by Ali Smith
On my first night a boy working on Room Service said he’d show me the ropes. It was busy, it was the weekend. On my second night we were up on the top floor. It was a Monday. There were hardly any guests up there. I can’t remember his name. He told me the history of the hotel. He had pockets full of replacement drinks for the minibars. We were messing about, sitting on the beds in empty rooms, watching their TVs with the sound down and the subtitles on so nobody would know we were there. It was quite early, about half past ten. He was putting dishes into the dumb waiter. Under the metal cover someone had left a steak and most of the chips. I ate some of the chips. Don’t do that, he said, I wouldn’t do that if I were you, you’ve not worked here long enough to know where it’s been. I said, I bet you a fiver I can fit myself in there. I took the tray out. I nearly slopped gravy on to the carpet, but I didn’t, I put it down and I climbed inside, I made myself fit it perfectly and I was just bending my head round to say how much he owed me, when.
You know the rest, she said. You were there.
Our broken body at the foot of the shaft. I was there. Wooooo-
hooooo, yes, what I felt, then. That reminded me. How many seconds? I said.
Time’s up, she said. That’s your story. Go away.
But how long exactly? I said again. Can’t you remember how long it took us exactly?
No, she said.
What ropes did he show you? I said. Were the ropes long or short? Did they make any difference to the speed of the fall?
For fuck sake, she said. I’ve told you everything I know.
I was losing her. I tried another tack. You know that swimming pool? I said. Did you ever dive off the top board at that pool? Was it very high? Or the very top boards of other pools? Because that’s it, I reckon, the same wooo-
hooooo only even more so.
Of course I did, she said. You know I did. I was good. I could do double somersaults in the air. Look. This is getting painful now. Go away. You said you would. I’ve told you. Don’t you have a home to go to? Aren’t you supposed to go to heaven, or hell, or somewhere?
Soon enough, I said (to God knows where).
Sooner the better, she said. I’m tired. Go away. Don’t come back. We’ve no business with each other any more, and she closed like a lid. So I came back up. I left her there, in her sleep, unravelling each of the letters of our shared name and throwing away the little coloured threads that made it no one else’s name in the world.
I want to ask her the name again for the things we see with. I want to ask her the name for heated-up bread.
I have already forgotten it again, the name for the lift for dishes. It has tired me out telling you her story, all you pavement-pressing see-hearing people passing so blandly back and fore in front of the front door of the hotel. I lose the words; like so many chips of granite tapped out of a stone to make the shape of a name, they litter the ground. I came up through the ground. A mouthful of ground would be something, dark and meaty, turfy and stony and pasting the tongue, graining under it and between the teeth like mustard. Or a handful of ground; grassy turf and the layer of earth crumbing down like good cake-mix if you rubbed it between fingers and a thumb, thickening like paint if you ran it through with a little spittle.
If I had spit, or fingers, or a thumb, a hand, a mouth.
You could put ground in your mouth, couldn’t you?
You, yes, you. You have a hand. You could hold the earth in it. I came up through the earth and I couldn’t keep any of it. I flew over flyovers groaning with the weight of their traffic. I saw rubbished grass round the edges of stations; a dumped fridge; a burnt-out car; a piece of old furniture rotten with rain. I saw the pool open beneath me. It was drained and empty for the cold months. Dark was coming. Old leaves blew in circles down at the deep end.
On both sides the rows of doors rattled, fixed shut for the winter. A sparrow waited till the leaves settled, and hopped about at the bottom of the pool, cocked its head. Nobody there. Nothing to eat.
I have a message for you, I told the sparrow and the empty pool. Listen. Remember you must live.
The top board barely swayed beneath me, troubled by thin air.
Where could I go? Back to the hotel. On my way I saw a wall of faces shifting and falling like water. Here they are: I saw a young woman struggling along a road; she was carrying awkward things. I saw a man on the opened-up roof of a house, white dust all over his hair and bleaching his nose; he had a pencil behind his ear. I saw a line of people; a man with his hands down the front of the skirt of the woman standing with him in the line. He was lifting her up by the groin; they both laughed, they had the faces of happy drunkards. The other people in the line stood between politeness and anger. I saw inside one man’s head; he was considering knives and blood.
I saw an old man with his hands raised after a much younger man who was driving away in a car full of things. The old man kept one hand in the air till well after the car had gone, then he stood at his garden wall in the birdsong and the nothing. I smelt pastry, faintly. In the cafeteria a woman was sitting at a table reading a newspaper story about a family who had gone on a boat trip and had all but one been eaten by sharks. She read it out loud, severed legs and bitten heads, to the woman behind the counter who was laughing, horrified. Cigarette smoke curled and caught as she laughed, staining her throat. I saw one car in a remote car park in the early evening rain. It had an L on the front and an L on the back, and inside it a boy and a woman thudding against the seats. Ah, love. The full weight of an other. The woman held a clipboard under her arm, her other arm around the boy, who was boiling. Steam rose from them both and slid itself across the windows of the car.
I told them all.
I told all the people in the cinema queue. They were waiting to see something. I told all the people in Boots the Chemist. They were waiting for prescriptions. (Imagine a glorious cold in the nose. Imagine a tweaking chirping thrush in the groin. Imagine being a colour, and feeling off it.) I went to the supermarket; the aisles were straining with foods. I told the check-out girls. They were waiting for Saturday afternoon to be over. It was their worst day.
Remember you must leave.
It was near dark. I found a shop with its windows full of watches. A girl sat by herself, leaning an arm on the glass top of the counter. Below her were watches. Behind her were watches. She was staring at the front of her wrist where the moving hand on the face of her watch leapt and stopped, leapt and stopped, leapt and stopped.
I passed through her. I couldn’t resist it. I felt nothing. I hope it was the right shop. I hope she was the right girl. She shivered at the shoulders and shook me off.
I put where my mouth had been to the side of her head. I said:
I have a message for you. Listen.
She flicked her head to sort her hair. She scratched at the back of her neck. She put her hand down on the counter again and watched her watch, the seconds, doing time.
Woooo-
hoooooo? Anything this time? No, nothing. I try again, and again. Nothing. Just sleep, coming. Time, nearly up.
It is my last night here. I circle the hotel and conjure stones, dust, soil. Some rooms are small, some are larger. The size dictates the cost.
I coast down corridors, invisible as air-conditioning. I waft about the restaurant from table to table, plate to nouvelle plate. I seep through the kitchen door; out the back five dustbins are stacked against a wall, each full of uneaten things.
I hang in reception like muzak. You will recognize me; I am a far-too-familiar tune. I slide up the shining banisters, up and up to the top floor, and through the door of one of the rooms and across the carpet and through the top window, and pirouette all the way down the front of the building (to the paving tiled with the name of the hotel, washed down every morning at half past six regardless of the weather or the dark or the light by the tired lady with the bucket and the mop, I shall not see her tomorrow, I shall miss). Woooo-
hoooooo I have a messa
ge for you, I tell the black sky above the hotel, and the windows lit at half past four down its sides and back and front, and its doors that go round breathing the people out and in.
Here’s a woman being swallowed by the doors. She is well-dressed. On her back she carries nothing. Her life could be about to change. Here’s another one inside, wearing the uniform of the hotel and working behind its desk. She is ill and she doesn’t know it yet. Life, about change. Here’s a girl, next to me, dressed in blankets, sitting along from the hotel doors right here, on the pavement. Her life, change.
Here’s the story.
Remember you must live.
Remember you most love.
Remainder you mist leaf.
(I will miss mist. I will miss leaf. I will miss the, the. What’s the word? Lost, I’ve, the word. The word for. You know. I don’t mean a house. I don’t mean a room. I mean the way of the . Dead to the . Out of this . Word.
I am hanging falling breaking between this word and the next.
Time me, would you?
You. Yes, you. It’s you I’m talking to.)
Else is outside. Small change is all she’s made, mostly coppers, fives, tens. The occasional coin is still shining like straight out of a Marks and Spencer till, but most of them are dulled from all the handling and the cold. Nobody ever misses it, do they, a penny, that’s fallen out of the hand or the pocket on to the street? There’s one there, just to the side of Else’s foot. Who needs one pence? Fucking nobody who is anybody. That’s quite funny, the idea of fucking a nobody, just a space there where a body might be, and yourself flailing backwards and forwards against the thin air.
If she leans forward she’ll be able to reach that one pence piece without having to get up.
She leans forward. It hurts to lean.
She stops trying. She’ll pick it up when she moves on. She is
(Spr sm chn?)
sitting near a grating through which some warmth rises. This is a good place here outside the hotel, and it’s hers, if she tucks into the wall alcove near the main door, good and decorous enough, far enough along from it to be left alone by the staff. She looks up. The sky is the ceiling. It closes in, dark early. On the highest ledge of the building opposite, the starlings have gathered and are settling and unsettling with flurries and jousts of their feet and beaks. Starlings’ eggs: pale blue colour. They build nests with grass and feathers, sometimes with bits of litter, in trees or eaves or holes in stonework. They are real city birds. Their chests are punctured with stars. They swarm and turn in one grand gesture in the sky at dusk.
Dusk has already happened; the street between the buildings is lit by streetlights and the lights from the hotel front, the shop lights and the lights on passing cars. Else’s neck hurts from looking up for so long. She drops her gaze down the side of the building. Yes. That girl is back, sitting on the steps of the World Of Carpets showroom. Yes, it’s her. She’s making it a habit. Everybody knows this is Else’s patch. But that girl acts like she doesn’t. She’s got her hood up, but it’s definitely her in there.
Else watches the girl. The girl watches something off to the side of Else. Else stops watching. Someone is passing, and is acting like she’s noticed Else but decided to ignore her; most people don’t see Else there at all, so it’s a reasonable bet with one like this that if Else asks, she’ll get.
(Cn y spr sm chn? Thnk y.)
Two ten pence pieces.
Put a ten pence piece in your mouth and bite down and if your teeth are soft they’ll break on it. Which metal is harder, silver or copper? It is not real silver. It is an alloy. She will look it up in the encyclopedia in the library next time it rains, if the library is open. She has looked it up once already, but has forgotten. She is pretty sure it’ll be the ten that’s harder; it stands to reason. One time, she and Ade filled their mouths with as much as they could. He could get a lot more into his than she could; he had a bigger mouth, ha ha. It bulged his face out like a hamster; she could see the shapes of the edges of the coins pushing against his beard. It gives you a heavy head, money, if you fill your mouth with it.
It makes her laugh to think about. Laughing hurts. The money had been covered in saliva in their hands; he spat his into her hands, it came out like a kind of shining sick. You can have it, he said, you need it more than me. Jesus, they must have been drunk or out of it or something; they knew the dirt there is on money and they still put it all into their mouths. The taste was metal. After that when Ade had kissed her he tasted of metal too. He passed a ten pence piece into her mouth, in past her teeth and off his tongue, flat on to her tongue like a communion wafer, she held it on her tongue like it would melt, then opened her mouth and took it out. The date on it was 1992. God. They’d kissed all
(Spr sm chn?)
the different sizes of coin they had on them, back and fore, like a game, to see what each felt like.
Else tries to remember.
She can remember the taste of the kiss more clearly, even, than she can really remember Ade, what he looked like, his face. A whole time can reduce down to a single taste, a moment. A whole person down to the skelf of a self. Sometimes now she rubs a coin on her jumper and puts it in her mouth; silver tastes cleaner than copper. Copper tastes like meat gone off. The edging on a penny and a two is smooth; the edging on a five or a ten is cut with little grooves; though they’re small they feel big to the tip of a tongue. The tongue-tip is sensitive. The weight of a pound is actually surprising. Else remembers being quite surprised. Nemo me impune lacessit. That’s the promise of it. That’s what the tip of the tongue can trace round the edge of heavy money.
The taste of it is always on her fingers, always lurking at the back of her throat. Or maybe the taste of money, or love, is just the same taste as the taste of catarrh.
Else looks up, across the road. That girl over there has her hood up today and people will be giving her less money because they can’t tell if it’s a boy or a girl she is. With her hood down she’d make a lot more. Though she’s not doing badly. She’s definitely doing better than Else. But with her hood down, well, she’d do a lot better. Else ought to go over there and tell her. She’s got no idea. Ten past four she got here. She looks fourteen, maybe fifteen at the most; she’s got school written all over her. She’s got
(Spr sm chn?)
good schoolgirl all over her face. Her hair is too bright and well, below that hood. She doesn’t look hard up. Her clothes change. She has more than one coat. She looks like a runaway, but a brand-new, just-arrived-today one. So she gets money easily, of course she does, she looks like the stupefied baby animals looked on the front of the kind of chocolate box that you used to be able to get years ago, if you compared them to a real cat or a dog. The only thing about her is that she looks miserable, she looks greyed. She’s the colour of ice that’s been smashed in over a puddle. Else feels quite sorry for her.
But it’s not like that girl wants the money anyway. She doesn’t even see them drop the money in front of her. Every time she’s there it’s the same; she makes a fortune she doesn’t even seem to want in no fucking time at all. Else remembers what it was like to be that age and not to care. It makes them give you more, the people going past, so they’ll matter to you. Some people even offer that girl notes. Else has seen this. They drop to their haunches in front of her and talk, shaking their heads seriously, nodding seriously, and the look on the girl’s face is like someone’s face would be if, if, Else can’t think what. Yes, if that girl woke up and got out of her bed and went downstairs and out on to the street
(Spr sm chn? Thnks.)
and found that for some reason everybody else on the street, in the whole city, was speaking something she couldn’t, like Norwegian, or Polish, or some language she didn’t even know was a language.
People go past. They don’t see Else, or decide not to. Else watches them. They hold mobile phones to their ears and it is as if they are holding the sides of their faces and heads in a new kind of a
gony. The ones with the new headset kind of mobile phone look like insane people, as if they’re walking along talking to themselves in a world of their own. It makes Else laugh, and it’s sore, to laugh. The sky is the ceiling, the buildings are the walls; she has the hotel wall behind her back now, holding her up. Inside her, another wall holding her upright, it goes from her abdomen to her throat and it’s made of phlegm, and occasionally, when she can’t not cough, when she has to cough, can’t stop herself, the wall crumbles. She imagines it breaking like rotten cement. But it has its uses. It keeps her upright. It’s holding her up just as much as the hotel wall is.
She imagines where her heart is, the muscles and the blood round her ribs and lungs. She imagines her lungs creaking and hissing, snarled up in blood and muscle like bad telephone lines, already outmoded anyway, and as if someone was trying to wire-up some place that just couldn’t be wired up. Like if someone arrived carrying the telephone wires all waiting to be connected up, got out of his van and found himself standing outside some fucking great castle wall with thin slits in it instead of windows, and it was in the fifteenth century and there was no such thing as electricity.
