Another hotel acting as a sort of a mock-up or mascot for the whole country, a dollhouse and scale version of a real home that has the bad taste to display it in the parlor, or else leaves it to gather dust in the loft. The new Imperial has diluted its stale, stereotypical character, taken great pains to smooth out a few rough edges here and add in some new ones there, and finally scraped together a semblance of luxury held together with string. It still displays an erratic sort of sense in enjoying it.
And in proffering it. The receptionists’ whispering and typing was becoming endless. I thought about taking out this little notebook, which rarely fails as a last resort — taking notes always gets the staff’s attention. At long last, the machine spat out the magnetic key card for my room. They made no sign of calling anyone to take my bag, and I could swear the two of them handed me the key card together. But that must have been because of their disconcerting double smile.
The hallway on my floor was deserted and silent, as though it were five o’clock in the morning. Or, in fact, as though it were the exact time that it was, since there can be a lot of noise in a hotel at five o’clock in the morning. Not an employee or guest in sight. The only thing you could almost hear was the smell of new carpets thickening the air. I found my door and spent some time trying to discover the right way to put the magnetic card into the slot near the handle. Finally, a little light blinked red before turning green. The door groaned and then, without me pushing it, reluctantly opened an inch. Behind it there was a shadowy space: one of those hotel-room airlocks that serves as a no-man’s-land and offers the luxury of a few square feet of space with no furniture and no name and no function other than to separate the room from the noise of the hallway, at least in theory.
To my left, the door to the bedroom, open just a crack, allowed in enough light to see the bathroom wide open in front of me. A glinting faucet dripped in the darkness. Before I had closed the door to the hallway, I heard a voice inside the room. For a moment I was paralyzed like a burglar caught in the act — an instinct I didn’t know I had and which in any case was misplaced. To my left, something moved in the little entryway’s full-length mirror. In it I could see the inside of the room that was obscured by the cracked door. There was the reflection of a double bed with a beige bedspread, which matched the gray light coming in through a window I couldn’t see.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, near the head of it, was a girl. Attractive, despite some ill-advised makeup. She looked very young to me. She was wearing only a bra and panties. Her hair and skin were the same color as the bedspread. She had her hands in her lap and was gazing down at them with a bored expression. She puffed out her cheeks a little, tapped her feet on the carpet, sighed scornfully; she was going out of her way to signal her boredom, like the child who isn’t really bored.
Out of the corner of her eye, she was following something that was going on at the end of the bed not reflected in the mirror. She wasn’t alone. The bed springs creaked without her moving, and someone — a man, clearly — panted once, twice, three times.
I didn’t know whether to go back out into the hall or come all the way in and demand an explanation. They couldn’t see me, so I took another step forward, still watching the mirror. The girl’s reflection passed out of the frame. Kneeling on the bedspread at the other end of the bed, with his back to the headboard and the girl, was a naked boy. A bit younger than the girl, much darker skin. I couldn’t see his face because he was hanging his head and looking apologetically at his chest; what I could see was his tense forehead, the strain of his furrowed brow. He continued breathing like one preparing for some great exertion, and he ran his hand over his chest with an unfeeling, robotic sort of gesture. Then the girl spoke.
“Why don’t you touch yourself?”
The boy gave a start and looked at her as if he had forgotten she was there.
“OK, OK.”
He concentrated on his hand again and let it slip slowly over his stomach down to his belly button. He seemed unconvinced, but he moved it all the way down to his limp penis, which he shook a few times like a rattle. He shuddered suddenly, tensing his shoulders.
“Fuck, it’s cold in here.”
“Mm-hmm.”
The girl’s “Mm-hmm” was deeply resigned, as though they had performed this exchange a thousand times; as though she had spent her life in that room, in her underwear, listening to people complain of the cold. I assumed she was arching her eyebrows and nodding with an affectation of sardonic solemnity, but to know for sure, I would have had to look away from the boy’s face. She must have liked the air of a woman of the world that her “Mm-hmm” lent her, because she repeated it.
“Mm-hmm.”
He started to pant again and resumed his task, in vain. The next time he let out a groan, the girl joined him in it.
“OK, what’s up?”
“I don’t know, man, why don’t you help me?”
“Come on, you know we’ve talked about this. No, I’m not going to, you have to do it yourself. Then we fuck.”
“But I can’t get hard.”
“So watch the movie.”
The girl suddenly adopted the tone of an older sister.
“One second, hold on, I’ll turn the volume up.”
I could hear her looking for something next to the bed, things falling onto the carpet. I didn’t dare change position in order to turn and look at her. I started to get scared they would see me. The idea of going into the room, looking shocked, and claiming what was rightfully mine had disappeared of its own accord. I ought to have gone down to reception. To tell the truth, I don’t know if I stayed for fear of making noise as I went out or because I wanted to see and know more. It seemed I could get away with waiting a little longer; if the boy or the girl got up, I would have time to go out into the hallway and close the door before they saw me.
“Great, now I can’t find the remote.”
The boy said nothing. He was busy massaging his genitals with both hands. He did it carelessly — in a strangely clumsy way, as though he had never had to touch them before. Suddenly, a chorus of moans over some ludicrous music burst into the silence: the unmistakable soundtrack of a porn movie.
“Oh. There. There. Oh.”
I realized I was smiling as I stood there in the entryway. A companionless smile is always a false one. I probably wanted to lighten my mood, or even the mood of the entire scenario — given the stimuli on offer, I wasn’t surprised that the boy was having trouble getting an erection.
“Turn that down, the whole hotel’s gonna hear it.”
“OK, OK, wait a sec.”
The moans and the music cut out just as a gruff, unconvincing voice was joining the ensemble.
“Yeah. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yeah.”
The boy was looking at the screen. He must have been right next to the door to the entryway, and for a moment, I thought he could see me through the wood; my heart thumped, and I felt my throat tighten. But no — what the boy was looking at through the crack was his own image in the mirror. Apparently, that worked better than the mechanical panting from the movie. His reluctant penis began to show signs of life. He turned a little to face his reflection full on. This boy, I thought at that point, is seeing exactly the same thing as me and is being turned on by exactly the same thing that I’m looking at without being turned on: his own image cast back at him by this mirror in the middle of this dark, little room. It was the image that my own reflection — the wrinkled back of my sports jacket — would replace if I were to take another step forward.