Like the hotel and the whole city, the movie theater was putting off remodeling for now; the moment for it to be chopped up into a multiplex was still to come. In the hospital-green lobby hung posters for unconvincing movies. It smelled of the shriveled chocolate bars at the snack counter, and a toilet cistern dripped. I felt better. There was no sign of an usher; I ducked into the din of explosions and screams coming from the theater.
There weren’t many people, so I could choose my seat. It’s true that it was already half an hour into the movie, but it was all designed so that you could glean everything you needed five minutes before the end. That was fine with me, too, and I would have disengaged completely from what was happening on the screen — an underwater car that could also fly, people who would die upon seeing a certain photo — if it hadn’t been for a group of kids only slightly less adolescent than their clothing. They came in making a ruckus and stumbling all over each other and laughing.
They sat in the row in front of me. The tallest one wore a cap whose visor blocked the part of the screen where things were happening. He had borrowed the style from movies like this one, and he was getting past the age for wearing it. A girl next to him wouldn’t stop chewing gum, and she kept squealing when he tickled her.
I noticed the fighting spirit that is sometimes awakened in me in movie theaters, and even a sudden interest in the fortunes of the space car. I made my seat creak, I sighed, I cleared my throat, I coughed and even shushed a few times; the tickling, smacking kisses, and giggling were redoubled. I ended up leaning forward to ask the kid to change seats or to take off his hat.
I had assumed he was expecting a confrontation, if not provoking one. But in fact, he jumped in his seat and turned around with genuine surprise. I gave an even bigger start myself — by the light of the screen, I could make out the logo of thehotellife.com, which by then I could have drawn from memory, on the visor of his cap. We held each other’s gaze for a moment. Without a word of complaint, the boy — worthy son of a city sworn to not frightening off outsiders — took off his hat. I sank quietly back into my seat.
At the Imperial, she had spoken to me about “merchandising” (and not ironically, by the way), about hats and T-shirts. But not about how you could get ahold of them. Would they be on sale in normal shops? Perhaps thehotellife.com had an online shop that I had overlooked. I doubted it — by now I really did know all of the website’s hidden little corners like the back of my hand.
Perhaps she gave them out herself to her actors, or raffled them off to her subscribers. The group of kids started to forget about me again, or else to grow bolder. I stayed very still in my seat, breathing deeply to calm the thumping in my chest that was becoming almost painful, preparing myself for the moment when the lights would go up.
The movie took forever to find an ending. While the room was still in darkness, the whole gang leapt out of their seats and charged toward the emergency exit. I ran after them. When I came out into the hallway I nearly collided face-on with the kid in the cap and his girlfriend, who had fallen behind the rest and were transfixed by something on a cellphone.
The two of them looked up at me, the smiles, like those of new parents, that they had bestowed on the telephone still on their faces. I asked if could I ask them something. The boy became serious and the girl laughed. They weren’t going to make things easy for me.
I mentioned the hat and motioned with my chin toward his forehead. The boy wasn’t wearing the hat any more, but out of sheer habit he also looked for it with his eyes. Even the girl looked up at his hair for a second. Then they looked back at me, their faces just as indifferent as before, although not exactly hostile; it’s rather that they were stunned, their reflexes still dulled from all those screens.
Eventually, they reacted. The boy laughed and the girl became very serious.
“My hat?”
He laughed again, and the girl joined in with him this time. Meanwhile, there was no trace of the hat; he wasn’t carrying it in his hand, and it wasn’t sticking out of any of his pockets.
“She gave it to me.”
He cocked his chin toward her, laughing. The girl pretended to be surprised. There was nothing for it. They improvised a little mock-fight on the spot, complete with jeers and insults. After a while, she pretended to remember they had an audience. She adopted a serious tone to answer me.
“I don’t know what hat you mean.”
I wanted to see this thing through to the end. I could already visualize my anger and the long night in my hotel room. I told them it was important, and even I thought I sounded crazy. Out in the street, the others were whistling and bent over laughing. The boy and girl glanced over sideways at them and caught the contagious laughter as they rushed out to the sidewalk.
I also walked out into the street, but slowly. I was comforted to see that night had fallen. It was misty again, and the walk back to the hotel wasn’t so awful anymore. I decided that, rather than having been a missed opportunity, this augured well, it was a sign that I was on the right track. I remembered what she had told me about the years of effort it had taken her to perfect her technique for approaching people. I wanted to take this misstep as she would surely have taken it: sportingly. I would also have to start learning to polish my technique. In the end, it’s all part of the job.
~ ~ ~
For the first time in all these years, the people at the paper refused to publish a review of mine. They didn’t want the one about the Royal Marina; it wasn’t long ago that they ran the last one, and there’s no need to revisit it for now. They’re right, of course. To get around it, they’re going to put out a write-up of an airport hotel I didn’t even remember I’d sent them, and which they had been keeping “on ice”, as they put it, in case something unexpected happened.
“You know, in the minibar.”
They made their placatory joke but couldn’t help emphasizing this “unexpected” side of it all, and the question of exactly what kind of unexpected situation this was hung in the air, and underlying it, the question of what on earth I was up to. They never quite formulated it, and I didn’t feel obliged to answer.
Something they did ask is what next week’s hotel would be. I said I’d call them to let them know. But I may not. In this second city on her list, there aren’t any of interest, as far as I know. In fact, there are only two that are even acceptable; the first is this one, the Central Hotel, where I decided to stay. It’s like the city it stands in: proper, predictable, neither very small nor especially large; as central and bland as its name suggests, less functional than it looks, and not even dull enough to lay claim to its own special brand of mystery. The other hotel is just across the road. That is practically the only way in which it is different. It’s also its great advantage: from the window of my room I can see all the windows on the facade across the street, and I have a commanding view of the main entrance. It’s like staying in both for the price of one. If I can keep watch patiently and methodically, it shouldn’t be too difficult to find out for certain if she’s staying in one or the other.
I have no idea what could have brought her here. I arrived on the date specified on her page. I’d spent the evening before the journey in the Central Station of the previous city, in case she had decided to go by sleeper train. I looked up the timetables, arrived with time to spare, and pretended to say goodbye to someone from the platform while I made a check of the near-empty compartments. I looked closely at the passengers getting on the train and hurrying between the carriages. If I had seen her on that train, I would have jumped aboard with nothing more than what I had on me. If I had had to pay a fine to the ticket collector, I would have paid it; I would have bought what I needed for a few nights and called the hotel and had them send my luggage on. It’s in these senseless practical arrangements that my days trickle away.