Nursing

I believed that some of the hotels along the water were actually brothels. I believed that unless you stipulated otherwise, the rooms within the towering, dazzlingly lit motels would come with a strange woman sitting on your bed, flicking through her phone, just waiting for you to unlock the door. 

At each of the motels along the beach, there was a small empty lobby which was the size of a bathroom and had a lift’s polished double doors in one wall. In the other wall there was a small frosted window, the size of a car licence plate, embedded in the wallpaper. I’d been to at least 10 of the motels; at each one I pressed a small buzzer, sometimes red, sometimes green and the small window would open showing the sleepy eyes of a the motel clerk.  She had a bed on the other side of the window and would doze all night until someone pressed the button to ask the price on a room. I could only see her eyes and her nose through the small window.

“Sleep. One night.” In each place, I put up one finger to show one night. I’d make both my hands into a pillow and lay my right ear against my hands to show what I wanted to do. I’d hear the woman writing a number on a small piece of paper on the other side of the wall, and then she’d show me the price through the window. At each place the price was high, higher than I could afford. I was certain the price included a motel woman. “No girls, only sleeping,” I said. The woman looked at me bemusedly. I waved my hand, turned and pushed open the glass door, back out onto the warm street.

I had tried 10 different motels. Each one was too expensive for what I could afford, so I set off away from the colourful motels by the beach. I walked towards the neighbourhoods further inland with fewer lights and where all the restaurants were closed at this hour and where I hoped I could find a cheap room.

As I walked away from the beach, the streetlights were spaced further and further apart. My feet sometimes hit against one another as I walked.

If I am honest, part of me had hoped that somehow, through accident and miscommunication I might have been able to afford a room with a view of the water, and might have unlocked the door, to find someone’s kind eyes looking back at me. I imagined the tall motels, 20 floors reaching up into the black sky, the stars painted black by lights shining indiscriminately out into the humid atmosphere, and inside hundreds of women sitting in hundreds of the rooms just waiting. I wondered if I couldn’t just by accident end up in a room with a woman with a great deal more experience of the world.

I am not a fellow who has a lot of experience. I have a round face like a porridge bowl. I once tried to grow a beard, but even though I have a bachelor’s degree, the hairs came out white, as if they were unweaned. As if they were fed only on sweet milk.

I was walking away from the beach, but in my shoes my little toes ached and the arches of my feet too.

Back home, in my country, I know a fellow named Dave Gillespie whose moustache and trimmed beard is dark. When he talks, he curls his hair behind his brown ear. I once saw him in a fight with Leister Williams, but he wasn’t yelling or agitated: his eyes were focused and he counted beats with his head, and after he punched Leister’s mouth he kissed the knuckle on his fist, which sounds like something an arrogant prick would do, but he had a big smile on his face. He looked like his horse came in first place. He helped Leister up and tousled his hair. In the bathroom, I sometimes kiss my own knuckles and I try giving the same rich grin to the mirror.

Whenever I talked with Dave Gillespie back home, I’d feel like I was destined to miss out on a big part of life. He had a story about how he spent the money that he’d put aside for a taxi on a pill he got from a dealer on the Hilltop when he was going out for a night on the town. He was at the Seven’s club he said, but it never kicked in. The way he described it, he said he was standing and he said that everybody’s clothes looked too tight, and he felt that he was enduring a lecture from life and he wanted to unbutton everyone’s shirts for them. He said the pill wasn’t working and with no money for a taxi he managed to catch the last bus. The pill kicked in on the bus. He watched the reflections in the bus window all the way to the end of the route. He walked home. He took his shoes off and felt the cool asphalt. He told me how the asphalt felt on the soles of his feet, how it kept pressing against him. He called the feeling “blessed assurance.” He talked about how it felt to walk on concrete, and on the grassy berm beside the road. When he arrived home, he didn’t have his shoes.

I came to a city block with no buildings. There was an open civic plaza made of concrete tiles with grass growing around each square. There was a large metal scultpure and a playground and a yellow slide. There were three bars for exercises and dumbbells on a chain beside an aluminium bench. Sitting in the middle of the equipment was a cat that was licking its paw. It didn’t look up. It was orange and a shade of white. I bent over and put my hand out.  The little thing stepped towards me and sniffed my fingers. It had a stripe of grease over its back from where it had brushed against the underside of a car. The fur on its head was soft and oily, but there were bumps that might have been scars.  I scratched under its chin with my fingertips and felt scabs and dirt as interruptions to the fur. I felt the valley between its shoulder blades, which was also dotted with scabs. The cat circled me, arched its back and pushed its head into my knee. It had a loud reassuring purr in the still night on the warm concrete slab.

The cat walked away, and I stood and continued across the plaza.  The cat headed the same direction I was following, away from the sea. We walked together, the cat two paces ahead. It didn’t look back; it was a creature entirely self-contained.

I grew nervous when we approached the road, but the animal slowed down to let a taxi glide past, then trotted across, neither ranging out into a run nor dawdling, but covering the distance determinedly. I picked up speed to cross the street and we continued together. Restaurants had left their plastic bins of food scraps on the footpath, but the cat barely inspected them.

At the next intersection, the cat turned left. I would have continued straight ahead personally, but I didn’t have a clear destination and we’d been sharing the path for long enough so I turned too. Sometimes the cat bounded ahead increasing the distance between us, but then it would slow down so I could catch up.

I didn’t book a hotel that night because I wanted to find my own way. You could say, I wanted to roll with it. I had jumped on a long-distance inter-precinct bus with no luggage except the shirt on my back and my elastic sided boots. I didn’t book accommodation, but I was going to find a cheap room on a whim. I think I came to this country because I was worried that everything was going pass me by. Unfortunately, I don’t just roll with it.  All night I was worried about pickpockets and corrupt police.  I heard that in this place, the cheap cocktails in plastic bags had window cleaner in them and bad ice. I am someone always too buttoned up. 

I’m not like Dave Gillespie. I am nervous about overdoses and psychosis. I never tried any of the drugs that Dave knew about. What I wished was for someone who would guide me through, maybe a nurse who knew about illicit substances who would make sure I was okay. Then I’d do a drug.  One of the really serious ones. I’d just do it once, and then when Dave told his stories, I would sit there quietly, knowing that I didn’t need to say anything, because I had my own lavish experience to think about. 

Nurses know about injections. If a nurse helped me with a hit of heroin, she would make sure that I was safe. It would need to be a nurse.  Like the nurse at school who came in for a special lesson to teach the boys about sexual education. Somebody like that would carry you gently so that you wouldn’t be afraid of anything.  Then probably I would do a drug.

The cat turned down a narrower street, so I followed. The street was only just wide enough for a car, and apartments 10 or so stories high were either side. The bottom floor of each building was an open car park with heavy columns, and a glass door into a small lobby where the lift was. As I walked, lights lit up in soft yellow, triggered by a motion sensor. As the cat and I walked further down the lane, the lights behind us extinguished.

There was an empty carpark that didn’t light up. Above it, no window was lit all the way up to the tenth floor. The cat trotted through the carpark to the glass door and knocked it with its head. This was its home. I walked between the columns towards the door and pulled on the handle to show the little creature that it was locked, and it would spend the night on the street, but the cool metal handle drew the door open, and the two of us were standing in a cool dark lobby. Two metal chairs upholstered in black fabric were against a wall, and there was a lift in the centre of the dark room. There was a chipped door to the stairwell and a small window with frosted glass. It was a motel. Beside the window, there was a door marked “Private.”  It was one of those cosmic coincidences. I, needing a place to sleep, was led by a street cat to a motel. I expected that here would be a room precisely within my budget.

I pressed the button beside the window but it didn’t ring. I knocked gently on the window, then hit harder. There was nothing.  I yelled, “Hello,” then rattled the handle on the window and it slid open.

I craned my head to peer through the hole and I saw the corner of a mattress and a wooden board with hooks for keys.  The clerk had gone out.

The cat sat beside the door marked “Private” and looked around the lobby patiently. 

*

I stood inside the clerk’s room. It smelt of instant noodles, and there were noodle packets in the waste basket under the microwave. The light switch didn’t work. The narrow bed was a swirl of sheets. I took the key for room 1001. I would check into the penthouse.

*

I let the cat enter the stairwell first. There was no electricity anywhere else in the building, but the exit lights still glowed green all the way up to the top. Looking up through the crisscrossing stairs was like looking up the gullet from the stomach of a mechanised body. I climbed the stairs as quietly as possible glancing up and also behind me, worried someone would appear. The cat had no such fear.

There was no need for the keys on the top floor. Every door was open, which let light into the dark corridor. The light of surrounding buildings shone through the large windows in the rooms and made the beds glow white. In each room, towels and sheets were balled on the floor. In room 1001, there were two queen beds and by the window was a triangular spa bath. 

The refrigerator was not cold, but I sipped on a bottle of water and a pulled the foil off a little cup of UHT milk. I opened another UHT milk and gave it to the cat. Hot water drummed against the side of the spa. The heating still worked. As I waited for the bath to fill, I lay on the bed closest to the window with my shoes on, and the cat jumped up beside me and kneaded my soft stomach over my belt buckle. I don’t need to tell you how my stomach is different to Dave Gillespie’s. The water pounded and the cat was kneading with all four paws, purring up the apocalypse, and as I smoothed my hand over its head, it pressed into my palm. I wondered at this cat. It gave hints of using it’s claws as it kneaded now, pushing pin pricks into my skin. I’d read this action the cat was doing was associated with suckling. Something a kitten did to stimulate its mother’s milk supply so it could nurse. It was kneading me.  I thought, I am not the one to nurse this scarred creature. It had collected me when I had stood lost in the concrete plaza, and it carried me here. I let the cat rub against my face, not bothered about its grazes. I was lying on the dirty sheets waiting for the bath to fill.

*

I eased in and the bathwater rose and greeted me. I lay against the warm porcelain, and looked out the window. From here, I could see beyond the surrounding streets, to the brightly lit towers on the beach that I’d left behind. It was a good city, I thought. It had welcomed me. I wasn’t pick-pocketed, no one asked for a bribe. And in some immense way, beyond my expectations, I was being cared for. I let my ears go under the water, so I could hear the muffled watery sounds of my own body moving against the porcelain.

I raised my head out of the water and saw the cat. It was crouched low and tense, and staring at the doorway of the room.

I turned my head. A man stood there. His dark clothes hung off him in strips. His back was against the wall, near the door. His palms were against the wall, and he was smoothing his palms up and down against wallpaper. His hair was a ginger colour and shaggy around his ears but it looked slick across his forehead. His eyebrows were dark and wiry and thick hair was around his mouth. His eyes sat so far back in his head that they were like crabs in a rockpool. The smell of tobacco filled the room.

He stumbled forward.  His chin lifted high, then higher, and his eyes started to show only whites, like crabs had scampered way back into their holes.

From the bath I said, “Are you okay?”

His back arched. He stood two or three feet from the wall, but his head almost rested on the wallpaper behind. His eyes, ghost crab white.

I wanted to get out of the bath and cover my skin with my clothes or with one of the sheets, but it meant clambering, naked out of the water, in front of his stare. 

When he took a half step backwards, his knees buckled, taking him down, but not all the way. He was bent forwards, leaning against the wall.

I got out of the tub and grabbed a sheet. I wrapped it twice and tucked it under my arm. The man fell onto his knees. I shuffled to him. Slow drippy spittle hung from his mouth like honey.

The cat’s pupils were black holes watching.

I could have run. I could have grabbed my clothes and run into the stairwell, but the cat stared intently at the man. I grabbed him up under his armpit, lifting him unevenly. He swayed. The cat sat up, attentive.

I could have left the man, like a cracked crab shell by the refrigerator. His eyes would have scuttled all the way away but the cat was watching.

I was yelling, “Hey,” and slapping him on the face. I took one of the bottles of water and poured it over his forehead. Briefly, the gears bit and turned and he looked at me. He murmured, “I’ve seen everything,” which was nonsense. Then the cogs slipped and his chin went back again, and I went back to slapping his shoulders and his back. 

“Wake up.” I said, “What did you take?” and he said “Everything.”   His neck glistened. His skin was a mechanic’s glove streaked with grease, used and used and used.

With one arm I held around his narrow torso and took the plastic bottle of water in the other hand. I walked him over to the window that overlooked the city, resting his forehead against it. I poured water over his neck. I pulled him towards me, then pushing him back against the window as spittle pooled on the window sill. 

In this way, the sun began to rise, slowly, almost as if my shaking and yelling into the man’s face was raising the sun over the towering apartments.