had to re-remind myself of some of the details of this thread since rejoining (piccadilly circus cafe account) ... i did spend a fair bit of time @regentpalacehotel in mid-late 90s it was a riot, i did a few days in the city here and there each month for 4 or 5 years with work, always liked the bukowski vibe so elected to suffer the shared bathrooms in the name of fear and loathing, none of my colleagues understood obviously
and so i have some affection for the story on those grounds, but couple of things stand out after some distance and on a re-read
the poor girl must have been fairly frazzled after a coach trip down the country all the day before, crashing with some stranger the night before, sitting in a hotel lobby literally without getting up, and without eating or drinking all day, this cant have placed her in a strong position to be clear minded through the wierdness to come
but i see a non sequitur in her writing the note at the hotel reception indicating piccadilly station cafe, before she had got there, ie there was at that time the assumption that the cafe would be at piccadilly circus, when in fact that hotel had several street exits and is in a complex configuration of streets, being (or used to be) triangular
regardless of where precisely the cafe actually turned out to be that day, it had already been defined for her as piccadilly circus since, as when you write down a dream, its caught in the net that point onwards
the other thing, as i mentioned back in 2017, there was a ground floor cafe with a curved bar and a street entrance in the hotel, or there was in the 90s ... it was always empty as it was very unobvious from within the hotel, due to the gradient of the street there may have even been a few steps down to get in from the street, and of course it would let out onto the same street as in the account, and probably allow someone to suddenly "see" someone in the street outside