The Lilybed

In my palm leaf protected spot, I am invisible. It is my ritual to watch the comings and goings of the place as a part of the tapestry. And come and go, they do. The cast of our own little movie, which must have been selected by spinning a bottle of expensive wine, and each round it stopped on a character more puzzling than the last.

One individual who certainly has the look of a puzzle, although one that was not assembled correctly, takes up residence in front of the receptionist’s counter. Her with jewels adorned hand is held by her accompanying puzzle piece, a man so bland he can only be described as a corner piece of a generic landscape photography. Visually agreeable, but nothing more to it.

They are waiting for the receptionist, and I am too. In the long stretches of time where I simply watched, the hotel showed itself to me, with its antiquities and its people, and anything that manages to combine these two.

I put aside my cup of coffee as I see the handle of your office door being pushed downwards. I notice you before anyone else in here does. You are not a relic, or anything that could collect dust. You are sleek, and you are to my eyes what velvet is to my fingers.

When I first caught sight of you, you were here too. Guarding the front desk like a ghost scheduled to haunt from 9 to 5.

You know me from sight and polite conversation, but you never act on it. It’s infuriating how you continue to play the role of dutiful employee and how I am laid completely bare to you. I don’t have to exert myself at all to star as the lonely and aired out guest no one can pull away from here. You are my closest acquaintance, but one that takes little notice of me.

I would throw you a line, about how you already know which room I reside in, and that I could be persuaded to leave it unlocked at night. But lines like these have been in too many mouths before, and overuse has rendered them dull. They don’t cut like they used to do, and no wound means no blood. There is no interest to be discovered by a hungry shark.

So, I bide my time, gambling with coincidence to make our paths cross. I’m always surprised by how content I am with only the thought of encountering you in my mind, and how little thought I waste on anything else than you.

My husband hasn’t heard from me for about a week by now. But if he had wanted to talk to me, he would have made it known. It’s a strange relationship we have, and a tainted one as well. It is why I’m past feeling any guilt, in the rare moments he crosses my mind. It might be little that connects us nowadays, but this we have in common: he would do it too. I’m too isolated for perceiving it as wrong, and you are too magnetic to resist.

My lucky star comes in the form of an envelope, dropped by the postman coming in from the stormy driveway. In orderly font, your name looks up from the paper and gives me a wink. I wink back and make it my day’s quest to find you.

I could open the letter up and read it, to discuss its contents with you, or to protect you from things you wouldn’t want to read. I wonder who could have written to you, and what they have to say, but my ideas are doomed to remain unconfirmed. I will present you a mint, unopened letter.

I don’t bother paying a visit to the receptionist’s desk, because I know the days I won’t meet you there. Those are my favourites because they always look so promising. You usually roam around the hotel alone, begging for someone roam along on your side.

You stayed aways from the places I usually find you in, and I am forced to visit more neglected spots. In the end, I discover your hideaway in the gardens. You sit beside a pond littered with waterlilies. Your lonesome figure is exciting, it outright screams “chance” at me, and who would I be not to take one?

I make my way over to you, the letter in hand, as if it were my invitation to your little lilybed. I feel sorry to have woken you from your slumber when your head snaps up as I speak softly. I hand you the letter, but you leave it unopened. There are questions you could have asked, how I knew your full name, how I had found you. Instead, you politely asked how I was feeling.

“Quite tired” I answer, truthfully. The truth is always better for conversation than saying what is expected. And I am tired. The hotel doesn’t seem to have enough good night’s sleeps to spare any for me.

“And lonely” I add.

Your receptionists smile remains in place, but I can see that it’s due to habit, and not a secretly confused reaction to my words. You know better than feigning politeness when you know what I’m speaking of.

You think about my confession of loneliness, for a long time, before you speak.

“Friendless?”

I chuckle. In need of friends, but rather in need of a lover. But if that is the only rope you are willing to throw me, I will cling to it. 

“Usually the fate of people who travel on their own, is it not?”

You tilt your head, and your dark hair moves a little over your forehead with the motion. Through the strands of hair, you glance at me. You tell me about the soiree the hotel is hosting tomorrow. Have I ever been to a soiree, you ask me, and if not, would I be interested in attending one tomorrow?

“Will you be there?” I demand, unguarded.

“If you will be?”

I smile and offer you my hand. It’s the first time I touch you as we shake on it.

This night is a particularly lonesome one. My sleep rejects me and never lets me sink into it for more than half an hour. Awake, I daydream about you sitting on that bench in front of your lilies. Asleep, I nightdream about you lying next to me. When I wake in the morning, my shoulders are cramped and longing for someone to rub the soreness out of them.

During breakfast, I solve a crossword and try to keep my mind on a leash, to stop it from running into the direction of the evening. If I think about it too much before, I risk watering it down. I’d rather enjoy it fully concentrated when it happens.

I hide, this day. You pulled me out of the shadows yesterday, and the bath in the light is seductive, I don’t want to leave it again. But I spend my day drifting from my room to my balcony, without ever nearing places you might be at. Like a bride entertaining the superstition of not being allowed to be seen by her groom, I stay out of your way.

This evening, I stay downstairs instead of retreating to my room. There was little that attracted me to the bar, as you rarely went there yourself. If any of the guests who frequent this location notice us two intruders, they don’t comment on it.

The main act is a local blues band, and they aren’t particularly bad, but a yawn still escapes me after a few songs.

“Tired again?” You eye me teasingly.

I only nod and ask you if you get better sleep in this place.

“Well, since I do my part in keeping this hotel intact, they were generous enough to reward me with a nice bed. It’s quite comfortable, however almost too spacious for me.”

You say this with cheek, as if it was big enough to share it with someone, such as me.

I buy you a martini, as a way of accepting your proposal.

Your room is pitch black, and I can‘t see your body’s contours in the dark. So, I discover them through touch instead. 

It is dark, and the hotel residents are asleep, and you and me are watching over them, the only ones awake. I lie in your arms, and you call me your girl and ask me to tell you something.

So, I confess to you. “I wasn‘t friendless. I was loveless.”

The smile in your voice breaks my heart and mends it again, as you tell me you knew it from the second you saw me. 

“It is easy to recognize someone bearing the same curse as I do.”

As you say this, you sound so young, and so old. Your young and your aged voice speak in choir, and they tell me of the love you have lacked and never managed to collect over the years. 

I know I lack love too, but only the one I can receive from outside. Inside me, there is a lake of love I can bathe you in, and softly carry you in its waves. 

I could try to give you all the love I can scoop up in my buckets, but I know better than to overstay my welcome. You lie on your side, and it is criminal how easy my body would have fit against yours.

“Dream of me”, I tell you, and you say you will.

I wake again the next morning, after a heavy, dreamless sleep. It is as near to a good night’s sleep I have come in this place, but my mouth tastes of the remnants of our drinks and my lips are dry from too many rushed kisses.

After my breakfast, I plan my route along the receptionist’s table. I’m not surprised to see you here, since you work again today, but I am surprised by the way you look at me. Your eyes wander over me worriedly, as if you had not known I would wake again today.

“Good morning” you offer me. You don’t ask me how I’ve slept, the thing you should have asked me.

I stay silent because I can see something is amiss on your conscience.

“Today we are welcoming a special guest”. I look at you, expectingly, and so you drop the yet unspoken words on me. “My wife, to be exact.”

I am stunned, and it comes to my mind that you spoke the truth last night. You did recognize the curse I bear, and you did reveal to me that you carry it too, the exact same one. I want to scream something at you, but I don’t have the right to. You haven’t deceived me more than I deceived you, so I start turning wordlessly, starting my way to my room. In another life, I left this whole goddamned hotel earlier. I could have stayed oblivious.

But there she arrives, like a golden age movie star, the floor-length veil of her dress catching my ankles and making me fall over. Splash. I have fallen into ice cold water, floating away, the light from above the surface occasionally broken by lily pad-shaped shadows.