Lost in Hotels (39 page)

Then I hear loaded footsteps in the hall just outside. I reposition myself on the sofa to appear as if I hadn’t moved despite the hours of time. The air in the room is stale with dim light that hovers around the low-wattage bulbs of the delicate Victorian fixtures next to the bed. David enters, his unbuttoned white shirt and shoes held in hand, as he turns the corner immediately upon entering and sees me still here in this last corner of our life.

“You’re still here?” he says as he takes a seat in the awkward rocker. His more relaxed face is chapped from the frigid weather outside that has frosted the edges of our windows.

“I’ll leave if you want me to; I just wasn’t sure.”

“Wasn’t sure of what?” he says, sitting motionless.

“I wasn’t sure if you had more questions.”

“Oh, I have a lot more questions, but none of which really get answered with your explanations.”

He leans over his legs, elbows resting on his knees. His smart striped socks with orange stitch detailing seem to smile up from the serious woven rug of the living room.

“I have been completely honest with you,” I say.

“I thought you were annoying when I first saw you, uptight and stuck in a constant inward reflection that was like some sort of introverted narcissism. Then you became more relaxed; a person I felt completely at ease with and wanted to linger more and more with in conversation. The sex was average at first, but you seemed comfortable being led into what became an entirely fulfilling emotional and physical relationship.”

David struggles and wipes his eyes before continuing.

“In Paris, I felt there was some sort of divine intervention, maybe even from my mother who had you cross in my path. I felt redeemed after being so disappointed that you didn’t contact me after Rio.”

“I never got the information you left for me at the hotel, truly David.”

“But there was a way to if you had really wanted. So I figured you didn’t feel the same connection or had other priorities that didn’t leave room for me. Paris was perfection, from the way we talked all night to the way you fixed the buttons back on my shirt without me knowing it after being ripped off the day before. And then when we parted, it was as if the time between allowed the relationship to grow; me sharing all there was to know about myself, and you listening and sharing all about yourself—much of what I now know to be lies and half-truths.”

“It wasn’t all a lie, David.”

“And in Los Angeles, I was in awe of you and caught myself in conversation with people saying that you were the type of person I would be proud to say I loved and was loved by in return. Ibiza made me see your more playful side, and Italy made me completely certain you were the right one for me. I pursued a job offer with a New York company so our relationship could have some sort of future, and we wouldn’t waste years getting to that place where I was yours and you were alas mine.”

David tears up and pauses. He tucks his feet back into his shoes before getting up and packing his computer with the remaining items from the desk and lifting it up and into his lap as he settles into a chair that’s soothingly closer to me.

“I wanted to get to know life with you. I wanted to know what it was like to take care of you when you were sick or food shop before coming home and making supper that would have been better than any hotel experience we could ever have. You were the type of woman I liked waking up next to as much as going to bed with. I didn’t want to have just one child with you; I wanted to have four or five that we would raise in the country. I would have found a local job to keep me close to you, and you would transition to writing books and being the great mom I know you would be. The great mom I think you still can be contrary to whatever I feel about you now.”

I begin to cry. David’s sensitivity seems even less bearable than his previous anger, the kind heart of the betrayed that seems too good to me.

“But Catherine, you need to go be that mother and find joy in the life that you have instead of chasing it in places where you’re never going to find it, and simply make what you do have all the less fulfilling.”

David stands again and reaches into his bag. He pulls out a small ring box. Its Asprey logo and demure presence emotionally collapses me, and I begin to sob without control.

“I was going to surprise you with this before we parted, not so much a marriage proposal, but a ring that would remind you of my intentions and the path I felt we had long since embarked upon.”

He holds the box dwarfed in his thick hands and sets it on a table in front of me.

“I didn’t really want to give you this, but the truth is I think you should have it regardless, as they don’t give refunds, and I really don’t want it lying around reminding me of this time in my life.”

I sit staring at the box as David moves into the bedroom and shuffles in the closet as if packing and then taking his duffel bag into the bathroom where a single swoop of commotion brings him back into the living room before me. He zips the opening of his black leather briefcase and puts his wallet in the lining of his inside jacket before looking over at me.

“So—” he begins, and then stops. He hovers above me appearing more emotional than he’s been throughout the entire conversation.

“So,” I say, looking up at him unable to fathom the moment where he is actually gone from my life.

“So, it’s been interesting, to say the least,” he says.

“David, I’m so sorry. I cannot even begin to tell you how sorry I am for deceiving you.”

His eyes are almost neon blue and his cheeks are rosy and offset by his jet-black head of hair. He turns away from me and makes a direct line for the door without a hesitation, a look back, a good-bye. I want to chase him or grab his hand, especially if it’s the last time to touch his skin, but I remain hopeful he will turn back. In the silence of a midnight hallway, the door slams shut. I run to the door and look out the peephole to watch him turn the corner into silence. I feel lost as I open the door and run for the elevator, and with a turn of the corner, I see the doors squeeze shut.

He will come back as he did last time, I tell myself, as there is something unfinished in his tone. There was no good-bye or mention of good-bye, I repeat to myself, walking back to the room resigned to wait out his return. He will return. As I enter, the dark wood furniture and haunting fabrics of the space seem confining and toxic left arranged in a remnant of memories that haunt as I recall the words and depth of my betrayal. I search the room looking for pieces of him left behind. He left nothing in the living room except for the lone ring box on the table, which I can’t bear to recognize. I run to the closet where all that was hanging is gone including the dress I unpacked, which he must have taken in haste. The bathroom is also empty, just the solitary washcloth where his toiletries once lay. I hold the washcloth to my face with its crusted toothpaste and fragrant scent.

He will return. I know he will. I listen for the sound of the metal latch opening and the comforting tap of his footsteps to interrupt the silence. I see only the small purple box on the table that sits with a solemn darker purple bow, unaware it will never be opened between lovers. I return to the sofa and take his seat, now cold in his absence. I run my finger across the table to feel for any dirt or lingering element of him. Perhaps I should leave, but I lack the will to walk away from the only place in the world where he might return and tell me that despite all my treachery he might still love me.

Outside, a light snow falls over the park. I look for him as far as my eyes can see, but there is no one on the street at this hour, even on a weekend night. My feet ache from the constraint of my shoes that are a size too small, but I don’t dare take them off should he return, not wanting him to see me feeling in the least bit at ease amid his sorrow. He left almost two hours ago. I do another look around the room checking under the fallen blanket in the bedroom and in the bathroom where I pull his damp towel from earlier in the day and take it with me back to the living room. I look it over for a single strand of his hair, which I find and hold close to my heart. I linger on the scent of the hotel’s shampoo that smells of a lemony ginger and not of him.

At 5:00 a.m., the night turns to a faint dawn, the snowfall briefly stops, and the sunrise reflects in the buildings across Gramercy Park. I have been sitting in this chair for hours. I jump up to pull shut the weighted red curtains, not wanting to concede to a new day. He must return. I make my way into the bedroom and lie next to the fabric shadow of him still left in the bed, submerging my pain in his pillow that offers a faint smell of him initially and then of its feather fill. I pass my arm along the bed with its silky sheets. I close my eyes and try to pretend he is by my side once more.

And for a moment in my mind, he is here again. My leg reaches over and imagines our bare ankles intertwined as I study his sleeping face. His body is in stillness, his athletic legs, and bare torso exposed and ready, even when withdrawn in sleep with its dark hair that stops so abruptly at his elbows and thighs before returning to the small knap below his belly button that I take with my lips. I imagine us on that raft in Panarea as he emerges completely nude from the sea glistening in streams of water rolling down his body. I take his cold foreskin that’s still wet inside my mouth and gaze into his eyes that study my face each time he penetrates me on the floor of the boat as the infinite sky frames his bare silhouette above me.

Though I am not asleep, I awaken from my thoughts and fantasy to realize I will never feel his touch again. I will never know what it is like to see his smile or feel him inside me again as he wanders the world far away from me. All our memories and thoughts of those times that I will savor for the rest of my days will likely rot in his mind as something he’d prefer not to remember.

The loss of him is simply incomprehensible. Let it be, I tell myself in this hour of my darkness where life seems so unlivable in my broken-heartedness. Part of me wants to die on this bed with him still here in some partial form in memory or smell or otherwise, falling into a deep and never-ending sleep where perhaps we can be together instead of having to face one day, this first day without him. I don’t want to know what it’s going to be like to count the days since we last talked, last touched, or last laughed as week by month by year the vividness of him disappears.’

It’s been almost twelve hours since he left. My thoughts forward to him being gone long enough to already be back in London or waking up in another hotel in this vast city that even despite him being geographically near, might as well be a world away. I fully awaken from my semiconscious escape. A wedge of daylight is making its way through the curtain that I pull tight and see the clouds have once more blocked the sky in a gray, gloomy haze. The couch no longer has the indentation in the cushion from where we sat last night with a now-dry towel with no remnant of anything other than the hotel laundry smell. I turn on my cell phone to see if there are any texts or messages, but there’s little more than work e-mails that come through.

Then there is the sound I have waited hours to hear again. I question if I’m actually even hearing it as the quiet has been almost deafening. But alas, the metal deadbolt on the door unlocks, and a hesitant foot steps into the room.

“Housekeeping.”

Noise echoes through the vapid room and through me as all hope feels lost, and a glowing housekeeper whose head barely reaches the center of the door tepidly enters.

“You want housekeeping?” she asks.

“No, but thank you.”

The last thing I can imagine is having someone erase every trace of him from this space that time is already expunging on its own. I imagine her patting the chairs clean of the smudges that his fingers made, the sink that still has residue of his shaving, and a bed that is the one last place we share even if he has long since departed. I don’t want to leave this room, as I know that upon leaving, he will never be again; it will forever more close this chapter of my life with him, as all hope is likely lost for his return.

“Just a second. Did someone check out of this room yet?” I ask the housekeeper, realizing that David would have settled the bill before leaving. My heart stops, hoping that he hadn’t while affording me hope that he might still return.

“Yes, miss, last night,” she says in an almost baritone Spanish voice. “But you can take your time as hotel is no full. Hour or so no problem.”

With her words my heart sinks. I imagine David checking out of the hotel in the middle of the night with no intention of ever turning back. The housekeeper leaves me in my broken-heart sanctuary as I return to the bed to smell his pillow in vain if for one last time. I lay my body and my head down on top of his print carved from the sheets and mattress, saying good-bye the only way I can for the last time. Part of me ends here and now, knowing that I will never truly love like this again for the rest of my life.

I look at my watch and realize that 4:00 p.m. is nearing, a lenient checkout time even at the most friendly of hotels. I return to his chair and brush the velvet seat clean of any trace as well as the bathroom sink, which I clean with my bare hand before going into the bedroom and stuffing his pillow inside my bag and pulling it out of the bedroom that never became what I imagined it would be for the weekend.

Then there is the box, the one last remaining trace of David that I can’t bring myself to open as I stare at it on the table. I can’t imagine actually unwinding the bow or pulling it apart to see the sentiment of his loving heart. I try to pull the ribbon, but stop myself knowing this is truly the last piece of him that I have as I stuff the small box in my bag. The creaks of the hardwood floors and the living room with its drawn blinds quarantine the emotions of the last day as I weep as I have not wept this entire time. I take my few steps to the door, which I touch, open, and step out of with a single look behind me at the nothingness that remains of us.