206 is identical to the room next door, except that now the bedroom is to the right of the entryway. The beige bedspread; the gray privacy curtains that make what’s left of the day — already limping to a close outside — even grayer. As it starts to rain again, it could be any time of day: seven in the morning or in the evening. And this could be almost any place, too; seen from up here on the second floor, filtered by the blinds, the little strip of street through the windowpanes could be a nondescript street from any one of a thousand cities. A neutral setting, you could say, for the adventures of our protagonist.
It remains to be seen, of course, what those adventures are — if they occur at all, that is. And who their protagonist will be, since this isn’t the first time I’ve felt like I’m a background character with no lines, hovering around the main action, out of frame.
As I followed the bellhop, I went past my neighbors’ door. It looked innocent enough. Not a single sound disturbed the ethereal peace of the hallway. And I can’t hear anything now, either. Only the partition wall separates the pillow on my bed from the one in the next room over, but it must be good and thick, because no pornographic pants or flesh-and-blood voices are coming through it. As though there were nobody on the other side, or perhaps nothing at all; as though the set, or the world, ended at this side of the dividing wall.
I confess that after the bellhop left without saying a word or waiting for a tip, I climbed onto the bed and put my ear to the wall. Then I did something I have only seen in movies: I took a glass from the bathroom — an identical glass and an identical bathroom to the ones I had glimpsed next door. I placed the rim against the wall and pressed my ear to the base. To little effect: just the gravelly breath of the plumbing over the hotel’s heartbeat, which palpitated up from the depths of the boiler room.
Perhaps I had gotten it wrong and they don’t really do it like that in the movies. Perhaps, for the trick to work, the glass has to have a little hole in the bottom. In another hotel, or at this same hotel in another time, it would have had one — for the water to drain out of after you’d used your toothbrush.
I felt ridiculous, and I sat down to write in this notebook, on this very low, extremely uncomfortable little table. There is no sign of a desk or a stationery set — international nomads have no need for them. Scanning back, I see that my notes are longer than I thought. I don’t usually take many while I work, and I haven’t brought a spare notebook; this one is already half filled, and I’m not sure whether I would prefer that everything fit in here, or if it would be better to run out of pages in the telling of everything that happens.
If anything does happen, that is. I’m hungry; I must have missed dinnertime. I’ve just eaten a small chocolate that was wrapped in silver paper and worth its weight in gold. The little fridge is as rancid as the peanuts inside it: a relic of the old hotel lurking behind the metal facing that keeps the minibar cool and brings it into line with the “cool” feel of the room. It has made me think of the photos I had seen in the elevator, above the control panel. The old lounges and dining rooms were oozing with saturated colors, decked out in all their pomp and in dubious circumstances: gathered curtains, toothpick holders, shellfish crackers. In one, complete with lurid yellow rice, larger-than-life local delicacies were laid out on wheat and grapevine stalks. The gums of the maîtres d’s holding the suckling pig helped place it all somewhere in the seventies — more or less when I must have come to this hotel for the first time. If the memory isn’t in fact borrowed from another hotel or concocted altogether.
These photos have also survived the refurbishment, but they’ll take them down as soon as there’s money to outfit the elevator in the same metal facing as the minibar. They’re odd, these reservoirs of time that sometimes pool up. Care must be taken, as I know only too well, not to venture too far into these lakes grown out of wasted hours; just like in the comics, shark fins will sometimes appear, and we can find ourselves being swallowed up.
Across from the bed, next to the door into the entryway, there is an immense television, quite flat. (Even I, who don’t have a clue about these things, know that there are much flatter ones. But that’s no one’s fault — there’s always going to be a flatter one on the market.) It, too, must be identical to the one in the other room. And the same mirror shows me my reflection from the entryway, through the door that I prefer to leave wide open for now. It looks as though it opens onto a neighboring room, where my exact double is living his hotel life.
I turned on the television, laid down on the bed, and flicked through the stations until I arrived at the inevitable porn channel. For ten seconds, a few women struck acrobatic poses and threw up a chorus of moans. Then the screen went dark, and some green lettering glowed mournfully: This is a pay per view station. For more information, please contact reception.
That’s what my neighbors had done, of course: pay to view. But this small flicker of detective-like success is too little, too late. It’s doubtless the first and last part of this adventure that doesn’t look like it’s going to go anywhere. I thought about calling reception and paying to watch what they’re watching, or perhaps will watch, or at any rate have watched in room 206. But I was put off by the certainty of sensing that double smile, which really would be conspiratorial this time, coming down the line from the two receptionists.
And there is one thing I absolutely refuse to do, and that is to stake myself out in the hallway. It could take hours, and I hate waiting hours for things that aren’t scheduled to happen at any particular time and may never happen at all. It’s possible no one would go into or come out of the room next door until noon tomorrow at the earliest. I drank a whiskey, neat, out of my novice-spy glass — I, who never drink at this time of day. It was a bad idea and it went down badly; now I can feel the beginnings of a headache that an aspirin alone won’t take care of. Perhaps my experiment is working — I feel, or perhaps I find myself obliged to feel, an imitation of that nostalgia for country, city, and home that the man who has traveled thousands of miles and is not sure he will return feels. And now what? Now, nothing: I’ve said it loud and clear and I’m writing it down here to see if I can make the disappointment I’ve felt since I came into this room just a little bit more ridiculous.
If nothing else, I will do my professional duty. I will conduct an inspection of closets, examine all complimentary soaps and shampoos. Perhaps I’ll get up, walk around the hotel a bit, take a few notes that might be useful — before I fill this notebook with rather more useless notes like these. I’d decided not to bring any books, and if I stay in the room, I’ll run the risk of finding myself reading the brochures on the bedside table: guided tours of the city; laundry service; a menu of sheets in case I want to choose the color or even the scent of the ones I will sleep on. Apparently, offering this contrivance of company to those who travel light and alone is in vogue.
~ ~ ~
The Hotel Life
Expert relaunch, or a patch-up bursting at the seams? This week, our critic investigates the new look of an ageing classic. Spend a night with him in the old Imperial Hotel and see if it is truly rejuvenated.
THE BULL BY THE HORNS
Or, “The Roof Over Your Head”. I’ll admit that I was about to use that title for this review of the (nearly) brand-new remodeling of the good old Imperial.