Hotel

Gerald stood in the queue, acknowledging the predictable sense of his growing disappointment. He heard the bells outside on the square striking 2 o’clock, the disappointment shifted to a mood located somewhere between resentment and anger. 2 o’clock was check in time, from 2 o’clock the room was his for 21 hours, why was he still in the queue waiting to check in?

He was at best anonymous, benign, but ever-present, like an untreatable but nonterminal cancer, and when he finally arrived at front of the queue and stared at the receptionist. she looked at him too, in a measuring way, and she knew it. Then she seemed to remember her role, and smiled a broad, fake smile, exposing yellowed teeth, stained by an unshakeable commitment to nicotine.

Checking in again, sir? she said, with a sugar coated boredom.

Gerald hadn´t been working for nearly two years now. At 57 his boss had sympathetically but firmly told him that his job no longer existed, and thus, in a characteristically unspectacular manner, his professional life concluded.

Gerald had been a ´secret´ hygiene inspector. He had been good at his job, simply because by exposing other peoples faults he had felt better about his own. Being a weak man he didn’t want to appear the failure that he was to his wife or his friends, so he carried on with the echo of his job and during the week stayed in hotels and visited restaurants making reports that no one wanted and that no one would ever read.

He took the lift to the twelfth floor and stepped out on a grey carpet, under grey roof tiles and looked down the long white corridor punctuated by red bedroom doors. Colourful, he concluded.

Opening the door he entered his standard corporate single occupancy room, little more than a box, with one double bed, a wardrobe and a desk that was built under the window, partially disguised by the depressing net curtains it showcased monotonous views of the building across the road. The bathroom appeared to be formed from one single piece of moulded plastic

Uncovering dirt in these circumstances would be a challenge, he knew these rooms were designed to be cleaned.

However, like a true professional he began his hunt unperturbed, running his hand along the tops of the frames of the sad landscape painting, looking under the sheets at the mattress to see if there were stains (or worse), shining his torch inside the faucet to see if he could find any evidence of hasty and uncompleted washing.

Nothing, but he didn´t panic, his years of experience calmed him, he knew that there was always something, always.

He took off his jacked, and pushed his shoulders back - guaranteed to provide the holy grail of his search…, he crawled under the bed, and he lay, looking upwards at the bottom of the old and well worn mattress, he twisted his bulky form to the left so he could tilt his head to look at the narrow section of floor where the bed met the wall, inspectors of less formation wouldn’t look here he knew, and the space had never failed him.

Spotless. It was hard for him to accept being beaten. In his long career this was unprecedented.

He pushed himself out from under the bed, feeling uncertain. A silence, oppressive, a miscarriage. Despondent.

His view drifted and he lost focus, he felt a wetness, not experienced since his childhood, it formed in his eyes, a welling like a spring finally arriving at the surface.

And it was then that its sharp whiteness caught his eye. Maybe the diffused sunlight caused him to see it. An envelope in the dustbin. A cleaners hangover, so easy to miss and so perfect to find - his salvation.

Drawing it out apprehensively he saw it was a letter. Unexpected. In his wife's handwriting.

—

Dear Gerald,

I put my words in this letter as I prefer for you to read what I have to say in your own time and manner. I have lost my job. This implies that I will be at home all the time. I have thought about this and I do not want to conclude my days waiting for an absent husband that, frankly, I don´t like and haven´t liked for a long time. Your obsession with cleanliness has slowly but steadily taken its toll on me and I can´t face it or you anymore.. The only reason we have remained together has been for the sake of our children and the circumstances or your absence, now the children have left, I will too.

I hope you get the help you need

Margaret.

—

He folded the letter back into the envelope and put it back in the dustbin then sat at the desk and wrote his report.

——

At 1100am exactly he checked out of the hotel, Upon leaving, he posted his report into the box marked Comments / Complaints

Walking into the flat sunlight of the world outside he felt a surge of satisfaction, someone would read his letter, certainly it would have an impact.

Catching his reflection in the glass doors of the hotel exit he felt strong, he felt valuable but also he felt something else. He would sit in the park a while and then go and check another hotel. That would clear his mind.

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For V. --- Copyright Notice

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