Hotel Verona

Amnesiac lost in a hotel room

                I woke up.  Knocking at the door.  Who?  It's stuffy in here.  My body has red rashes all over it, and my skin is clammy--probably mold in the room.  Dusty.  The door must have remained locked and undisturbed for years before I rented it.  It's a nice, odd thought to believe you're the first of your generation to see a place.

                I edged myself out of bed and shuffled across the room to its one window.  Chips of paint flew out in all directions as I forced it open, breaking the painted-over seam.  I stuck my head out into the night air and inhaled deeply; hundreds of errant paint chips rushed straight into my gaping maw, settling somewhere deep within my innards.  Hopefully there's some lead in this paint.  The ash left on the windowsill by some previous occupant caught a gust of air and flew to the world outside like a million baby spiders.  Smiling, I watched them rise up to the orange and purple sky.   Knocking again, louder this time.  Won't answer.  No.

                Nine floors below, a cracked sidewalk snaked around the edges of the building.  Around dusk one would expect the path to be swamped with people coming home from work... today is no different.  Nine floors below, the countless anonymous jostled for the privilege of some temporary place within the congestion.  The noise and the clamor of the world outside began to make my head feel dizzy; I felt my muscles slacken and my body go numb.

                A sour feeling began to rise up in my stomach.  I'm told I've been experiencing extreme vertigo like this ever since the car crash.  I closed my eyes and counted backwards from ten.  Nine.  Eight.  Seven.  Six.  Fi-... my legs shot out from under me and my spine straightened out like a yardstick; I fell backwards into the room, retching, and crumpled to the floor.

***

                Waves of nausea washed over me.   I pushed myself up off the floor and, spying a sink across the room,  began to make my way to it.  There was barely enough time to get there before my stomach unleashed its contents.  I leaned over the basin and spat out rosy paint chips and green bile into the kitchen sink.   Circles spun around in my eyes, and from deep inside my belly a miserable groan issued forth towards my lips.

                Car horns and shouts filled the air.  The faucet dripped.  A loud banging at the door now.  I stood there a while listening, head hanging down, hands grasping onto the edges of the basin.  My hair dangled in greasy strings in front of my eyes.  Longer and dirtier than I last remembered.  How long?  I tried to focus on the drip of the faucet to regain some composure.  Soon, I felt well enough inside to shift my weight onto my feet again.

                I made my way back to the corner of the room, over to that big unmade bed in the corner.  I sat down upon the still-damp sheets--must have slept here recently.  I rested my back upon the wall, which served as the headrest for the bed, and grabbed the remote off of the endtable.  I pressed a button and the TV powered on with a hiss.

                Turning from channel to channel, all I got was static, nothing but electric silvery snowstorms on every station.

                All appeared blank until I reached channel six; on it, a fat black woman, red rag in left hand, blotted with it her swollen eyes.  She was standing on the porch of a stately plantation house, sadly waving goodbye towards the camera with her right hand.  Moving away from her and towards me, a unicorn carriage rolled down the dusty road, driven by a young Negro wearing a tophat.

                Inside the carriage, a young white gentleman was sitting next to a waif-like young white lady; she appeared overcome in a virulent yet mannered rapture.  Behind them in the coach several suitcases were piled on top of one another.  The carriage wobbled down the magnolia-lined path.

                The channel began to suck backwards in a snowy haze, disappearing into the recesses of the picture tube...

                On the next channel a McCarthy-a McCarthy-era drama unfolded in glorious black-and-white.  A group of onlookers, all charcoal-faced and dour, sat behind a glass partition.  A priest delivered the convict's last rites from his seat in the front row as a pretty young woman was strapped into the metal seat of an electrocution chair.  The three policemen standing next to her in the death chamber stared forward emotionlessly into the camera.  Their postures were erect as they waited with an executioner's patience for their signal to come from the warden.

                A natural when it came to commanding respect, the warden scanned the crowd like an old Roman Caesar, as if he were checking where each member of the crowd's thumb was tilted before he would issue forth his verdict.

                Before the warden could speak, however, the image began to fade out in a snowy vortex...

                My eyes at this point began to ache within their sockets, eyelids drooping, vision beginning to blur in response.  Everything darkening, sleep coming...

***

                Given enough time, I can remember her face.  It comes in pieces--her straight, red hair, so smooth and cold to the touch; freckled, warm skin that smelt of cucumbers and tea; a soft, rounded earlobe and the fleshy taste of it; the brown, spun cotton coat she wore when it was cold out; the way her voice trembled when she asked a question she knew the answer to; her habit of closing shut her blue eyes when she was happy--and suddenly her face is there, always first in profile, because we were always next to each other, side by side.  Then she turns to me, and smiles, and looks at my eyes, before letting her eyes fall to my mouth; she looks at it as if it were her favorite kind of candy.

                It takes me longer to remember her face when I dream now.  Must focus.  Difficult to.  Can't make head work right.   As time has passed, her features, once so instantly accessible, have become cloudier in my mind's eye.  Each time I dream she stands next to me, but her features are more and more obscured; now when I think of her, her features remain mostly behind a veil of darkness. 

                Focus.

                Her father's house, last year.  I recognize this place.   Long oak table.  Father eyeing me across it,  spooning mashed potatoes on his plate.  Extra gravy.  Calls himself 'Pajamas.'  Weird guy.  We announced our engagement to him that night.  How clumsy the words spilled out--"Marry your daughter."  Felt his eyes burning into me as I spoke.  Scarlet kept her eyes down, on her plate.  I remember those long, pregnant seconds that followed.

                He stands up and walks around the table, then stops behind my chair.  Stands there solidly for a couple of seconds.  Puts his hand on my shoulder.  "Glad to have ya' aboard, son."  Pajamas called me 'Son'--felt a little weird hearing a man I just met call me that word.

                I packed that night and we left early the next morning.  Made it to the edge of town fairly quickly.  I barely saw the church bus come speeding from around the corner as I crossed the intersection.  It slammed into the passenger side like a hammer on a nail.  The last thing I remember is my head hitting the window, hearing it split.

***

                "Claude."  He knocked.  "Claude."  He knocked, again.  "Claude, it doesn't matter.  Claude.  Please."  He banged on the door.

                It doesn't matter, not since the accident.  My mouth maneuvered silently; I said--the only person I've ever loved is dead.  Dead.  She's dead and I'll never remember another damn thing again. 

                The sounds around me were never ceasing: car horns, shouts, dripping faucets, and Pajamas's knocking.

                "I don't want anything from you.  I just want you to open the door and talk to me."

                "Opening doors and talking are two very big things to ask of me right now."  My words inaudible.  Must be too choked up to make sounds.

                I stepped away from the sink, my body swinging from side to side as I made my way again to the window.  Starry-eyed, I opened it again--the blue dots came back again in a swirling rush, rotating round and round like a hundred spinning tops; I got sick, again.

                The puke hit the cement.  From the street, a guy shouted up to me "Get your head back in there!"  To his friend, more quietly, I heard him say "That place is full of dope addicts."

                I leaned forward.  No breeze tonight.  Dead.

                I pulled my head within the room.  The intermittent dripping in the sink still there.  Drip.  Drip.  Drip.  The sounds of the city float in from outside the window.

                "I know you're in there.  I asked at the desk.  I want to talk to you, Claude.  There's a light under the door.  Stop playing."  His knock is hard and quick and exasperated.  "Goddamnit, Jesus, open your door and talk to me."

                My stomach shifts as I push my body up off the floor; around me, the room spins violently.  Nothing left to throw up though.  Lucky, in a way.  I fight through waves of nausea as I bend down to grasp the mug on the floor, my fingers wrapping themselves around its handle independent of one another.  I walk over to the sink and hold the mug under the faucet, then turn the handle to the left.  The pipes creak and stutter-step before water beings to run from the tap.  The mug steadily fills up with the liquid.  It fills up and I take slow, deliberate sips.  Feeling anxious.  I stick my head into the sink and let the water flow through my hair.  Calmer now.  I turn the handle once more, and the steady flow trickles down to mere droplets.  Now or never.

                "It wasn't easy tracking you down.  I called every hotel in five cities.  This is pretty pad, I know, but you'll get through it.  We can get through it together, Claude.  Make it right, somehow.  You know that.  But, we have to talk.  Are you listening?  Just tell me that you're listening."  Pajamas stood silently outside the door waiting for me to answer.

                Make it right, somehow.  In my mind the words were a harsh command.  The sink is a nagging, grating, constant sound that for some reason I could not think of a way to silence.  The insect sound hums and sings and twinkles in my ears.  I realize that the heavy, closed box around my head was the room.  Got to get out.  The room is encased in the density of the world around it, as though in tons of solid concrete; my head is smothered between the walls of the room; my body is lost.  My torso hangs unfeeling out the window.  My eyes blink.  I see only a shadowy blur.  There is a cruel swaying of justice.  The entire mass of all that I knew of the world--indeed, of all worlds--begins to list dizzily.

                "Claude, I can't just stand here.  I know it's wrong, but..."  His voice died.

                "No, there's nothing wrong, Pajamas," I say out loud, and fall forward out the ninth floor window of the hotel.  The dead grey air suddenly lights up and stirs into a bright wind.  An, as I had known it would, the wind holds me up and sings to me, and carries me away.

                Pajamas stands knocking on the wrong side of the door.

 

Author's Note

work in progress...

Reviews

[bluessadmood]

oh this is so nice ,yes ,and it seems its work in progress ,with few more touches
it would look splendid ,i really loved it,tou tell your stories so well,i was really engulfed into reading
it ,its very exciting ,one thing leading to the other,and your description of feeling and surroundings and going
back and forth from the past to the present and back again..all centred on the accident in the bus leading them
he and her ,who she seems was the love of his life,only he was beside her and suddenly all he felt he hit the window
and saw himself then sitting in a room alone ,apperently she could not make..
this was really a very strong deep write,you right through into his psyche and his sufferring..
i really loved this .wonderful work..
lovely write..