Lost in Hotels

by Martin, M.

  My heart stops at the thought of staying in David’s home, but I also realize Matt would be calling me in the room. If I didn’t answer and there was an emergency with Billy, I would never be able to forgive myself.

  “So tell me about your assignment again. Are you interviewing someone here?”

  “Yes, a US TV celebrity who’s in a West End show.” I make up a story on the quick, not wanting to tell him about the low-level travel assignment I’ve sought out just to be here with him again.

  “What show?” he asks.

  “Oh, just a US TV comedy actress on the rise.”

  “No, I mean, what West End show?”

  “It’s a new version of West Side Story,” I blurt out, hoping it will satiate his inquisitiveness, which it does.

  “So, what were you so busy working on the last few days?” I ask before sipping the iced water poured out of a hefty-looking glass bottle.

  “It’s one of the most intense jobs I’ve ever worked on, and without boring you too terribly much, it’s a regional British bank acquiring a small German lender, but it’s marred in all these subsidiary businesses that we are trying to risk access.”

  Three waiters bring a series of appetizers in three consecutive unveilings that reveal a full caviar spread and a fish carpaccio of some sort. They place the dishes in front of David. I hesitate to tell him I’m mostly vegetarian, especially if he doesn’t remember by now, until I look closer and see the caviar is actually some sort of milled vegetable. I smear some on the endive leaf and attempt to eat it without displacing my lip liner.

  David continues with the nuances of the deal; his intensity keeps me intrigued as he gestures with his thick hands, catching my eye in between delicate forks of the carpaccio and precise wipes of his mouth with the heavily starched white linen napkin in his lap. His manners are impeccable. He holds the fork in one hand while gently using the knife to smear the remaining pieces in one small heaping that enters his mouth without fail.

  At moments, listening to David reminds me of Matt, from the way he gets frustrated at people of unlike mind, to the way he tries to appease me by passing the water before I ask or inquiring if my food is just right. I try to block the comparison from my head, as if it’s some sort of Freudian undertone that we simply repeat all things from our past. It’s neither comforting nor annoying but an awkward similarity of two men who have so little else in common.

  “But let’s forget about work and think about something more convivial. Tomorrow, you’ll come over to my house, and we can leave together for Somerset?” he asks as he subtly makes obvious that we will not be spending the night together.

  “Yes, of course,” I say as I grab the stem of my orbed red wine glass. I bring it to my lips in a slow sip of the wine that I try to drink without having it touch my teeth.

  “I’m going to drive, so we should probably leave by afternoon in order to avoid traffic,” he says, “assuming you’re done with your work by that time. Otherwise, we can always grab the train, but that’s a bit grim, I’d say.”

  Dinner passes in a faster pace than I expect. David declines dessert or espresso, and I do the same. I glance at his thin gold dial Patek Philippe and its shiny black leather strap that alludes we completed dinner in little more than sixty minutes, which seems rather rushed for two people so desperate to be with each other. I think of ordering another drink, but resign myself to the evening ending. I hope to find better footing with David with a little sleep.

  “So, my flat is very near here. Why don’t we take a walk, and then I’ll call my driver to give you a lift back to the West End later?” David says, grabbing my right hand and spreading my fingers to rub our palms together before getting up from the table. He helps me up from the booth as I contemplate a long walk in my now-ridiculous-feeling dress and heels. But it doesn’t matter when with David as he leads me out of the restaurant and up the street, past galleries, closed cafés, and designer shops that line this part of Mayfair. It’s no more than a few blocks where the narrow brick buildings open to the dramatic archways dotted in bold point lights that look like an old theater marquee along the entrance of the Ritz.

  The streets are still crowded, and I try not to fall behind David’s speedier pace. London beats with a racing heart even in the late evening. Taxis zoom past and busier commercial streets with posh brasseries and packed bars succumb to pockets of cozy residential buildings trimmed in glossy black frontages with wrought iron gates and women ready for bed in the windows cut out of the red and white brick on the upper floors.

  “When I first moved to London after university, I didn’t know how to get anywhere. I spent every moment in the back of a car to the point where I really didn’t get to know the nuances of the city,” David says.

  “How old were you?”

  “Maybe twenty-five or twenty-six. I’d come here all my life. But since then, I try to walk home every night from dinner as long as it’s not terribly far or the weather isn’t too bad. Seeing the people in the windows and on the street are my version of having dinner with the family every night.”

  I realize this is my time to tell him, to tell him the truth, in this moment of vulnerability when the night is still young and we have the weekend before us to work through the anger and deceit and come out the other side.

  “You know, there is so much we really don’t know about each other, things we might have missed in the process of this new relationship given the distance between us,” I ease into the conversation.

  “But I’ve had distance between the people I love all my life, from my parents sending me away to school and then with work that separates me from almost everyone I know.”

  “Do you want your life always to be on the road and away from the ones you love?” I ask softly, not wanting to come off as a woman who says she insists her husband not travel for work or otherwise.

  “I love what I do, always meeting new people and seeing places that keep my mind and interests expanding. And that’s what I love about you. You’re not bogged down with conventional expectations and have found fulfillment as a person, a complete person, one who doesn’t need a man or a child to have a full life.”

  “But I don’t know if that’s the exact case for me,” I say.

  “Of course it is. Normally, I’d be having fights at this point in the relationship about my lack of availability and endless travels, but with you, it works. It’s the best relationship I’ve had with a woman, and I think that’s because you know who you are and you know what you want.”

  The adulation stalls my advances as he holds my hand tighter, and the neighborhood around us becomes even more storybook-like. The perfectly green square lined in parked Mercedes sedans, encircled by rows of pure white Victorian houses and their proud Doric columns, varying striped window coverings and national flags of the respective Spanish and Finnish embassies, pass by us.

  “This is my road,” he says as I take a second look at the name Eaton Street. I savor this moment tracing the steps that he takes night after night. The sidewalk widens and the diplomatic houses yield to facades that are more residential and then his; it comes with a four-story white and brick face with an ebonized single door entry that opens to a narrow hallway. An iron staircase rises extravagantly above our heads. He opens his mailbox with a key from his pocket in a sort of coming-home routine that I couldn’t find more captivating.

  A small elevator opens and we both step inside. He presses the third-floor button and the door shuts. He leans in for a kiss without looking up from his fingering of envelopes and letters in large envelopes likely too important to be folded. I can’t believe I’m here. The elevator stops and opens to a simple long corridor with doors spaced unevenly. His is the last one on the left, which he approaches with a key in hand and opens.

  Two steps later, I stand inside the lair of the man I have been fixated on since our first meeting. I expected a d
ark boudoir of masculinity, and instead, a creamy white space surprises with its stylishness and purity.

  “It’s so lovely, David, and totally not what I was expecting,” I say.

  Two long powder-gray sofas are staggered on opposite walls with a Hermés throw laid over the arm, and an edgy photograph of a blonde woman smoking a cigarette on a bus stop sits on a white wall with plaster wainscoting and a crown of carved moldings. A marble fireplace looks inoperable, either out of lifestyle or in actuality, with its perfectly clean innards and wicker basket with birch branches in front of it. Two elaborately tall columns stride either side of a wall that leads to the dining room; its white lacquer table looks unused with its six cubist chairs that sit in a corner overlooking a storybook street scene. Two mirrored doors push open to the kitchen with its bare countertops and single coffeemaker that looks as if it had been left on from earlier in the day.

  David doesn’t do a tour or even mention much of anything about the apartment that feels like just another hotel room, albeit a bit larger with its decor that anyone would feel comfortable to live in and lack of personal touches that makes it feel like absolutely no one lives here.

  “Do you mind if I use the bathroom, quickly?” I ask.

  “No, not at all,” he says, still consumed with his mail. “Just go through the living room, and you’ll see it in the hall on the way to the bedroom.”

  Despite the continued lull in our conversations, the inside of his home captivates me. I make my way back through the living room with its few photographs of David and friends on vacation and a family photo at a formal wedding somewhere long ago. On a higher shelf, I notice another of him and a woman, which I cannot properly see on my turn down the short hall. I glimpse into his bedroom and see a perfectly made bed with a herringbone quilt and two oblong pillows in the same pattern.

  Hoping the bathroom would be the lone one in the apartment stocked full of his personal items, I’m disappointed to find a simple sink protruding artistically from the wall with a Damien Hirst photo of a pill in place of a mirror and a toilet next to it. There’s an arrangement of perfumes and hand soaps from Asprey that I test one by one, but none of which are the woodsy mandarin scent of him. His towel racks are lined in three pressed linen hand cloths, not towels like virtually every other person I know has in their bathroom.

  “Catherine, come in here,” David says as I exit the bathroom and see he’s removed his suit and stands in his dress shirt and boxers in a corner of his bedroom. The fabric walls are the subtlest of gray colors, and I notice a television is on.

  David flops on the bed. “Come sit with me.”

  I sit on the edge of the bed as he pulls the covers over him, now lying there in just his white boxers.

  “This is my favorite place in the world, just lying right here in this bed and flicking on the TV set and letting my mind simply go blank.”

  My dress doesn’t compress well when lying down, and I try to pull it under me as not to give the illusion of a fat ballerina.

  “What do you watch?” I ask.

  “It really doesn’t matter. Sometimes, one of those singing quiz shows and other times whatever movie happens to be on.”

  “I didn’t take you as the movie type,” I say.

  “I really don’t watch it. I just let it wash over me and take away all that I was thinking about in the day.”

  My hand reaches over and caresses his warm body under the sheets; his smooth chest, with its spare few hairs and down his torso, he feels like a Greek athlete cut from marble and leaves me just a little self-conscious about my own body, even if it gets better and thinner with each day. My hand dips down to feel his dick, soft and lying to the side with its fleshy tip as a door buzz interrupts us.

  “So I think that’s your car. I was hoping we could cuddle a bit, but I know you have to work tomorrow,” David says, somewhat to my dismay that we won’t be having sex tonight after all. Perhaps he’s upset that I chose not to stay with him, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t stay most of the night. I jump to my feet as David rises from the bed lingering with the covers in lieu of seeing me to the door.

  “So, text me tomorrow when you are done with your interview,” he says with a kiss on the mouth without a hint of second thoughts on his part.

  “Yes, I will,” I say, quietly making my way out the bedroom door. I can see the car through the window below, its lights beaming in the night sky.

  “I’ll send a car for you, and we will leave from here.”

  “Okay, see you tomorrow.”

  I retrace my steps through the living room and into the hallways, shutting the heavy wood door behind me. I take the staircase because it’s prettier, rounding my way back through the lobby and outside where a shiny black Mercedes, like the one I saw on the walk, waits with a driver waving from the front seat. Even with my disappointment from what the night was to be, I find solace in plopping into the rear of the sedan with its new fragrant leather and dark windows. The London night flashes in the window like a movie of my own life: the marquees near Piccadilly, the store windows on Oxford Circus, toward Soho to Shaftsbury Avenue, and on to Convent Garden that feels so very far from him this night.

  The following day, I busy myself with work through the morning and until the late checkout of two o’clock before texting David that I’m finished with my interview. I lunch quickly at a small bistro called da Polpo near the hotel that makes the best quinoa salad I’ve ever had, with crew of dining actors on break from their theater practices. It’s overcast and intermittently rainy at times; a struggle for my mostly summer wardrobe that doesn’t include a proper trench this season.

  “Meet me in 30 at Paddington. Got delayed obvi, let’s train it, more fun.” Alas, at 4:00 p.m., a text finally arrives from David as I sit stranded in the hotel lobby with my plot of luggage. There’s no car sent or excuse as to the delay, just a beckon to Paddington Station with which I gladly comply. The hotel clerk takes longer than usual to summon a cab, but it finally arrives. The driver hesitates to get out of the taxi as the bellman struggles with my hard-sided luggage into the rear of the cab. The rain is thicker than it was earlier; falling as if an angry man is sitting above in the heavens with endless buckets thrown on our windshield, and making me wonder how I will ever make it inside the train station without being drenched.

  There, in the doorway of Paddington Station in a smart slicker and a cute hat, is the man I adore. The rain is falling on him as he rushes to grab my bag that he kiddingly struggles to lift before rushing it inside and me along with him. He could have easily remained inside, which I expected, but his presence on the street side, waiting for me in the rain, washes away all disappointment from the day before.

  “I can’t believe I made you come here in the rain, on your own, and in the worst of traffic!” he yells above the train announcements that lend a romantic soundtrack. He holds me tightly around the shoulder before rearranging our bags and making our way through the terminal that glows anew when on the arm of someone like David. We make our way to our rail track where the yellow and green locomotive purrs and uniformed agents whistle in the background as other trains ready for Chichester and Redding and Manchester.

  “So, where is it we are going, exactly?” I ask.

  “Well, technically the wedding is in Somerset, but we are going to Bath. That’s closer to the hotel where we’re staying,” he says as we board the front of the train and make our way through the glass door and into a dark interior space with tables and booth-style seats; we take the third vacant one. David heaves our luggage onto the shelves above our seats, his bare stomach and small patch of hair below his naval exposed under his plaid shirt.

  “You’re not exactly a light packer, are you my love?” he says as he comes to a seat across from me. “That’s good to know.”

  “It’s actually the bag that’s the heavy part; it really doesn’t fit a lot.”
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  “I see. And you advise people how to travel?” he asks with a sarcastic grin.

  “Yes. I advise people how to travel fashionably and that bag is a hit,” I reply as his grin widens.

  We are seated in the first-class cabin. On the train, that simply means assigned seating, and I believe a free beverage of choice at the snack bar in the forward carriage. I can already smell its sizzling grill and too-fragrant meat pies. The train staggers to a forward motion before hitting a steady speed, and the rail station begins to retell the story of my previous day’s journey to London in reverse. David’s eyes home in on the weekend edition of the Evening Standard, his eyes speeding horizontally behind chunky black reading glasses that sit precariously low on his Roman nose.

  The horizon turns from urban to rural in a matter of three pages of the International Herald Tribune with its condensed take on major news stories of the day and American trends that feel a little stale, likely by writers with stories that weren’t immediately picked up by top-tier newspapers. The rolling grasslands of almost fluorescent foliage are suddenly interrupted by a horse-shaped figure carved out of the hillside.

  “David, what is that on the hillside there?” I ask interrupting him from his paper folded over in fourths to an article that has enveloped him since boarding.

  “You mean that … there?” he says, peering up from above his glasses. “That’s one of the white horses. You’ll see a lot of them along the way. They’re really old. I think before Jesus Christ.”

  “What do they mean? Are they like crop circles?”

  “Not sure, really. They’re made of rock, I think. They usually represent some sort of historic figure or notorious battle, if I remember correctly,” he says and returns to reading his paper.

  I put down my own newspaper and pull out my iPad to do a quick research of hill figures and discover there are actually a variety of newer figures made for various advertising and cultural celebrations. But this particular figure is the Uffington White Horse that’s almost five-hundred-feet long and made of hand-dug trenches filled with crushed white chalk dating back to three thousand BC. While questionable that the figure is even a horse, the carving was meant to symbolize the dominance of the nearby castle under the same jurisdiction.