Hotel World

Woooooooo

hooooooo what a fall what a soar what a plummet what a dash into dark into light what a plunge what a glide thud crash what a drop what a rush what a swoop what a fright what a mad hushed skirl what a smash mush mash-up broke and gashed what a heart in my mouth what an end.

What a life.

What a time.

What I felt. Then. Gone.

I would give anything to taste. To taste just dust.

Because now that I’m nearly gone, I’m more here than I ever was. Now that I’m nothing but air, all I want is to breathe it. Now that I’m silent forever, haha, it’s all words words words with me. Now that I can’t just reach out and touch, it’s all I want, is to.

The hands of my watch were stuck at ten to two, though that wasn’t the right time. I took it off my wrist and put it on the counter and the girl behind the counter picked it up to examine it. She held it in her hands. Her hands were serious. I looked to see by her face what it was going to cost me, and when I did, when I saw her brow furrow as she thumbed and turned and shook my watch, when I saw the moment of concentration pass across her face as she held its face in her hands, I couldn’t help it. I fell. She sells watches, all different kinds, and watch straps, and watch batteries. She sends people’s watches away to have their insides cleaned out so they’ll work again.

What you looking at? she said. I had been looking. I had been gazing, without even realizing, at the shape of her body, at her stomach and the place where her pants covered her, and I had been thinking about what the girl in the watch shop’s body would look like if it didn’t have any clothes on it. It was the first time I had ever, ever thought such a thing, about anyone, and I felt shame in my gut and spreading all up and down my body. Nothing, I said. Well don’t, fucking weirdo, my sister said and turned her back on me to pull her pyjama top on over her head before she unclipped her bra. When she turned round again she wouldn’t look at me, but her face was red, like she was ashamed too. She got into her bed and snapped the light off and we were in the dark.

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.

Lise wasn’t well.

Well: a word that was bottomless, that went down into depths which well people estimated, for fun, by throwing small coins then leaning with their heads over the mouth of the hole and their hands cocked behind their ears listening for their coin to hit the faraway water so they could make a wish. What could well people find to wish for, having everything already? Unwell: the opposite of well. It ought to be a place where things levelled out, a place of space, of no apparent narrative. Nothing could be possible there. Nothing could happen there, for a while.

Global Hotels made it compulsory for members of staff from this branch to attend Sara Wilby’s funeral. After the funeral a joke went round the hotel staff combining the Doris Day song ‘Que Sera Sera’ and the dead girl’s name. Lise can’t remember the wording of it now but she remembers it was a relief to pass it between themselves, illicitly like a spliff, as they all did at work in the weeks after the funeral in the hotel kitchens, in the hotel storerooms, and walking back and fore in front of the door of the boarded-up basement.

From over by the lift doors she called to the girl, crosslegged and weeping, leaning against the disfigured wall. The hollow socket of it sagged open above the girl’s head.

Someone’s on their way up, Penny said in a cheery voice. Won’t be long now.

At the bottom of the shaft, colourless in the dark, there was a shoe and a crumpled uniform, both still warm, both going cold. There were three or four coins, maybe more. There was a broken clock. Its plastic shell was shattered and its face was in bits.

& 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

I had been really crying I think it was because of the lift shaft because actually fucking seeing it it was so dark in there old-smelling the thing was I couldn’t see the bottom of it or how far away or how near how long it would take or how short I knew as soon as I saw it all opened up like that I suppose I just knew that of all the things that were sad about it this was the saddest that it didn’t matter not really whether she had wanted to do it or not it didn’t make any difference either way just the fact that one minute she’d been there right there on the exact same spot where I was and the next she wasn’t

& since in the end when you went & you went with legs & arms all I know I know upside down stuck in I know & then it was all over all of it the broken tops of all the waters over & done with still listen Sara even though you couldn’t even though you couldn’t move couldn’t do anything about it listen to me you were fast you were really really fast I know because I went there to see tonight I was there & you were so fast I still can’t believe how fast you were less than four seconds just under four three & a bit that’s all you took I know I counted for you

Down the country and over the border, speeding away from the massed northern ranks of the ghosts of centuries’ worth of anger-wakened warriors baring their wounds and waving their warty shields, the ghost of Diana, Princess of Wales, historic and royal ghost, ghost of a rose, ghost in a million stammering living rooms, ghost again today on the pages of this morning’s Daily Mail, still selling its copies by breathing her back to a life that’s slightly more dated each time […] she will float, merciful, eyes full of sorrow, above all the squeaky postcard racks of the newsagents and post offices, above all the teatowels and cups and trays and coasters graced by her graceful full-of-grace face in the many souvenir shops of turn-of-the-century England.

The girl who works in the watch shop has never done this with anyone else’s watch. She is surprised at herself. S. Wilby stood outside the shop, for days, shy and slight, undemanding, intriguing, looking down at her feet all the time. She had pretended not to notice S. Wilby. She doesn’t know why she did that. It seemed the thing to do. She wasn’t ready. The timing was wrong. It was embarrassing. It’s embarrassing now, when she thinks about it, and when she does she can feel small wings moving against the inside of her chest, or something in there anyway, turning, tightened, working.