Javier Montes - The Hotel Life

I wonder how many of us guests are holding out, ensconced in our rooms. Around mid-afternoon, a few heads could be seen poking out of windows. By the time it grew cold enough that I had to close my window, I couldn’t see anyone anymore. From the rooftop, to my right, a long banner with roughly painted words on it was hanging down. It was made of sheets sewn together, and they reminded me of the sheets, presumably meant to look like desert tents, on the lofty rooftop bar at the Imperial.

Writing kills the appetite and makes you cold. My feet are as frozen as the radiator over there. I’ve wrapped myself in the comforter to write these notes. It warms me up a bit, but it’s no match for the forlornness of the cloudy breath I can see when I exhale. No good news from the outside world — just now a leaflet was pushed under my door, containing some badly-forced rhymes and a list of demands. Reasonable demands, perhaps, but practically illegible; the quality of the photocopy is as shaky as the grammar. I looked out into the hallway, but nobody was there. And nothing new about that dismal scene, either: the tangles of towels, the overturned trays, the wide-open doors.

I can fall back on the alcohol reserves in the minibar in order to avoid being starved into surrender, at least for the night. Fortunately, they haven’t cut off the electricity or the water — which is freezing, but flowing. And I still have internet. If the worst comes to the worst, I can take refuge in the perpetually available rooms on her website.

Because I don’t expect I’ll be able to sleep; the musical reveling is going full throttle downstairs, and now I can hear giggles, and exclamations, and doors slamming, and running, and knocks on the doors across the hall. I’ve wedged a chair up against mine, just in case someone tries using one of those housekeeper’s skeleton keys.

In the next room over, a TV is on full blast. Somebody on the floor below must be banging against the ceiling with a broom handle. But from the room above me, and from there alone, merging with the cold itself, falls a thick blanket of sepulchral silence.

I was woken up this morning by a rapping at the door. I’d dropped off in the early hours, rolled up in the comforter, head down on the desk in front of the lit-up computer. I was so groggy when I opened the door that it hadn’t occurred to me that she herself might be coming to visit me.

And so I was spared a disappointment — or a relief — when I saw that it was a different woman standing there, the one who had served me yesterday in the hotel lobby. Violet shadows under shining eyes, energized and hoarse, she had recovered her rings and shed the company scarf. I was feeling my hangover from dining on the minibar stock, and it looked like she had a monumental one, too.

She either didn’t recognize me or pretended not to. She announced brusquely on behalf of the management that the hotel was about to close. Any guests still occupying a room were kindly requested to leave the premises. She explained something about compensation and indemnity that I was in no mood to hear. I left her there talking, and when I came back out of the bathroom, she had gone.

I’ve stayed in many hotels at the paper’s expense, but this was the first time I’d ever walked out of one without paying the bill. I couldn’t have done it if I’d tried, actually — there was nobody attending the reception desks, and the employees, huddled in groups, ignored me as I went by. It was daytime by now, but it was still dusk in the lobby — the lights were off and there were large signs taped over the windows that looked out onto the street.

My first time without paying, and also the first theft of my life — I, who have never pilfered so much as an ashtray. As I was making my way out, the staff’s indifference got to me; partly to prove that I hadn’t become invisible, and also because I really was hungry, I turned back and walked into the breakfast room. It was empty. A couple of chairs had been propped up to keep the swinging doors to the kitchen open, allowing a view of surfaces piled with dirty dishes.

The dining room tables hadn’t been cleared away and they were a mess of leftover food, crusty plates, and crumpled napkins. I sat down at an immense, round table set for a large group of diners. The cloth was mottled with wine. I helped myself to two spoonfuls of a fruit tart nobody had touched. It was floating like a desert island on a purple sea of melted ice cream, and I felt like a castaway.

At the back was the breakfast buffet, untouched and laid out in undisturbed perfection. But the burners under the metal chafing dishes weren’t lit. Sausages and bacon lay crystallized under layers of fat, like insects in amber. The croissants had gone rubbery. My theft had perforce to be modest: I dropped a banana into my jacket pocket with no real intention of eating it. I forgot about it after that, and only just now, taking a seat in this café where we are to have our appointment, did I remember I still had it on me. Here it is, black and accusing, like a question mark sitting on the table.

It wasn’t easy finding another room for tonight. We stragglers at the striking hotel — I was perhaps the last to surrender — had forfeited any right to logistical or psychological support from the absent reception staff. I trailed from one hotel to the next all morning, standards dropping along with the number of stars. It was noon by the time I found a vacancy in a cheap hotel, down a gloomy alley in the center of town. It was invisible at street level, but a sign was affixed to one of the balconies of the third floor it occupied.

They buzzed me in from upstairs without inquiry. There was no elevator, and the door on the landing stood open. You could see a tiny counter wedged into the corner of what must have been the entryway of a family apartment that had seen better days. This was reception, or rather a gesture towards one. An unsmiling old man received me. He seemed resigned to the futility of all the precautions taken to deter potential guests — now and then, some desperate traveler is still bound to uncover his lair.

“It doesn’t have a bathroom. And it’s supposed to be for four. But we’ll just charge you for a double.”

The room was huge and frigid. I paid up front and through the teeth. Sure enough, it contained four beds, one against each wall, around a big, empty space. Empty and useless; except for the absence of whatever item of furniture (of unimaginable name and shape) that might have occupied it, the whole space contained nothing but a gray sink dotted with cigarette burns, and a wardrobe that partially blocked the French windows leading to the balcony.

Peering into the little mirror over the sink, I thought my eyes looked baggy, but I was too restless to try to sleep. I came straight to the café we had arranged to meet at, even though it was much too early for our appointment. On the way out, I asked the attendant for directions. Then, without thinking, and for the first time on this trip, I dared to ask about her — who knows, she might have washed up in this place herself. The pictures on her website often feature rooms that seem just as bizarre, and almost as squalid, as the one I’ve been given here.

At close quarters, the receptionist didn’t look quite so ancient. His creased shirt and flattened hair made me think that maybe he pops into the small room behind the counter for a snooze when there’s nothing to do. Through the half-open door, I could see part of a calendar with Alpine cows on it. It was harrowingly bucolic — at some point, incredible as it may seem, the perpetual snows surrounding us must surely melt.

“About forty years old, dark hair, tall, attractive, nicely dressed?”

He let me speak without looking at me, perusing the stains on the wallpaper over my shoulder with an interest not yet entirely diluted by year after year of standing on the same spot. I was just about to repeat my inquiry when he spoke.