hotel stay

Hotel hallway. Mirrors at the end of each corridor. Their bevelled edges catch the light from the chandelier-style light fixtures overheard, creating rainbow prisms as I walk to my room door. Maybe mirror should be spelled mirrorrim.

Hotel hallway at night. Silent, muffled stretch of road. Strangers housed on either side. Nothing is going to happen here.

Keycard in the door. Always a tiny little thrill to see that green light go on. It's going to open for me!

Sitting on the edge of the bed. Too early to go to sleep, but nothing else to do. I could read, but I don't want to. Tired of words. Usually at home I look forward to solitude, but not when it's enforced on me like this, by reason of being alone in a strange place. Cut off.

Muffled clunks and bumps from below, and the ceaseless susurrus of the heating system, which is, listening for a while, actually composed of two distinct sounds: a pure airstreamy flow, and a lower, more rattley undersound with punctuation, like a muttering voice.

What are those clunks and bumps from below? Enthusiastic lovers? No. Too mechanical a sound, too regular (but with a chuckle I'm reminded of the couple I heard in the room next to mine one night in another hotel, the gushing repetition of each other's names "Oh, ---! Oh, ---!")

I go the bathroom to brush my teeth. Flick on the buzzing fluorescent. Not my bathroom. Anyone's bathroom.

Cut off here from my world. Hotel room as transit state. Not a house, not an apartment, because really all it is is a bedroom. Anyone's bedroom. The only thing that changes is the one sleeping in the bed.

In bed. Reaching to turn off the light. Remembering waking up in a hotel room in Beijing not knowing where I was. During sleep had completely forgotten I was thousands of miles from home. Woke up in pitch dark. Where the hell am I? Which in a terrifying way was really "who am I?"

Click. Bedside light off. Lying on back facing up, beneath starchy sheets that don't seem to know me, or like me very much. The clunks and bumps still rising from below.

I think this will be a long night.