Javier Montes - The Hotel Life

At least the other cities seemed to be aware of my search effort. They played a part in it, even if it was only to make it more difficult. But I get the feeling that this one is refusing to even take the hint. Considering the results of my hunches thus far, that could be a good sign.

The hotel restaurant was deserted, and I sat in the lobby instead. I passed the time by watching the woman who was acting as hostess. She was efficiency incarnate. She maneuvered expertly, very seriously, and never inelegantly among the tables, offering tea and coffee. Her comings and goings, all her gestures, were impeccable, worthy of study; they were a reminder that there is an art to everything, a way of executing things properly. She wore a tailored suit whose only elements of uniform were the little brushstrokes of corporate colors on her belt and her shoes.

I noticed that after listening to the guests’ orders it was she herself who disappeared and reappeared with a heavy tray that she would deposit on the low tables. I was surprised. Really, her role ought to have been heading up an army of waiters and waitresses to whom she could pass the orders.

I barely had to signal (not even a signal — I simply raised my eyes and met hers) to get her over to my armchair. The black coffee and newspapers I asked her for were only an excuse to see her from up close and to hear her voice. She smiled — just a little, but just right — and went off to the little bar in the corner of the room. I was surprised again to see that it was she who operated the espresso machine. And then she vanished, the task half done. The diligence of her wordless promise didn’t seem to match the fifteen minutes it took her to reappear with a newspaper in her hand. No tray, no sash with the hotel’s logo; she was clearly much more mortified than I was by this lack of formalities in an establishment that would appear to guarantee them to the guest as he arrives, and that doubtless charges dearly for them as he departs. And I think that the liking, or at least the fellow feeling, she inspired in me was mutual. That she noticed that I noticed the absence of these details, in the same way that one lost in an uncivilized country finally finds a person who speaks his language.

She apologized as she handed it to me — they could only get local papers today. As for the coffee, the machine had run out of cartridges and it would be a while before they could get more. I didn’t have to ask why; my gesture of very slight surprise was enough to make her tell me that from midday onwards there would be some disruptions in the normal functioning of the hotel. It seems the parent company and the recently appointed director have failed to comply with what’s been laid out in the industry agreements. Apparently, the unions have been nursing wounds and planning formal complaints for weeks. And today was the very day they had agreed on for a series of strikes and protests.

After a pause, she asked me with a pained, conspiratorial movement if I could hear anything. I remembered the man with the slippers in the poet’s hotel, his inaudible radio stuck in a loop of repeated songs. Once again, I couldn’t hear anything, and I told her as much.

“Exactly.”

Her answer was quick, triumphant, and bitter. We ought to have been able to hear the ambient music programed to play twenty-four hours a day in the hotel’s common areas.

She pointed to a used coffee cup on one of the little, low tables.

“You see this? Well, you shouldn’t have to. It shouldn’t be there.”

But she can’t cover the other staff members’ absences on her own. In fact, she explained, she shouldn’t be there, either. It isn’t part of her purview as a middle manager. But today, apparently, a lot of managers like herself, and even some directors (she pronounced the italics), have had to get up out of their offices and get to work at reception or in the rooms. This didn’t exactly mean she feared to get her hands dirty — though she must have taken her rings off for a bit, because I could see the marks on her magnificent fingers. The ones who drew the short straws had to make up the rooms or dry glasses in the kitchen. The head events organizer was serving the breakfast this morning. If they don’t make progress on the negotiations, she told me solemnly, the hotel will find itself hurtling down the slippery slope from a discreet strike to an all-out war on strikebreakers.

She stopped herself just at that moment to look at the camouflaged door at one corner of the lobby. Two men in street clothes were sticking a flyer written in large, capital lettering onto it. We could read it from where we were. It was an ordinary piece of paper, printed in one of the standard fonts that come with any word processor. It had an almost handmade look to it, which was shocking in a place like this, where everything presented to the public is first submitted to a process of denaturalization and homogenization. As in haunted castles, the law here is that nothing of what hosts can see or touch must resemble what they can touch or have or consume daily, when at home.

The flyer announced strikes on behalf of the protesting hotel staff. It also warned that the contracting of temporary replacement staff contravened current labor statutes and would be immediately reported to the Ministry of Labor.

The other guests have started to get up. Without excusing herself, the woman, who was seeming more and more attractive to me but with whom I no longer felt the closeness I had at first, walked over to the men in plain clothes. Like artists on the eve of an opening, they stood at a distance to observe the effect of their freshly pinned flyer and to check it was straight. The three spoke in hushed tones before disappearing behind the camouflaged door.

I didn’t particularly sympathize with the staff and their strikes. I didn’t doubt the legitimacy of their demands or wish to deny them their rights. But I had gone too far with my own fight to start feeling solidarity with theirs now. If she was staying in this hotel, these disruptions might scare her away. They might force her to move to another one or, worse, to make last-minute changes to the itinerary I had memorized. And if that happened, I would lose track of her for good.

The impending strike; the hubbub and shouts that, without any piped-in music to cover them, could now be heard coming through the camouflaged door; the desertion of my precious few companions in the lobby — for the first time on this trip I felt abandoned and as though I were running out of rope.

And in view of what happened, it’s lucky I wasn’t able to rise to the occasion. I didn’t know what to do, where to look for her. I saw no other choice than to redouble my waiting, ignore the bad omens, and forget all the disillusionments suffered after so many hours spent vainly in so many lobbies. To believe without faith and trust without hope that she would suddenly appear in that lobby, sitting at my table, as if by magic.

It seems to me now that, in a way, that’s exactly what she did.

As I had done on my first night at the Imperial, I opened the newspaper in search of one last life raft. I gave myself over to the local press and its anesthesia of winter poetry competitions and cross-country ski marathons, its calming sinkholes and road shoulders and council members’ bickering. I would have gladly drunk the coffee I had ordered, but I couldn’t see anyone left who might bring it. I tried to forget the woman’s lurking presence in the city, perhaps in the hotel itself, somewhere on the other side of the newspaper as I read it. She, who was doing who knew what or where, while I avoided looking up, hell-bent on reading every entry in the classified section.

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