The Pink Hotel

by Anna Stothard

  David and I were both thoughtful that night. I played around with a computer game on his mobile phone. It looked new, and all the contacts on his phone were celebrity hairdressers and department stores and stuff, not people.

  “I threw out my old phone when I gave up drinking,” he said. “A month and a bit ago. It’s easier without my old friends leading me astray.” I looked up from the game and straight at him – with this revelation about giving up alcohol, things started to make sense. It was six weeks since Lily’s wake. It was four weeks since David’s birthday dinner at the Thai restaurant. It had been an intense month that felt like longer, and I’m not sure I’d ever known someone so intimately as I thought I knew him then. Still, certain puzzle pieces didn’t quite connect. He seemed awkward and adolescent sometimes, but I guess that was because he was used to being drunk. He didn’t have many friends, but I guess that was because they were drinking friends. Even his scars, his weight loss, his sadness.

  “You quit drinking when Lily died?” I said.

  He paused.

  “Yup,” he said.

  “Because Lily died?” I said.

  He paused again, and massaged his big shoulders slightly. He looked much better than he did when we had our first lunch in the car outside the Platinum Club. The bags under his eyes were thinning, and he didn’t look so gaunt. He swallowed a mouthful of ice cream and chocolate sauce.

  “I sound like a Hallmark card,” he grinned, but it was a fake grin that immediately collapsed back into a frown again. He didn’t know where to look as he spoke to me. “I’ve done a ton of shit that I regret, that’s all. I’ve messed up. And I don’t want to regret anything else. I don’t want my life to be... regrettable.” He looked away, over at the television. “You’ve made a difference, is what I’m saying.” He stumbled, not looking at me. “You’ve helped,” he mumbled, and stared over at the TV.

  I raised my eyebrows, and stuttered: “And Lily?”

  “What about her?” he said, looking confused. I knew he wanted me to say something about what he just revealed, either the alcoholism or my impact on his sobriety. It was like a mental tick, though, and I asked:

  “Was Lily an alcoholic? Is that why she died? Was she addicted to drugs or alcohol or something?”

  David’s big green eyes rested steadily on me. He looked oddly beautiful, his shoulders hunched in front of the dripping window and his mouth curled into his trademark lopsided frown. I remembered the sight of him sitting on Lily’s bed at the top of the Pink Hotel during the wake, sucking his thumb after he cut it trying to get Lily’s photograph out of the frame.

  “I don’t know,” he said. David glanced at his hands, then out of the window. Then he looked back at me. “I wish I hadn’t said anything.”

  “Why?” I said.

  “Does everything have to revert back to some party you happened to wander into?” he said. “I understand why she stays on my mind, but why do you bring her up? She has nothing to do with you.”

  “Cos she has something to do with you,” I lied guiltily. “I don’t know. Cos she meant something to you, cos I wear her clothes – a million reasons.”

  “What do you mean you wear her clothes?”

  “I realize you were drunk when we met, but I stole her clothes – remember? You called me a grave-robber.”

  “Of course I remember that. But at the café you said you sold them. You turned up at my door with a plastic bag.”

  “A plastic bag full of her clothes, some of them,” I said. “The ones I didn’t sell.”

  “You said you sold her clothes. I assumed they were new clothes. The plastic bag was from that clothes shop above the supermarket. I thought they were new clothes. You sold her clothes.”

  “I said I sold some of her clothes.”

  “Fuck.”

  “What’s the big deal? I thought you knew.”

  “What are you wearing now?”

  “Hers,” I said, and we both looked down at my white cotton dress with the black buttons up the front, the same white dress I’d been wearing when I came to his house. “Her shoes. Her bra. Her knickers.”

  He went pale, white as Lily’s dress. And I felt sick too, because I was deep in now.

  “You’re insane. That’s disgusting,” he said.

  “Don’t say that.”

  “You’re actually fucking insane.”

  “Don’t say that. You just admitted to not remembering half your life. Don’t call me insane.”

  “You said you sold them.”

  “You’re like a scratched record. Some – of – them. I sold some of them, David, and kept some of them. They’re just clothes,” I said. “What’s the problem?”

  “The problem is they belong to a dead woman.”

  “You wouldn’t be here with me if I was still wearing polyester sports clothes and a dirty baseball cap!”

  “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” David said, and pretended to smile. Again, the smile collapsed.

  “I know you wouldn’t, though,” I snapped at him, “cos you walked away from me that morning.”

  “I didn’t want to vomit on you! It wasn’t your fucking clothes. You really think I’m that shallow?”

  “I think you like Lily’s taste. She had style. I don’t.”

  “But I don’t give a fuck about Lily’s style. I give a fuck about you. Maybe it wasn’t instantaneous at the beach, but I was about twelve days gone at the dreg ends of a bender. If I’d been sober I would have fallen for you then. The clothes didn’t matter.”

  “You don’t think they matter,” I said. “But they do.”

  “Those clothes belong to a dead person.”

  “I’m not arguing with that,” I said. “I know they do.”

  “I’m trying to do something really difficult. The last thing I need is a tourist in stolen clothes sleeping in my apartment,” he said.

  “You invited me,” I said. “The hostel was just fine.”

  “Whatever,” he said.

  “I’ll leave in the morning,” I said.

  We drove to his place in silence, my bottom sticking to the wet leather seats of his SUV. I thought about him saying he would have fallen for me at the beach, if he hadn’t been so legless.

  “Did you ever write her love letters?” I asked David in the car.

  “No,” he said grumpily. I didn’t know if I believed him or not. Everything felt static as I undressed later in the living room, listening to him tug damp clothes off his body in the bedroom. We waltzed around each other. I turned on the bath water. He turned on the TV. He boiled the kettle on the stove. I got into the bath. Then ten minutes later he came into the bathroom and brushed his teeth while I was floating in the rising heat and heavy steam. I closed the sticky plastic shower curtain abruptly with my toes. I have long toes. They’re sort of funny. My second toe reaches out further than my big toe. Dad has the same thing.

  “David?” I said.

  He grunted and spat toothpaste out into the sink.

  “I thought you knew,” I said, “I thought it didn’t bother you or, maybe, you were okay with it.”

  “Why would I be okay with it?”

  “You said I looked better the second time you saw me. Less feral.” The water looked bright green around me. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  He paused for a while. He put his toothbrush back on the sink and took a sip of water from the tap.

  “You stumbled in on all this,” he said eventually. “It’s not your fault. And I’d rather have you in weird clothes than not have met you at all.” I sunk my head quickly under water and emerged again. “Which I guess is the toss up,” he said, “since we wouldn’t have met if you weren’t a thief.”

  “Or if you weren’t a mean alcoholic,” I said.

  I could see his shadow through the shower curtain, leaning on the sink. We were silent again.

  “You know, I’m ten years older than you,” he said after this moment of quiet. “That’s no good t
hing.” I wondered if this was time to reveal that I was five years younger than I claimed, but of course decided it wasn’t.

  “Close your eyes, I want to get out of the bath,” I said instead.

  “I’ve already seen you naked, little thief,” he said.

  “You’ve never seen me naked when you’re angry with me. It’s a completely different thing. Go away or I’ll dissolve.”

  “Dissolve into what?”

  “Into the dirty bathwater,” I said.

  “I don’t want you sliding down my plug hole with the troll people and the iguanas. You might clog the pipes,” he said.

  “Charming.”

  “My eyes are closed,” he lied. I peeked my head around the curtain, where he was clearly staring at my hunched silhouette beyond the frosted-plastic curtain. He smiled and picked up a towel from the rack, holding it out in front of him like a football banner.

  “Have you turned into a mermaid?” he said.

  “You wish,” I smiled, getting up. “As it happens I’m half human, half dove,” I rose from the water, stepping into the waiting towel.

  “That sounds like something that ought to be explored,” he said, wrapping the towel around me.

  27

  A week later I found piles of carefully chosen women’s clothes arranged on David’s bed. Laid out like shadows were a pair of sturdy jeans, five high-necked cotton T-shirts, black and white cotton knickers, a brown jumper made out of some synthetic woollen material, a knee-length chiffon skirt, some tights and slip-on shoes with little heels. There was even a pair of faux-pearl earrings. Everything was from an outlet mall in Fresno, and each piece had something wrong with it – you could see a squelch of glue where the faux pearls had been sunk into their platinum shell, and the jumper had a hole in the sleeve.

  “I’m sorry it’s nothing extravagant,” David said as he came in the room, making me jump. I touched the sweetly chosen clothes. He must have looked absurd in the dress shop, his big Gilgamesh hands picking up little shiny kitten heels and tiny white cotton knickers. Warmth came into me with the most phenomenal surge. I imagined him looking lost among the isles of silk and zips and buttons, getting everything completely wrong. Is this the girl he wanted? Pearls and knee-length skirts? Or was this what he thought I wanted? The sensation that filled me up at that moment felt like hunger, or desperation. In retrospect, it was love, but at the time it was a sudden, overwhelming nausea. I couldn’t even look at him.

  “You don’t like them,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “I do, I like them,” I said.

  “They’re not you,” David said.

  “They are,” I said. “They could be.”

  The day before he bought me the new clothes David had got me a day job working as a script supervisor for a man named Sam, who had the face of a prematurely balding child. He was tubby, with kind eyes, and he wore oversized T-shirts emblazoned with creatures from Star Wars or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. David said Sam came from a wealthy family, and his uncle had put up some of the money for his latest films. Although I didn’t have any experience on movie sets, Sam took David’s word for it that I was observant and could do the job. I was to be paid cash.

  “Close your eyes,” said David to me only a few moments after we met Sam in a Silver Lake bar with big chunks of plywood nailed to the floor. “What colour are Sam’s shoes and is he wearing a belt?” David asked me.

  “He’s wearing white Nikes,” I smiled. “The left lace is trailing on the floor. He’s not wearing a belt, but he should be, cos I can see the top of his boxers.”

  “What colour are his boxers?” David laughed.

  “Blue.” I smiled, the knuckle of David’s right hands resting on my nose.

  “Awesome,” laughed Sam. “That’s pretty awesome.”

  “She’s oddly observant,” said David. “It’ll be perfect.”

  “How’d you two meet?” said Sam.

  “At Venice Beach,” said David.

  “Guess that’s why we haven’t seen you for weeks,” he said. “We going to party tonight?”

  “I’ve got to work,” said David.

  “Where you been the last two months, though, dude? We haven’t seen you.”

  “Cleaning up my act a bit,” David said.

  “Well come to Vegas with us next weekend and we’ll get you good and dirty again.”

  “I’m in AA,” said David. I looked at David. He hadn’t told me that he went to AA meetings.

  “I’m hoping you’re talking about American Airlines or the Car Insurance, dude,” said Sam.

  “No more booze,” said David.

  “No more weekends?” said Sam, taking off his hat for a moment and rubbing his balding head. “Ever?”

  “Not if the weekends include getting wasted and waking up in gutters. I want to remember the second half of my life. Thought it might be a nice change.”

  “You’re not even staying for one drink tonight? To toast your girlfriend’s new job?”

  David tilted his head to the side, indicating “no”.

  “There was this one time,” grinned Sam. He looked at David, then cheekily at me: “Right? We’re on a bender in San José. We haven’t slept for twenty-four hours but we’re on fire. Like, blazing. Then we realize, where’s David? We’re like, dude, he was here a minute ago. Then my cell phone rings and it’s David telling me he’s woken up in, like, some chick’s bedroom in Mexico.” David smiled somewhat nostalgically at the memory, then looked nervously at me as if I might be retrospectively jealous or angry. “This man,” continued Sam, nodding at David and ignoring the awkwardness, “is downright the best dude to have at a party. The best.”

  “I don’t really want to know,” I said blankly.

  “Oh, feisty,” said Sam, looking at me and then glancing over at David. “So has she tamed you, then? You whipped now?”

  “Give it a rest man, can she have a job?”

  “Course. Anything for a buddy,” said Sam.

  It turned out that I was a very good script supervisor. I notice the details. Being a script supervisor made me think of the comment about solar eclipses being “coincidences of geometry”, which Lily’s anonymous lover talked about in one of his letters. This is what the day-to-day construction of movies seemed to be about. In order to make it appear that people were having a natural conversation on screen, the coincidences of geometry had to be perfect. It was a mess of angles, of eye lines that needed to “match up” and coverage that needed to slot together. Everyone on set was always talking about the “180-degree rule”, where two people in conversation should have the same left/right relationship to each other at all times. If the heroine is on the left and the hero on the right, then she should be facing right at all times and he needs to face left. Jumping to the other side of the characters on a cut would be disorientating. A script supervisor is someone who details the geometry of continuity. I’d note down whether the actor exited stage right or left, whether his shirt was tucked or not, whether he was wearing a watch or whether his cuffs were buttoned up.

  Sam hardly ever looked directly at anyone, let alone noticed anything that went on around him. Los Angeles is a city of sideways glances – over shoulders, through car windows – and Sam epitomized it. He had an anxious sideways glance for when he wanted to escape a conversation, an upwards tilt when he was lying, a burrowing stare when he was embarrassed or anxious, and a sharply flung sideways look when he was trying to be flirtatious. Mostly Sam and I talked while he was driving me back from set, both staring straight ahead at the battalion of armoured worker ants zooming down the freeways. It was in cars that he told me his secrets, hardly noticing that I never said a word. He told me about the hundreds of women he’d slept with in San Francisco before he moved to Los Angeles and lost all his hair, and about how his ex-wife cheated on him during their annual Christmas party.

  “Actually during the party?” I asked.

  “In our bed,” he said. “But a couple of months before
that I did a chick in the kitchen while my wife was listening to Tracy Chapman in the bathtub.”

  “Huh,” I said as we merged into the freeway.

  “You’re such a good listener,” he said earnestly.

  “Did you know Lily?” I asked Sam, once.

  “Lily who?” he said.

  “Harris. She and David were friends.”

  “David’s not particularly charitable with information about his private life. Guess you’ve found that out,” Sam laughed. “I chalk it up to him not remembering most of his private life! Drunk fuck. Was she a girlfriend?”

  “Think so,” I said.

  “Are you checking up on him?” he said.

  “Just curious.”

  “Curiosity killed the cat,” said Sam.

  As Sam started to like me more and more, he stopped asking anything about me. I listened to him endlessly constructing his identity, telling me what he was and what he wasn’t. His mother had an all-consuming obsession with true-crime novels, so she saw everything as a potential crime, which made Sam a very jumpy child. Sam hated: pushing past people in movie theatres, crumbs, seeing people eating, any sort of white sauce, seafood, conversations about cheese and missing the first or last second of a movie. He literally had to sit in his seat until the credits were over and the screen went silent. Every evening after work and after long, monologizing drives across glittering Los Angeles, Sam would drop me off at David’s place. I never told David about Sam’s confessed fetish for wearing designer women’s underwear, or how Sam no longer had sex with his girlfriend because she had a mole on her lower stomach that made him feel physically sick. The mole was mountainous and had two hairs, Sam said, like television antennae. It was difficult to have sex without touching it, so he didn’t have sex any more. I didn’t even tell David when Sam parked the car outside the Starbucks on North Vermont and Franklin one morning and told me that he loved me. Nobody had ever, in my life, said the words “I love you” directed at me, and the first person who did say it was someone I’d only met a few weeks before and I didn’t care about in the least. I would have liked to ask him what colour my eyes were, or where in London I was from. Why didn’t I live in England any more? What did I want from life? How old was I? Instead I smiled stiffly and told him that I didn’t feel the same way as he did.