The Plaza Hotel

The Plaza Hotel is where Millie Calloway and her married employer, Andrew Winchester, turn an attraction they have tried to resist into an affair. Andrew first offers separate rooms as a practical answer to their drunkenness and inability to drive, but the night ends with them sharing a room. The next morning, the hotel’s giant window and queen-size bed frame Millie’s competing responses: pleasure in what happened, recognition that it cannot be repeated, and a fantasy that it might nevertheless change her future.

Setting and Circumstances

Andrew raises their reservation at The Plaza Hotel after recognizing that he should not drive. He says he sometimes hosts clients there and can get a deal, presenting the hotel as a convenient place to stay rather than an impulsive declaration of intent. He proposes two separate rooms. Millie agrees only on that condition, while acknowledging that she, too, is too drunk to drive and is frightened of getting behind the wheel of his expensive car. A taxi offers the immediate solution: they leave for the hotel in a yellow cab rather than drive back to the island.

The journey keeps the practical arrangement under pressure. Millie’s white dress rides up as she gets into the taxi; she reaches to pull down its hem and notices Andrew looking at her legs. His grin makes the attraction between them harder to treat as incidental. The hotel is thus approached through a small, visible breach in the distance they have tried to maintain: Millie is attempting to behave properly, while the scene makes clear that both are aware of their desire.

The Separate-Room Plan Unravels

The promised separation does not survive their arrival. Millie states plainly afterward that they do not get two separate rooms. Andrew kisses her in the taxi, and the encounter escalates as they check in; they make out in the elevator and, once in their room, stop trying to slow things down for the sake of his marriage. The hotel’s successive thresholds—the cab, check-in, elevator, and room—mark the movement from a negotiated overnight stay to an affair.

Millie has condoms in her purse, left over from when she thought something might happen with Enzo. That detail establishes that she had prepared for the possibility of sex, but not specifically for this encounter. She describes the sex with Andrew as exceptionally good and as something she needed, while also identifying him as her married boss and herself as his maid. The hotel room briefly suspends those facts without removing them: their intimacy takes place inside a relationship shaped by marriage and employment, not outside it.

Morning After

At sunrise, Millie lies in a queen-size bed beside Andrew, who is asleep, breathing softly. A giant picture window overlooks the city. The luxurious room and the quiet of the morning give her space to savor the night, but they do not make its circumstances disappear. She expects the encounter to be a one-time event because Andrew is married and because she works for him. Her own pleasure and her sober assessment of the situation occupy the same scene.

She nevertheless lets herself imagine a different outcome: Andrew might decide to leave Nina Winchester, choose Millie, and let her live with him in his gated home. In that imagined future, Millie could give him the baby he wants, while Nina cannot. Millie also recalls hearing at a Parent Teacher Association meeting that Andrew and Nina have an airtight prenup, which feeds her belief that a separation might be financially manageable for him. These are Millie’s hopes and recollections, not a decision Andrew makes at the hotel; he remains asleep as she entertains them.

Narrative Significance

The Plaza Hotel concentrates a decisive contradiction in Millie and Andrew’s relationship. Andrew’s offer of separate rooms acknowledges the danger of their circumstances, yet the night ends in the opposite arrangement. The hotel makes the affair possible as a private episode, but its morning-after clarity prevents privacy from being mistaken for a promise: Millie can imagine being chosen, while recognizing that the encounter may never happen again. Its role is therefore limited but consequential—a single night’s setting where desire becomes action and Millie’s fantasy of a shared future briefly takes shape against the facts of Andrew’s marriage and her place in his household.