Certain American States_Stories

by Catherine Lacey

  I felt there was just no reason to leave room 807. I appreciated its beige-and-navy color scheme, its reassuring blankness. It was effective at its task—to be a room in which one could exist, gathering smells and washing them away, becoming weary and sleeping and becoming awake and becoming weary again. The four-by-four-foot shower collected nearly an inch of standing water, and though I realize this may be considered a plumbing defect, I appreciated this defectiveness as the shower’s puddle gently softened the soles of my feet. The sink fixtures and cabinet pulls were ergonomic. The lighting was efficient and unromantic. Room 807 was remarkably unremarkable and yet I found so much in room 807 to remark upon, a paradox that amused me greatly, made me feel as if I had a deeply entwined understanding of room 807, as if room 807 and I were devoted siblings sharing a sly glance during Christmas breakfast as our father told some well-worn boyhood story that became more epic with each telling. We were irrefutably enmeshed. I loved room 807. I respected room 807’s implacable roomness. No one could ever take the job of being a room away from this room, my dear room 807. I had no intrinsic motivation or desire to leave room 807, and if I ever did leave room 807, I realized, this would only be the result of someone else’s insistence. I waited for the gentle knock of a housekeeper, perhaps a phone call warmly reminding me of the hotel’s checkout policy, some kind of signal that the final moment of my stay at the Grand Claremont Hotel had come and my departure was, unfortunately, required and would also be greatly appreciated.

  But there was no knock or call.

  For three days I did not leave room 807, nor did I call room service, nor did I move unless absolutely necessary. I left the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the exterior doorknob and the sign did its job faithfully, guarding me from any manner of disturbance. Most of the time I lay in the stupefying and slightly perfumed bed. I felt beautifully empty, nothing more than a life. If I noticed a hunger or thirst, I consumed a cashew nut, a candied fruit, a gulp of faucet water. This is how I lived. This is what I became. At some point I even ceased to be waiting for a knock or call. I forgot what sound was.

  On the third day, rested but somehow restless, I began to move the chair from its place by the window, into the bathroom, back to the window, to the bathroom and back to the window, a gentle labor, something to get through. I covered the television set with a sheet and placed the phone beneath the bed and moved the chair between window and bathroom until night, then tucked the chair into bed with me. We had been through so much. I slept well. So did the chair.

  Late in the afternoon of my fourth day in room 807, I put my Grand Claremont Hotel bathrobe over my regular clothes, opened the door, walked down the hallway, filled my ice canister at the automated machine, made brief eye contact through an open doorway with a maid as she snapped a white sheet open above a queen bed identical to mine, then I returned to room 807. I stood at the door, seething with joy, ecstatic in my solitude and ecstatic for the solitude of others, far or near from me, contained in their other rooms, in their beds, in their bodies.

  It was only four in the afternoon but I had a dry vermouth on ice, the last item from the minibar. I fell asleep quickly but awoke two hours later feeling bolder, as if I had just been reconstituted after some kind of total disintegration. I opened my door, removed the DO NOT DISTURB sign, and shut the door. I called room service and had them send up the Grand Claremont Steak Dinner Deluxe and a whole bottle of barley wine and that night I feasted with all the lights on, the curtains drawn back. I watched the people of that city stroll the streets below me, move around in the windows of neighboring buildings, and I felt I was almost speaking to all these people, enduring beside them as all our lives ticked by. I waved at some of them but none saw my wave, yet I believe they felt it. Yes, I believed it was felt.

  The next morning the ecstasy of my ice-machine journey and meal and revelation had faded. I was staring into the mirror just for the company when I heard several short door-knocks and Housekeeping, spoken in such a way you could almost call it singing. I went to the door, opened it, and found the same maid I had seen in that other room. She was considerably shorter than me but obviously more powerful and efficient, the sort of person who could paint a whole room without spilling a drip or taping the trim. Beside the maid was a rolling cart tidily stocked with cleaners and tight stacks of sheets and towels.

  We smiled at each other, I think. At least she smiled. We remained still. After some time I remembered what this was all about, that this was the disturbance that I had allowed when I had revoked my door-handle order to not be disturbed. The maid was the disturbance of sudden order.

  Leaving the door open, I walked across the room, took a seat in the chair beside the window, and watched the city as she went about her business. It seemed only a few minutes had passed when I heard the maid say, All done, goodbye, in one breath, the door shutting behind her. I turned to see room 807 made taut—my suitcase had been moved to the closet and the sheet had been removed from the television set and the telephone returned to its place beside the bed. It was as if I had never been here. I felt like an entirely new person in an entirely new room. I fell asleep that night in the chair. The room remained pristine.

  On the nineteenth day there was a knock at the door. It was a slow, heavy knock—not the rapid tapping of a maid passing by—a knock followed by a baritone voice projected through the door—I’m so sorry to be a bother, but may we speak for a moment?

  There had been, I was told, a gross oversight on the part of the bookings department and I would need to vacate room 807 immediately. The man who told me this was wearing an immaculately tailored suit the same reassuring shade of navy consistent among all Grand Claremont Hotel paraphernalia. Everyone here at the Grand Claremont Hotel, I was told, was deeply sorry for this inconvenience, and they all sincerely hoped that I could forgive them; however, an Exclusive King Room on the twentieth floor was ready for my occupancy.

  I thought of telling him that it was really quite all right, that I should be moving along anyway, that perhaps nineteen days in the Grand Claremont Hotel was enough days in the Grand Claremont Hotel, but I also knew I had nowhere to be going, had no place that required my return, had no people that were missing me.

  An Exclusive King Room would be quite fine, I told the man in the suit. He made an expression of elegant relief, and while escorting me and my only suitcase to the twentieth floor he explained a wedding party had booked the entire eighth floor and simply could not be separated.

  It is entirely our fault, sir, he said with a particular mix of dignity and shame that only a man in such a fine suit can express. We do wish you a very fine stay at the Grand Claremont Hotel.

  My Exclusive King Room, room 2032, was much like my first love, room 807, only everything was a little larger, every object seemed to have a matching friend. The bed, of course, was wider and longer and instead of two sham pillows there were three and instead of one cylindrical reclining pillow there were two and instead of four soft down pillows there were eight and all of them were much larger than their counterparts down in room 807. The chair by the window had a twin and between the two chairs was a low, round table. The ceilings, I realized, were at least two feet higher than in room 807 and the window was thrice as wide. The window, upon closer inspection, was not only a window but also a door, a sliding door that permitted one to pass through it and stand on a narrow balcony.

  Over the next few days in room 2032 I began to establish habits quite similar to those of room 807. Did I feel I was betraying my allegiance to room 807 by this new allegiance to room 2032? Indeed I did. But room 807 was getting married and didn’t even think of me anymore. I was just trying to carry on. This is reasonable, I told myself, as I moved one of the chairs from the window to the bathroom to the window again, then switched chairs just to be fair, then moved that second chair to the bathroom, back to the window, and switched back to the original chair—well, this is just what you do in a room, in whatever room you find yourself within, and after all
, I thought, the past is nothing. Once I worked for The Company and that means nothing now. It happens no longer. There is no way to spend any energy on the past. I am just here in this room. Walls. Chairs. Floor. Bed.

  I was already beginning to forget room 807, forget what it had meant to me, forget the sensation of being within it. To forget something, to allow myself to forget something, this was somewhat extraordinary behavior for me as I am afflicted with deeply nostalgic proclivities, constant and pointless yearnings to reach back, always dragging my heels as the clock ticks. To begin to forget something, to even have the thought that the past is nothing—it all felt so radical I became immediately unrecognizable to myself. I once kept a beer-bottle cap for sixteen and a half years because it reminded me of the first good day of a good summer I spent mostly in a swimming hole that had a perfect rope swing, a memory I didn’t want to release, a day I didn’t want to let slip into the gnaw of forgetting, and now I had become, in an instant, a person who did not care about that bottle cap, about that day, about any feeling I’d ever felt that had faded into the past.

  The past is nothing, I thought again. It felt cardiovascular. A steep hike. I went to sleep having this thought, dreamed of it, woke with it.

  Each day, when the maid came, I excused myself to the balcony to give her privacy in her labor. There was no chair on the balcony, and there was barely any standing room, and as I stood there I would sometimes momentarily consider the option I had to lean across the rail far enough that gravity would just end me. But I never did. I somehow identified that as a choice not worth making, which meant I chose to keep living, which meant I chose to keep living in the Grand Claremont Hotel.

  One day, when the maid came at her usual hour, I found it was raining rather heavily, so I remained inside room 2032, taking a seat in one of the chairs as she went about her routine. Not until she had almost finished her chores did I realize that I had been intently studying her every movement—the elongation and shortening of her limbs as she vacuumed, the militaristic precision of her bed-making method, her gloved finger searching for dust in the oddest of corners. It seemed the rigor of my attention had implied some sort of unintended message, because just before she left she lingered, looked at me, squinting a little, and said, Anything else?

  A mix of coyness and fear and determination was in her voice. I didn’t or maybe couldn’t say anything. I must have been breathing heavily because I became critically aware of my lungs in my chest, a sort of pain and pressure in them, as if they were pushing on me from the inside, trying to get out.

  She unbuttoned the top button of her shirt and I kept staring at her, still unsure of what she was trying to convey to me, or how my staring, a rather nonstandard and perhaps somewhat offensive behavior, had been interpreted to mean something when in fact it meant nothing at all. My inaction apparently gave her the signal to refasten her undone button and flee room 2032 with a cheerful Goodbye!

  I am not altogether sure how long I lived in room 2032 but at some point a knock came, much like the knock that had ended my tenure in room 807. I was certain this would be the end of my stay at the Grand Claremont Hotel, yet I have been wrong about a great many facts in my life that I was, at one point, certain about.

  We are deeply sorry to trouble you, the man in the navy suit said. The maid was standing just beside him, peering past me into room 2032. But we have just learned that there will be some construction taking place on the roof of the Hawthorne Building, of which you have an excellent view, but we are afraid the noise and dust will cause too much of a disturbance to your days and nights and we really must insist upon a second relocation.

  I wanted to tell him that I was undisturbed by disturbance, that I no longer hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign on my door, and I also wanted to ask him if he knew why I was still here, and I wanted to say, to confess, really, that though I didn’t object to living out all my foreseeable days in the Grand Claremont Hotel, I couldn’t understand what had happened that had allowed me to remain here, and though I wanted to know what had transpired that made my tenure in the Grand Claremont Hotel possible, I also wasn’t sure I wanted to know or could even stand to know the reasons I was still here. Maybe one shouldn’t lift the hood of some machines. I said nothing, waited.

  We really must insist, sir, that you allow us to offer you more peaceful accommodations. An Executive Ultra-King Suite on the twenty-ninth floor is available for your occupancy. You needn’t even pack up, as we will be happy to take care of that burden for you.

  At this the maid entered the room and began packing my meager things as the man in the suit guided me by the shoulder down the hallway to the elevator, up to the twenty-ninth floor, down the hallway and into the Executive Ultra-King Suite, room 2901, which was not just one but, in fact, four rooms: a sitting room with two sofas and one chair, a dining room with a large table, a bathroom with a tub you could nearly swim a lap in, and a bedroom containing a bed that was roughly the size of the entirety of room 807. Every room had large windows and the ceilings rose to such a height that I felt as if I were in a cathedral, or one of those opulent old banks built when dollars must have seemed more hopeful than they have turned out to be.

  This must be the finest accommodation in the entire hotel, I said.

  We are so delighted you approve, sir.

  I wanted to ask the man in the suit where he lived, whether he had a room in the hotel, and if he did what did his room look like, and if he didn’t, what did his home look like, and if he had a home and not a room did any other people share this home with him, and how did it feel to leave his home each morning to come here, to this building full of room-homes, temporary and semitemporary places for people who were on their way somewhere or lost along the way somewhere or people who did not fit into any category at all. But I said nothing to him, just felt a knot tighten in my gut, a knot in my throat, a knot in my head, as if I were a piece of rope meant to demonstrate how it’s done—barrel knot, square knot, slipknot, and so on. At some point perhaps I may have known how to tie such things.

  Your luggage will be delivered shortly, he said as he backed out the door, leaving me to the Executive Ultra-King Suite. I don’t wish to disturb you any further.

  Alone in the Executive Ultra-King Suite I could hear a slight drone, some sort of noise the suite had created, it seemed, by its own vastness. I walked from room to room, touched the various fabrics and surfaces—marble, stainless steel, linen, slate, hardwood, tile, sheepskin, bearskin, other kinds of skin, soft sheets, downy blankets, pillows, throw pillows, accent pillows, glass.

  As the droning increased in volume, I wondered if I had missed some turn at some point in my life and now I was just passing through a series of spaces that had never been meant for me. The drone became even louder, that or my moroseness was having the best of me. No, I wouldn’t let it, I thought. What I needed was a brisk walk, yes, in fact that was all I needed, though I also knew it was possible I might set out for this walk and never return. My skin went damp as this possibility began to seem more possible. The drone became louder. My bowels shifted like cargo on a storm-thrown ship.

  I tried to steady myself against a nearby window and either my hand was trembling or the glass was trembling or everything was being shaken by the drone, and I wondered if somewhere in this room there might be a wild animal of which my body had become aware and was reacting biologically before I could react consciously. I looked all over all the rooms and found nothing save for the luxuries of the Executive Ultra-King Suite. The drone had reached such a volume I felt my teeth shaking in their gums.

  I ran down the hallway and jumped into a waiting elevator, took that elevator to the lobby, but when I arrived in the lobby I was still on floor twenty-nine. I pressed the LOBBY key again. The doors shut and I believe I sensed the elevator move, yet when the doors opened again I was still on floor twenty-nine. I looked for additional instructions on how to operate the elevator but found none. I pressed LOBBY again, harder this time—I meant
it. The elevator door shut and I was so sure I felt the elevator descend, that familiar sinking, but when the doors opened a third time I was still on the twenty-ninth floor.

  Well, I am not one to allow such absurdity to continue. I won’t let myself be made a fool. I went back to 2901, the suite, that special place. What is this? I asked myself, but even my own voice could not be heard over the drone.

  What a person should remember at times like these, when all normalcy seems to have left you, is that all things begin and end in the mind. Anything can be in there and anything can be taken out—anything, any single thing, by which I mean everything can be taken out and whatever remains is what you are, not the sensations you feel, the food you eat, not the people you seem to know or the objects you own or the people you seem to own or the objects that have known you all your life. You’re not even the memories you can remember or even the thoughts you can think. You are something below all those things. You are the little dog at the bottom of the pile; no, not even the dog but the smallest flea on the smallest dog at the bottom of the pile. Even less than that, even less and still somehow more than anything else—that’s what you are. And when you can remember this everything becomes very still and you can move around easily, as if it were all a dream.

  I noticed a door I’d overlooked upon my arrival to 2901, and opening it I found a large closet in which my few clothes had been hung, pressed. Also there were three navy suits and three white shirts monogrammed with the Grand Claremont Hotel logo. A navy telephone was mounted on the wall of the closet and as I stood there, awash in the drone, breathing the reassuring scent of clean laundry, the phone began to ring, and though I couldn’t hear it over the drone a knuckle-size red light flashed to let me know.