Javier Montes - The Hotel Life

TATIANA.Psychic since childhood. The truth, even if it hurts .

FEDORAClinic. Abortions up to 22 weeks .

REQUIRED:Amateur boys/girls for videos & photos .

As I write this now, I’m surprised that I skipped the rest of the ad in the moment and kept reading. I was resolved to pretend that I had seen nothing, that I really was going to just keep on reading. But my tell-tale heart was beating so loudly that it felt like it would make the lobby walls shake. I think I looked around to buy a bit of time, with the excuse of checking that nobody had seen anything. Of course they hadn’t. I knew full well that there was no one else in the lobby; that even if there had been, they wouldn’t be watching me; and that even if they had been, even the most keen-sighted spy wouldn’t have registered anything in my movements. I realized I was petrified. I put off rereading the ad for a moment longer. I stubbornly kept my eyes on the lines that followed, reading them one by one. For what seemed like an eternity, I played at baiting my angst — it was a good angst — and testing its limits, like a child postponing the moment when he’ll pet the little animal being held captive in his room.

ENJOYlistening to me moan .

HOUSEWIFE.Will pay. Home alone. 18+ .

I read without taking in a thing. Much as I might put off admitting it for a few endless moments more, I knew I had finally found her. This ad was hers; it was her. I waited for one more second, until it hurt too much. And then, acutely aware that no one in the entire world suspected a thing or could follow me down this path, I slowly retraced my steps; I wandered back with my eyes along the tracks of small black lettering, pushed aside thickets of phone numbers and creepers of addresses, and found myself once again face to face — filled with a sense of Olympian magnanimity that seemed apt for this triumph of mine, and that I’m now rather ashamed of — with the ad.

REQUIRED:Amateur boys/girls for videos & photos. Until the 5th of this month only. Young, presentable applicants only .

A cellphone number followed.“Required” and “presentable” confirmed to me that it had to be her, as much as or more than the fact that the time frame coincided with the date posted on her site. Required. Who requires anyone to do anything nowadays? And who stipulates that their prospective employees must be “presentable”? Only she could have written that, as deft with the language of classified ads as she is with that of the photo captions on her website. I still can’t tell if it isn’t me who’s adding in the irony I think I detect.

And there was that ugly repetition of the adverb “only”, and the space-saving, tacky use of the slash. It had to be her. She must have been having bad luck in this city.

I didn’t want any evidence of my cellphone to end up registered on hers, nor did I want to dial her number with mine blocked. I imagine she’s used to being contacted by people whose caller IDs are withheld, but that kind of cowardice could give her a bad impression of me. I can now see, of course, how idiotic this was — as though my calling her at all, and the preceding pursuit of her that it would imply, wouldn’t already give her the worst possible impression of me.

On the way to get my phone from my room, I had to dodge piles of sheets at the doors to some of the rooms, breakfast trays, lettuce leaves, lone shoes. Through an open door here and there, I could see unmade beds, rooms hastily abandoned. I passed a man in a tie carrying an aerosol can in his hand. He avoided meeting my eye and said nothing by way of greeting, contravening the universal laws of hotel staff courtesy. His ominous silence was, however, the same one that reigned over all the hallways.

It was her. I recognized her voice in the curt hello she answered with, even though her voice sounded different on the other end of the phone from what I remembered. The telephone line seemed to have caught strike fever too, distorted as it was by buzzing sounds and vague murmurs. The hand I was holding the receiver with was trembling, and I had to lean my elbow on the bedside table. I swiped aside the old newspapers and the two recently emptied little bottles of whiskey from the minibar. I had hurried to dial the number after drinking them each down in one gulp, and now I regretted it — I was afraid of slurring my words, of finding my tongue suddenly cotton-like and clumsy.

For one absurd moment, I thought that the conversation would have been easier if I had tidied the table first. Luckily, even if it wasn’t exactly easy, it certainly was quick. On hearing her voice I realized that I wasn’t planning to tell her who I was. I would be able to explain myself better face to face; there was too much to tell her, and I was afraid she would hang up on me without a thought. I was relying on the faulty telephone line and on her not remembering my voice (and perhaps remembering me only very dimly) when I told her that I was interested in the ad and wanted to get an interview. She was succinct. She explained the matter to me in literally a few words—“erotic videos”, she said — and forced me to lie when she asked how old I was. I was able to tell the truth, however, when admitting I had no experience in the field. I’m proud of how cunning I was on that account: I exaggerated my shyness as though I didn’t know that that’s actually a plus in her eyes.

There was a silence during which I tried not to think about anything. I read the front-page headline on one of the newspapers, over and over, without understanding a word of it. Just then, the sound of another telephone — a rabid ring of rude Rs —reverberated in both my ears at once: the one I was holding the receiver to, and the one that was free and open to the sounds in the room. I became disoriented, as though I were being confronted with the audio version of one of those optical illusions showing inextricable silhouettes that can’t both be seen at the same time and that force the eye to choose between them. Then she spoke on the other end of the line, over — or rather, alongside — the sound of the ringing phone.

“Excuse me one second.”

I understood suddenly, as though waking from a falling dream, that the ringing of the other phone came from both inside and outside the one I was holding. From outside my room, to be specific: the noise was coming, muffled by the ceiling, from the room directly above.

The double ringing stopped, and I heard her — now only through the receiver — answer the other call.

“Hello?”

Was she right above me, then? I couldn’t rule out some telephonic coincidence, or an odd side effect of the two whiskies I’d drunk on an almost empty stomach. I gazed up at the ceiling like an idiot, as if my eyes could pass as easily as the sound of the ringing telephone had through the plasterboard and hidden concrete, the elaborate parquet and knotted rug which presumably lay between me and the soles of her shoes — maybe those same snakeskin sandals she had had on at the Imperial. I pictured her seated on the edge of the bed like me, a couple of yards above my head, one floor up, in an identical room.

She spoke briefly into the landline, without lowering her voice or bothering to cover the mic on her cellphone. A Morse burst of curt yeses and noes. I was thankful, really, for every second of that short conversation, which gave me time to regain my composure — although I have to say that the sensation of coming unstuck from the trusty surface of solid land was not wholly unpleasant. It occurs to me now that maybe the instant preceding panic never is; I’m reminded of the treacherous jab to the back of the knee with which my fellow columnist greeted me at the Imperial.