She could be a guest here certainly! More likely, she was meeting friends for a late lunch. A business lunch, she was a woman who belonged to numerous committees. Her father served on corporate boards, he was a trustee of his former university, both her parents were civic-minded, responsible. Only this once she would be unfaithful to her husband, and to her children, it would never happen again.
He, the man, was to be in room 2133. She did not think of him as an individual with a name, she did not think his name to herself, only just he, him. Without apparent haste or agitation she crossed to the bank of elevators, sleek glass cubicles that lifted and fell soundlessly through the immense open space of the hotel’s atrium. At midday the hotel lobby was crowded, festive. There was a convention of hairstylists, another of radiologists. There was recorded harp music. There were terraces of Easter lilies, tulips. Potted ferns the size of small trees. A noisily trickling fountain. Like a woman in a spell she stepped into the glass elevator, she was sucked up into the interior of the hotel as if into a vacuum. Still she was thinking I can turn back at any time.
How distant her other life seemed to her, where she was Mommy.
That morning the children had behaved strangely, as if sensing her mood. She’d laid her hand against their foreheads that seemed slightly overwarm, damp. The little girl had been fretful, uncooperative while being dressed. The little boy had complained of bad dreams. She would keep them home, she thought. For April, it was such a raw wet windy day. She and Ismelda and the children would make Easter eggs as they’d done the year before. Yet somehow she’d hurried them through breakfast, she’d driven them to school as usual. If they came down with colds, if they had fevers that evening, it would be her fault.
Ismelda had been born in Manila, she belonged to an evangelical sect called the Church of the Risen Christ. In her small room on the third floor of the stone house Ismelda played Christian rock music.
He was to be in room 2133. He’d left a message for her just that morning. Breathless she hurried along the corridor. Underfoot was a thick carpet, rosy as the interior of a lung. The far end of the corridor seemed to dissolve in haze. Closed doors, no movement or sound. On the doorknob of room 2133 was DO NOT DISTURB. Hesitantly she knocked on the door. He would not open it, there was no one inside. She was faint with yearning, dread.
The door opened inward, he was there.
He laughed at her, the expression in her face. He spoke words she couldn’t hear. His arms pulled her inside, the door was shut behind her. He wore trousers, a white undershirt. Hair lay in damp dark tendrils on his forehead, like seaweed. The ridge of bone above his eyes was prominent. He was heavier than she recalled, she was trying to speak his name.
…my happiness is my children, my husband. My marriage. My family. My happiness is not myself but…
It was mid-afternoon, the tall windows were open to the sky. A spangle of sunshine like gold coins against the ceiling. He returned from the bathroom, his face was shadowed. He knelt above her. He straddled her. Their skins slapped wetly together. He laughed into her face, his teeth were bared. She began to plead no, I don’t think…He was gripping her throat that was so beautiful. His thumbs caressed the arteries beneath her jaw. Beneath her makeup, her skin was wearing through. She began to move in protest, she was a beautiful scaly snake. She was firm-fleshed as a snake, lithe and pained. She was having difficulty breathing. Her eyes were open and stark showing a rim of white above the iris. Her wristwatch and rings had been removed, as before surgery. Her bracelet. On the table beside the bed. She was lost, she had no idea where she was. Her cries were torn from her, like blows. He was not squeezing her throat, only just caressing, forcibly, rhythmically. He was deep inside her, even as his large hands held her throat, he moved deeper, her body had no defense against him. He was unhurried, methodical. He had been a fighter pilot in an earlier lifetime. As a young man he had dropped bombs onto the earth, onto cities. At a distance he had killed. He had not told her this exactly but she knew. He had not done these things by himself, others had performed with him, he was one of many though he’d been alone in the cockpit of his plane as he was alone now inside his skin. His thumbs released their pressure on her arteries, the relief was immediate and enormous. Breath rushed into her lungs, she could have wept with gratitude. The wish to live flooded into her, she adored this man who gave her back her life. In a flat bemused voice he was saying, You like this. You like this. You like this.
Far above her he regarded her. Her hands tried to reach him but could not. Her fingers were weak, her wrists broken. Still he was inside her, she was impaled upon him as upon a hook that pierced her lower body. Now his hands moved onto her torso, her breasts, as if he were a blind man, curious to see her in this way, in the way of touching, sculpting with his fingers. He ran his hands over her, he gripped her breasts as if to test the resiliency of her flesh. Her breasts ached with sensation, the nipples felt raw, as if she’d been nursing, hungry mouths had been feeding from her, tearing at her. She was writhing, darkness opening at the back of her skull. She understood then why she had no name for him, why he had not once spoken her name. When she’d begun to speak his name, at the start of their lovemaking, he’d covered her mouth with the heel of his hand, lightly yet in warning: No.
Beyond the tall windows whose drapes had been pulled back the sky was shot with a vivid chemical light. Below was the river, invisible from where they lay, so chopped by wind you could not have said in which direction it flowed. Her eyeballs shifted upward, a death had come over her brain. She saw only a portion of her lover’s face, the glisten of oily sweat on his forehead. Only a portion of the ceiling where shimmering water reflected, live-seeming as microorganisms. How ragged her breath was, short and frayed like cloth that has been ripped! As if she’d been drowning, the man had saved her. No one had brought her to such a place before. He had brought her there as if by chance, negligently. The knowledge was crushing to her.
She heard moans, whimpers. She heard a woman’s choked sobs. He laughed at her, there was little tenderness in him.
Still he observed her, curiously. As a pilot might observe the ground far below, at a distance at which everything is in miniature, inconsequential. At such a distance there are no individuals. No cries can be heard. She could not bear it, this distance. She reached for him, he gripped her wrists and brought her arms down, spread outright beside her head, so she was helpless. He moved into her, she began to shout, guttural cries that scraped like gravel against her throat. She was a sinewy snake, every inch of her flesh quivering, her skin a damp scaly glisten. He’d pulled a pillow free of the tangle of bedclothes, it must have been caprice, he must have miscalculated, he lowered the pillow over her sweaty face, her anguished eyes and opened mouth, he was pumping hard between her spread thighs as if there was a fascination in him, what he might do to her, the woman, what was emerging between them in this place. Desperately she pulled at his hands, his wrists that were too thick for her fingers to close about, there were hairs on the backs of his hands, wiry hairs on his wrists, she was blinded by the pillow, she was frantic to breathe. Now her body, in which her soul was mute, dazed, swollen tight against her skin like a balloon blown nearly to bursting, began to struggle for its life. The man held her fixed, she was impaled upon him, a great sinewy snake helpless beneath him, the heavy pillow seemed to enclose her head, she was being suffocated. Tendons stood out in her neck, her arteries swelled. She lost consciousness, in a moment she was gone.