“Well, I’ll see you later, then?” Neil says, beginning his slow approach, though he still doesn’t know just where he’s going.
“Hold up, I’ll come with you,” Mason says, rolling his black suitcase behind him.
“Sure, great,” Neil smiles.
Waiting for the elevator, they find that they’re both on the fifteenth floor. They watch the numbers overhead as they light up one by one.
“Oh check it out— this is one of those hotels that has no thirteenth floor. I didn’t know that was still a thing.”
“This hotel was built in the fifties, if I remember correctly,” Neil says. “It was a thing then.”
“No shit?”
“This was where a lot of Motown artists always stayed when they passed through here— before it was bought out.”
“Oh yeah? How do you know this stuff?”
Neil shrugs and gives Mason a weak half-smile, and keeps watching the numbers as they pass twelve and go straight to fourteen. When they land at fifteen, Neil makes sure to get out first, mildly annoyed as Mason keeps walking right alongside him.
“It’s gonna be a good time, man,” Mason says, stopping at his door, “but don’t get too wasted tonight— ‘The Tao of the Sale’ is at 8:00 a.m. Hey, see you down there.”
Neil nods back to him and laughs, though nothing’s funny. It just comes out, some kind of hiccup of good cheer. He continues on to his own room, feeling suddenly odd about being so high up. The windows he can see at the far end of the hall don’t look out at anything. It’s just grayish white sky. The hallway is so wide, and he drags his feet a little against the brown and darker brown checked carpet, spotting stains as he goes. He imagines for an instant that the whole hotel is empty, that it’s just him rattling through the arid halls.
When he gets to his own room, he throws his things on the floor and sits on the tightly made hotel bed, across from an abstract portrait of a violin, its pieces broken apart in right angles, but hovering over a hazy ochre backdrop. He wonders how much something like that costs. Did it come from some big box store, from a bin next to the picture frames, or is there an artist somewhere who’s cornered the dull hotel art market? He gets up and examines the painting for a signature, but finds none.
Over the bed is another one, a portrait of some fishing village done in the Impressionist style, little blotchy fishermen by a big blotchy sea, surrounded by smudgy little huts, the whole tableau bathed in the persistent sunlight creeping in through the Venetian blinds. He notices it isn’t centered, and lifts up an edge with his index finger, finding a jagged circle of chipped paint on the wall behind it.
He’s hit with a wave of fatigue, and lies down on the bed. He grabs the end of the bedspread and drapes it over himself, rolling up like a caterpillar. In the darkness, he breathes in its smell. He saw an exposé on TV late one night, where they passed blacklights over the bedding at several top hotel chains, revealing every variety of bodily fluid in harsh neon splatters. They found dust mites in the pillowcases, bed bugs teeming under the mattresses. The host wore rubber gloves.
He sits up quickly and checks his watch, then pulls the event schedule out of his folder. He has fifteen minutes before the “Sales Strategy Symposium.” He’ll be expected to talk at this one, so he needs time to get into the right mode. He goes over to the mirror above the dresser and looks at himself. He smiles, then tones it down to a half-smile.
“Hi,” he mouths. “Good, good,” “Good to see you,” “Is that right?”
He raises his eyebrows and tilts his head. “Huh,” he mouths, “that’s something.” “Me?” “Oh, good, good.”
He clears his throat then and leans back a little, folding his arms. Out loud, he says, “Well I’ve always believed that the key to success is to sell the buyer’s ideas back to him.”
He shifts his stance. “That’s very true,” he says to the mirror, “but how do we sustain the buyer’s enthusiasm once we’ve built it to the desired level?”
He closes his eyes and rolls his neck back and forth. He looks back to his reflection. He stands up straight, puffing out his chest a little, then smiles again, mentally complimenting himself on the whiteness of his teeth. He locks his focus onto the reflection of his pupils with some vague idea of fishing himself out. When his own gaze starts to feel too hard, he closes his eyes and visualizes his body filling up with bubbles, light as air. With each breath, he visualizes the bubbles rising up toward the top of his head. He smoothes his hair, pops a breath mint, and makes for the door.
Neil has stayed in hundreds of hotels, and the bedding always feels fresh and blank, and smells like the package it came in. There’s not a thing wrong with it. Why, he wonders, is everyone always on the lookout for something to be wrong?
SUNDAY
Summer has barely begun, and already, the air is growing thick. Iris lies by the rooftop pool of Mallory’s apartment complex. This is a ritual they have carried over from their college days, only nobody had a pool then, so they would sneak into hotels posing as guests. But there was no sneaking or posing necessary. No one ever questioned them. No one ever said a word, and why should they— to a couple of girls at the pool? Now they lie on their backs, virtually synchronized in their cigarette drags and iced coffee sips. Up here, the sun feels closer, the air more molten. They are the only ones here, ten stories above the afternoon bustle.
“Oh hey,” Mallory says, “did you ever go out with that guy? The one from my party?” She sits up and twists her wet hair into an intricate knot, then lets it fall forward over one shoulder.
“Who?” Iris asks, half listening. Her eyes are closed, and she concentrates on the orange wash behind her eyelids.
“You know…” Mallory says, easing back down into her chair.
“Oh. Yeah.”
“You sound enthusiastic. What was the matter with him? Didn’t like the sound of his footsteps? Thought his teeth were too straight?” Mallory cackles and takes a drag.
“I don’t know. I got sort of drunk and I don’t remember what I said to him. I think I might have been a little mean.”
“He said you were ‘cryptic’.”
“So you already knew. You weren’t even asking a question.” Iris opens her eyes and squints into the light.
“Sorry, I just thought that was a funny thing for him to say. Did you like him at all?”
Iris shrugs and tosses her cigarette butt into her emptied cup, the ice hushing its spark. “I don’t remember.”
Mallory laughs. “That’s what I’m gonna start doing,” she says. “Any time someone asks me a question. Feign amnesia to shut people up.” She smiles and slips down further into the chair.
“I’m not feigning,” Iris laughs, “I couldn’t name one thing we talked about.”
Mallory sighs and rolls over onto her side, facing away from Iris. “That’s some talent,” she yawns. “You must work at it.” A minute later, she begins to snore softly, a low whispered growl.
Iris closes her eyes and flirts with the idea of sleep, the sun pushing its way under her skin and massaging her bones. Her every joint bursts with dozy warmth. She feels the sun’s rays as one solid mass that pushes her untanned flesh further into the deck chair, causing her body to sink and spread, liquid contained only by a black bikini. She takes off her sunglasses and gets up out of the chair, and the sun turns its attention elsewhere.
She steps into the pool, heated so there is hardly any difference between air and water. It is just a change in texture, a hazy barrier between dry and slick. When she is all the way in, she drifts toward the center where the water is deepest, and leans her head back, letting her legs float to the surface. Then she turns over and pushes her way down to the bottom. She stays down there, stroking her fingers against the soft concrete, bobbing up an inch, then pushing down again. She listens to the underwater echo of nothing— nothing out nothing in. When she can’t hold her breath any longer, she floats up and emerges with a subdued splash. She pushes her hair back, and watches as an elderly woman enters the pool area with two small boys trailing behind her. They are engaged in water gunplay, babbling threats in their tiny animal voices. The woman, in a floral, skirted swimsuit, spreads a towel out on one of the deck chairs and lies down, placing a giant straw hat over her face. Iris wonders then if the boys are with her at all, as they drop their weapons and hop into the shallow end. She climbs out the other side and drips her way over to the edge of the roof. She leans against the concrete enclosure and wrings her hair out over the edge, hoping to see the water hit the sidewalk, but it gets lost somewhere along the way, caught in the air. She parts her lips slightly and takes a deep breath, but she doesn’t feel like she’s taken anything in.