The Third Hotel

by Laura van Den Berg

  Seatmates. Davi smiled and shrugged, as though sitting next to a person on a plane obligated you to enter into a pact of continued companionship.

  In the lobby, she was reminded of Davi’s perfect eyebrows, which she suddenly wanted to touch. He deposited his glass on a side table and said they were leaving for an art opening. Did she want to come? It would be a prodigious good time. His smile was different from the pitying one he offered her on the plane. Now it was curious, playful, solicitous. Women traveling alone were often the subjects of curiosity; this she had learned during all those trips to Nebraska.

  Any chance Yuniel Mata might be there? she asked.

  After the press event, she had only seen the director once more. She had glimpsed him through her binoculars, cloaked in black sunglasses and slipping into a yellow cab.

  Anything is possible, Davi said.

  Arlo pantomimed slitting his wrists with his festival badge.

  We used to work together, Davi said. In Rio.

  Davi, in addition to being a critic, also produced documentaries. In Rio, he and Arlo had worked together on a doc about a famous Brazilian photographer. Through a network of connections and invitations that seemed vague to Clare, Arlo, who had attended film school in Havana, had been coming and going from the city for some time—a year in Rio, six months in Buenos Aires, ten in Barcelona.

  Now I’m an experiment, he said. An experiment in being a person who stays.

  Experiment with being a person who stays in Rio, Davi said, nudging him in the ribs. That is your path to happiness.

  It was clear to her that this conversation about Arlo’s whereabouts had been ongoing between the two of them; for a moment she was being permitted to interlope.

  We’ll see, Arlo said. We’ll see if I’m ready to meet that person.

  He turned to Clare and told her that he’d come home to make a documentary on light fixtures.

  All I want on the screen, Arlo said, is the present tense. Anything is possible in the present tense. Failure and love and stillness and change.

  He’s an artist, Davi said. Artists are mercenaries.

  At that line, the men laughed and laughed.

  In the taxi, Arlo took the front, she and Davi tumbled into the back. They raced along the Malecón, the ocean following like a shadow. She could hear water thrashing against the seawall and remembered reading that twice the city was founded in the middle of a swamp; twice it was moved from its original site before settling on the island’s northern coast. She held her purse in her lap and through the cloth she felt the envelope of cash she carried, as her American credit cards were worthless here. Soon the envelope would be empty, but not yet.

  In the passenger seat, Arlo was telling the driver a story about his great-uncle, who had been an economist and who traveled periodically to Paris, where he always ended up lovesick and jumping off bridges. Six different bridges through the years, according to the family story, and still he lived. No one was luckier than this great-uncle. Finally, in Havana, he met a woman and they married. At last, true love! Not long after the wedding, he fell ill with cancer and died. When Arlo got to the end, the driver, to Clare’s surprise, seemed to find the story quite amusing.

  The window was cracked open, and all of a sudden she was pressing her face into the gap like an animal sniffing the air, the oceanic rot, and willing the driver to go faster, faster. She wanted a speed great enough to hurtle them into a space beyond the limits of time, a space in which she would be free of past and future, of memory and feeling, though of course she realized such a state did exist and it was called Being Dead.

  The taxi clunked over a pothole, knocking her back into the conversation.

  Arlo and Davi were discussing a producer who’d worked on Revolución Zombi and was loathed by the crew. Yuniel Mata’s film had not relied exclusively on the ICAIC. Funding had also been secured through a collaboration among three production companies: one Spanish, one Cuban, one Italian. In the eighties, Clare remembered, there had been a rage for uncut versions of grisly Italian horror films. Some were styled as pseudodocumentaries; in one particularly objectionable instance, the footage looked so real that the director was rumored to have killed his own actors on set.

  The producer from the Italian company had been the problem, according to Arlo and Davi. Apparently he had forced Agata Alonso to drink cow’s blood to get into character—even after she vomited and cried.

  * * *

  The art opening was in a renovated olive oil factory with a brick smokestack and tall windows that glowered over the Almendares River. The line to get in coiled around the block. Once inside, they picked up white squares of paper from a counter, used by the bartenders to record drink orders.

  Don’t lose it, Davi said, holding up his square. Or it’ll cost you.

  If you lost your card, you had to pay thirty pesos. Apparently tourists lost their cards all the time here and then argued the consequences.

  She followed her new companions through a labyrinth of halls and rooms. A doorway led to a staircase; a staircase led to a room and then tapered into a hall; a hall opened into a room adjacent to the one they had just crossed, with a window that allowed her to glimpse the people standing where she had stood moments before, the entire layout designed to encourage the viewer to cast an eye back on their own path or to forget the notion of a path at all. Everywhere there were paintings and photographs and mobiles and screens and the island of Cuba made entirely of brass keys and a tiny alcove boutique selling handmade jewelry and shoes. Worlds stacked upon worlds. A vast room with rows of chairs, the backs to a fluorescent-lit bar, connected the two halves of the space. They passed through this room twice, and each time something different was happening: a brass quintet; a skateboarding documentary playing on a giant screen. According to Davi, the factory had been open only for a year and it was not state run or privately owned—the government owned the land, while the art galleries and the bars were classified as private businesses. It was a new kind of experiment, an in-between space, a delicate, delicate dance.

  They got beers and mojitos from a bar and then climbed a flight of stairs to the exhibit. Ten large black-and-white photographs hung on white walls, each an image of other people taking pictures. In one, a woman kneeled on a split sidewalk, a digital camera pressed to her face like a mask. In another, two young women trained cameras on the ground; they appeared to be photographing a pothole. In another, a couple held phones in front of their bodies, unclear if they were photographing whatever lay ahead or taking a selfie. In fact, there were two layers of anonymity: the subjects of the subjects were excluded, left to the viewer’s imagination, and also the subjects did not appear to be aware they were just that. One exception was a middle-aged woman holding a long-snouted Canon, captured at the exact moment she registered the weight of another camera’s eye, her face warped by the beginning of a glare. Her upper lip had curled just enough for Clare to see that she wore adult braces.

  While cleaning out Richard’s home office, Clare had come across a Super 8 camera in the bottom of a cabinet drawer, covered in loose papers. The camera was black and gun-shaped, a birthday gift she had not seen him use in years.

  Screens were vehicles for the subjective, he had once written. No eye was objective and thus no lens could be either. In turn, the viewer’s response to the images became the third subjective eye, an invisible revelatory force. Screens and images revealed the viewer as much as they revealed to the viewer. Who in this gallery was being struck still by currents of pleasure or guilt or rage. Who was looking at the subject with the long-snouted Canon and thinking she resembled their mother. Who thought this and felt bowed with love. Who felt murder in their heart. Who gazed at the pair of young women and wished they could see through their tops.

  She’d lost track of Arlo and Davi. She wandered down two flights of concrete stairs, through a hall and a set of swinging doors and into a dance party, the walls pulsing with reggaeton. On the ceiling a scattering of fluor
escent stars. She forgot about Yuniel Mata and thought instead that this might not be a bad place to keep an eye out for Agata Alonso; if the actress was lying low, it would be easy to hide in these shadowed crowds. A man delicately pinched the back of her elbow and then disappeared. She looked at the shimmering heads of the men around her, some in pairs or buoyant groups, some standing alone, holding drinks close to their bodies. Richard, she thought for a moment, the shadow of the touch still hot on her elbow, and then, No, no, no. She got another drink and sucked the straw until the plastic was ragged, her throat numb. Strobe lights cut around, and after they illuminated a young couple tangled against a wall, she crouched on the floor, lungs burning for air.

  Out and up through the vast room, where footage from a Nirvana concert had taken over the screen, and onto a concrete landing. People were clustered in the corners, washed in blue light, blowing smoke into the green fronds of plants. Along one wall, a trio of small, square windows looked into a private restaurant available only to special guests, according to a sign, a pocket of exclusivity in the otherwise democratic-seeming world of the art factory. A bronze statue stood in the center of the landing—a tall figure in a cape, a woman, a wraith. Enormous black tires surrounded the statue and were being used as benches.

  In front of the statue, the eel shot down her spine. The bronze figure had no face.

  Liesel! a voice exclaimed from behind. Damp hands clamped down on her shoulders. The voice had pronounced the name like a long sigh. Lee-zeel.

  Clare turned to face a British woman with floppy blond curls and a grotesque sunburn. She was wearing a linen scoop-neck dress, sleeveless, the skin on her chest and shoulders crimson and molting. The slope of her nose looked like it had been boiled.

  Liesel, the woman said again. Why didn’t you tell me you’d be here?

  She raked a hand through her curls. Her jaw flexed. She was perturbed, but trying to not show it. The kind of person, Clare imagined, who ground her teeth in her sleep.

  So, she said. Are you here with another group?

  Clare tilted her head. Another group?

  Through yet another window, on the opposite side of the landing, she glimpsed the room below, the dance floor undulating with bodies. She had been one of those bodies—right until she felt the eel slide up her sternum and snug itself around her throat.

  If a person starts out a group traveler, they usually stay a group traveler, the British woman said. She carried a red tote with a decal that read KING’S TRAVEL CO.

  It’s hard to change, she continued, once you’ve gotten used to having literally everything handled for you.

  Well, there is no other group, Clare said. I’m here alone.

  She was starting to understand: groups were the British woman’s business, and she was hurt by the prospect of Liesel having defected to a different provider.

  The British woman told Clare that people said all kinds of things at the end of the tour, when they were feeling sentimental. How they had had the time of their lives and it was all because of her.

  Imagine! she said. Me giving someone the time of their lives.

  She drew a cigarette from the front pocket of her dress and lit it.

  Good for you for making the hop, she went on. The first time I came here I hitchhiked all around, not a guide for miles. Tomorrow I’ll meet a group at José Martí and take them hither and yon. But why am I telling you all this, Liesel? I’m sure you remember.

  Clare was curious about this Liesel. Possibly of German ancestry. Possibly American, as the British woman had not commented on her accent. Possibly a current resident of the U.K. She imagined Liesel living in a town in Wales, Cardiff, or Swansea. She imagined her driving a diminutive car through roundabouts. She imagined her drinking a beer on the beach at sunset, her hair thick with sea. Did she work as a librarian or at a bank? Was she a retired assassin? Did she have a cat?

  On the landing, Clare became aware of a man beside her. She did not acknowledge him right away because she was unsure of what Liesel would say, how she would handle such a sticky situation.

  Liesel? The British woman tapped her sandaled toe against Clare’s shin. Is this a friend of yours?

  This is Arlo, Clare said, grasping his elbow. He’s an artist, which means he’s also a mercenary. She tried to smile and found that the muscles in her face had been immobilized.

  Arlo wrested his arm from Clare, with a sharpness that made the eel turn summersaults in her gut, but he did not disrupt the story. The British woman introduced herself as Bryony.

  I was just about to ask after Liesel’s family, Bryony said next. A pity I only got to see them in photos.

  The knowledge of a family disrupted Clare’s previous image of Liesel. Now there was a station wagon passing through the roundabouts, small paper rafts filled with chips at the beach. Yet her family had not accompanied her to Havana, given that Bryony knew them only through photos. Clare wanted to turn from the conversation, to wonder over their absence, but Arlo and Bryony were both leaning toward her, expectant. Arlo, who seemed amused by the trap he’d found her stuck in, added that he too was curious to know about her family, if they were well.

  Something she and her husband had in common but rarely discussed was the absence of a desire for children, to fill their home with people besides themselves. It was a silent agreement, felt rather than spoken, and in her experience the soundest agreements were the ones that did not require the reassurances of language. Therefore this line of questioning was the inverse of what she usually fielded, since a childless married woman in her thirties was so often regarded, by men and women alike, as a puzzle or a pity. What’s the story here? people would ask, inquests designed to make women like her suspect there was something malformed inside, blinding them to the hideous reality of their choice.

  She turned her wedding ring on her finger. She imagined the beach in Wales, the cardboard raft of chips, the small hands grabbing at the golden shells. Liesel crawling inside the now-empty cardboard raft and paddling out to sea.

  Everyone is very well, she said, the eel skittering across her heart.

  In the vast room, a Jimmy Stewart film had taken over the screen. The light on the landing shifted, and Bryony’s sunburn turned an even more alarming shade of red, like she had been exposed to radiation and gone phosphorescent.

  So how do you two know each other? Bryony pointed her cigarette at Clare and then at Arlo.

  I’ve come home to make a documentary about suicides in Havana, Arlo said. Liesel here is part of my crew.

  Ah! So you’re here for work. Bryony stamped out her cigarette, the mystery of why Liesel had not returned to Cuba with a tour group at long last solved.

  But I don’t recall you working in film, she added.

  Well, Clare said, I do.

  Havana has a remarkable history of suicides, Arlo continued. We’ve lost a number of mayors, for example. Take Supervielle, ruined by his failed promise to build an aqueduct. A personal favorite is Chibás, the politician who committed suicide during his own radio program, though sadly he lost track of time and ended up firing the fatal shot during a commercial break. Even the cats commit suicide here. Watch and you’ll see them leaping from balconies. The contagion is now threatening my own sister, who is planning to commit suicide at the age of thirty-three, like Hart Crane. In the meantime, she works as a mammal trainer at the National Aquarium and spends her free time skateboarding in a drained swimming pool, life choices I do not pretend to understand.

  Bryony frowned. Below, the pulse of the music intensified.

  Clare knew nothing of skateboarding except one bad joke. What did the skater say who fell and broke her elbow? That wasn’t very humerous.

  Hart Crane is her favorite poet, Arlo said, with a shrug. Personally I prefer one of my countrymen, Nicolás Guillén.

  As you can see, this is a very personal project, said Clare.

  I could go on, Arlo said.

  Please don’t, said Bryony, wrinkling her nose.
>
  Do you even have a sister? she would have asked Arlo had they been alone.

  Hart Crane didn’t leave a suicide note, Arlo continued. He spoke his last words before jumping from a ship. Goodbye, everybody!

  Straight to the point, Clare said. No time for bullshit.

  This is simply not the Liesel I remember, Bryony said. She took a step closer to Clare, her blue eyes narrowing. Have you done something different with your hair?

  Maybe this Liesel was a maniac. Maybe she was a serial killer hiding out in Cardiff or Swansea. Maybe there was a reason her family had not accompanied her to Cuba. Maybe they had not been seen in some time.

  Clare argued that Bryony was not remembering properly, that everything was just the same. Bryony pointed a plump finger and told Clare that something was not right here; something was not right with her. She inhaled, as though she was about to keep going, and then stopped herself. The recognition of the problem seemed to be enough. She was not compelled to solve it. She turned away and sailed into the vast room, her broad red shoulders swinging. Clare imagined Bryony, in the days to come, talking to a colleague who had been on the trip with Liesel, a colleague who also said her name like a sigh and had seen the photos of her family. Bryony would describe seeing Liesel again, in Havana, and how different she seemed—how peculiar and erratic and vague. Something different about her hair too. A change that did not become her.

  Any more sun and that woman is going to need emergency services, Arlo said as he watched her go. So how many names do you have?

  The movie screen went dark and people began to flood the landing; she thought that if she stayed very still it would only be a matter of time before she was carried away. Clare was a little disappointed at how quickly Arlo had abandoned their collusion. She had wanted to keep pretending. When she told him there had been a case of confused identity, he said Bryony wasn’t the only person getting too much sun.

  Clare woke with an irrepressible desire to go to the zoo. The zoo, the zoo, the zoo, she said as she washed her face in the round bathroom sink, flecks of hair still clinging to the drain. She had not succeeded in finding Richard on the street or in the cemetery or at the festival, which would soon enter its final weeks—why not try the zoo? The brochure had migrated to the bedside table, and she imagined the tiger implanting ideas into her mind while she slept.