Hotel Dream

I had another weird dream last night. The majority of the action took place in some Florida hotel (the setting was probably a Florida hotel because Anita was telling Elisabeth and me the other day about how she was looking forward to the upcoming cruise trip that those in the Reynolds Arts Department - who could afford it - were going on in the next few days). I'm pretty certain that we were in Miami, Orlando, or some other big city; we certainly weren't in Naples. I was staying in the hotel with a group of students from my school, though I cannot specifically pick out the students that I encountered at various points in the dream.
The hotel was very tall and long; each of the many floors consisted of a red-carpeted, dark wood-paneled hallway with almost a hundred rooms branching off of it. In between the silver-numbered doors, windows framed by flowing lace curtains overlooked the bustling night scene of whatever city we were in. The hotel possessed that odd excitement that causes one to inexplicably want to race down the hallways and jump in the elevators.
Seized by this same odd euphoria, I discarded my luggage on the non-descript twin bed of the room that I was sharing with some other girls whom I don't remember. I wore flip flops, but the carpet of the hallway was so soft that I decided to leave them in the room as well. I kicked them off beside the bed and wandered back outside, determined to explore some of the other hallways for lack of better things to do. I entered the elevator with the lighted buttons and gleaming, mirrored walls, pressing some double-digit number and ascending to that floor. I walked slowly down the silent hallway of closed brown doors and mute traffic displayed beyond the windows, when suddenly, not far ahead, I heard music floating out from one of the rooms. As I approached the sound, I noticed that the door to a room was left ajar. I peeked inside the room and saw an immaculately-dressed man that I knew very well seated cross-legged on the wooden floor with a plate of what looked like Chinese take-out on his lap. There was no furniture inside the room. As the man was facing the door, he immediately noticed my curious face peeping inside. "Come on in," he invited, patting the floor in front of him, "You look very familiar to me." he commented.
I entered and sat down, listening to the music coming from the small radio plugged into the far wall. "And you to me," I said, non-committal. "I believe we've met somewhere in the not-too-distant-past, though I cannot quite remember where." Wherever it was, I remembered it very well.
We exchanged names and shook hands, and I forget exactly the route of the conversation, but soon I was asking the man questions about himself and his hobbies. I found that despite whatever his current career was, his passion was singing. "I used to sing in the choir when I was a boy," he informed me, and reminisced about his favorite hymns, even singing sections of them in a bass voice that didn't quite fit his face or the image that I associated with it - though it, too, was something very known to me.
I had left the door open wider than it was before. I heard female chattering outside of it, nearing my position on the floor; I had a fear that one of my teachers or chaperones would find me here when I was technically supposed to be in my room. However, I saw the passing intruders from my peripheral vision, and as I recall, the group included a girl named Stormy from my biology class. She broke away from the group when she noticed me, and her face at first showed shock upon recognizing me; this shock slowly turned to amusement. She entered the room casually and greeted me. "Fancy finding you here, Ms. Witt." she said, a smirk in her voice.
"Hey," I said. I turned quickly to the man, who was still indulging in his Chinese food, "I must be getting back to my hotel room, but it was nice meeting and talking to you." He waved, but his mouth was full of food and he couldn't answer. I left the room with Stormy, boarding an elevator at the far end of the hallway. This elevator had glass windows (like the elevator in the Tim Burton re-make of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory") and I was able to gaze in awe over the skyscrapers lit up and the city cloaked in the darkness of evening. The elevator descended like a silent shadow to the earth, stopping on our floor. We exited the elevator and returned to our separate rooms.
I cannot remember much of the next part of the dream; in one part of it, I was in my grandfather's music room. He was showing me some new score that he had acquired. I sat hungrily at the piano bench, my fingers itching to touch the keys. He reclined in the chair that his drama students had signed many years ago, and I played the "Emperor Concerto" of Beethoven while looking out of the window at the lethargic ducks milling around the duck pond. Then, I was in the band room, speaking to Mr. James about something that I don't remember at all; I might or might not have had the trumpet with me. I woke up in the middle of this confusing jumble of dreams.