Javier Montes - The Hotel Life

I was about to say that I’d give him the rest if everything went according to plan. But I didn’t get that far. I was sick in advance of haggling, and at the end of the day I don’t care — I had to remind myself of this — whether I have this kid’s respect or not. I gave him the remainder without comment and he pocketed it the same way.

“We arranged to meet in that café you told me about before. Tomorrow night at eight. It was a guy on the phone, I think he’s the one who’s going to show.”

Maybe he was capable of curiosity, after all.

“I could go, and then tell you what happens.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

“What, you don’t trust me?”

“No, I don’t.”

The boy laughed again.

“Don’t let it upset you. I don’t even trust myself, at this stage.”

He didn’t seem particularly upset.

“How come?”

“Two hours ago I thought I was finished with this whole thing. Now look.”

The boy answered quickly, almost before I had finished speaking.

“It’s not too late. You can still catch the first plane tomorrow and be out of here.”

I sat back down on the bed. Feeling exhausted, I decided to overlook his impertinent tone and pretend to take at face value what he had only really said to irritate me.

“True.”

The boy took a few steps toward the door. I still can’t tell if I’d have preferred him to stay. Now that the silence of the journey had been broken, the prospect of being left on my own again was harder to bear. But the boy was lingering. He eyed me from the center of the room.

“But you do trust her.”

I could have asked him to leave. I could at least have protested, sworn blind that I didn’t trust her, either, that she was actually the person I trusted least of all. He was right, though. You can trust this woman. Her website is deceitful and full of sneaky tricks; she lies, sure, but she stops short of making promises, or rather she only promises one thing: to provide — no, better than that, to sell for a reasonable price — a habitable space, four walls made and a roof over our heads. Not believing in promises doesn’t mean we don’t want to keep hearing them.

“Well, she’s told the truth so far.”

The boy came up to the bed where I was sitting. He stood still, and very close.

“The truth.”

Smiling, he lifted his T-shirt with one hand. His abdomen was right at my eye level.

“Look, the truth.”

He smiled.

“The only one there is.”

I was silent, and it seemed for a moment that he had nothing to add, either. But something more always gets added. We always wait for the addendum, and it always arrives to find us ready and willing to hear it, to believe it, to repay it tenfold.

“And it’s not such a bad one, either.”

He picked up my hand and placed it on his abdomen, then a little higher, on his ribcage.

“You can touch it.”

He released my hand slowly. And my hand stayed where it was. Under his skin beat the faint echo of another heart. We didn’t speak, and I felt how my pulse merged with his.

The boy gazed intently into my face. I kept on looking straight ahead, at the contrast between his skin and the skin of my hand. Mine struck me as discolored, almost blurred, far less substantial than his. It’s true they were beating in unison. But you couldn’t trust that, either.

I leaned back. The boy retreated, too. His T-shirt once more hid his waist. He was laughing. Without contempt, I think, and certainly without spite.

“OK.”

He sat down on the edge of the farthest bed and began untying the laces on his sneakers.

“I’ll sleep here all the same. I’m supposed to have gone home, and my dad sleeps at reception and he wakes up easy. He better not catch me coming out of a guest’s room at this time of night.”

“Aren’t there any other rooms free?”

“I didn’t bring keys.”

He had pulled off his pants and was getting into the bed.

“I’m gonna turn off the light, OK? I have to get up early tomorrow.”

He half sat up, and reached his arm out for the switch. He paused in this position to regard me from across the room, smiling more broadly than ever. I suspected then, and still think, that that’s the image I will retain years and years from now when I remember this conversation: the young man half reclined, wrapped in a sheet, one arm upstretched as if he were about to announce a tremendous piece of good news, some unexpected stroke of luck.

“You’ll have to tell me how it all goes.”

He switched off the light and we were in darkness. I heard him sigh a couple of times and turn over a few times under the covers until he got comfortable. My eyes soon grew used to the shadows. I’m writing, and everything stands out sharply in the orange glare of the streetlights. A peaceful rise and fall of breath is coming from the boy’s bed. It’s hard to believe, but it’s true: he’s dropped off. I’ve been smiling pointlessly into the dark for a while. It would seem that in the discomfiture stakes, I’m the last one standing.

I’ve taken off my shoes, but not my pants. My wallet, naturally, is safe in my back pocket. I can’t decide whether the company of the boy in the far bed is a relief or not. It may well be that this is all I can look forward to, at this stage of the game, as far as potential company is concerned.

And anything is possible; incredible as it may sound, maybe something about this kid has rubbed off on me. Maybe I’ll fall asleep as soon as I close this notebook and my head hits the pillow.

I spent the whole night with my eyes shut tight, buoyed on the breathing of my bed neighbor, trying to seduce sleep, to cajole it, like an exhibitionist whose wiles wouldn’t fool the most gullible schoolgirl — feigning indifference, spying on its movements with sideways glances, waiting for it around corners, placing decoys and candies in its path, sweet thoughts that might lure it closer and induce it to open wide its arms and engulf me. Several times, I faked a declaration of defeat, to speed things up. Nothing worked. Only when I truly abandoned all hope and resigned myself sincerely to lying awake all night did I plummet into a dense, black, dreamless sleep.

I woke with a start and leaped out of bed. Without even checking the time, before assessing the strength of the daylight seeping through the still-drawn curtains, I knew I’d overslept and that it must be late. The boy’s bed was empty. I stumbled around the wardrobe that obstructed the access to the balcony and pulled the curtain back. It was getting light. No, it was getting dark, and there was nothing but a grimy afterglow left in the sky. Just then, the streetlights came on, highlighting the cruel practical joke that I had begun to understand was being played on me. Their pale pink glow deepened to orange. I stared dumbfounded at them until they turned yellow. A joke, a prank; I had been swindled, robbed of the whole day. Never in my life, not even when I was fifteen years old, had I slept this late.

The bad news was confirmed when I saw the time. It was after seven thirty, barely twenty minutes before our appointment. I dived wildly at my suitcase, yanked on new clothes, and pounded down the hall to the shared bathroom. I washed my face while trying to calculate how long it would take to get to the café. I’d only just make it on foot, but I didn’t dare risk trying for a taxi; I couldn’t bear the idea of standing still on the curb, trusting to luck.

I passed the unmanned desk and charged out into the street. The pavement was slippery, and I kept almost falling over or knocking people down as I ran. I tried hard to blank out my mind, and before long it really was blank. By the time I got to the other side of the road from the café, I was ten minutes late. My mouth tasted of blood, my chest hurt, and my back was running with sweat under my coat. Through the windowpanes, I could see the old ladies sitting at the same tables as yesterday. A bored waiter was gnawing at his nails behind the bar. There was no sign of her, or of old Pedro.