The door may as well have been a wall. Laura stared incredulously at the little "202" room sign just 12 inches from her face, mouth slightly open, heart now beginning to race a bit. She again reached down and tried the door handle. It went up and down easily enough, but that was it. The door was absolutely locked.
And why wouldn't it be? All hotel doors lock automatically when you close them, despite which side of them you happen to be standing on. Despite whether you have your room keycard with you or not.
And despite whether you are wearing any clothes at all or not.
Laura...was not.
Just 27 seconds ago she was on the OTHER side of that door, the one she now stared at in her shock induced trance. She had even been wearing a towel. And then the strangest, most by chance, unlucky chain of events lead her to this moment of stark nudity in a very public hotel hallway. All at 6:40 AM in the morning.
It went something like this.
Laura, an early riser, had just finished showering and doing her hair. The major components of her outfit for the day, a pair of black dress pants (the ones that she ALWAYS got compliments from her female coworkers on how GREAT they made her ass look) and a white silk blouse, were hanging in the closet. As she walked out of the bathroom and towards that closet, the door to her room came into her peripheral field of view. She was momentarily distracted by the thought that there may potentially be a newspaper waiting for her out there. Many hotels provided free morning papers to their guests...and they usually were placed just outside the door.
Without giving such a benign activity a second thought, Laura changed her course of direction from the closet to the door. She tried to peek through the little security view hole in the door, but it did not offer a steep enough vantage point for her to see what may or may not be on the hallway floor just outside. She decided to open the door just a bit and take a more complete visual assessment of the area. She unlocked the security lock, pulled back the little sliding security bar (you know, the one that acts the same way that a door chain does, allowing the door to be open a bit, but keeps someone from forcing their way inside) and opened the door.
The doors in this hotel, as she had mentally noted just yesterday when she checked in, were heavy. Damn heavy. Probably solid steel. So opening it from the inside required "pulling" strength as opposed to pushing. Pushing it open from the outside was easier, she could just put her shoulder into it if she needed more leverage.
Laura, only towel-clad at the moment, and not wanting be seen as such by her fellow hotel occupants, wanted this to be a quick, 2 or 3 second event. Open the door, grab the paper (if any) close the door. So keeping the weight of the door in mind, Laura gave a good, solid yank and she pulled the door open towards her.
As it turned out, it was way more "pulling" strength than was necessary. And being that Newton proved "an object in motion tends to stay in motion"...that extra energy needed to go someplace.
Where it went, was the door coming right at Laura's bare feet, which her brain assessed in the flash of a microsecond, would be the things that the door would impact first. So, acting on raw animal instinct and reflexes, Laura quickly stepped to her right and just out of the path of the door, letting go of the handle in the process.
As if annoyed by being jerked open so abruptly, the door retaliated by catching the edge of Laura's towel with the now unencumbered door handle, as it raced by Laura's hip. The towel was yanked off cleanly.
Having now accidentally stripped herself of the one thing she was wearing, Laura gasped, then threw her arms over her now bare breasts. The door, not finished with her yet, hit the door stop installed in the floor of her room, just outside the bathroom, and continued back in the other direction...quickly.
Laura stood now directly in it's path...with her back to it.
When the cool, smooth metal surface bumped her exposed rear end, Laura let out another little gasp, but also lost her balance, and pitched forward, catching herself with her hands on the carpeted floor of the hallway.
CLICK!!
The door, with her towel still hanging from the INSIDE of the door handle, closed behind her. She sprang up and immediately began a futile attempt to open the door.
Which brings us back to where we started.
One stage of suffering through an embarrassing situation is denial. Laura was at that stage right now. As she peered through the little security hole in reverse, back into her room, she wished herself back in there, getting her clothes on.
"Oh god no. Oh no....no...no..." she whispered, her hands pressed to the door, trying to come to terms with what had just occurred.
Laura noticed a small paint chip on the door, just above the room number. She instantly wished that she could go back in time to the moment when that little defect occurred, because she was CERTAIN that she was not locked out of anywhere naked then.
The air was a bit cooler out here in the hallway, which only served to remind Laura of her state of total undress...not that she needed to be reminded of it...she was acutely aware. Suddenly, here out in the hallway, every inch of her body was sort of, tingling. It was a sensation that she might have actually enjoyed if it were not occurring in a hotel hallway, in her birthday suit.
As the denial stage started to wear off, Laura came to the realization that her situation was VERY real, VERY public, and needed to come to a quick conclusion, lest she be seen naked by half of the hotel guests on their way to breakfast and other destinations. As the panicky feeling rose, Laura tried to reason out an escape plan in her head.
Her rental car would provide some cover for her, but it was outside and locked. She glanced down the hallway in both directions. As a sort of brutal irony, there were no newspapers laid out; they would have served as EXCELLENT make-shift skirts and tops for her. There were also thankfully, no people either. At least, not at the moment.
"Oh good lord...I'm going to have to go down to the ...lobby..." her heart raced at the thought, the panic rose....and strangely, the tingly sensation increased a bit in intensity. Laura bit her lower lip and wanted to cry. "Oh my god how is this my life? This is going to be soooooo embarrassing" she said out loud.