Steve Toltz - Quicksand

Howard is the owner?

The manager. I remember we fell into a deep silence broken only by telephones vibrating in guests’ pockets and by the sudden elevator ding. ‘Listen, Aldo,’ Howard says, leaning forward, ‘you seem pretty unsuitable for this position, but I owe Stella a big one, and I hear you’re having some difficulty making your child-support payments.’

Child-support payments?

That’s what Stella told him, even though she hadn’t yet had the child, the child that was Craig’s, or perhaps some unknown third party’s. I mean, this whole scenario was typical Stella, you know, pointlessly manipulating the truth or lying outright to get her desired outcome. In this case, me in full employment, the repayment of the debt.

Not to mention power over you.

Being a room-service waiter would mostly entail delivering twenty-dollar hamburgers to strung-out rock stars in fluffy white robes, she’d said, and now I wondered if that wasn’t a lie also. Howard leaned back into his chair wearily, as if he’d had to deal with me his whole damn life. He said, ‘A man’s gotta do what he’s gotta do, Aldo.’ I said, ‘I suppose so.’ He said, ‘A man’s gotta meet his responsibilities.’ I said, ‘You sure know a lot about men.’ Howard frowned. The elevator doors opened onto the empty lobby. ‘All right, job’s yours if you want it,’ Howard said quietly. ‘I appreciate the opportunity,’ I lied, and he bullied me into an exaggerated handshake and ducked out of the lobby, leaving me straining my eyes at the dark charcoal etchings on the oil-black walls, before he returned a minute later waving a uniform in my face, the sight of which made me recoil. I said, ‘Oh God. Oh Jesus.’ He said, ‘What’s the matter?’ I said, ‘Oh Jesus.’ The thing is, Liam, it was only black pants and a black jacket with a white shirt and a red tie but it seemed to me that I was being fitted for a life that was exactly my size.

So what did the job entail?

I had to wait in the kitchen, shivering in subarctic air-conditioning, scrubbing plates and shining counters while the chef prepared the food simulacrum, after which I pushed trolleys through poorly lit corridors into rooms where I was to cultivate a disgust at human sexuality I’ll never entirely shake off, delivering overcooked meat on soggy bread under silver domes to bargain-obsessed adults who dressed like rich ten-year-olds and didn’t stop sniffing cocaine off strippers’ tits when I entered. That, and the overabundance of women who when talking to their dog referred to themselves as ‘mummy’, and the Sri Lankan concierge who whined about the day globalisation finally reached his village but passed him by personally, and the guests who stared at me meaninglessly as if I were a pot plant or a fixed point in space, and the businessmen loitering frustrated and embarrassed outside their rooms, unable to master the electronic key, made me hate every minute, but because a stubborn illogical part of me wanted to impress and win Stella back, I was determined to stick it out, and I would have, if not for, you know.

No, I don’t know. What?

What. Exactly.

What?

Exactly. Until my species of bad luck is identified, I can’t say.

CAN’T SAY WHAT?

I know I’m always in the path of strange comets, and it’s somehow my own fault, but how, Liam? Am I really reaping what I sowed? If so, what the fuck am I sowing, and how am I sowing it?

That I don’t know.

Some nights, when I go to bed, I half expect to find on my pillow a card that reads, ‘Yours sincerely, Lucifer.’

Aldo, just tell me, what happened at the Railway Hotel?

Nothing much! That’s the thing! Everything happened. The usual. In the nine measly days of my employment there, I slipped on the lobby floor, only to be harshly reprimanded by Uncle Howard for slipping on a slip-resistant surface. I misidentified the sex of a guest’s child in front of the hotel owner, fell up the back staircase, opened the side restaurant door and struck a pensioner in the face, and then the solemn feud between me and staircases extended to elevators when, somewhere between the third and fourth floors, the elevator ground to a shuddering halt.

You got stuck in the elevator? Is that such a major deal?

The problem was I wasn’t alone. There was an attractive blonde in a leather skirt with a few more teeth than her mouth could handle who pressed the button a dozen times, and it occurred to me, I mean I sensed, that to be trapped in an elevator with a man was the erotic fantasy she’d waited her whole life for, and further, I intuited that she wanted to want me, but there wasn’t the slightest hint of sexual tension between us and despite herself she couldn’t or wouldn’t find me attractive. ‘This is a bit of bad luck,’ I said. ‘Hmm,’ she said back. I said, ‘All those disaster movies have it wrong. I don’t think strangers do bond together in times of crisis, I think they resent each other’s unfamiliarity as the plane goes down and then burn together in awkward silence.’

Funny.

Right? In response, she pushed herself into the elevator’s corner and began whimpering, and a second thing occurred to me: she’s scared out of her mind! I gave my warmest smile aimed precisely at her absurd misperception. ‘Don’t touch me,’ she said, and backed up even further. ‘I’ll scream!’ she screamed, incrementally flattening herself against the polished wall then half turning sideways into a cowered squat. I didn’t know what to do; I straightened my rumpled shirt and put on my most solicitous grin and stared ahead at the doors, but they were reflective burnished silver, and no matter which way I turned we couldn’t avoid each other’s image. It was awful. Her terror, my terror of her terror. Her mounting hysteria, my anger at her refusal to calm the fuck down. And the whole thing just triggered the worst memories.

Of what?

You remember.

Natasha Hunt?

Exactly. I mean, is sexual insidiousness my blind spot? Do I spur a reflex to persecute? Is there such a glitch in my aura that I project myself as wild and undomesticated? Is that the family curse, that we make bad first impressions, middle impressions, and last impressions?

Let’s get back to the elevator.

Twenty gruelling minutes later, the doors fly open and the petrified woman sprints out, and within an hour I’m summoned by Howard into his office, a large room with a wall of huge windows in factory frames — so this is where all the light was, I thought; he was hoarding it, the bastard. ‘Stella’s like a daughter to me,’ he said, ‘so what should I do about this complaint?’ I said, ‘I never touched that guest! He said, ‘She’s not a guest.’ I asked, ‘So she works in the hotel?’ He said, ‘Not exactly.’ I couldn’t understand the meaning of this conversation. Howard worked the back of his neck in a pincer squeeze. ‘She’s a working girl,’ he explained, using that strangely old-fashioned term, and went on to explain that she came from a high-class brothel, The Enigma Variations. ‘The Enigma Variations?’ I said. ‘What kind of a name for a brothel is that?’ ‘Just leave the girls alone, Aldo. They have a job to do,’ he said, and so, over the following days, I set out to pick the prostitutes from the regular guests and found it inconceivably easy: heavily made-up girls in drastic skirts trudging noisily down corridors in dagger-like heels, black stockings and visible suspenders, girls who knew how to stare unblinkingly ahead or else looked to be constantly bracing for impact. I observed them, and the male guests who now smelled of shame and body oil, with puzzlement and fear. Any time I heard footsteps I froze; whenever an order came to the kitchen, my hands trembled. Each night I slept uneasily, my dreams laden with premonitions, and at work, wandering the dark hallways like the child of a sun-fearing people, I expected the worst.