Jane Unrue - Love Hotel

argued to the judge

His heart beat rapidly as he imagined what he might discover in the forest and while he advanced he prayed that when he found his wife she would be safe. However at the same time he felt angry that his solitude had been disturbed.

But looking around I noted plenty of substantial differences as well. I put my tote bag on the bed unpacked a few things from my suitcase. For example just one nightstand. In addition to a one bulb ceiling fixture over the bed the pineapple lamp was small. Cream pleated shade. No floor lamps. No black table with a drawer below a shelf.

Although it was so early I turned down the very same leafy bedspread exposing the same pink

On the bed I laid my dinner long limp french fries hotdog mustard relish catsup packets on a towel.

The man recalled his house his chair and ottoman the gentle breezes through the open windows. So as not to lose his way he kept his path as straight as he could keep it. But what he had not anticipated when he went that afternoon into the forest was the movement of the outer and the inner rings of trees. Like gears rotating in opposite directions they were turning.

It’s a little difficult to talk about she might have answered had he asked her whom she had been listening to that night when I had called them on the telephone. But I will try. Each little story

No let’s say each song she might have said. It has an atmosphere.

It would have been a cooler night on the VERANDAH where the feeling would be private. Intimate. Exclusive.

Something scampered up the screen.

This singer is in harmony with certain states of inner life she might continue tuned into the same dimension as the song. What happens in a case like this is simply the inevitable effect of

Do you see she might have said in an attempt to redirect

Each one is written on a plane.

I see he might have said. A plane.

Or if you like she might have said

one last attempt to put it in a form that he could understand

it floats within a world to which I momentarily attune as soon as I pick up the phone.

At other times he found himself transported back into the cloakroom where that woman who was much too old for such exhausting forms of labor would be cleaning organizing toilets hanging clothing on the racks. Down on her knees at first then standing stretching reaching in as far as she could reach

she’d even disappear in there

knees creaking

momentarily

then out again

still searching. He would watch her desperately flickering hands whose skeletal fingers rummaged hastily within the racks as seen from his perspective from that corner of the ceiling.

What’s she looking for in there?

One day

It was a wretched day.

he turned into the park then chose a narrow pathway passing under trees with icy steely colored branches decorated with the white lights of the season. He stopped walking looked across the cracks upon the frozen lake but he was right away transported back to where the wheezing woman in the lower rack of clothing searching

reaching

going in

For what?

That was the time when she did come back.

I’ll look for him

I told myself

a little later on.

Next morning figuring good idea to go back where I’d started I was in the reading room again. Grand hall watched over by elaborately framed dark portraits shining facelessly from where they hung upon the walls. Illuminated by the ceiling lights was dust from far too many solitary arid paths picked up then carried in by lonely people who had somehow made it to that place that seemed consumed by feelings of true heartbreak

although entering into there was to attempt to lose oneself in notions of imaginary heartbreak.

While the guidebook raved at its collection much of which could be requested quickly fetched what left a more immediate impression was the smell of alcohol enhanced with body odor. Wanting to look at the people responsible for the smell competed in me with not wanting to look at anyone who might look back. Also snaking its way in between these divided desires was an irrational but profound physical impulse to look at the smell itself.

It was a place that sat about in rags an edifice that looked out at the world with such a weightiness a gloominess that truly was dismaying. All those loiterers. Staff workers. Authors. Characters in the books. They all had lost resistance. On that day in fact it seemed as though the whole thing

books as well

had just passed out.

Having situated myself at the end of one of the reading tables I decided that I would go back to the hotel as early as possible check in eat dinner early go out look for him. Unless

I told myself

the seat adjacent to my seat now filling in

Unless I get to bed get up then catch the first train home show up tomorrow night for work. The question is I told myself how do I kill this afternoon.

It happened

as she told it

three months prior to the day when he was born.

Not me he reassured me winking leading us out to the VERANDAH. (Night Two.) Him he said. He was so giddy as compared to her right now. The difference: night to day. He pointed to a padded chair said Please. She said Sit down . He said I’ll get the glasses.

In her story it was morning when a gentleman first knocked upon the door. Then late that night a figure showed up at her bed. The gentleman in the doorway was deformed. The figure at the bed was feminine though in describing this mysterious figure she did not say female . She did not say woman.

With one match she lit the cluster of short candles in the center of the table while he hurried to get the bottle open. I had understood it that the figure was an apparition she said seating herself across from me. He said I can’t remember sitting down beside her. Was it someone in the family? Someone that we knew ?

A sadness sifted like pale sands behind her eyes as she replied that it was neither friend nor family. She said But the love that I was sensing from this presence made me feel as though it had to be connected to me.

Cheers he said. Good friends .

The presence told her

as she told us

pulling up her feet into the padded chair

She gave her nose a little blow.

that he

The being called him he .

would manage to accomplish something meaningful in life.

The point in telling us the story now as she explained was that the meaningful had lately with the onset of these calls begun to signify or possibly even point the way to something else. She told us that the figure who had appeared at the end of her bed had always made her fear

For him she said.

this fear increasing with the coming up of certain birthdays. How I dreaded all those numbers she said returning to the other portion of the story

the deformed gentleman at the door. He knocked.

I asked what time.

What time ? she said.

She didn’t answer it.

But that was what the approaches of those birthday milestones did to me she said then going on to explain that through the years her focus had remained exclusively upon the figure who had appeared at the end of her bed. Hearing this

along with the further breakdown as to years months days

I started to imagine her surrounded by the glowing script of sleeplessness. Four date scrawled ghostly walls. A ceiling overnumbered doodled into spaces filling in around her night by night with ritualized yet ever frightening projected computations.