The other guests have started to get up. Without excusing herself, the woman, who was seeming more and more attractive to me but with whom I no longer felt the closeness I had at first, walked over to the men in plain clothes. Like artists on the eve of an opening, they stood at a distance to observe the effect of their freshly pinned flyer and to check it was straight. The three spoke in hushed tones before disappearing behind the camouflaged door.
I didn’t particularly sympathize with the staff and their strikes. I didn’t doubt the legitimacy of their demands or wish to deny them their rights. But I had gone too far with my own fight to start feeling solidarity with theirs now. If she was staying in this hotel, these disruptions might scare her away. They might force her to move to another one or, worse, to make last-minute changes to the itinerary I had memorized. And if that happened, I would lose track of her for good.
The impending strike; the hubbub and shouts that, without any piped-in music to cover them, could now be heard coming through the camouflaged door; the desertion of my precious few companions in the lobby — for the first time on this trip I felt abandoned and as though I were running out of rope.
And in view of what happened, it’s lucky I wasn’t able to rise to the occasion. I didn’t know what to do, where to look for her. I saw no other choice than to redouble my waiting, ignore the bad omens, and forget all the disillusionments suffered after so many hours spent vainly in so many lobbies. To believe without faith and trust without hope that she would suddenly appear in that lobby, sitting at my table, as if by magic.
It seems to me now that, in a way, that’s exactly what she did.
As I had done on my first night at the Imperial, I opened the newspaper in search of one last life raft. I gave myself over to the local press and its anesthesia of winter poetry competitions and cross-country ski marathons, its calming sinkholes and road shoulders and council members’ bickering. I would have gladly drunk the coffee I had ordered, but I couldn’t see anyone left who might bring it. I tried to forget the woman’s lurking presence in the city, perhaps in the hotel itself, somewhere on the other side of the newspaper as I read it. She, who was doing who knew what or where, while I avoided looking up, hell-bent on reading every entry in the classified section.
LOVE. Get it back. Quick, reliable. Pay after.
TATIANA. Psychic since childhood. The truth, even if it hurts.
FEDORA Clinic. Abortions up to 22 weeks.
REQUIRED: Amateur boys/girls for videos & photos.
As I write this now, I’m surprised that I skipped the rest of the ad in the moment and kept reading. I was resolved to pretend that I had seen nothing, that I really was going to just keep on reading. But my tell-tale heart was beating so loudly that it felt like it would make the lobby walls shake. I think I looked around to buy a bit of time, with the excuse of checking that nobody had seen anything. Of course they hadn’t. I knew full well that there was no one else in the lobby; that even if there had been, they wouldn’t be watching me; and that even if they had been, even the most keen-sighted spy wouldn’t have registered anything in my movements. I realized I was petrified. I put off rereading the ad for a moment longer. I stubbornly kept my eyes on the lines that followed, reading them one by one. For what seemed like an eternity, I played at baiting my angst — it was a good angst — and testing its limits, like a child postponing the moment when he’ll pet the little animal being held captive in his room.
ENJOY listening to me moan.
HOUSEWIFE. Will pay. Home alone. 18+.
I read without taking in a thing. Much as I might put off admitting it for a few endless moments more, I knew I had finally found her. This ad was hers; it was her. I waited for one more second, until it hurt too much. And then, acutely aware that no one in the entire world suspected a thing or could follow me down this path, I slowly retraced my steps; I wandered back with my eyes along the tracks of small black lettering, pushed aside thickets of phone numbers and creepers of addresses, and found myself once again face to face — filled with a sense of Olympian magnanimity that seemed apt for this triumph of mine, and that I’m now rather ashamed of — with the ad.
REQUIRED: Amateur boys/girls for videos & photos. Until the 5th of this month only. Young, presentable applicants only.
A cellphone number followed.“Required” and “presentable” confirmed to me that it had to be her, as much as or more than the fact that the time frame coincided with the date posted on her site. Required. Who requires anyone to do anything nowadays? And who stipulates that their prospective employees must be “presentable”? Only she could have written that, as deft with the language of classified ads as she is with that of the photo captions on her website. I still can’t tell if it isn’t me who’s adding in the irony I think I detect.
And there was that ugly repetition of the adverb “only”, and the space-saving, tacky use of the slash. It had to be her. She must have been having bad luck in this city.
I didn’t want any evidence of my cellphone to end up registered on hers, nor did I want to dial her number with mine blocked. I imagine she’s used to being contacted by people whose caller IDs are withheld, but that kind of cowardice could give her a bad impression of me. I can now see, of course, how idiotic this was — as though my calling her at all, and the preceding pursuit of her that it would imply, wouldn’t already give her the worst possible impression of me.
On the way to get my phone from my room, I had to dodge piles of sheets at the doors to some of the rooms, breakfast trays, lettuce leaves, lone shoes. Through an open door here and there, I could see unmade beds, rooms hastily abandoned. I passed a man in a tie carrying an aerosol can in his hand. He avoided meeting my eye and said nothing by way of greeting, contravening the universal laws of hotel staff courtesy. His ominous silence was, however, the same one that reigned over all the hallways.
It was her. I recognized her voice in the curt hello she answered with, even though her voice sounded different on the other end of the phone from what I remembered. The telephone line seemed to have caught strike fever too, distorted as it was by buzzing sounds and vague murmurs. The hand I was holding the receiver with was trembling, and I had to lean my elbow on the bedside table. I swiped aside the old newspapers and the two recently emptied little bottles of whiskey from the minibar. I had hurried to dial the number after drinking them each down in one gulp, and now I regretted it — I was afraid of slurring my words, of finding my tongue suddenly cotton-like and clumsy.
For one absurd moment, I thought that the conversation would have been easier if I had tidied the table first. Luckily, even if it wasn’t exactly easy, it certainly was quick. On hearing her voice I realized that I wasn’t planning to tell her who I was. I would be able to explain myself better face to face; there was too much to tell her, and I was afraid she would hang up on me without a thought. I was relying on the faulty telephone line and on her not remembering my voice (and perhaps remembering me only very dimly) when I told her that I was interested in the ad and wanted to get an interview. She was succinct. She explained the matter to me in literally a few words—“erotic videos”, she said — and forced me to lie when she asked how old I was. I was able to tell the truth, however, when admitting I had no experience in the field. I’m proud of how cunning I was on that account: I exaggerated my shyness as though I didn’t know that that’s actually a plus in her eyes.