Hotel World

by Ali Smith

  & since you went quite early on after you went I started making them while I was lying here lists of all the things that you could have been including a swimmer a swimmer obviously but the thing is you could have been anything a doctor someone selling jumpers in a shop selling shoes in a shoe shop papers in a paper shop someone who looked after trees & bushes at a garden centre see all anyone is talking about at school is the millennium this the millennium that what will you do for the millennium five hundred words on how you will make the world a better place in the millennium & all I can think is that the list of things it would have been possible for you to do is never fucking ending it goes on forever new things adding to it all the time you could have been a TV vet or done the things they keep telling us to do at school with computers & personnel or got married or been a person working in a hospital the night a dead girl who’d fallen down a lift shaft got brought in & then like on ER the story would have gone on for you instead of stopping I guess nobody would watch that programme if it just stopped every time someone that got brought in died the story goes on & on for the doctors & nurses every week & on Casualty too even though there are patients that die on them all the time imagine if it stopped just because people stopped there would be nothing but blank screens on the TVs all round the country five minutes after the start of each episode people would be banging the tops of their TVs throwing their remotes across the room there would be riots I am watching TV for you in case you are missing it I am keeping up with Brookside for you it is seriously crap & not just George Clooney is out of ER now but there is a rumour that Carol is going to leave too so you would be pretty pissed off though it is funny to think how you maybe don’t know about that when everybody in the whole wide fucking world knows it & when I eat a piece of toast it is slowly so I will remember for you what it tastes like first the burnt taste then the taste where the butter has melted in & the jam taste like tonight then the tougher taste when you get to the crust whatever I eat I eat slowly to see what it really tastes like to eat an orange or whatever & chicken & a potato in gravy that I know you liked for instance today at lunch there were frozen peas they tasted of peas like frozen peas taste do you remember & one time I stood up on the arm of the couch when there was nobody else in the room & put my hand on the top of the door for you where the wood is still kind of rough up there it isn’t painted I don’t think it has ever been painted since whoever built the house there’s loads of like years’ worth of dust & stuff is all layered on I think our whole fucking family is up there in layers including the cats & when I came down I touched the velvet of the armcover of the reclining chair so you would know what it felt like though the touch of velvet makes a shiver go down my spine like if you scratch your finger across one of those old vinyl singles in his collection not you me & I look at things hard so you will know if you want to what they look like the new cars I saw on the car transporter coming into town were so new they didn’t have numberplates they were really cool really smooth-looking they looked really good really fast because cars are getting faster & I have even been to the pool yeah the pool me so I can smell it for you too the smell of the water & the chemical & shampoo smell the smell is of you I went on Tuesday last week in lunchbreak there were kids splashing this guy dived in he was crap he hit the water too hard sounded like it was sore yeah I know believe it or not the pool where I wouldn’t have gone for any money I wouldn’t have been seen dead there ha ha get it listen a dog goes into a bar in the Wild West right & he goes up to the bar & he says I’m looking for the man who shot my paw or is that like a stupid little sister joke & maybe you can hear things like that joke anyway when it’s actually happening maybe you were listening when Laura told me it at the newsagents I don’t know whether I have to remember them & tell you later like now I hope it’s not boring to hear it over again if you heard it already did you hear the one about the man who built a paper shop it blew away I am going fucking mad talking to a dead person a person who’s dead & can’t hear anything & here I am talking to it telling it jokes for fuck sake I am losing my mind would Clare Wilby’s mind please report to customer services it’s me that’s the joke I am such a joke still my heart is going so fast about something it is racing away ahead of me it is kind of amazing to talk to her like that amazing because I talk to her all the time now we never used to talk at all hardly ever but now all the time I can’t get my head round it if someone is dead they can be more alive than they are when they’re actually like alive that is mad that is lobotomic it really is I have to not think like that it is backward it is fucking retarded if anybody knew it was me who was leaving those sweets there they would put me in a mental hospital but I don’t see what the difference is it is okay to plant stupid crocuses though I don’t know if she ever even liked crocuses but I do know that she liked them because she showed me how to suck the sugar dust off & what the toffee looked like after you did muddy white she had it between her teeth opened her mouth so I could see she said there were two different ways to eat it you could eat it with the sugar still on just chew it really hard straight away that was one way & one taste then you could also do the sucking the sugar off thing then chew it & that was a different taste so I thought they were as good a thing to leave maybe even better actually since she stopped getting to eat any of that stuff to slim down for swimming so she could be faster I can still remember when she showed me it in her mouth it was all lit up because of the way it was covered in her saliva that is so fucking weird I am going weird if anyone knew I thought these things or went around leaving sweets in cemeteries for a dead person who can’t fucking well exactly eat them can she I still just don’t get it a dead person & her a dead person & her how the two things are the same thing where does it go where did she how one minute can you be walking about & the next you can’t as if like you just got lifted up & disappeared into the sky or you turned a corner & fell off the side of the world & nobody can phone you or anything & I saw what happened to that mouse that we put in the shed after Fluff got it it wasn’t bleeding but it was in shock that’s what mum said we put it on the saucer & put another saucer with water near it but when we got back from the holiday & opened the shed door there weren’t even any bones left just a swarm of white things moving back & fore on the saucer we threw it away the whole thing the saucer too & also & also there are all these rules like when Teresa Drewe her family’s Catholic she went to a Catholic school before Bourne’s she came up to me at art when we were doing the time capsules & told me about how saints actually get to be saints because they have had to endure these painful deaths so maybe it was good to go like that she said but then she said was it true that it was on purpose because that meant that she couldn’t get into heaven & that wherever she was buried it would turn the ground into unconcentrated ground well it wasn’t on purpose was it & that thing about how there are even people who carry bits of dead saint around with them to keep safe or blessed or whatever it is it’s kind of like people who have those real white rabbits’ paws on their keyrings for good luck like Uncle Martin showed us that time with the claws of the rabbit still in it well I suppose the handkerchief in the drawer the handkerchief in the drawer is kind of like that maybe though I don’t want to not have it I like knowing it’s there certainly wouldn’t tell anybody about it or show anybody because they would think it was so disgusting & lobotomic but Sara I know Sara would laugh she would laugh about the hoover if she was here then I would make a joke about how she is so light now how she is so not heavy any more that she could easy shave 0.45 off her butterfly in fact she could easy be the fastest swimmer in the whole fucking world if she wanted to if that’s what she wanted to be she’s so light now she could be fast as the wind fast as fucking light I would say it & she would hit me over the top of my head that stern look on her face her hand scuffing the top of my hair like it was a stupid little sister thing & I wonder if I maybe looked a bit like her when I had the uniform on we don’t really didn’t really look alike but maybe a little bit I must have look
ed a bit like her I must have looked a bit

  & since the bits of her all broken apart still aren’t coming haven’t come tonight yet yet thank God thank fuck it is not them but my heart going so fast that’s keeping me awake yeah along with the fucking noise of him through there still snoring I can’t believe anyone could snore so much & not wake up he’s a heavy sleeper ha that is the fucking understatement of the year of the century of the millennium it sounds like someone drilling bricks out of the side of the house someone mowing the carpet with one of those lawn-mowers that you push that don’t have a motor except it sounds as loud as louder than a motor it is no fucking wonder I never fucking sleep haven’t slept properly for months I wonder if that Lisa will send me some of her sleep hours that was nice I don’t remember him snoring like that before it either he’s snoring or he’s getting up he’ll be getting up in a minute it’ll be that fucking wheeeeeee in a minute morning again he is always in there these days going at his face with the razor about three times a day I don’t remember really what it was like before it must have been different from this I think he thinks I am insolent all the time not just because I don’t say anything but because I am the one who is still here & also I know this is true that if I was thrown into a pool & they would have to throw me because there is no way I would do the jumping or the diving in that she could do no way never so if they would throw me in I would sink straight down & it would be so embarrassing someone the pool guard probably would have to dive in & rescue me off the bottom like I was one of those bricks people practise with sometimes I wouldn’t mind being just an ear just an eye an eyebrow just one single eyelash blown away like someone held me at the tip of their finger & made a wish on me blew me away light as a really really small piece of I don’t know uh leaf it would be a relief to be just that not this with all its feet & hands & mind going all the time Sara you are lucky oh God what am God no I don’t mean it Sara I didn’t mean anything by it I didn’t she had the most fucking amazing eyelashes they were so long longer than anybody else’s I will ever know & there they were just on the ends of your eyelids going down & up whenever you closed your eyes & opened them or blinked just blinked like we all do thousands of times a day where did they go your eyelashes were they hurt a thing happened on Saturday when I went to Sainsbury’s with mum she sat by the door while I paid at the till they gave me the change & the receipt I was scrunching it up to put it in my pocket & I noticed it said right at the bottom of it the words goodbye hope to see you again & I was walking back over to mum she was sitting near the newspapers & it came into my head from nowhere I remembered that night quite near the end when I was getting ready for bed & you were in your bed you were looking at me I could see your eyes in the dark you were just looking at me nothing else just the looking it was I don’t know suddenly terrible my whole insides filled it made me angry it was sore it filled me up as simply as water will fill a cup a sink a bath a pool a river the ocean basin or whatever you put it in it filled me so I could hardly breathe came right up over my nose like I was too small for the depth of it Sara do you remember you had a pain in your stomach one day in that week you first went to work at the hotel & do you remember you took that pink stuff that comes in the bottle with the plastic cup on the top of it well inside the bedside cabinet your cabinet from the side of your bed I went through it before they took it away I found the cup it was the week after you & there was a little of the pink stuff left at the bottom that you hadn’t drunk it had solidified inside the cup I picked it out with the tips of my nails it was exactly the shape of the inside of the cup & even had printed on it the writing from off the bottom of the cup except backwards that is amazing isn’t it it is interesting eh it is inside my cabinet at the back now I am going to keep it for as long as it keeps for I don’t know if it will last it is kind of papery-feeling now it has darkened in colour it doesn’t smell of anything but I touched it with my tongue it tastes sort of sweet it is lobotomic I know but I couldn’t not keep it in a way it is kind of like the five pounds he owed you I put the five pounds in the cabinet too I won’t ever spend it it is yours in a way it means you maybe because it means you it will call you back or if you know it is here you will come back for it it belongs to you even if you don’t I will keep it for you it is worth more than anything I have flattened it out between two books Linda Goodman’s Sun Signs & your dictionary you had from school it is full of words you could have looked up I am always wondering when I look at it which of the words you needed to know the meanings of it is funny how many words there are & nothing ever even said it is as if I’ve thought so many fucking words out into this room not ours mine by now that I am swimming in them ha sinking more like they must be like several metres deep now maybe this bed is afloat on them like a ship a rowing boat no maybe I’m already under them & breathing like a fish through gills I didn’t know I had maybe I am a better swimmer than I thought here I go swimming swooping about who needs oxygen I am a great fucking swimmer God staying awake so late is better than drugs any time now I am swimming about on the deck of a boat & the boat is under what is the word for deep water under deep miles of all these words I haven’t said I wonder if words are light or heavy I suppose it depends what they’re saying or what they’re not saying well dictionaries though are hardly fucking light are they oh I think that was a bird was it there is always one bird starts the whole fucking raft of them off cheeping not long till the morning comes up till morning has broken like the first morning like that hymn from school blackbird has spoken etc spoken ha ha more like fucking yelling it IT’S MORNING AGAIN EVERYBODY UP COME ON EVERYBODY WAKE UP when I was small I used to think that the day break would be the same as switching on a light in a dark room but really in actuality the light is grey hardly like light at all more like the going away of light I think the most fucking amazing morning I ever saw was when there was that low mist the light came up like usual but I couldn’t see anything just mist as if a block of light nobody could see through was wedged between the window & the rest of the world as though outside wasn’t there any more & as the day came up the mist moved I saw it move like a curtain across the garden like something was sweeping it back it was amazing to watch the world come back God that terrible night it first went away it was early much earlier than it is now first the phone going it woke me then the knocking on the door & I got up I was standing at our bedroom door & they were in the hall already there was the policeman & the policewoman dad was already dressed but his pyjama trousers top was coming out of the waistband of his work trousers then mum was flat against the wall the policeman standing next to dad with his helmet under his arm dad looked small beside him like he’d hurt his back then my heart was falling I felt it something happened the house had changed something had come in the door & changed it it wasn’t just our house it was everything outside too like it had all been smashed then stuck together with glue by someone but all in the wrong order & we were standing in the hall at home it had got light outside by itself nobody in the hall moving up it came anyway same as usual the fucking light of day