And then, some bitter afternoons, I only see the present. The city absorbed in its rhythmic purr, the people coming and going like something out of an illustrated schoolbook: the grocer at his fruit stand, the builder with his bricks, the fancy lady looking at her reflection in the shop windows, the security guard with his nightstick. You can almost even see the young boy with a tray of buns balanced on his head who’s always crossing the street in one corner at the very back of all old photographs. I see myself in this tableau, too, of course — the man standing on the balcony with nothing to do, the character of no discernible profession or apparent contribution to anything, who fills a gap, and whom the teachers leave out of their explanations.
It’s more and more difficult, yes, but I still step out on to the street when I get tired of wandering along the hallways or whiling away the hours in the lounge, of looking out the window and hoping that, any moment, it will be her I see coming around the corner or getting out of a taxi or opening the curtains in a room in the hotel across the way. I go to a nearby café and kill time reading the local papers and keeping an eye on the passersby outside the window. I’m served by a waitress who looks just the type to appear on thehotellife.com. If she had seen her, she would have taken her on. The café is centrally located and very well known; everyone visiting the city ends up stopping in. And in fact, after a couple of days, I came to convince myself that she had already done just that.
In a place like this, four mornings are enough to make you a regular. By dint of sitting at the same table, giving good tips, and turning out a few obvious jokes, I had struck up a rapport with the waitress. Today, on the fifth day, during her lunch break, I waited for her in the corner of the café and we went upstairs to my room. She didn’t want the other waiters to see her with me, but she said hello to the hotel receptionists as we went past the counter.
I asked her if she’d ever posed for thehotellife.com, shortly after we’d gone into the room, as she was unbuttoning her blouse. She had already taken her skirt off, and I could see the mark its metal clasp had left, like the negative of a tattoo: white with pink edges. I had planned to ask her some time later, to take advantage of the ten extra minutes before she would have to go back to work, a time when people often reveal truths to each other, or at least allow each other a little license to make them up. But I think I read too much into her breeziness in greeting the receptionists. I thought I could catch her when her guard was down and her back turned, take advantage of the weak flank her awkward position presented. I tried to ask her in the same way my neighbor from the Imperial would have, imitating more or less the tone in which she’d spoken about her job that night.
She whipped around sharply, still sitting on the edge of the bed. She stopped unbuttoning. She didn’t need to understand the question to comprehend the tone of it perfectly — she sensed a trap. I got tangled up in pathetic explanations. She stayed very still, her hands still under her shirt, looking at me without listening, resolved either to not hear any of it or to appear not to. Then, scoffing, she struggled to get the loose clasp on her skirt closed again. She thought (or wanted to make me think she thought) that it was I who was proposing she appear in a video. She insulted me without raising her voice, and I have to give her credit for achieving an effect that was both icy and long-lasting — I’m still feeling the shivers from her final “what’s your problem, freak.” She did slam the door as she left, though.
I won’t be able to go back to the café, of course. And coming down to the dining room for dinner, I get the feeling the receptionists and even the waiter are giving me dirty looks.
It turns out the city of the twin hotels still had one particularly low blow in store for me. Tonight, before getting on this train to the next city, I found a new entry on her page that had been posted recently. In the photos, I recognized with near terror the worn upholstery of the sofa, the whitish wood of the headboard, the tiles in the background of a rather well executed shower scene in one of the unmistakable bathrooms of the Royal Marina.
I deserve that, I forced myself to think and almost say out loud. I’ve looked for her without entirely believing I would find her. I’ve followed her without ever letting go, I now realize, of a last scrap of irony that might allow me to save face, even if only in front of myself. As though I had agreed to join in some pastime, some board game for grown-ups, that had no strings attached and that didn’t make me look silly in my own eyes.
Or, most importantly, in hers — sometimes, in the street or in a bar, I would turn around suddenly, convinced I was going to catch her watching me. More than once, as I walked out of a shop or turned a corner, I thought I saw her in the distance, walking over to me or passing me on the opposite sidewalk. It was never her; at least, that’s what I prefer to think — on two occasions the woman that could have been her vanished without a trace, leaving me with an uncertainty that still disturbs my sleep.
Now I’m starting to understand: deep down, I was afraid that I would run into her and that her face, or what she said or didn’t say, would reveal the deep and painful gulf between her thoughts and mine. But I’m tired of being alone in my fantasy, of forcing myself not to dream up different denouements for this story. I miscalculated my strength; I thought that following her around like this was something I would be able to do for a long time. That the pleasure of it would always, deep down, be greater than that of finding her. But I’m no longer convinced it’s such a good solution, this way of being with her without being all the way with her, of having her almost in view and dropping everything else in order to put all my effort into maintaining just the right distance.
I don’t know when it stopped seeming reasonable to me — and, under the circumstances, I’m well aware of the irony of the term — to think that things might always be like this. When it stopped being enough, this way of moving forward motionlessly, of feeling I am wending my way towards a denouement; of thinking that a denouement is surely nothing more than that, than creeping indefinitely towards a denouement.
I packed my suitcases with a foreboding of disaster quite distinct from that which had had me ready within minutes at the Reina Amalia. I set out for the station under the deluge and the reproving gaze of the balconies and the two doormen of the twin hotels.
~ ~ ~
It’s true that I wasn’t in the best of moods when I arrived here. But even in more favorable circumstances, I still would have found this city unpleasant. And I don’t like the hotel, which opened just recently and spared no expense, either. It offers unheard-of gimmicks and rushes to satisfy needs you didn’t know you had. And that’s no small thing, considering I get an endless stream of catalogues in the mail and thought I was up to date with all the high-tech junk toted at the trade fairs every year. They must have seen the jet-lagged look left on my face by the overnight — they offered me a “post-flight treatment” in the subterranean “spa.” It included an oxygen canister, electromagnetic massage, and some liquid-crystal video glasses with projections of relaxing images.
Both treatment and hotel cost an arm and a leg, so I won’t be able to afford many days here out of my own pocket. And I won’t be reviewing it for the paper. I don’t feel up to writing anything apart from these notes, and I don’t want to put anyone onto my scent. When the deadline for sending in my article passes, perhaps they’ll give my neighboring columnist double his usual space. He’ll like that, presumably, and I wouldn’t put it past him to have been cradling the idea for years.