’ve vacated.
Elegant snacks, like rosy house-cured salmon with frisée and
bits of green apple and slightly too much balsamic, are on offer. So
are popcorn shrimp. In the liquid-cheer department, a list of warm,
sweet-sounding beverages includes the ominous, inaccurately named,
and out-of-place Silent Night: a shot of Jägermeister. On one
table, the detritus of previous merrymakers (drained drinks, wadded
napkins, sticky straws) lingers longer than it ought to; the miracle of
superlative service remains elusive.
As people get a little lashed up, the holiday spirit moves them in
strange, loud ways. Another suit-and-tie regales a small crowd with a
fish story, complete with a well-lubricated, sideways charade of the
victim swimming upstream. A couple of blondes grow giddy; lodged at
a table in the center of the room, they’re listing to one side on the
circular upholstered banquette. Amid gales of laughter, one begins
crowing at the other, “You whore! You WHORE!”
In the ladies’ room, an ancient woman in a hot-pink Chanel suit
stands with the help of a walker and a middle-aged daughter.
“Mother, I can’t understand a word you’re saying,” the daughter says
severely, but she can. “You’d know if you had someone else’s glasses,
Mother. Oh, I’m so glad I don’t celebrate Christmas. Careful of my
feet. My feet hurt so much, Mother. You keep walking all over
them.”
By midnight, everyone’s drifted away except a couple having a
tête-à-tête fireside, dwarfed by matching
wingback chairs. She has an accent. “Can I kiss you now?” he asks.
She assents. 