What is already settled before the knock
By the time anybody knocks, almost everything that could cause a moment of awkwardness has already been dealt with in writing. You have a name, a start time given as a minute rather than a window, a length and a figure in whole pounds, all in the confirmation from the desk. The single check has been made once, the name the reservation is held in against the building and the room number, and nobody will ask about it again.
That leaves very little to do in the half hour before. Most first timers spend it worrying about things that do not need worrying about. A tidy room is pleasant but nobody is inspecting it. Ordering a bottle is a kind thought but entirely optional. The one decision worth making is whether you would rather she came up to the room or met you in the bar downstairs, and if it is the bar, the desk needs to know which one before she sets off. Both are ordinary. Across W1, from Brook Street to Charlotte Street, lobbies see guests crossing them to the lifts all evening.
Minute one: the door, and the fee
She knocks at the minute you were given, or within a minute or two of it, having crossed the lobby and taken the lift as your guest in the ordinary way. Nobody at the front desk has been involved and nobody will be. You open the door, she says hello, and there is usually a small laugh from one side or the other, because first meetings are faintly absurd for everybody and it helps to acknowledge it.
Then, in that first minute, before the coat is off or the drink is poured, the fee passes to her, in person: the figure from your confirmation, exactly. She thanks you, puts it away, and neither of you gives it another thought. Nothing is added later, and nobody is waiting for a tip.
Why the fee comes first
Guests sometimes ask whether it would be more gracious to leave it until later. It would not, and the reason is simple. Doing it first means the one piece of business the evening contains is over inside sixty seconds, and everything after that is just two people in a room. Left until the end, it hangs over the evening like a bill that has not yet arrived, and the last ten minutes, which ought to be easy, become the awkward ones.
It also removes any question about what the evening is. Fees on this site are for time and companionship only, and handing over the figure at the door is the plainest possible way of saying that the time has now begun.
Minutes two to five: coats and bearings
The coat goes over a chair, she looks at the view if there is one, and she asks what kind of evening you had in mind, even though you told the desk. That is deliberate. Your four lines said two hours in the hotel; what she wants to know is whether you are tired, whether you are hungry, whether you want to talk about the day or forget it entirely. The answer shapes the next two hours far more than anything written in advance.
If you are nervous, she will carry the conversation for a while without making a point of doing so. This is the manner that the girlfriend experience describes: no performance, no script, nobody pretending to have known you for years, just the ordinary warmth of somebody who is glad to be there and in no hurry. Phones go face down, hers first.
Minutes five to ten: the first drink
Somewhere around the fifth minute a drink appears, from the minibar, from room service, or from the bar downstairs if you both decide the room is too quiet for a first half hour. The hotel bars of W1 are some of the best in London and several are a lift ride away: the Artesian on Portland Place, the Fumoir on Brook Street, or a pub a few doors along a Fitzrovia side street if you would rather sit somewhere plain.
By the tenth minute the evening has simply begun. The hours run from the start time in your confirmation, not from whenever the conversation settles, and she keeps to the finishing hour without looking at a clock, telling you when it is close rather than standing up in the middle of a sentence. If you would like to take the evening further afield, to a bar and then a table, the note on Mayfair bar and table pairs gives six that are never more than four minutes apart.
What first timers worry about, and need not
Being late: every booking carries a quarter of an hour of slack, and one line to the desk moves the minute if your meeting overruns further than that. Not knowing what to say: she has had a great many first ten minutes and will fill any silence that needs filling. The hotel: it plays no part and is not told anything. The end: she leaves at the agreed hour, cheerfully, and adding an hour is possible only when her diary allows it, agreed in the thread first and at the ordinary rate.
What nobody worries about in advance, and probably should, is booking too short. An hour at £250 is a real conversation. Two hours at £500 is what most first evenings in the zone actually turn out to need, because the first ten minutes are the only part that ever feels long.
Choosing someone for a first evening
A first booking suits company that is easy from the doorway rather than after twenty minutes of warming up. Lucy is the least judgmental person on the list and needs no audience at all. Molly reads how much conversation somebody actually wants and gives exactly that. Luna is striking at the door and, once the first glass has been poured, the easiest person in the room. Nancy, a little older, is warm from the first minute rather than the twentieth, which makes her an unusually gentle introduction.
Lucy, Molly and Luna all appear among the early twenties names on the index, and Nancy on the blondes page. If you are unsure, describe the evening instead of choosing a face, and the desk will suggest a couple of names and say why each one fits.
Cross filed: most of the names in this piece also sit under curvaceous in the the index.