The Remembrancer

“First and foremost, we’re an experience company,” said our CEO as he meandered about the stage. “Meandered” was not the right word. Francis Echo did not meander. Francis Echo did not do anything without a distinct purpose. Now he stopped, and tapped his fingertips together, as if thinking about what he would say next. However, everyone in the audience - 3,000 employees of Echo Hotel & Resorts Worldwide - knew that nothing about this impromptu speech was impromptu at all.

I knew best of all. I wrote the speech.

“Memory is a funny thing, isn’t it?” Frank asked. An answer was not expected, but 3,000 heads bobbed up and down. “The human brain holds a quadrillion memories in a lifetime. A quadrillion!” A white number flashed on the black screen behind him. 15 zeros. “Do me a favor? Everyone close your eyes.”

5,998 eyes dutifully shut. Not mine.

“Think for a moment about your favorite Christmas ever. Maybe when you were a child, or even a teenager. Or maybe your own child’s first Christmas.”

I looked around at the serene faces of my colleagues.

“Maybe you remember a special gift, or a funny story, or if you’re lucky, a special treat a loved one made, maybe just for you. Maybe your mouth is watering right now, thinking about Christmas cookies, or a cake, or your first swig of eggnog.

“Now open your eyes. That was a nice moment, wasn’t it? But now it’s gone. And it was nothing like the real thing. If I had filled the auditorium with the smell of fresh baked cookies, and maybe some Christmas music, perhaps your nostalgia would have been more intense, but, let’s be honest, nothing like having your loved ones together - even those you’ve lost - all around the Christmas tree.

“And, memory is subjective. For me, it’s Christmas, but maybe your happiest memory, the memory you’d give anything to relive, is something different. Maybe you’d choose a different time.”

He paused again. The woman sitting next to me was breathless, waiting to see what Frank Echo would say next. The entire first row was on the literal edge of their seats. He was good, that was for sure.

Make a Memory was our company tagline. “Echo Resorts and Hotels are both the backdrop and the main event of treasured family memories.” The people in this room were the top hotel and resort employees in the country, performing hundreds of different functions - from hotel operations to event planning to food and beverage. But, Francis always told them, their real job was “to create an unforgettable experience for our guests.”

And like this conference, where Frank “just hopped on the stage” to address his “most trusted and valued memory makers,” everything at Echo Hotels & Resorts was meticulously planned and curated to create a first-class experience. Even our Signature Scent - a citrusy, musky blend - was scientifically proven to improve mood and therefore pumped into every hotel lobby in the Echo portfolio.

“Memory is a funny thing,” Frank repeated. The audience was in the palm of his hand. I thought the woman next to me might pass out. Frank reached into his pocket and pulled out a small pink ball. He held it up between his forefinger and thumb. The image popped up on the screens flanking the stage so that those in the back could see the piece of candy. “What if you could choose not just to remember,” he dramatically looked out into the audience of his employees, “but to relive?”

---

“I don’t know how to write this. I don’t understand it,” I said to Frank two weeks earlier. I was the first person in the executive office to learn what the scientists in the lab on the seventh floor of our massive glass building were working on. They were under a non-disclosure agreement. I was not, but I didn’t need one, and Frank knew it.

He sighed. We’d been at this for 20 minutes, which was 15 minutes longer than he liked to talk about speech writing.

“And I don’t understand why we’re doing it,” I continued. That wasn’t entirely true. I understood why we were doing it - to make money, obviously. A piece of candy that would allow the customer to relive any memory they wanted… it was cool, but why would Frank commission it in the first place?

A familiar look crossed his face, and he smiled. “I think you’ll just have to trust me.” He slid a tiny transparent bag across the table to me. I held it up. Inside was a tiny ball. “I reserved the suite for you this afternoon. Leave your laptop here.”

There was no sense arguing. I tried to smile as I took the bag, and made my way down to the lobby of the Echo Hotel, housed within our corporate offices.

---

“Tomorrow, we’re releasing ‘The Remembrancer’ to market. The Remembrancer is a new travel experience all its own. It is the most ambitious project of Echo Inc. yet,” Frank said, now standing center stage, the screen behind him black. The audience was silent, rapt, until Frank said the magic words: “But you get to try it tonight.”

The crowd went nuts. 3,000 Echo employees were on their feet, cheering and hugging colleagues who were little more than strangers.

I watched Frank revel in the moment, and I caught a wry glimmer of told-you-so in his eyes as our gaze met over his screaming hospitality employees.

---

When I arrived in the hotel suite - the size of which hardly seemed necessary for this particular experience - I was overwhelmed by the Signature Scent, not for the first time.

I opened my palm and studied the little white ball.

“Pick any memory you’d like to relive,” Frank had said excitedly in his office moments ago. “Then chew it up and swallow. Lay down on the bed, or somewhere comfortable and -” Frank snapped his fingers, startling me, “Bam! You’ll be back wherever you want to be! Whenever you want to be.”

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes at the cliche.

I popped the little white ball in my mouth. It was sweet, but not overly so. As I crunched down, breaking the candy shell, a thick ooze gushed into my mouth. It was delicious. I wanted more immediately.

I kicked off my shoes and lay back on the bed, the oversized pillows supporting my head. A warmth spread through my chest and my eyes began to feel heavy, as I remembered….

---

The line stretched around the hotel conference center as employees excitedly discussed which memory they were going to choose. I didn’t have to stand in line. Instead, I stood next to Frank, whispering the names of employees and managers in his ear so he could greet each one as if they were old friends.

“Ben Michaels, manager in Boring, Oregon,” I said, almost silently. Frank’s eyes bounced to me, and a tiny smirk flashed across his face.

I had been with Frank from the start. When he purchased his first property in the geriatric town of St. Pete Beach, Florida, it had been I who stood with him in the outdated, dirty lobby. “Picture it!” Frank cried, and I wasn’t sure if he hadn’t noticed, or was choosing to ignore, the water-stained walls. “I want this whole wall to be a fish tank. A breathtaking first image!” What was breathtaking to me in that moment was how much he had spent on an absolute dump.

Now it was our most successful resort property, with three more themed hotels along the beach.

“I don’t know how you remember this stuff,” Frank said to me quietly when the conversation with Ben Michaels from Boring, Oregon was over.

“How could you forget the guy from Boring?” I teased. Frank laughed.

He turned, facing me, intentionally showing his back to the next GM who was coming to chat him up. “You really didn’t enjoy it?” Frank asked.

I hadn’t said that, not specifically. But after 20 years, there was little we could hide from one another at this point. “I think… it’s a great idea. An ambitious project.” I waved my hand to the line of employees waiting in line. “It’ll be successful, Frank. Maybe it’s just not for everyone.” I shrugged and caught a whiff of the Signature Scent. The memory, the one I had relieved two weeks ago, shot through my brain.

---

We sit together, he and I, on a fence rail on the side of the road. I am a little drunk off mudslides. My chest feels warm and I feel uninhibited, free. My ears ring from the last three hours we spent at the bar. The quiet now is a stark contrast from the voices of a hundred camp counselors from around the lake, laughing, drinking, singing.

The wooden fence rail is rough on the back on my legs, bare beyond my frayed jean shorts. I take in the muscle on the side of my leg - how strong, how tan. How could he not want to date me with legs like these?

We don’t speak but a familiar longing rises in me, to hear his voice, for him to make me laugh.

He turns now to face me, and even in the dark, I am struck by his beauty. His high cheekbones, big eyes.

This is why I am here. Hiking, climbing, arts and crafts with the kids are minor distractions during the day until I can escape with him each night.

The longing morphs into a sick feeling in my stomach. Anxiety. He doesn’t like me, he doesn’t want me. Maybe no one ever will.

I shake my head and force a smile. “Want to go swimming?” I ask.

He tips his head to the side and smiles back at me. His perfect teeth glisten in the moonlight. What a ridiculous thought, I tell myself and the sick feeling intensifies.

I stand and pull my shirt over my head. I’m wearing my bathing suit. I am always wearing a bathing suit. Unbutton my shorts and pull them off.

He unabashedly takes me in and I revel in the moment. He reaches out and touches my hip, trying to pull me to him. But it’s too much, more than I can bear, so I skip away from him before his fingers can graze my skin for too long. I run toward the water, my feet sliding in cheap flip flops. I kick them off when I reach the wet bank, sand squishing between my toes.

The air is cool and fresh and I breathe in deep before running into the cold water. I submerge myself completely, and shut my eyes tight. For a moment the ringing in my ears stops, and I float: cold, alone, waiting.

I hear a splash and emerge. He has kicked the water.

“Come in,” I say.

“I shouldn’t,” he calls and peeks over his shoulder.

I can’t help but follow his eyes, which have landed on the sign. The sign I have seen a million times. The sign that keeps Frank from being a spontaneous twenty-somthing like the rest of us, from jumping in. From loving me.

“Welcome to Lake Echo….”

----

“I told you, you’d never be bored,” Frank said, back upstairs in his office. He was excited, giddy even, at how well The Remembrancer was received by the staff. “I promised you an experience, didn’t I?”

My stomach sank. He’s going to ask, I thought, kicking myself for not choosing some stupid Christmas memory from Frank’s speech. He’s going to ask what memory I chose, and then I’m going to blush and he’ll know. Maybe he already knows.

“Even if you didn’t love it, the Remembrancer is an experience, right?” Frank said, sitting down at his desk, oblivious to my internal panic.

Oh.

I shook my head. “Right,” I said. “And you never disappoint.”

Frank was silent, considering

“We’d better go over talking points for the board of directors in the morning,” he said finally.

I nodded, and perched on the edge of the chair next to his desk. My chair. Frank had well over 10,000 employees, but only I sat in this blue-green velvet chair that looked like it belonged in a museum.

I opened my laptop, relieved to be back to business.

----

Frank and I are in the swim shack. A hundred child-sized life jackets line the walls. The air is faintly musty. Frank has draped a scratchy blue towel around my shivering shoulders, as if I am a camper. Perhaps to him, I am. He is 28, I am 21. He’s made it clear that he is too old for me, that if we were ever caught… that he has responsibilities, that he is here to learn the family business….

And yet, here we are, together in the swim shack, with only this scratchy blue towel between his hands and my skin.

“Stay,” he says. “Don’t go back to school. Stay here for the winter.”

I snort. “Winter in Maine?”

He smiles. “It’s not so bad. We don’t work that hard in the winter. Christmas is beautiful.”

“Sounds boring,” I say nonchalantly. I want to scream yes, that I will stay with him forever, follow him anywhere.

He laughs. “I promise you will never, ever be bored if you stay with me,” he says, “I’ve been saving. There’s a property I want to buy in Florida. I think I can get it, but it needs work. And… I need your help.”

“With what?” I ask, incredulous that Francis Echo - heir to Echo Parks and Recreation, the owners of this sprawling summer camp - that he could possibly need me to do anything for him.

He turns away from me. “My parents think it’s stupid. But you…” He doesn’t finish the thought, but I am pretty sure the rest is something like: “But you worship the ground I walk on.”

“Okay,” I hear myself whisper. “Okay,” I say again, more clearly.

He spins around, and before I know what is happening, his lips are crashing into mine, the warmth of his body spreading to mine, and in this moment, I know.

I know that I have fallen deep inside Frank Echo.

That I love Frank Echo.

And I know that Frank Echo will never, ever be mine.

---

At 1 a.m., I finally closed the cover of my laptop.

“Nitecap?” Frank asked. I knew he was tired. Whenever he was tired, he became the quiet introvert I met on Lake Echo twenty years prior, speaking to me in clipped sentences and one word questions.

We made our way silently down to the hotel bar. The Signature Scent greeted us before the bartender

“A drink, Mr. Echo?” she asked.

“A beer please,” he replied.

“Mam?”

“A mudslide,” I said, without thinking.

Frank laughed. “You haven’t had a mudslide since we were kids!”

I shrugged. “I was a kid,” I say, a slight at his age.

We drank silently. “Great work today,” he said, but I could sense there was something else.

“It’s going to go fine tomorrow,” I tried.

He nodded. “I know. I know, today went great.”

“It did,” I took a big gulp, feeling awkward. The cold chocolate danced on my lips bringing back the memory of his hand on my hip, twenty years ago, his body pressing against me, that one moment of pure lust or love or youth…. It was too bright, too much. I closed my eyes and shook my head. I took a deep breath and finished the drink, trying to forget.

“You didn’t like it,” Frank said, and for an instant, I thought he was talking about the swim shack. For a moment the lines blurred. The Kahlua, the smell of him so close to me, the drunk, sleepy feeling in my chest…. The moment was so fresh, so real and recent, that for that moment I could not differentiate between then and now, now and then.

“I did!” I said too loudly, and the bartender’s head swiveled. I cleared my throat. “I did. I just… maybe some things should stay in the past.”

“What did you remember?” he asked.

Maybe it was the mudslide, or the fact that it was almost 2 a.m. Maybe I was brave, maybe delirious. Maybe I really thought I was 19 again.

“You,” I said. My cheeks burned.

He furrowed his brow for a moment before realization spread over his face.

“On the Lake?”

Words were so often unnecessary between us, but at that moment I wished I could find the right ones.

In twenty years, we had never spoken about that night. When Frank realized what he was doing - making out with a much younger female staffer on his parents' camp property - he pushed himself off me. “It can’t be like this, though,” he had said. “I promise you will never be bored. I promise to give you unforgettable experiences. I promise to take care of you. But I won’t love you.”

The words hurt, but 19 and naive, I thought surely I could change his mind if I… stayed.

And I did. For twenty years. I was at his side for every business deal, every ribbon cutting. I helped build the hotel and resort business, and then acquire the camp and recreation business when his father retired. I wrote for him, listened to him, sat next to his desk whether we were winning or losing.

And now, here I was, alone with Frank in the bar of the hotel he owned, in the tallest building in the city.

He reached out and touched my hip.

There was no lake to run into.

“Some things aren’t worth remembering,” I said.

“I don’t know if I believe that anymore,” he said, not moving his hand.

“The business.”

“The business is flying. Don’t we deserve more? Don’t we deserve an experience?”

I nodded involuntarily, 19 again, lost again in Frank Echo.

“And some things are… unforgettable.”