Jane Unrue - Love Hotel

I bought some extra snacks because I was afraid of waking up to nothing next to me to eat.

Sky darkening the air a little chilly

There’s a suffocating feeling that I get when clouds roll in.

I stepped into the patio then down again to enter through the automatic doors.

You might not turn up anything she said.

I chose a number. Then

As if the clouds are rolling right into my mouth

And that’s why we need you he later said.

I took the elevator up.

my nose

the space behind my eyes

I feel

I feel

It seemed as if the darkness was what pulled that train along as if the darkness pulled the train to just exactly where it wanted all the people in the train with all their things to go.

The lady

more like vapor these days seeping through the cracks between the floorboards or through gaps around the door

grew somehow conscious of what heavy burdens these two women one who had a child

However on her own she couldn’t possibly have

He

The child

Although he did one day become

It was a frigid day when memories of the night his mother climbed releasing him from her grasp up to the railing on the bridge began to dim. He was a young man now who thanks to just one gentle request from mother to the chambermaid

The chambermaid was happy to help a child whose eyes she often thought showed true compassion

empathy

extraordinary sympathy resulting from a limitless sensitivity to

capacity for

To look into his eyes she told the lady when appealing in the child’s behalf is first to lose yourself inside their color then you find that you’ve come out upon the other side confronted by a trail into a forest of unfathomable dimension. Depth. So little sky. Those eyes.

So many trees.

He thus began to get his lessons in the mornings with the children from a nearby mansion. As he grew he more repeatedly began to think of nothing other than revenge for not just all the years his delicately featured fragile little mother spent inside that closet but for how her time on earth had bottomed out.

When on the train awakened by a jolt I

Slipping back into my country cottage dream I started to anticipate the return of the little boy’s parents. Absent from the dream they were apparently returning to the cottage. I grew anxious then

The rimmed in small blue painted flowers plate was trembling on my lap.

about what in the world I could say to the two familiar

They looked so familiar in that dream.

familiar figures who would all too soon be standing in the cottage doorway conjoined in a shared expression of knowing parental terror glazed over with a rapidly disappearing layer of hope. How can I possibly explain this thing I asked myself about the plate.

I awakened again. All quiet save the sounds of the train. Through the window I could watch the sky. The moon was full. I did not look at the woman sitting across from me. I only thought about the dream.

The answer that they

We were in the ENTRANCE

MAIN

(Night Five)

which as he pointed out

You have to admit he said.

was high. A gabled

pretty impressive!

stone projection to the right side of the STAIRCASE

MAIN

The answer was that he had disappeared before.

I felt as though I

Having spent my lifetime tangled up in skeins of thinnest threads I felt as though at last I was beginning to unweave.

Except he always

Sometimes it can take a few days she said. Even weeks he said.

came home.

She said However this time seems a little

That’s why we need you he interrupted. He was looking up into the ceiling.

She was looking down.

I stuck the key into the

402

It was a double with an ivory eyelet canopy on top with ruffle around the bottom both in dusty pink coordinated loosely with the carpet more directly with the walls all painted in the same pink color. Not just one but two gold painted chairs pink cushions shared a cozy corner with a floor lamp near a tripod table bunch of artificial flowers in a vase. The lightness of the carpet with the shortness of the ruffle meant that every corner of the room could be looked into even underneath the bed .

There was a blocked off fireplace white painted grate the window dressed in triple treatment of white vinyl blind behind a gauzy dark green curtain fringed at top with matching valance. May sound good but it was seedy. A little dirty. Worse than 607. There were pictures though. A row of slightly banged up seasonal depictions of a lake a seated conversation on a porch two different sailing scenes one ordinary sailing scene one showing children using sticks to push toy boats across the surface of a pond. But catching my attention in a lingering way

It started with a jolt.

was one medium sized portrait

good condition

hung above the fireplace.

If we should try imagining the raw intensity of the feelings of that child

a man now

we would find a new example of

The child became a

uncontrolled connection with not one

not two

He waits.

He walks.

He passes fluidly among three states of consciousness.

I laid a towel across the bed . I opened the spaghetti suddenly remembering after buttering the bagel halves a dream from several nights ago that I had not recalled until the moment when I stepped into the train.

On board I passed from car to car looked for a seat across from seats still empty. When I spotted just exactly what I wanted I remembered dreaming of

I felt a momentary pang of longing sitting eating on the bed .

All dark. As I could suddenly recall on board that train the person in the dream who chased me was unknown. While being chased while crossing from the concrete walkway to the grass while trying desperately to keep my distance out in front I also tried while crossing grass to walkway grass to slow my shifting sense of who he was. This effort to arrest his image as the high speed nature cameras capture

for example

wingbeats

Not a moment to explain the horrors to his wife not even to describe the bride’s

white

fur

handwarmer

torn to shreds

the lightly traveled pathway sprinkled with a curly bloody mess

diagonally the man cut through the clearing opened up the door and grabbed his wife and told her that they had to leave at once because their sons were coming home.

This wanting to identify the man was

Drawing a halt to this accelerating period of remembering was a woman on the train who sat across from me. I had no memory of her physical appearance or possessions but I vividly remembered some of what

This wanting to identify the man was overtaken by the physical necessity in seeing my apartment building stop itself from smearing blurring fading fast because of being chased around so rapidly repeatedly by us.

a couple of the woman’s thoughts.

It now occurred to me that this might be a good occasion to review take stock of things I’d done things not done things I’d seen or speculated even playing back my

I will finish dinner take a rest then go back up to 6 then down to 3 to have a look around I told myself.

The first real difference

he explained

(Night Five)

the three of us still standing in the ENTRANCE

MAIN

was in the phone calls . Starting two days after they had seen him for the last time day or night at least one phone call came. Nobody spoke no sound no numbers visible on the caller identification screen. Gradually they noticed the duration of the calls decreasing. At the same time it became more troubling to receive one. She especially had found these calls from no name calling from no number so upsetting that he had requested that if she could not see