Эмили Мандел - The Glass Hotel

On a late spring night in the Hotel Caiette, in 2005, the night houseman was sweeping the lobby when a guest spoke to him. “You missed a spot,” she said. Paul forced his face into a semblance of a smile and hated his life.

“I’m kidding,” the guest said, “I’m sorry, that was a terrible joke. In all seriousness, though, can you come over here for a moment?” The woman was standing by the window, a scotch in her hand. She was old, or so it seemed to Paul at the time—in retrospect, she was probably only about forty—but there was something striking about her. She conveyed a general impression of having her life together, which was a state to which Paul could only aspire. He carried the broom over awkwardly and stood near her.

“Can I help you with something?” He was pleased with himself for thinking to say this. It sounded very butlerlike, which was more or less the model he was going for. Every now and again he caught a glimpse of, if not exactly the pleasures of the hospitality industry, at least the pleasure of professional competence. He could see how there might be a certain satisfaction in being good at a job, the way Vincent was good at hers. He’d always been an indifferent employee. At that moment Vincent was at the other end of the lobby, laughing along with a guest who was telling her a story about a fishing trip gone hilariously awry.

“I wonder if I might speak with you in confidence,” the woman said. Paul glanced over his shoulder at Reception, where Walter was applying his considerable powers of soothing to an American couple who were furious that the room with the Jacuzzi they’d paid for was, in fact, a room with a Jacuzzi, and not a suite with a full-size hot tub. “I’m Ella Kaspersky,” she said. “What’s your name?”

“Paul. Pleased to meet you.”

“Paul, how long have you worked here?”

“Not long. A few months.”

“Are you going to stay much longer, do you think?”

“No.” He hadn’t exactly thought this through before he said it, but the answer rang true. Of course Paul wasn’t going to stay here. He’d come here from Vancouver in order to get away from friends with bad habits, and because Vincent was already here and had told him it was a decent place to work, but he knew it was a mistake by the end of his first week. He hated being back in Caiette. He hated living in the same building as his coworkers, the claustrophobia of it. The waiter who lived in the next room had sex with a sous-chef every night, and Paul, who was extremely single, could hear every noise they made. He didn’t like his boss, Walter, or Walter’s boss, Raphael. He missed his father, who’d died months ago but whom Paul somehow still expected to see every time he walked into the village. “Actually,” he said, “I’ve been thinking about leaving soon. Maybe very soon.”

“What do you want to do instead?”

“I’m a composer.” He’d thought that saying it aloud might make it more real, but saying it aloud only made him feel like a fraud. He was composing music that he showed to no one. He’d fallen into a territory between classical and electronica and had no confidence in his work.

“Tough line of work to break into, I’d imagine.”

“Extremely,” he said. “I’m just going to keep working in hotels while I work on my music, but I want to get back to the city.”

“It’s one thing to rest and recharge in the middle of nowhere,” Ella said, “but something different to live out here, I’d imagine.”

“Right, yeah, exactly. I hate it.” It occurred to him that he probably shouldn’t be talking this way with a guest—Walter would be furious—but if he was leaving anyway, what difference did it make?

“I’d like to tell you a story,” Ella said, “which will end with a business proposition, something that would involve you making a bit of money. Are you interested?”

“Yes.”

“Keep standing here, and we’ll look out the window together, and if that uptight manager of yours asks about it later, I was asking you about fishing and local geography. Deal?”

“Deal.” The intrigue was wonderful and solidified his desire to leave, because even if she stopped talking at this moment and said nothing further, this was still the most interesting thing that had happened in weeks.

“There’s a man named Jonathan Alkaitis who lives in New York City,” she said. “We have exactly one thing in common, and that’s that we’re both regulars at this hotel. He’ll be here in two days.”

“Are you some kind of detective or something?”

“No, I just give extravagant tips to burnt-out front-desk employees. Anyway. When he arrives, I’d like to convey a message to him.”

“You’d like me to deliver it?”

“Yes, but we’re not talking about slipping an envelope under a door. I’d like it to be delivered in an unforgettable way. I want him to be shaken by it.” Her eyes were shining. He realized for the first time that she was actually quite drunk.

“I knew a girl who once wrote graffiti on the window of a school with an acid marker,” he said. “Something like that?”

“You’re perfect,” she said.

When Paul wrote the message, it felt like stars exploding in his chest. It felt like sprinting in a summer rainstorm. On the appointed night he left for his dinner break and crept around to the side of the building, where he’d hidden an oversized hoodie with an acid marker in the pocket, then crept into position near the front terrace, just outside the pool of light cast by the hotel. There was a breeze that night, which made it easier to move undetected, his footsteps disguised by all the small forest sounds, the creaking of branches and rustling of wind. For a long time the night porter stood by the door, too close, and Paul almost despaired of completing the mission, but then Larry glanced at his watch and stepped back, disappeared into the lobby, walking in the direction of the staff room. Coffee break. A cloud passed over the moon and it seemed like a sign, the night conspiring to hide him. He uncapped the marker and stepped out quickly onto the terrace, heart pounding, head down. Why don’t you swallow broken glass. He wrote the message backward, the way he’d been practicing in his room, and then slipped back into the forest, and like choreography the cloud slid away from the moon and the message was illuminated. He crept around the side of the hotel and back toward the staff quarters. It was impossible to move in perfect silence but the night forest was full of noises anyway. In the staff lodge there was some kind of party happening, light and music spilling out of a suite on the second floor, the day staff getting wasted to dull the agony of customer service.

He stripped off the hoodie and gloves, balled them up and shoved them into the bushes at the base of a stump, stepped out onto the path connecting the staff lodge with the hotel, and came walking out of the woods into the bright pool of hotel light so that if anyone happened to be watching from the hotel, it would look like he’d just gone back to his room for a moment. He glanced at his watch and opted for a slow walk around to the side entrance, nothing to see here, just enjoying some fresh air, high with the twin pleasures of action and secrecy, and the elation lasted until the moment he stepped into the lobby and saw the tableau: the guest standing in the middle of the lobby, stricken; the night manager stepping out from behind the desk; his sister looking up from the glass she’d been polishing behind the bar; all of them were staring at the words on the window, and the look on Vincent’s face was unbearable, a look of naked sadness and horror. The guest turned and Vincent looked away while Walter sailed forward on a wave of efficiency and reassurance—“May we offer you another drink, on the house of course, I’m so sorry that you had to see this,” etc.—while Vincent stared hard at the glass she was polishing and Paul stood just inside the side door, unnoticed. It somehow hadn’t occurred to him that anyone else would see the message. He slipped back out into the cold night air and stood for a while just outside, eyes closed, trying to get ahold of himself, before he made a second, more obvious entrance, closing the door loudly behind him, trying to act casual but his gaze falling immediately on the philodendron that someone—probably Larry—had pushed in front of the window.