Hotel World (3 page)

Is that her name? I asked.

I’m warning you, she said to me through her unopening mouth. I’m only going to tell you this once, remember? We made a deal. Sekonda was the word written on the watch, the name of the type of watch it was. It’s the first word she said to me. Sekonda? like that, with a question mark after it. Mine’s Sekonda too, she said. She turned her hand palm upward and showed me the face of her watch. It had Roman numerals. Then she said: it’ll have to be sent away. It’ll take about three weeks, maybe more. It’ll cost around thirty-five pounds. That’s average, but it could end up costing more, I’ve no way of knowing. You could buy a new watch for less. So do you want me to bother? Yes, I said; I couldn’t think of any other word to say to her. It has to be fixed by specialists, she said. All the Sekonda watches get sent away. We can’t do them here. Yes, I said, yes, and I took the receipt she was holding out
to me and left the shop, the bell above the door clanging behind me.

I leaned on the wall outside the shop with the ringing bell in my ears. I held my sides with my arms. I didn’t know what was the matter with me. I thought how I could go back into the shop and say, your watch is a lot nicer than mine, I’d like one with those Roman numerals, sell me one the same as yours. But I didn’t move. I couldn’t move. I stood outside the shop and listened to my heart ticking. I felt strange, and different.

Then I realized. I had fallen, and it was for the girl in the watch shop. I was happy. And I had a receipt.

(I stretched out on top of her in the room beneath the ground. There wasn’t much space; it was lucky I am so insubstantial. The story had made me forget we were dead. But I looked and I saw the grim shut corners of her mouth folded down.)

So I balled the receipt up in my hand, she said. I kept my hand in my pocket and the receipt warm in my hand. For three whole hours that day I walked the streets as if I owned them, as if I owned the world.

Then I went swimming.

It was a warm day in May; I went to the outdoor pool. You remember the one, where they have the old-fashioned cubicles, wooden doors, the kind that swing open and closed like saloon doors from a western?

We used to love westerns, remember? I said.

No nostalgia, she said. Ground rules. What was I telling you? Yes. Go and look for the swimming pool too.
That day I swam like I’d been born to. I was happy, and the water skimmed me forward. I went back to my cubicle, slung my towel round my neck. I was rubbing my hair dry when I heard something going on, some commotion around the pool. I looked out. Two small boys were pointing at me. Some people were leaning over the side and gesturing down at me from the seats upstairs too. A girl, high up against the sky on the diving board, was watching, people were watching from below and above, all round the pool, even in the pool, leaning up against the edge and blowing water out of their noses; some were laughing. I felt cold run down my back.

But the cold I felt was just water from my hair; they weren’t looking or pointing at me. Of course they weren’t. They were looking at something near me, next to me. I stuck my head out further to see what it was, and this is what I saw.

A middle-aged woman three cubicles along was trying to close the doors on her cubicle. Only, the doors wouldn’t shut. She wasn’t that big a person but the cubicles on the women’s side of the pool are small and her stomach jutted out, holding the doors open. She stepped out and tried going the other way in and the doors still wouldn’t shut. They stayed open on the rump of her behind. So she backed out and tried going in sideways, but it was worse. It looked like she had been doing this to-ing and fro-ing for some time.

I got back down into the water and swam across to the other side. People made way for me, shifted so I could sit
on the side of the pool with my legs in the water and see like them.

I saw like them. Now the woman had given up trying to close the doors and had begun to take her clothes off with the doors open, but there wasn’t enough room in the cubicle for her to lift her arms or bend down so she stood outside it. She took off her shoes. She bent to peel down her tights and we could see the tops of her legs. Someone wolf-whistled. Everybody laughed. She put her arms up above her head to shrug her top off. Her face came out of her clothes, it was red and flustered. She was down to her underwear. We cheered at the swimming-guard who was running round the pool to stop her taking everything off. Another guard picked up her clothes off the tiles. One guard on either side of her, like a police escort for a shoplifter or someone appearing in court, she was escorted out to cheering and clapping. She was barefoot, still wearing her skirt, just her underwear on top. We could see the skin pouched under her arms. A man called at her to cover herself up. I could hear female murmurs of agreement. No room for any water if she got into the pool, never mind room for the rest of us, the man next to me said; he was looking at my wet neck now, and I nodded and smiled because he was flirting with me, and slipped back into the water.

Afterwards everyone round the pool was high. I could hear them as I pulled my own clothes on over skin still so wet that the clothes caught and snagged on it. When I was on my way out several people said goodbye to me, like we
were old friends, like we all knew each other well, had been through something together.

I was lying on top of my bed that night and my little sister was undressing to get into her own bed. She stared at me. What you looking at? she said. I had been looking. I had been gazing, without even realizing, at the shape of her body, at her stomach and the place where her pants covered her, and I had been thinking about what the girl in the watch shop’s body would look like if it didn’t have any clothes on it. It was the first time I had ever, ever thought such a thing, about anyone, and I felt shame in my gut and spreading all up and down my body. Nothing, I said. Well don’t, fucking weirdo, my sister said and turned her back on me to pull her pyjama top on over her head before she unclipped her bra. When she turned round again she wouldn’t look at me, but her face was red, like she was ashamed too. She got into her bed and snapped the light off and we were in the dark.

In the dark I decided to let myself think a little more about the girl. It was a lot easier in the dark. It didn’t feel anywhere near as risky as it did to catch myself thinking about her with the light on. I thought about her until I heard my sister asleep, breathing like breathing was difficult for her.

I knew what my sister would think. I thought about what my parents would think; I could hear them through the wall, breathing. What our neighbours would think; they were breathing through the other wall. What Siobhan and Mary and Angela, and all the boys, all my
friends from going to the pub, would think. What people who knew me would think. What people who hardly knew me or didn’t know me at all would think. What the people at the outdoor pool, for example, if I were to take off all my clothes there in front of them right down to skin and thumping heart, would think.

My heart thumped.

I would go back with my receipt the next day and simply ask for my watch, and the girl would simply take the receipt, find my broken watch, give it back to me, and as she handed it to me over the counter she would simply look up, simply look at me, and see me.

The next day I went back to the watch shop. I stood outside it.

The day after that I went to the watch shop, stood outside it.

I did this for three weeks of working days, including Saturdays. Her day-off varied. Her lunch hour varied. It could be anywhere between half past eleven and four o’clock. Every day of the third week she had her lunch-hour at half past twelve, and every day of that week she opened the door, ringing its bell, waved back to someone still in the shop, let the door swing shut behind her, crossed the pavement, walked over the road, towards me, right to me, and right past me, inches from me. She was beautiful, and she looked straight through me as she passed me as if I simply wasn’t there.

Falling for her had made me invisible.

On my eighteenth day of waiting, I let myself look for
one last time at the brown back of her jacket as she passed. I went home. I shut myself in our bedroom. I folded the receipt up as many times as it would fold, until it pushed against itself in my hand, and I put it in the music box on my dressing table. It was my mother’s, from the sixties, from when she was a girl. When you open it a plastic ballerina unbends, flicks up and revolves on a pedestal; she has one foot gummed on to it. She only has one leg, meant to be two, stuck together. Her arms are set in the shape of a circle. Her two hands are moulded together above her head, her fingers are melted into themselves. A tune plays as she goes round. Lara’s Theme, from Dr Zhivago. It sounds cheap. I forced the folded receipt into the space under the pedestal at the end of her leg. The music stopped when the lid went down and the ballerina folded. I put the box back and got ready to go out. I was in a hurry. It was my first night at a new job.

On my first night a boy working on Room Service said he’d show me the ropes. It was busy, it was the weekend. On my second night we were up on the top floor. It was a Monday. There were hardly any guests up there. I can’t remember his name. He told me the history of the hotel. He had pockets full of replacement drinks for the minibars. We were messing about, sitting on the beds in empty rooms, watching their TVs with the sound down and the subtitles on so nobody would know we were there. It was quite early, about half past ten. He was putting dishes into the dumb waiter. Under the metal
cover someone had left a steak and most of the chips. I ate some of the chips. Don’t do that, he said, I wouldn’t do that if I were you, you’ve not worked here long enough to know where it’s been. I said, I bet you a fiver I can fit myself in there. I took the tray out. I nearly slopped gravy on to the carpet, but I didn’t, I put it down and I climbed inside, I made myself fit it perfectly and I was just bending my head round to say how much he owed me, when.

You know the rest, she said. You were there.

Our broken body at the foot of the shaft. I was there. Wooooo-

hooooo, yes, what I felt, then. That reminded me. How many seconds? I said.

Time’s up, she said. That’s your story. Go away.

But how long exactly? I said again. Can’t you remember how long it took us exactly?

No, she said.

What ropes did he show you? I said. Were the ropes long or short? Did they make any difference to the speed of the fall?

For fuck sake, she said. I’ve told you everything I know.

I was losing her. I tried another tack. You know that swimming pool? I said. Did you ever dive off the top board at that pool? Was it very high? Or the very top boards of other pools? Because that’s it, I reckon, the same wooo-

hooooo only even more so.

Of course I did, she said. You know I did. I was good. I could do double somersaults in the air. Look. This is
getting painful now. Go away. You said you would. I’ve told you. Don’t you have a home to go to? Aren’t you supposed to go to heaven, or hell, or somewhere?

Soon enough, I said (to God knows where).

Sooner the better, she said. I’m tired. Go away. Don’t come back. We’ve no business with each other any more, and she closed like a lid. So I came back up. I left her there, in her sleep, unravelling each of the letters of our shared name and throwing away the little coloured threads that made it no one else’s name in the world.

I want to ask her the name again for the things we see with. I want to ask her the name for heated-up bread.

I have already forgotten it again, the name for the lift for dishes. It has tired me out telling you her story, all you pavement-pressing see-hearing people passing so blandly back and fore in front of the front door of the hotel. I lose the words; like so many chips of granite tapped out of a stone to make the shape of a name, they litter the ground. I came up through the ground. A mouthful of ground would be something, dark and meaty, turfy and stony and pasting the tongue, graining under it and between the teeth like mustard. Or a handful of ground; grassy turf and the layer of earth crumbing down like good cake-mix if you rubbed it between fingers and a thumb, thickening like paint if you ran it through with a little spittle.

If I had spit, or fingers, or a thumb, a hand, a mouth.

You could put ground in your mouth, couldn’t you?

You, yes, you. You have a hand. You could hold the earth
in it. I came up through the earth and I couldn’t keep any of it. I flew over flyovers groaning with the weight of their traffic. I saw rubbished grass round the edges of stations; a dumped fridge; a burnt-out car; a piece of old furniture rotten with rain. I saw the pool open beneath me. It was drained and empty for the cold months. Dark was coming. Old leaves blew in circles down at the deep end.

On both sides the rows of doors rattled, fixed shut for the winter. A sparrow waited till the leaves settled, and hopped about at the bottom of the pool, cocked its head. Nobody there. Nothing to eat.

I have a message for you, I told the sparrow and the empty pool. Listen. Remember you must live.

The top board barely swayed beneath me, troubled by thin air.

Where could I go? Back to the hotel. On my way I saw a wall of faces shifting and falling like water. Here they are: I saw a young woman struggling along a road; she was carrying awkward things. I saw a man on the opened-up roof of a house, white dust all over his hair and bleaching his nose; he had a pencil behind his ear. I saw a line of people; a man with his hands down the front of the skirt of the woman standing with him in the line. He was lifting her up by the groin; they both laughed, they had the faces of happy drunkards. The other people in the line stood between politeness and anger. I saw inside one man’s head; he was considering knives and blood.

I saw an old man with his hands raised after a much
younger man who was driving away in a car full of things. The old man kept one hand in the air till well after the car had gone, then he stood at his garden wall in the birdsong and the nothing. I smelt pastry, faintly. In the cafeteria a woman was sitting at a table reading a newspaper story about a family who had gone on a boat trip and had all but one been eaten by sharks. She read it out loud, severed legs and bitten heads, to the woman behind the counter who was laughing, horrified. Cigarette smoke curled and caught as she laughed, staining her throat. I saw one car in a remote car park in the early evening rain. It had an L on the front and an L on the back, and inside it a boy and a woman thudding against the seats. Ah, love. The full weight of an other. The woman held a clipboard under her arm, her other arm around the boy, who was boiling. Steam rose from them both and slid itself across the windows of the car.