Javier Montes - The Hotel Life

The man with the slippers let out a little laugh.

“How funny. The presenter must have fallen asleep.”

Then he swilled his tea around, took one last sip, left the cup on the table, and spoke to me again.

“Ah. What an enjoyable job. And a difficult one, too, I take it?”

It took me a moment to realize he was taking up again the conversation that had been interrupted by the radio.

“Well, I’m even gladder I invited you up here, then. Do me the kindness of giving the place a good writeup. It might help them keep it open. What would I do if they closed it? Just think of it — where would I go now?”

I don’t know what time it was when I left his room, but when I drew the curtains in my own, the morning was already limping into the counterfeit spring that had managed, with its amateur trickery, to get me out into the garden. I spent hours tossing and turning in the bed and getting nowhere. And now, though the sun may be shining, I can feel on my back, through my sweater, the thin, chill wind that the Scottish poet complained about so bitterly, gifted as he was at glossing even the slightest current of air.

Because before going back to my room last night, I stopped by the internet alcove again. I walked down the silent hallways, lit only by the slivers of light under the doors of the unexpectedly nocturnal English guests. I crossed the ground-floor lounges, which were vast in a way they hadn’t appeared during the day and frozen with a disapproving air in the orange light of the garden lamps streaming in through the windows. I turned on the light in that tiny computer room, then turned on the computer, praying that the stupid startup sound wouldn’t disturb the slumber of the night receptionist in his armchair behind the counter. Or that of the hotel itself (which I could feel wheezing around me through the lungs of all the guests heaving in unison), exhausted after a hundred years of uninterrupted watchkeeping and service.

At last, I was able to open the video they shot at the Imperial. Without the sound, it seemed even more furtive — this enhanced, improved replay of the things I had seen, and the things I had only imagined, the other night in the other hotel. Once again, I felt like I was spying on them from the other side of the door. But instead of through a crack, now it was as though I were seeing the girl and boy through an imaginary keyhole, positioned perfectly to take in the whole scene. I saw how the bed came to be unmade, why the mattress had ended up bare. There was nothing much worth seeing, nothing I hadn’t seen before. Nothing I would have wanted to see, in any case: the real mysteries that this scene only pretended to resolve. I didn’t see the boy having trouble getting turned on, I couldn’t smell the hostile new carpet, I couldn’t feel the chill of the room or hear the rain falling beyond the windowpanes. In this little movie, everything seemed sunny and simple. It took an enigma and exchanged it for a hackneyed, old riddle.

I saw no trace of old Pedro in the video. And caught no sight of her, of course. There was no hint of her presence in the whole video. In fact, it had been shot in such a way as to banish the idea that she was present or even existed. Except, that is, for the indelible trace of the shoot itself: her indispensable camera, and her eye that had witnessed the whole scene through it. That was something you had to make an effort to remember, and that I would have forgotten, myself, in other circumstances: if her face and her conversation were not so present in my mind, if I were not able to summon up so clearly — as I’m doing now — all her gestures and words, her exact tone of voice, her technical instructions.

I saw, in the end, what she had seen. Or rather, what she wanted me — and thousands of other subscribers — to see. Every fold, every face, every position. And yet, when the video finished, I felt disappointed. She had found the perfect hiding place.

I don’t know how long I sat there looking at the frozen image on the site’s main page. It was a while before I noticed a red button with white lettering:

Our Itinerary

I probably hadn’t seen it until then precisely because it was so obvious: it was in a prominent position on the screen, next to the box where subscribers enter their username and password. This woman has clearly mastered the art of hiding things in plain view. A new window opened when I clicked on it.

Below are the cities we will be visiting in the coming month. If you live in one of them and are interested in working with us, don’t hesitate to write us. Please attach three recent photos, and remember that you will be required to provide at least two forms of ID at your interview in order to confirm that you are eighteen or over .

A list of cities followed, with their respective dates. It was an erratic route, at least at first glance. If you joined the dots on a map, it would seem to trace the mark of a particularly cunning Zorro, a scrawl with no discernible hand or intention behind it. Perhaps she doesn’t have either.

I copied the list onto a separate slip of paper and stuck it between the pages of this notebook before going to sleep. I’ve got it here beside me now, on the table — the names of six cities under the hotel’s sad, blue letterhead of this hotel that prices so high its writing paper with a pedigree. I had to weigh it down with a rock from the garden so that it wouldn’t blow away. Actually, it wouldn’t matter if it flew off on the wind or miraculously burst into flames this very instant. I realized this morning that at some point in the middle of the night — in the half sleep of warped ideas that I’ve forgotten but that must have been stored in some adjacent room in my mind — I had learned it by heart.

My host from last night has just appeared at his window. He opened the curtains and is now leaning out on the windowsill, as though to mimic the position of the blurry poet in his yellowing photo. Right now, I might be in the position of the person who, a hundred years ago, trained his lens on him from below and bore eternal witness (dubiously, but indelibly) to his stay here. It’s past twelve o’clock. He is not an early riser. And why would he be? They’ll be waiting for him punctually with his out-of-hours breakfast, and with everything else, too. Everything contained in the tiny world of this hotel will adapt to his rhythms and his desires, all day long and on every identical day that follows. Everything will happen according to his schedule. He is the master of his time here, and holds more sway over things as a guest than any owner could.

“Good morning!” he shouted down to me. Scottish readers gave us disgruntled looks from the neighboring garden benches. The very wind was like a librarian’s shushing.

He asked me if I wanted to wait for him down in the garden to have an aperitif at one o’clock. It was a pleasant, tempting offer. The aperitif to a pleasant and tempting life, perhaps, in which it would always be cocktail hour in this autumnal garden, and in the endless autumns that followed. I would spend my days ensconced under the window of this poet, this fake, efficient acting-god of the establishment. And at night, again as a perpetual guest, I would return punctually to that other hotel, her hotel. I noticed a last aftertaste in my mouth of that useless brew the man gave me to drink last night.

I returned his greeting loudly, happy to irritate the English guests and happy, too, in the euphoric knowledge that I was only passing through. Enjoying the prospect of the pleasure in departing of he who departs, the joy of suddenly finding myself with a ready-made itinerary that will allow me to vacate this bogusly British establishment without so much as a farewell.

“Thanks, but I can’t. I’m just leaving.”