And bright. Why do they make them this bright? Like that blast of hot air when you go into malls. Adjust. Always adjust and adapt. Christmastime window-shopping. Look up and the whole world’s gone darker than dark. 9 to 5. October. Get to work while it’s still dark. Get out after sundown. Could never do it. Never say never, except for the letting know of anyone. Boy is that ever in there, surfacing all the time. Must be all the focusing I’m doing. Other-end-of-the-line was right, is right, it’s been a while. Like riding a bike. Why all these stupidly sentimental flashbacks then? Adjust. Eyes are fine. This isn’t that bad, must have been looking straight at the light. Good thing I didn’t sneeze. Big lungs make a lot of noise. Used to be praised for my adaptability. No matter what they threw at me. Younger. Had to make some comment, idiot that I was. Turned that smile upside down. Destroyed the mood. Younger. Smarter now? Is this the last time? I’ve been asking that since the first one. Stupid question. Should be up to me, but, only human, all the same, always. You mean you couldn’t?, I said. Idiot. LV. Don’t want to go through the list now. Need to save it. Gold and red. Oak? Think it must be. Nice chairs. Couches. Tables. Smells good. Clean but not clinically. Human. Humane? That’s what they call a mezzanine. I think, architecture’s a mystery to me. All those boxes filled with all that stuff, all those people. Designers did good work here. No gaudy statues or anything. Quick check. Not exactly crowded in here. Slow evening maybe. Someone wants to come in. I’d better move a bit.
DeskKeysYouth. Is that a he or a she? Column. Must be a good job right now. Hardly anything to do. Minimum wage. When it rains we all get wet. When it rains on the rich the poor get a little fog. Or foggy words. Not one to talk. Youth is keymaster. Responsibility. Does Youth even care? Perhaps responsibility remains unregistered to make it easier to cope. Big responsibility. Lots of keys. Open lots of doors with lots of rich things behind. We’ve all got to start somewhere. I was damn good when I was his/hers/whatever’s age. Credit cards, paperclips, brute force. Only took stuff. Things. Items. Possessions. Wall-crawler. Freshman friends. I paid for that trip, every last thing. Small shiny objects command quite a bit of not only attention but also financial clout. Why the past? Just a lobby. Just a key handler. Uniform. Less so than TopHat. Still obvious. Red and gold. It’s a girl. Probably packing mace. Trying to make her German mate with their English. Only bastards coming out of it so far. New Latin. Hard being a former empire. Must be. Time they realized it, got to fitting in. Synchronizing, what’s that about? Direct show of weakness. Admittance. We don’t know, we don’t educate well enough. I’ve tried filling out one of those job applications, her German ought to be better too. Used to be strict about that. Manager must be off duty.
GermanCouple. Or maybe they just don’t care. Acceptance. They look rich. Well, the opulence of this place has been pretty well established by now. Rich attracts rich. Move in different spheres. They’ll see a far different country than their poorer tourist counterparts. Not that it will be any less authentic. Just different. Lisbon, Elton always complaining about the motel. There was nothing wrong with that motel. Even had breakfast included. Continental. Buns, butter and jam. An egg or two. Most important meal of the day. Start off right. ‘Course Elton never did eat any breakfast. Got up too early. We all do what we do best. Librarian, yes sir, over there sir, no I don’t know why Dewey made it that way sir, yes, let’s. He died. Didn’t slip. He never cared about the rain. Used to laugh at my asphalt observations. It’s just the light breaking. Soft. But there was no east. Streetlamps, alleys, soaked. Poor Elton. Left. Wonder what he’s doing now. You never know. He wanted out. Dry jokes. Gallows. Good for getting through things. Germans. Zhose who claim zat chermans haf no sens of humor vill be taken out back und chot! Stereotypes. So easy. So... start any good wars lately?
NewspaperReadingManWaiting. That’s him? No. Someone else’s. Someone else. We’re all someone else. Bah. Empty words are the easiest. Showing off or serious? Well, who could he be showing off to? That’s one boring newspaper. No colors. No comics. Crossword puzzle from Hell. Vocabulary training. He looks educated. Little bit wealthy. Nothing flashy. What’s the word, distinguished. What’s he waiting for, oh, scratch that, who? Her?
RedDressBlondWoman. She doesn’t look cheap. Better curb myself, married the two of them. With each other it seems. I know not seems. Knowledge is power. But wisdom is even better. Of course they’re connected but they sure aren’t the same. It’s all about gaining knowledge through wisdom. Knowledge without wisdom is useless. Maybe that’s too harsh. But at the very least it’s not preferable. Big yellow, white and black thing in his hands, which category does that fall into? And why is he taking it along? Not going on a date after all. But, oh, yeah, they’re married. Oy. All those jokes. True maybe. Every silver lining has its very own cloud. Like clouds. Pretty. Let it fly. They’ll be away in T minus twenty-five seconds. Hope they have a good evening. No umbrella. Oh well.
Contact. There we go. See you. See me? Hello? Oh, right. The signal. Poor guy’s been kept in the dark. Other-end-of-the-line should know better. Knowledge is power. What was it, uhmm, three fingers. Nods, he nods. Idiotic response. Far too obvious. LV is in what room? Understood. Look at me, hey, what’re you looking at. Someone behind me. I know, when I came through the door, it’s who?, crap, you have him? Little girls are nothing but trouble. Good memory. I owe someone an apology, certain that there was no need for anyone here. He looks young but competent, if a little off, and at the end of the day his age won’t really matter. This isn’t even so bad. One of the upsides of having done this for so long. Endless list of worst-case scenarios. Lisbon. And that was just one. Never ask if anything else can go wrong. Usually get an answer straight away. Other-end-of-the-line’s probably been withholding information from me too. That would explain the ascetic look of the room he gave me. No TV? You’ll only be here a few hours, pro like you can entertain himself, right. Playing on my pride. Clever. Going to have to look him up. Afterwards. My alarms have been going off ever since I first met him. But, then again, they always are - going off. Freshman friends, before I even got started. Freaking desert for crying out loud. Those clouds look disturbing. Don’t eat that. He has a gun, I’m sure he has a gun. Probably paranoia. Probably clinical. Horrible word, that, clinical. Like a mixture of hope and despair. Like this guy. Pray you never need him. Pray. Even I prayed for rain. Thank you, slightly shady character, thank you for getting in his way. No TV, what the hell was I thinking!
And then there’s a staircase. Gotta love staircases. So much easier than ropes. Or ladders. Or just the whole jump and roll, jump and roll, rooftop, rooftop. Probably have a dozen lifts here. With lift-boys. Would hate to do anything to a servant. We’re all just servants. Workers control the means of production. It’s a political struggle. So many meta-jobs. Money for nothing. Nothing tangible anyway. Synergies. Teamwork. East meets west and messes us all up. Better to be in construction. Demolition even. Or this. No one telling you to stay off the water cooler, to get for some tla certification. Document work-process. Liftboys take you somewhere, you could get there yourself, true, but that does not make you any less taken. Lots of stuff that one gets done that one could do oneself. Like cities, shouldn’t be badmouthing all this. Like the ivory towers, much prefer them to log-cabins. Quebec. Had us staying somewhere that wasn’t exactly centrally located. In the woods you can’t see them coming. Good thing they didn’t. So unlike Cochlann. More of a pro than that. Or was it Langley? Well, we got out and on so maybe I misunderstood that situation. My paranoia probably goes deep. Runs. Can’t say that I inherited it from her, but I’m still sure I got it from my mother. She was always scared. Breathing down her neck, three steps behind her. Must be tough. Must be why she did what she did. Shook me to see her fear. Never let anyone know. She wanted to fall but I wouldn’t let her, grabbed her naked arm and pulled her safe. Thing like that bound to leave some kind of mark. Saved a life that day, well, even thieves give to charity. But mostly they steal. Step follows step, upwards, those stairs that lead down into the basement, do they go up also, strangest questions people ask in the real world. Naked arms and staircases. Sounds like a pitch for a perfume advertisement. Like jeans, always too surreal, it’s all just rubbing alcohol. Harsh, too, the difference is there, takes the heart to smell it. Remember her smell, she’s off the list, could just, remember to turn, twist, with the staircase, don’t attract attention. What? Whatever he’s doing back there it sounds loud. Ball rolling. Pfft, balls been rolling since we were all born, we just see it now, I do, it’s not as if fate waits in the wings only to show itself at inopportune moments, never think of a kiss as fate, or a crumpled up hundred on the sidewalk, luck gets those, fate gets this. Body hurries if the mind slows, keep the pump pushing red stuff out to the extremities and away from the brain, I know where I’m going. He knew where he was going back then, he knew what to do with his extremities. Other-end-of-the-line should have could have, wouldn’t, you can’t just give a homeless person an order and a tool, this is business, not amateur night, moving, that motion. All the time I wasn’t in this, all the time before, before time, there were rooms and books and none of this. Well, some of this. Him and Her. And his thumb moving up and down her back, rubbing, she doesn’t respond and yet every pore of her body is on high alert. I know because I know not because I can see, because I knew, saw through the veil, turn off the mind, focus on something else, hotel carpeting, always easy to vacuum, worst thing, he doesn’t even know her, only biblically, only like Oedipus, same kind of oh-didn’t-know, not his mother but she could be an anti-Semite or even a Jew, off it, it’s just his thumb. Contractions, is, was, big machines moving down halls while people are away. Servants. Not like I don’t play games, play so many games, cops and robbers, The Paranoia game - have to stop that one - and the Mind Wandering game. Rules. But. Non-played games, that hunt, the hunt, hunt them down for touch, sensation. Hunt them. Alone so long, must be why I took it, didn’t just leave them, leave Cochlann, leave Langley, the whole motley crew of contradicting orders, life crushing rules. Must have been in grade school, puppy love, federally supported relationship education. Puppies don’t love, do they? Love in animals. Animals. Sapiens. Soft and carapace-less but wielding sharp objects, pointy sticks, supersonic pieces of metal, liquid fire, the glory of The Sun delivered to Asian towns. Freshman friends, brought along relevant school books, whatever we could use to have fun. Pictures in the science book. The wall was still standing but the guy on the ladder had been reduced to less than ashes. Evaporating, leaving a fine print on the wall, the garage door. The unmatched power of the floating fire. In her eyes. And there was his thumb. And she wasn’t walking away. She could have turned me into molecules, made me float away on a little cloud, as a little cloud, of me, raining essence. Her back was unappealing but it was all I could see, and his thumb. I still have that thumb, like I have her scornful laugh. When something ends it lasts forever. The hunt. Fields of grass. A roll in the hay. Know thyself, I was pleased to see them so shocked, scared, surprised. Then a blur and an aimless wandering. Blurry and aimless, so sharp these days. Lucky dog. But somewhere, I know, he continues the slow-motion slow motion. She accepts. Forever. Hope they’re happy. Hope they’ve finally gotten to know one another, conversations. His thumb worn down to the bone, the back of her ribs showing through the remaining rags of her party dress. Forever. Kitchen staff looked for weeks. Stayed for the signals. Rules. The orders might be different but what’s behind them is the same, there’s no mistaking the intentions. Go left. Go right. Third floor, fourth floor. Never let anyone know. If you want me then come and get me. Don’t move that hand that way, don’t give me that look. Put your face farther from mine, let me read the entire message, dyslexic. Never did it for free again. I loved her. Do puppies love? Made it no harder. I’m here for the taking, use, abuse, misuse even. Brief, brief moments are what life’s made up of, lips, grass, roofs, speed, catchphrase. A classic tragedy, how many are there, boy meets girl, girl spurns boy. And the hijinks that ensue. Trained so well her name is gone. Control. Knowing and controlling. Maybe even nice places like this, maybe they have that in common with the other hotels, regular and otherwise. Bet there’s one big place where they all go to buy carpeting. There’s this place’s guy in a butler costume and over there is Pedro from The Craptastic Motel and Grill. What would they discuss? Probably conferences. And war stories. We are all christia... hotel people after all. A little thing like stars shouldn’t come between us. And over there in the corner, next to Pedro, is Candi. All night brothel. This place, bring your own whore. Why did I have to love a girl like that. Not a whore, if only she had been, long long list of lovers, skipped me, I might not know your language but the alphabet is still in here somewhere. Sat up at night with a list of names and numbers. Crossing off. Just your lips would have sufficed. Librarian, why I should have been a poet. Tried for a while. This pays better. Got real good at drawing lines, straight, definitive. Another one bites the dust. Toothfairy, same kind of sleepless waiting, Saint Nick doing his nocturnal thing, crawling around unseen on rooftops, just get me my red suit and I’ll grow the beard. Like I would wake up beside you, you would do your magic and I would know what I was missing. The last piece of the puzzle would be put in. I would nod when they brought it up, know what moans meant. Was not to be. Approaching the party. Noise and heat in the distance. Laughter as I got closer. Last time I did it for free, guess they were the first too, try everything once. Find your preference and stick with it. Do what you love, love what you do, there’s actually a big difference there, well, not big, but it’s there, you can love playing the guitar but hate it if you have to, I guess, if you’re forced to play. Some people won’t get up to press eject but tell them that it’s for the good of the nation and they’ll march mile after endless mile with so much stuff strapped onto them that they could build their own little house. I avoided all that, asthma. I do actually, if it wasn’t for the constant mind-numbingly dull training exercises I would be gasping for air right now like a, well, a man being choked with a piano-wire. Music. Little hammers hit little strings and bam, you’ve got Rondo a capriccio op 129, I don’t naturally, you have to start playing at a young age and we could never afford, what floor is this now, and why always with the hundreds, there are only sixty rooms in the place - not here, they’ll have a few more, just an example - and yet the room numbers may climb well into the five hundreds. False advertising. All in the name of order, keeping it, maintaining it. And off the well, the stairs, out of the well and into the fire, the hallway. But that was passion, can’t count towards the total, can’t be put in the same clay pot as my heart, can it, it can’t be weighed on the same scale, it was all personal, no business. Like the good of the nation, like the thing I avoided I did it anyway and both ways you commit little atrocities to prevent the big ones. Even if you never do get around to the prevention part, even if you stay with the committing. At least you help the average, for every job I’ve done someone out there has not done what I did. You wouldn’t bring a whore here, champagne companion maybe, too expensive, also the transport, not exactly overflowing with ladies of the street down there, in the rain, theaters too close, they can never remove crime, only move it, again and again, probably how some cities got so big, had to be someplace to put the tobacco, alcohol and firearms, and hookers. Lines and sinkers. This is my rifle, never misuse, never abuse, never when drunk, never unless sure. This is my gun, misuse, abuse, better with a little liquor in you, you can make up your mind after. The mystery was solved eventually and I didn’t even have to go see Candi or her female business-partners, Stella! I never cheated on you with any southerners, maybe the guys are right, maybe I do spend too much time with sheets of paper, I never sent anyone to any sanitariums, never any bells in the far distance. And your name wasn’t Stella, but I still shouted it, Stella!, outside your window, I knew you’d understand, you always said I didn’t read enough, you and your friends who became and were my friends always used to say that, right now you’re in front of the big fireplace, curled up in someone’s arms, reading Here Comes Everybody or Attreides, re-reading, and if it wasn’t for the mind numbing training I would remember all this. But I don’t. There is a before and an after, there is a young man in the desert and a somewhat less young man in the rain on a rooftop somewhere. Nothing in between. Choices we make in life. As a compromise, librarian, as a compromise I started writing poetry. Never any good. Not atrocious either, but lacking oomph, writing songs/is painfully simple/if you have/nothing/to write about. I grew fond of that one, like scientists of hypotheses, hypothesi?, like the moor of his suspicion. And growing fond of it I lost all ability to hear criticism, until one day of clarity, 55b 55c toilet ice machine, when I looked at my collected writings and realized that what I do now leaves no space for a paper trail. I killed them both, Iago and my girl, without having to kill myself. Not literally, but I don’t think of that. Onward quantum soldiers, leave no man behind. So after all this, all these compromises and dreams of nothing and loves that are lost and are better than not having ever had them, after all of it I started working out. Buff. Young, angry, planless, loveless and physically strong. They must have followed me, training trains you to train your memory on episodes before training trained you and so on. Got off work at five, I know what that’s like, you can’t imagine Hell, and got home at three past six, like clockwork, hands dragging me through town and time, long and short and longest. Same route. I would have been the perfect kidnap victim, Langley’s favorite thing to shout at you if he thought you were becoming predictable, “kidnap victims always have set paths and routines, live their lives on a train track, no wonder the freight takes them sooner or later” runonsentences. Cochlann liked those too. Always made me think of Vonnegut, until I told them and then they said, he said, never let and so on. Poor guy strapped to a rail, looking at the world through a stove-pipe with mirrors, one way only. And this way is mine, that door over there leads to LV. It will be locked but there are ways around that. No utility closets around here, no ducts, no way onto the wall, front door then. Housekeeping? Food? Wine? Hookers? Not right here, not the neighborhood, call it entertainment and that might work. What did I do last time?, hide in bushes, so still still stilly still still, bored out of my skull, ready for it when it happened, not like that, I’m still one of the very best, but so very bored. Not that again, so far this is even exhilarating. Not that I can let it be anything but monotonous at the very best. Take what I can get. Published on the internet, along with every angsty McAngsty angst poem about mothers who weren’t there and thus some jerk from the Midwest had to dress up in all black clothing, liberate me, rude awakening, I was just as bad, not as horrible, but just as bad. A firm kick right there ought to do it.
