Room Service Nobody Ordered

I travel for work and I have stayed in a lot of hotels, so I do not spook easily. This one was a grand old place downtown, all marble and brass, the kind that has been open for over a hundred years and is proud of it.

At four in the morning there was a knock. Two soft raps, then silence. I looked through the peephole and saw a room-service cart parked outside my door, white cloth, a domed silver cover, a single rose in a bud vase. Nobody was standing with it.

I had not ordered anything. I opened the door and pulled the cart in, thinking someone had the wrong room. Under the dome was a plate of food I did not recognize, old-fashioned, arranged the way you see in photographs from decades ago. It was still warm.