Javier Montes - The Hotel Life

At last, she looked me in the eye. She had taken her time about it, and I looked away immediately. I preferred not to answer her. Thinking ahead, I first took a look around the room. They were going to throw me out any moment, and I didn’t want to be stuck forever with the unsolved mystery of that room that was about to vanish just like that into thin air — furniture, people, and all — like something out of a fairy tale.

The room had, of course, all the things I had already seen through the crack in the door, the things that were also in my matching room. And things that weren’t the same, like in a game of spot the difference: the armchairs and the little table were there, but upturned and hurled against the wall; the bed was there, but no gray bedspread. And almost no sheets or blankets, either, as they were in a heap at the foot of the bed. On the other hand, it did look as though the joyless signed etchings on the walls were identical to the ones in my room. The lamps at the head of the bed, like the ones in my room, were switched on.

But they looked dim, because from about the height of the woman’s shoulder shone the bright spotlight of a digital camera mounted on a tripod. It was difficult to tell if the light made the room and the bed bigger or more compact — they were thrown out of shape, just as the presence of the camera distorted the possible significances of the situation. It made the stains on the mattress, which clearly predated the remodeling, stand out very plainly. In that light, they loomed large in their yawning nudity. Or rather, their prudery — hotel mattresses are one of those things that are not made to be seen, and never should be.

The woman’s question wasn’t a question. In fact, it nipped any possible conversation in the bud. In the bathroom, the man was still leaning over the boy, who hadn’t gotten up. The two of them looked at me without saying a word and didn’t seem any more surprised than she.

And even though I would have preferred to take it as a real question in order to buy some time, it was difficult to hit on a decent response. What did I want, in fact? It was hard to say. What did I expect, as I stood there in that room, from these three people staring at me in silence? For lack of anything better to say, I ended up giving the details that she (almost as much as I) would surely have preferred I keep to myself: I was in the room next door, I’d heard shouting and banging noises, gone out into the hallway, found the door open, wondered if anyone was hurt.

She gave me a serious look. A furious or perhaps amused spark flashed in her eyes and then vanished. Or not so much in her eyes as around them — we talk about eyes, but what we read really goes on in what’s around them: in the eyebrows, the eyelids, in the untold bundles of nameless muscles that tighten the corners to close them, or that sit in the fraction of cheek beneath them.

I like to think she at least understood that I, too, thought it unnecessary to polish up those run-of-the-mill lies into anything else. In the bathroom, the man snorted. It looked as though he was going to say something, but she beat him to it.

“Well, thank you. But everything’s fine. Good night.”

The woman smiled politely, and there was a mocking look in her eyes now for sure. Was she laughing at me for being a coward? She was happily playing my game, while still looking down on me for resorting to it.

I hesitated. I looked into the bathroom again, avoiding eye contact with the boy and the man; then around the bedroom, at the tripod and the camera pointed at the bed. She took another step forward.

“Good night.”

The man in the bathroom straightened up.

That was all there was to say.

“Good night.”

Or all I felt able to say, at least. I turned around to walk out of the room; before I could close the door, that deserted hallway, the little pictures in their cheap luxury frames, and the carpet all weighed down on me at once.

“Wait.”

I turned around, feeling saved. I looked at her, trying not to give the slightest gesture that might make things easier for her. I could already tell she was the proud sort.

“Have you informed reception? Is somebody on their way up?”

That hurt — the question, and the fact she was so formal with me. Did she really think me capable of such a thing?

“No.”

I held her gaze until it was her turn, for the first time, to lower her eyes.

“Of course I haven’t called them.”

I said it faintly, and even I thought my “Of course” sounded incongruous. Why “Of course”? What was so obvious about it if we didn’t know each other at all?

No one said anything more. I waited a while, until there was nothing for it but to go back out into the deserted hallway. Looking back, I like to think that she knew very well I hadn’t informed anyone, that I’m not the type to go running to reception. And I like to think that we shared the “Of course”—what she had really said when she asked me whether I had told reception was,“Of course you haven’t.”

But I didn’t think any of this at the time. Just as I was closing the door, the last tiny particle of chocolate came loose from my gums. The taste started in one corner of my palate, spread quickly through my mouth, effervesced, and then died out in less than a second, without leaving a trace; it was already the trace of a trace. But it was enough to remind me of the other little chocolate — the one that still lay untouched on my pillow — and of the virginal half of my bed, the bedsheets still unwrinkled. The ghost of the chocolate in my mouth, a vision of the room without me; I turned around, opened the door again, and walked into the entryway.

She hadn’t moved. She didn’t react.

“I was here earlier. This afternoon.”

She didn’t so much as raise her impenetrable eyebrows.

“Oh yes?”

In the bathroom, the boy leapt to his feet, holding his towel on with one hand.

“Close the door.”

I turned around to do as she had said. I was still holding the handle.

“Not you, him.”

She walked over to the bathroom herself and shut the door on some surprised looks from the boy and the man.

“Just a sec. I’ll let you guys know when I’m done.”

Then she turned to face me. She seemed like another person altogether, suddenly, when she smiled.

“I’m not going to be so easygoing with you quite yet.”

She turned her back on me and walked into the bedroom. I followed her, weighing up that “yet.”

“We can talk here. Even though it’s rather a mess.”

The air in the room was thick. There were empty miniature bottles of gin and whiskey on the bedside table and the bed. The porn actors continued their exertions silently on the television screen. She gestured to the only armchair that was still in its place.

“Have a seat. I’ll open the window.”

I sat down while she turned off the TV and the spotlight on the camera. The room itself also felt a little less hostile in the lamplight. Cool air and the sound of rain came in from the street. She sat back down on the edge of the unmade bed.

“And how is that?”

How was what? It took me a moment to understand that she was taking up the conversation from the last words we had spoken in the hallway.

“They made a mistake at reception. They gave me the key to this room.”

She looked at me impassively.

“And what did you see?”

“Hardly anything. I wasn’t here long. The boy.” I jutted my chin toward the bathroom. “And the girl who walked out.”

“Right.”

She hesitated before adding anything further.

“They fought. She got very upset.”

She said it quickly, apparently without much interest in hiding the fact that it was a spurious explanation, that it didn’t explain a thing, really, or do anything other than state the obvious.