by Will Wiles
“No,” I said. “That was my fault. I’ve got to get out of here.”
“What was that all about?”
“Wasn’t it obvious?”
“Forgetting the name of someone you’ve slept with,” Maurice said in a philosophical tone, examining the situation from arm’s length as if he was a disinterested expert. “Unpleasant.”
I glared at him. “You had to ask.”
“Well, old chap,” Maurice said with chiding emphasis, “I thought you would know!”
“Fucking hell,” I said—to myself, not to Maurice. It was true, he could hardly be held responsible.
“Pity she wasn’t wearing her thingy,” Maurice said thoughtfully. “Her name badge. They’ve helped me out of tight spots more than once.”
“Look, Maurice, I’ve got to clean up,” I said. Ridding myself of the stickiness creeping around my chest and neck had become top priority. “I’ll see you later.” I drained what was left of my whisky, a good slug of it. It froze and burned; my back teeth hurt. It felt good.
“I wanted to talk with you about what happened earlier,” Maurice said. His demeanour had altered, and surprised me—he was all business. “At the conference.”
I summoned myself. “I want to talk to you about that too, but this isn’t the best time.” Stickiness was developing between my fingers and under my chin. “Can we do it tomorrow?”
Maurice looked doubtful but didn’t say anything right away. Instead, he took a pen and a card—my business card, I saw—from his inside jacket pocket. “What’s your mobile number?”
Only hours ago it would have been inconceivable for me to give my number to Maurice. Circumstances had indeed changed. I told him, and he jotted it on the back of my card. “I’ll give you a call,” he said. “I want your side of the story.”
“Right,” I said. “I’ll see you later, then, Maurice.”
“Good show,” said Maurice, his normal joviality returning. “Don’t worry, the drinks will be on me!”
The keycard worked on the second try. The first time, the little red light on the door lock was enough to make me deliver a sharp kick to the bottom of the door and swear. After a deep breath, I tried again, and the light blinked green, the lock behind it opening with a satisfying click. No need to go down to the lobby, I could lock myself in and put the day behind me.
Inside, with the door closed, I took off my jacket and shirt and stuffed them into the red plastic sack provided by the hotel dry-cleaning service. I hadn’t been wearing a tie. In the bathroom I filled the sink and washed my face with the warm water. There was wine on my neck, down my front, in my hair. Another shower? I had taken two already today; the notion of taking a third struck me as almost decadent, whatever the immediate need for it. But this was a hotel shower. Even though I spent most of my life in hotels, I still revered their showers: hot water at a pressure that scoured the skin; clean, dry washcloths and towel; no fungus or grime between the tiles; the bright white light of a NASA dust-free lab. Not to forget the little individual soaps and bottles of shampoo that so impress people unaccustomed to hotels, though those are just part of the greater truth of the hotel shower. The whole experience is like one of those little bottles. It is used only once or twice, then replaced. Every day the whole shower is reset by invisible staff, as if you had never been in it. In your shower at home, your repeated visits will eventually accumulate, and you must continually clean the unit. This, more than the dribbling water or the Swiss watchmaker precision needed to set the temperature between glacial and scalding, is the true disappointment of the home shower: you are constantly encountering yourself. What should be a fresh experience becomes a rendezvous with scum, mold and hair. But the hotel shower is permanently renewed.
And I needed renewal. My chances with Lucy were now zero. Probably less, a terrifying negative value a great distance from zero. I had flunked with women before—had come on too strong, or inadvertently insulted them, and they had cut me dead, called me a prick, stormed off, whatever. And it had been nothing: a ping-pong ball against a suit of armor. So why did I feel profoundly affected by the collapse of this passing and not long-sought flirtation? I had a sense of some distant and serious damage being done—the deep vibration though a ship’s hull that says it has struck something and is taking on water, felt long before the decks begin to list and the passengers head to the lifeboats.
In previous times I could have contented myself with anonymity. When I was not known, my failures and foul-ups were not noted or remembered—I could simply disappear again. I was a meaningless part of the background. But Lucy remembered me, and I had been remembered at the fair. For the first time, I suspected I might have a reputation, and I suspected it was not a desirable one. My ability to live as I pleased, with no consequences, was compromised.
I dried myself and put on one of the dressing gowns that hung by the bathroom door. It was not too late to order something comforting from room service—perhaps a dessert—but the idea felt somehow effeminate, so I resisted it. I switched on my laptop, intending to write an email to Adam telling him what had happened today. But the room’s WiFi signal was perilously weak. The computer would connect to the Internet and show a few tantalizing signs of loading up websites—then the progress icons would slow to a crawl and eventually stop altogether with an apologetic bubble-message stating that the connection had been lost. Once I had repeated these steps three or four times, there was no sign of improvement and I had little inclination to persist.
Instead, I took a half-bottle of red wine and a glass from the minibar and lay on the bed, sipping mindlessly through the television channels. Sitcoms and crime dramas gave way to telecasino operations, home shopping and sign-language repeats of documentaries. My surfing soon beached on a music channel, about the only source of brightness or novelty on the digital dial as the hour got later. I had seen the news many times over already, the same stories in their constant loop, a spectacle so excruciatingly tedious that I found myself yearning for a major disaster—a natural catastrophe somewhere with a high incidence of cameras per head, an ornate political scandal, an episode of histrionics on the financial markets. So I watched the music channel, sound low. Men and women, mostly women, strutted and thrusted and shimmied. I considered that perhaps my restlessness had an angle of unrelieved tension, and turned my mind to the hotel’s on-demand “adult” television services, their promise of rapid gratification in return for a discreetly worded but substantial addition to your room bill. The menu was reached via the welcome screen, and I passed again the hotel’s personalized greeting, its forecast for tomorrow’s weather and its helpful hints about how to book a business suite. Once I found the adult pay-TV options, past the feature films and the kids’ programs, the titles did nothing but stir my self-loathing, and I returned to the less penetrative displays of secondary sexual characteristics in the music videos.
The half-bottle of wine seemed very parsimonious, disappearing in less than two glasses, and it made way for two whisky miniatures. I thought that after a drink I might begin to be ready for sleep. But although the day had taxed me greatly, it did not seem to have tired me. There was, I believed, no original thought left to have about my various confrontations, but still they turned over and over in my mind, certain phrases bubbling back up, certain moments replaying in a loop. I formulated snappy and witty rebuttals, unanswerable comebacks; I scripted and rehearsed future encounters. And this ceaseless, futile mental activity disgusted me even as I felt myself unable to stop indulging in it. The alcohol had done some valuable work, dissolving the worst of my embarrassment and regret. Consequences mattered less now. But rather than giving me peace, instead I felt a rising anger: anger at the event director for his ruse, anger with Lucy for making an unnecessary scene and for not giving me an opportunity to apologize, anger at Maurice for his thick-headed insouciance in the face of everything, for blundering into the wrong moment again and again and for generally being Maurice. It was extraordinary that anyone
so shambolic could thwart me so effectively and consistently. But more than anyone I was angry at myself.
Meanwhile, the party downstairs and the other functions around the hotel were breaking up. Guests returned noisily to their rooms, bumping along the corridor and slamming doors. Some travelled in pairs and groups, intent on sex or combined raids on minibars, or simply stretching out the joy of boozy togetherness to the ultimate possible second, before they reached their doors and had to part. Maybe they were using their mobile phones, too, drunkenly texting wives and girlfriends, or husbands and boyfriends, and setting plans for tomorrow with colleagues and lovers—I guessed this, because the clock radio by my bed began to trill with interference, burbling and bleating along to some imperceptible traffic in the air around it. I braced for my mobile phone to ring or receive a text, but nothing came and the noise continued. Muting the TV, I leaned over to see if the radio had a volume control or standby button I could use to shut it up. Between its electronic yelps and growls, there was a velvety purr of static—so low it could barely be heard—with silvery variation. I ceased my fiddling with the controls to focus on this background layer. It suggested the faintest trace of music or speech coming from the speakers, even with the radio turned off. Was that possible? I had heard speakers pick up taxi radios before, delivering a short burst of dispatch communications, but that was when they were turned on—could the same happen when the radio was turned off? Was it truly off? It was plugged into the mains, to power its bright red display. Every time I felt I was getting close to the subliminal pattern, almost identifying a tune or a voice, another bout of loud static chatter broke in and I lost it. Frustrated, I reached under the bedside table and yanked the plug from the wall.
Nothing happened. The clock showed the same time as before, and continued to natter and whisper. How was that possible? A backup battery, perhaps, to keep the alarm set through any power outages—shrewd design, but was it plausible? How long could it stay on? The muttering had developed a sinister, repellent aspect. It dredged up a memory—I had heard it before, that morning. It had woken me, intruding into a dream, and dissolving before I could grasp it.
Uneasiness grew in me. I unmuted the television and watched, trying to enthral myself with the seedy commercial pop videos, and ignore the treacherous, whispering device beside me. But their appeal was waning. The drink had made me woozy, but still not sleepy. Perhaps if I turned off the TV and lights and got under the covers, sleep would come. A formless, visceral distaste adhered to that idea—I didn’t want to go to sleep, I had to cancel my sense of being a victim with some kind of action. I wanted to do something—anything—with an urge that felt almost animal. Returning to the bar was out of the question—it would probably be closed now, while the staff arranged the restaurant in preparation for breakfast tomorrow. If by some miracle it was open, there would be stragglers from the party down there, and I had no intention of amusing them with a ghostly reappearance. Still, I had to get out—this room, which had beckoned so hospitably through the day, was tightening around me. While it had been so pristine on my return from the conference, I had now sullied it with my presence—clothes scattered abou t, condensation in the bathroom, a clutter of empty miniatures and cans on the bedside table. And the squalls of static from the clock radio continued to trouble me, with their suggestion of a pervasive disquiet in the invisible spectra, and their indifference to mains power.
Some actions could be taken. In a burst of energy, I rose from the bed, gathered up the empty bottles and cans and dropped them in the room’s bin. I hung up the towel I had used, wrung out the flannel and folded away my clothes. I opened the room door and left the dry-cleaning bag in the hall for collection, along with the tray and plate that had carried my room-service sandwich.
The corridor was empty. There was no sound from the direction of the lifts. Perhaps everyone had already decided what bed they were going to spend the night in and had taken to it. Other trays and other bags were left outside other rooms.
Faced with the gathering quiet of the hotel, sleep spreading through it, conquering room after room, I would normally have wanted to succumb, to spend my last waking moments revelling in the thought that I was one among many solitary sleepers, all subject to the same gentle lullaby from the air conditioning, recycling our slowing, deepening breath. Tonight, agitated and unready to rest, I wanted to participate in that shared experience in another way: by being out in it, awake and alert, moving and thinking amid general still oblivion. I thought of the urban fox, busy in slumbering streets, an outsider but blissfully independent. I dressed quickly, just a shirt and trousers. Now was also the hour of the redheaded woman—or it had been yesterday, at least. Was that only yesterday? It seemed so much longer ago; again she was receding from reality to an afterimage.
Her hour. The first time I saw her, that shining memory, she had been sleepwalking. It had been a recurring problem, she told me last night, particularly in unfamiliar surroundings like hotels. But she had overcome it. Way Inn hotels were now so familiar to her that her night-time expeditions had ceased. Maybe she retained some affection for the night, when the corridors were quiet and the paintings could be found and photographed in peace, and that was what had drawn her down to the bar yesterday, and might lead her to be out tonight. Grasping at straws, yes, I knew that—the chances of just happening upon her in the corridor were a million to one against, especially past 1 a.m. Still, however infinitesimal the odds, they were better than zero. And all I wanted to do was walk.
I stepped into the corridor and let the door of my room close behind me, a task it completed with a certain grace, slowing as it narrowed the distance to the jamb, braked by a hidden mechanism. They would not slam by themselves, these doors; left to its own devices the hotel was quiet, considerate, unobtrusive. Normally, on leaving my room, I would turn left to go to the lifts and stairs—in fact, I would do that in all circumstances, like most guests. I never had any reason to turn the other way. There was nothing down there, only other rooms, other doors. But I turned right.
The black doors I passed—one on my left, then one on my right, then one on my left—gave my pace a satisfying rhythm, and I turned my saunter into a brisk stride. Ahead, the corridor terminated in a fire door, which I pushed through. It opened directly onto a T-junction, obliging me to choose a direction again. From what I knew of the hotel’s geography, a left turn would make me complete half a circuit around the Zen courtyard—if I followed it with another left, then another left, I would arrive at the lifts and stairs. So I turned right again; the other, unexpected direction.
The corridor turned to the left, and I with it. I tried to picture the hotel in my head, as a model or a wireframe graphic I could manipulate and manage—it was, from the portion I saw from the outside, a long rectangle in plan, its shorter edge facing the motorway and the service road, its bulk stretching back into the dreary fields. The courtyards were essential to bring light into its inner rooms—but how many courtyards were there? Two, I thought, making the whole layout a figure-of-eight. But already the hotel seemed a little larger than I anticipated—there could be three courtyards, arranged in a line or a triangle pointed at the road.
No one else was about, but I was not alone. Most of the doors I passed were silent, but from behind some came the sound of conversation or laughter, or a television with the volume higher than it should be at this time of night; in at least one room avid, gasping intercourse was taking place. It was, relative to the dead quiet of hotels at other times, a fairly lively night—I fancied it would have been possible to guess that a party had taken place even if I had not known about it. Many rooms had trays and dirty crockery left outside, evidence of earlier meals or midnight snacks; in some, elaborate feasts had been consumed, their remains piled on trollies. DO NOT DISTURB signs hung from many door handles. Many people had clearly had a much better day than I had had. Bitterness welled inside me.
Another fire door; beyond it a bank of windows overlooking a
second courtyard, deeper in the building. Weedy security lights only hinted at the artfully arranged stones and boulders, aided by the low gleam from the wet surfaces. The lights’ reflection in the black of the pond danced and scattered, broken by the falling rain. Not even diehard smokers out at this hour. The hotel above this sodden yard was no more than a grim implication of bulk, its tinted windows patches of thorough blackness in a dark that otherwise would have appeared total.
I kept moving, left, right, right again, trying to randomize my route as I did at the fair, to defy any logical path and experience the building naturally, like a forest, without desire, without rational choices. More inscrutable black doors, continuous indirect lighting, halogen spots on the omni-similar abstract art, painting after painting. Thank God there was no single artist shouldering the job of supplying wall candy for Way Inn. Just this one hotel would ruin his wrist and his eyesight; many more hotels would open while physiotherapy restored him to health. A new Way Inn in Hefei, in Curitiba, in Sharjah, all needing his inimitably imitable visions in shades from chocolate to eggshell. Again his fingers would have to twist around the ragged brush. But the redhead had said they had found a way to industrialize the process, to collectivize it—of course. Looking at the hotel, seeing its size, it quickly became clear how mistaken the impression of a single artist was. No one man or woman could supply the hotel.
Big hotel, really big hotel. I kept my pace up, moving powerfully, covering distance, and still I felt I was in new territory. A big container for people, forever waiting to be filled. This was only the start, the motorway axis was meant to grow, grow, grow—more flights into the airport, more vehicles on the roads, more visitors at the MetaCenter. Even in hard times, a global corporation like Way Inn knew that growth could always be found somewhere. That was what the redheaded woman was employed to find: places to grow. Business leaving other areas had to go somewhere . . . people sloshing around the world, needing a vessel for their night hours. At any given time, five hundred thousand people are in the air, in planes. Five hundred thousand. At all times. Half a million. A city. This population is stable, distributed globally. How many people in hotels, worldwide, at any one time? Many more: a super-city, a megalopolis, its doors always open, its lights always on; twenty-four-hour room service, check in at all times; people sifting through without end. Its population peaks with the passage of night—an empire on which the sun forever sets. These cities are only invisible because most of their inhabitants stay for just a short time, a night or two. They never really stopped to think of their presence in this invisible city. You had to stay longer for that.