Hotel World

by Ali Smith

  The woman had already put her hand deep inside the lining of her coat, she had brought out a twenty pence piece, she was holding it up.

  Here you are, she said.

  By the time she was back at the hotel Penny had become anxious about having written a cheque for so much. By the time the lift had reached her floor she had decided what to do about it.

  The lift door opened. Penny peeked out.

  The girl was gone. All the loose change was gone. The hall had been tidied up. But the gash in the wall was still there, horrible. Penny put her head at an angle so as not to see it. She unlocked her door. In her room, clear and plastic, was the smell of new computer.

  Nice, she thought.

  She drew the curtains shut, kicked off her stained, spoiled boots and flopped herself on to the bed. Tired, she thought.

  There were no messages for her on either phone. She started the computer up. Its clock said 11:15 p.m. There were no e-mails waiting. For a moment she felt bereft. Then she typed her opening paragraph straight out. She read it over. It needed almost nothing else.

  Good, she thought.

  She reached for the phone and dialled 1.

  Hello, Reception, a voice said.

  Hello, Penny said, this is Room 34. I’d like a Club Sandwich.

  Certainly madam, the voice said. I’ll connect you to Room Service.

  And one other thing, Penny said. Can you tell me the combination for pay-per-view for this room? I can’t find the information anywhere in the room. I’ve been looking all evening.

  Certainly madam, the voice said. As it says inside our Global Information Brochure under the heading Pay-Per-View, you just double your room number. So your pay-per-view combination, for instance, since you’re in Room 34, will be 3434.

  Ah, Penny said.

  Room Service? a voice said.

  This is Room 34, Penny said. Can you send me up a Club Sandwich?

  Certainly madam, the voice said. Would you like anything to drink with your order?

  Hot chocolate, Penny said.

  Certainly madam. With cream?

  No, Penny said.

  Penny hung up. She pressed the on button on the remote, and reeled through the channels until she found the crypted-over channel from earlier in the evening. She keyed in her number. Words on the screen told her to press the button marked BUY. Penny pressed it. The channel decrypted immediately. A woman in a fedora and an unbuttoned mac was sitting in a car outside a house.

  She was clearly supposed to be a private detective; she carried a camera with a ridiculously long lens. Through the lens she was watching a man and a woman having sex in a kitchen. She watched them, then she put the camera down and put a finger into her mouth. The woman having sex moaned. She held on to the sideboard. The man talked in a quiet voice. He turned the woman round on the table and went in from behind. The woman moaned some more. Her head was next to a block of knives, a plate covered in what looked like uncooked bacon and a basket of cakes with white icing and red cherries on top. The man wrapped some of the bacon round his index finger and looked as if he were about to poke it inside the woman’s anus. The camera cut to the woman in the car, who had taken the lens off the camera and had put it between her legs. Ooh, she said. She moved backwards and forwards on the lens inside the car.

  Penny finished her second paragraph and read it out to herself.

  Great, she thought.

  Then she remembered, and got her chequebook out. There was a word written on it. It was the word the homeless woman had wanted to know. Half-curious, Penny called up Spellcheck on her computer screen and typed in the letters r e, then b e g, then o and t, but the Spellcheck came up blank. After a moment it suggested replacing the word with the word reboot. She tried the Thesaurus. The word was not found, the Thesaurus told her. Choose another word to look up. It listed the following words instead: rebel, rebellion, rebelliousness, rebirth, rebuild, rebuff.

  The Room Service order came.

  Penny signed for it, ate it and drank it.

  She thought over the evening as she ate. It hadn’t been dull. It had been unexpectedly interesting. Nobody would believe she had been for a walk round the worst areas in town looking into people’s houses with a homeless person who had asked her the meanings of words. Would anybody be that interested? But she had liked the homeless woman, who had taken her to see front gardens, one with an old sofa in it, one with a fridge, gardens with children’s toys abandoned in them, or with fuchsias and roses and perfectly edged black lawns in them. The Garden of England. Blair’s Britain at the Dawn of New Millennium kind of thing. She should suggest it. She would work on it. Thought-provoking, kitsch value, old-fashioned class value as well as social value. She was pleased. The night had given her a great deal she hadn’t expected.

  She wondered if the homeless woman had been casing the houses for anything valuable.

  Before she forgot again, she dialled 24-Hour Banking and keyed in her pass-numbers. She told the man the number of the cheque.

  Cancelled? the man said.

  Penny paused. Something made her freeze as surely as if someone somewhere had aimed a remote control at her and pressed the button with the word pause on it. In the frozen moment she remembered: the width and narrowness of money; the great clock towering the Thames and the Houses of Parliament, its pendulum kept in order by a pillar of small coins; a man with a beard climbing uneven steps holding in the dip of his hand a feather and a pea; and the way that the borrowed money had fallen inside the callbox so that someone at the other end of a phone could say something and she would be heard by them.

  Hello? the man on the phone said. Hello?

  Then she was back in the hotel room, sitting on the bed holding the receiver and talking to someone she didn’t know in a bank that never closed.

  Please, she said.

  For a minute there she thought she’d gone soft. For a minute there, the universe had shifted. But no. Good. As she read out the last two numbers of the cheque, she felt it; crude to put it like this, perhaps, with what had happened outside her door earlier that evening, and what was happening on the hotel television screen right in front of her, right then. But something inside her which had been forced open had sealed up again. Good, she thought again, pleased with herself first for the initial extravagance of her act, and next for being able to, crucially being sensible enough to, put a stop to it. If you were poor, you were poor. You couldn’t handle money. Money was nothing but a problem if you weren’t used to it. It must be a relief, to have none. It was no accident that the words poor and pure were so alike.

  Homeless Woman Windfall. Penny From Heaven.

  She laughed. That was good. She was firing on all cylinders. She wrote the last paragraph of the hotel piece and read through the whole thing.

  That, she thought, will do nicely.

  Wary of calling down for someone to fold her covers back (in case they sent up that girl from earlier in the hall) she rolled them back herself. She checked the sheets, like she always did, for cigarette burns, bloodspots, marks of any kind, hairs.

  She had finished the piece, had saved it and had sent it down the line. She had left the television on, low-volume fleshy creaking in the background, and the lights on too. (Usually this kept it at bay, but tonight she would dream again of falling out of the plane, the pack on her back faulty, the straps and ropes tangled and the chute not opening as she falls above the lonely rolling English countryside, trees below her so small that she could pick one up between her finger and thumb and put it on her tongue like an international delicacy she isn’t sure of the correct way of eating. But what if someone has seen her eat it incorrectly, and what if the tree in her stomach swells as she falls to its actual size like the trees below her, her stomach about to burst open, leaves and branches and trunk and roots come furiously new-born out of her?) She had the hotel shampoo, the hotel stationery, the hotel pen, the hotel pencil, the hotel cotton buds, the hotel shoewipe, the hotel handcream, all packed
away in her case for her early start back down south tomorrow.

  She stretched herself out in the bed. It was huge. It was sweet-smelling. It was warmed-up from where she’d been lying on it. She was about to fall far, deep, fast, asleep. Perfect, she thought as she did.

  WORLD HOTELS

  It doesn’t matter where you are in the world if you’re anywhere near a Global Hotel. You could be, literally, anywhere. You could even be home. For work, for relaxation, for the ideal get-away-from-it-all, and for stylish, spacious bedrooms whose unique individual design is just one of the classy hallmarks of the Global Hotel phenomenon, you can’t beat them. They’re good.

  Why go there?

  Who needs an excuse? These relaxed, informal, usually small hotels in the very hip and trendy Global category are their own raison d’être. Affordably priced, elegantly adapted, they’re miles ahead of the guest-house competition when it comes to leaving nothing to be desired.

  Why stay there?

  Because you won’t be able to help it! New York, Brussels, Leeds, wherever, we practically guarantee you that if you’re in a Global the temptation will be to spend your whole holiday (like we did) in your room, revelling in the lush, plush settings they do so well. You’ll be so perfectly at home in whatever armchair you’ve happened to fall into that you’ll find it hard to get out of the chair, never mind the room. And the food! Don’t get us started on the food. Another reason you won’t want to go out. Global makes a point of hiring seasoned, fashionable chefs who cook up such a bill of fare that wherever you are you’re eating at a Capital-City-high standard.

  City life

  Excellent for business meetings and pretty well equipped for everyone from the lone traveller to the full-scale small conference, we found the seductive Global rates are probably well worth a look whatever your needs might be.

  Winter weekends

  Let’s face it, winter is hard work, hard winds, hard going. Or – alternatively – you could be enjoying a luxurious soak, enjoying the comfort of flawless staff attention, enjoying blissing out to the latest in TV technology in your room, or just blissing out to a room with a Global view. Why not let yourself get utterly oblivious? High on style, low on fuss, and the perfect hideaway, the classic yet contemporary Global will provide an environment that’s hard to better. A transcendent time is ready and waiting to be had by all.

  World Perfect awards the Global chain nine out of ten.

  Effortless style and an effortless visit.

  A superior stay.

  & since the main thing is I counted I was there

  & since I have come home with really the most fucking amazing new shoes & also they gave me the breakfast & it was really good

  & since there is the five pound note

  & since I knew I did know already about the horrible thing about being crammed-in all upside down I had read it in the papers it wasn’t a surprise or a shock or anything I did know

  & since she was fast since she was so incredibly fast I bet she’d be pleased I’m sure she’d be pleased how fast I like to think she is light as air lighter than it now like those pictures they take of car headlights in cities where the cars are going too fast to leave anything of themselves but their lights as they go so fast past the camera it is like that with her I am sure I think she could go round town all day & all night if she wanted at a really amazing stream of light & speed over the tops of the buildings she could even dive out of the high windows of that hotel she would just float she wouldn’t fall she wouldn’t have to because now she can tread air too not just water like people who are only alive well that’s what I think anyhow

  & since usually at this time of the night no not really night morning really what time is it half past four since at this time of the morning it is me staring at the airtex in the ceiling & it all going round in circles in my head me going over & over it that she was going to she was to have gone up to maybe even sub in the national team they said they would maybe test her for the team that sometimes subs for the national team if she could have got her time on the butterfly right she needed to shave it she said to not quite half a second less that’s what she told me that they were on the point of offering it to her if she could make it a 0.45 of a second faster she was saying it she was in bed right there right over there she would be able to go for the trials they told her she was still fast for her age if she could do the 0.45 thing 0.45 of a second it is nothing it is like almost nothing no time at all like that that that that that past you so fast you can hardly tell it was even there that was all she needed to lose off her time to shave it she said & she hadn’t told anyone in case it didn’t happen because she said it might jinx it I haven’t told anybody I haven’t told a soul sub that means substitute imagine Sara my sister Sara Wilby might have been a sub for a national team that is fucking amazing really & she her voice was just there inches away over there I could have reached my hand out imagine if you shaved a butterfly that would be terrible you would have to be careful what if you sliced through something its antennae its proboscis where would you shave it there’s nowhere to there’s no extra on a butterfly it was the Wednesday night she was right there telling me & it was weird because usually she never told me anything she never usually said anything to me about anything & then after that it was on the Monday night after that that was the Monday night she never came home when she was supposed to she never came every night ever since then since that night it has been the bits of her coming at me like they are all demanding I never know what & it’s like say she was standing there at the end of my bed & then she suddenly flew apart she just fell apart small bits of her her ear neck the hollow of her neck hand fingers toes her heel her foot the bit where her swimsuit dipped down & the shoulderblade in it eye mouth muscles her oh God fuck sake it makes me weird in my stomach the word the breast like it stares at me some nights looking at me with like just its one open eye sometimes there’s two of them two eyes like staring like when he says I am being really insolent well Sara you have a really fucking insolent chest well you had God I am weird I am fucking gone I tell you I am a lobotomic case anyway not yet tonight it hasn’t come still all the same I still can’t get to sleep maybe after tonight I think because it has made my heart go so fast or maybe it is all the food they gave me at the hotel I ate a lot I haven’t eaten as much as that for God ages now I don’t know how long kind of forgot about food really

  & since now I know for sure though really I knew already that she didn’t actually mean to do it I suppose that too is keeping me awake though more usually at this time of the night morning I am lying here not sleeping again because I am thinking all that stuff again like how she was going to be 20 years old & it would have been on Jan 22nd next year & she was about to be 20 in a couple of months’ time she would have been 20 in 2000 on Jan 22 20 2000 22 & at school everybody thinking she did mean to do it like in English with horrible Ellis cow looking at me from the front of the class all sympathetic fucking sad eyes like I’m an invalid or freak or something that day we were reading that book Tess of the D’Urbervilles by T Hardy & there is that bit in it where she is looking in the mirror suddenly she thinks that we all know our dates of birth but that every year there is another date that we pass over without knowing what it is but it is just as important it is the other date the death date I could feel everybody in the whole place the boys too all the eyes going into my back & Gemma on the one side & Charlotte on the other not looking because they all knew about it it sent this funny tingling through everything made everything like woah fuck sake weird like something had happened & nobody could say it & I knew I was supposed to be thinking that she had had her other date maybe she had even decided it to do it on it & it was 24 May May 24 & the thing is for once I wasn’t actually fucking thinking it or anything about it for once I had been thinking of something else I had been listening to a story about something else a girl looking in a mirror that’s all then I had to think about it didn’t I because everybody knew & was expecting
me to though nobody would fucking well dare say so out loud would they no & then that night & for a long time after it was all I could think about was how she had had all those 24 Mays one after the other & on every one of them she must’ve woken up got up like usual had her breakfast she used to have just an apple for her breakfast our mum shouting at her because an apple isn’t enough breakfast for a growing girl breakfast being the most important meal of the day that she saw in a magazine or on TV or something she must’ve been made to eat other stuff when we were smaller & they could still make her eat it Frosties or something Rice Krispies I suppose I don’t know I don’t remember & then she’d have walked to school not when she was really small of course like before I was born but after I was born she was nearly five after that she’d have walked to school primary school first at Edwards’s & then when she was eleven Bourne Comp on that date 24 May if it was a weekday & probably she went to the pool or whatever on it & now I know for sure she didn’t do it on purpose she didn’t know it was her other date it just was it is kind of horrible that idea in that book I can’t get it out of my head that that day is always there & the day comes round I wonder if I ever feel anything when the date comes round on my own day I think if it hadn’t actually happened in real life & we had been reading that book at school I would have thought that it was kind of a cool idea even though it’s in such an old long book with all those boring bits about fate I can’t remember anything else out of it except the horse getting killed & the baby & the man with the moustache there was obviously a lot more death in those days & the blood on the ceiling that was in the film they showed us of it what if I was looking at a ceiling like I am now then I saw blood spreading all over it & it dripped through into the room & fell on to my bed uh that is so horrible because she they didn’t tell us he didn’t say tonight that man if she did I don’t know maybe you don’t have to maybe you don’t bleed if you just all break up inside but I was thinking about I was thinking about something else yes 24 May the date thing in the book I was thinking yes since with it actually happening in real life it makes it not like cool any more no it’s more like you just can’t not think about it because what is it like it is like like reading a book yeah like say you were reading a book any book & you were halfway through it really into the story knowing all about the characters & all the stuff that’s happening to them then you turn the next page over & halfway down the page it just goes blank it stops there just aren’t any more words on it & you know for sure that when you picked this book up it wasn’t like that it was like a normal book & had an end a last chapter a last page all that but now you flick through it right to the end & it’s all just blank nothing to tell you yes that is a bit like what it is like