London?

Paris x

St Petersburg

Moscow

Budapest x

Bratislava x

Warsaw x

Cracow x

Haworth x

St Austell x

Beijing x

Tokyo x

St Petersburg x

Bucharest x

Craiova

Paris x

Khartoum

Barcelona x

Cairo x

Riga x

Amsterdam x

Milan

Florence x

Sorrento x

Naples x

Rome x

Avignon x

Santarcangelo di Romagna

Brussels x

Siena x

Bagno Vignoni

Venice

Berlin x

Dublin

Donegal

Ballycastle

Belfast

New York x

Newark x

Folkestone x

Manchester x

Edinburgh x

Glasgow

Stratford-upon-Avon

Norwich x

Avignon

She has no interest whatsoever in France. The subject is unbroachable with her. She disregarded it as best she could on the train from Nice. She did not absorb her cab ride here. With this indifference, of course, she has defeated herself: tomorrow will mean the acquisition of a map. The, as yet, avoidable worse though would be requesting directions in her tense-less French. It galls – the merest suggestion of this and the insufferable tone it habitually elicits. With a shudder, she calls to mind a previous incident of ‘Madame, shall we start again … perhaps in English this time?’ Too late, too late will be the cry. But as she inwardly simmers her fractious eye alights on a bowl of matchbooks nearby – crimson, gold and gratis, liveried for the hotel. Their reverse addressed, surely? Location marked on a street grid? Retrieving two and flipping one she discovers it is. So, upon sliding them between the folds of her valise, finds a complication resolved.

This appeasement aside, the foyer sags with humidity unleavened by the indoor trees. Palms, she supposes. Fronds dust-patinaed to rust, as though some off-Riviera Death in Venice were the desired effect. Should this be the case they’ve not been entirely unsuccessful, she reflects – the aqueous decadence of old Venice excepted, alongside any perceptible increase in the likelihood of an untimely death. Th. And there it is, death again. Displaying its feathers as the always inevitable. Even here, in this suppurating suburban hotel to where she herself doesn’t know how to get. Enough however, enough of that. This kind of thing could make her blink but before it can she recalls her previous assessment that, however stifling the atmosphere may be, it’s unlikely to bring about her demise. Besides which, there appears to be a dearth of golden-haired boys upon whom to unhealthily dwell. In fact, as she casts about, she sees absolutely no children at all. Naturally she finds in this no cause for complaint having, in her own small way, contributed to their absenteeism too. To be perfectly frank – as she is to herself – the, approaching fetid, adult clientele also fail to seriously assert their presence, beyond peripherally. An unwelcome thought this, the thought of them: walking, being, unconsciously imbibing the air as though it’s a rightful allocation of theirs which will never run down. But then, above, a fan kicks in. Its whirr invasive. Air imitates motion. Time reasserts itself. Sweat rolls down her neck. It brings to mind her much favoured attitude of haste – not that she’s in any specific rush. It’s merely her preference not to indulge mortality’s by now routine assaults on her carefully habituated ennui – a good word, ennui, so one–nil to French. This timely revival indicating, however, that now it’s best the brass call bell gets repeatedly pressed and the concierge is delivered a long look of impatience. As he indicates the desk clerk’s imminent attendance, she drums her fingernails almost to dents on the dark, high polished wood. Having come so far, with so little delight, she embraces this brief performance of her magnified distaste for delay.

The clerk arrives, sunned-brown and neat and slow, through the door behind the desk. His disinterest does not regard her particularly while, invested in her own, she does not regard him back. Framed in keys, who is he to me, this arbiter of rooms? Besides, she’s already booked hers with some specificity and therefore need not gaze up hopefully for favour in his eyes. Well fortified thus, she slides her passport across. Her credit card after that. And as soon as the tan hand languidly indicates, swiftly signs without flourish along the dotted line. Neat fingers pass keys and hers, pale, intercept. She does not look into them for the number, just goes where his point – the white tips elegantly signalling stage right. She already knows where. This is not her first time in this hotel but she had not expected to return.

The ground-floor corridor. Its hot dun gloom. The carpet runner and rods beneath her feet.

Against all inclination, she remembers its brown tinted glass, the outsize faux Ming vases in gilt willow pattern. She seems to recollect how the nylon awnings stretched to construct channels of respite from the sun. She possesses little interest in the doings of the sun – bodies spit-stretched beneath, skin crimpling to burnt umber from – but recalls how her silently professed repugnance had borne little weight on the matter before. Rather, a radiant torture appears to remain the hotel’s aim, prosecuted most effectively by a marked absence of even the most cursory blind. She remembers that. Thinking that. So now does she think it afresh? And can she think it afresh? Or only ever again? Rat running around its run over and over and Stop. An instant of regret, forced from the knowledge that allowing memory, or any of its variables, admittance is invariably a mistake. Nonetheless, and even knowing that much, time makes a ladder of her anyway. Down. The room key – not being the more modern card but cut – and how on that previous occasion she’d also thought ‘When was the last time you saw one of those?’ What about that cigarette burn, to the far left, was that there? Located, unusually, in the skirting board. Surely she would remember a peculiarity like that? Does she remember? And if, in that past, she turns her head away, to the right, what other oddities might she see? Or what welcome familiarity might there be? Impatient now though with her brain’s apparent receptivity, she encourages her irritation to grow. Familiarity is not the ambition. Never at all, of late. In fact, she’d say she has been at pains to let nothing embed. Surely, it’s merely human nature, travel, stress, which beckons the mind back to that other visit? She could admit she came here on purpose but that would mean owning to a degree of conscious volition which she remains at pains to deny. And. On that first visit, she reminds herself, her attention had been on everywhere and so nowhere near the now all-important imperative to forget. She just saw all she saw and it went in and there’s nothing to be done about that.

Door. Scratched dull lock. Put in. Turn the key. Fail. Joggle. Lean into. Be firm. Try again now. Try again, again. And, on another try, there. She’s in.

She shuts it hard behind. Abominable heat. The day aches around her shoulders in search of other mischief. Headache. Perhaps but will not do and, before it attempts to beat this path through her, she turns the anxious air conditioning on. Once foxed by dials not of her immediate ken, she is now au fait with all the buttons of hotels and more than adept at deciphering their idiosyncrasised versions of ‘Up’, ‘Down’, ‘Whirl-around’, ‘Press’. This time she presses. A briefly baited wait. Hum. Cool air sputters live from the vent. In hoc signo vinces! Well, no. Or not exactly … some.

In the corner, inevitably, a strapped fold-out stand for a case. Hers fits snug into the cradle. Zip. She checks for washbag damage – out of habit nowadays, rather than deep concern, and about convenience because if she had to, she could easily replace everything. Times have changed, she notes, as is her wont on these occasions of which, of late, there have been more than a few. Another unzipped bag, in another uninteresting hotel room, upon which she stares indifferently down at the folded clothes, or the shampoo congealing into them if she’s been unlucky which, on this occasion, she has not. All’s well in there so that’s all she does, apart from extracting then balancing her toothpaste-spattered washbag on the too-short shelf above the low, piss-stinking loo. Scrubbed though she’s sure and certainly looks it but a high turnover of dehydrated urine has a tendency to out. The poor aim of men, drunks and cracked tiles is her theory. The pungent condensation, her proof. A tightly shut bathroom door should work wonders, she thinks, and it could be so much worse. That said, she is grateful to have not yet removed her boots. Soon though she will, everything’s starting to hurt. Perhaps a quick check for which make-up’s gone astray first? She pulls the shaving light on. The cheap yellow fog shows her sickly but she already knew it would. Make-up’s fine, almost off. There is nothing needs tending, except a quick under-eye wipe. Should she shower? She quite probably should. Not now though. She’s going nowhere. She is certain of that. She turns the shave light off. Nothing to see here. She prefers it in the dark anyway.

To do. To do. She seeks tasks to do but can’t find them anywhere. Look.

No need to hang up her clothes. She won’t be here long enough for that. Instead the wants of sweat and thirst propagate in her head. She recalls the mini-bar not being in the obvious place but has, nevertheless, located its whereabouts after a swift moment or two. In its sole 7Up, she recognises an opportunity for restraint which she has promised herself to avail of, should the opportunity present. But, she explains to no one, it’s been a very long day. Then she remembers that this has indeed been the case and grows irritable with herself for allowing no one a say. The perennial problem recurs. If only no one could be banished as easily as bade. It gets wearing, the contortions of the critic in her head to whose scrutiny she must, however, submit. She should just make the choice, as it was once previously made. She knows that. She makes it then. Sees the phone and calls to the front desk and, in overly imperative English, requests a bottle of white wine. Or two. On hanging up, she mouths, ‘It’s unendurable, this heat,’ which her hands pretend is the directive to unlock and un-slide the fly-blown inner door. No one heard her though and did not in any regard buy this excuse.

Courtyard.

It’s not a courtyard, she thinks. A wall of breeze blocks enclosing a ‘bird of paradise’ run amok. However, they certainly fulfil their stated remit of keeping the breeze well and truly out. And, paradisiacal as the truncated vista purports to be, she’d far rather find herself in receipt of the occasional light lickings of … is it the Mistral here? She can imagine that sensation described as ‘delicious’ by some. Never by her. It’s an appropriation she finds particularly grim, as though even the pleasure of the fat is being re-consecrated by the messianic thin. At any rate, this ill-conceived digression fails to divert her for long and the lighting of a cigarette soon rekindles her preference for the feel of moving air. She suspected it would because it usually does. And she is tired. Exhausted. France appears to be taking its toll. Or her body disapproves the incidental disinterment of long, long ago. No. Just a few years ago. She wishes it was long ago though.

So instead, she makes herself of now and forswears what has been.

Meaning, here she sits, feet slipped into the grey sand beneath and already countless fag ends there. Even in their advanced state of decay she can confidently differentiate the dogged constancy of English tips from their more pliant European relatives. And, if she looks carefully does she spy a lung-collapsing papirosa there? Maybe. No matter. No matter to that, or the curl of smoke undulating over her head, all the way back in. It can linger by the ceiling. Nothing is at stake. This is France, as she’s chosen. There need be no excuses made. Besides which, no other person will be in this room tonight. That is the plan. That is the plan.

Knock.

Wine knock. She knows the sound. Tentative yet authoritative. She drops and grinds the cigarette out, ensuring no spark survives. She remembers, although now does not care to remember, ensuring this too in other times. Best practice, nothing more, she counsels herself and now all gone under the dirt anyway. She gets up, straightens and goes to get. But when did the sun fall and the night rise in such hot black? Of course, she reminds herself not to be shocked, that happens so much more quickly over here.

Parquet. Pace. Light switch on and handle down.

She opens the door. Supplicatory waiter. She signs his slip. He shows the bottles to her. They’re the right cold and wet after their journey from the bar. She takes them both then and does not tip. She has no euros yet. Once she would have cursed herself for this. Now, she doesn’t care. The night roasts behind her and the chug in of warm air undoes the whirred cool from above.

Light switched off again.

And to the business. The accoutrements there. The corkscrew. An old one. Dig. Screw. Pull. Use pressure from the underarm and hope for the best. If it is the best, which it is, then that makes it one–all between France and her.

The bed stays unrumpled beneath as she yanks it free. A few light runnels on the bedspread. Chintz-ish brown fleur-de-lis, or cheap needlework, perhaps? There’s not much she knows about that, pours, and does not spill a drop. Drink. She drinks it down with some considerable relief at outmanoeuvring her travel fatigue, the buzzing, the desiccating heat and its risk of a maudlin dusk. That’s it right now, agitating her veins. Coursing through until the arches of her feet unclench – the most secret pleasure of drinking, she thinks, and unquantifiably nice. Her wrists will follow soon. Inevitably, knees. Loosed shoulders are desirable, if difficult to achieve. The key is to stop before it gets behind the eyes, after which all circumspection generally flies. That’s tightrope drinking. Tonight, she will make the attempt – to unhitch from while remaining in possession of. This is her intention. Certainly, more is not in the plan and, unwilling as she is to expand on that, she has little difficulty in recollecting why. So, she will drink only until her musculature relents which, even from this starting point, will require some intransigence. She has the time for it though, probably plenty too.

Clock. She remembers over there.

Time flashes below the TV, one hour ahead. She should change her watch but why make the effort? It passes quickly enough as it is. She drifts towards what she has left behind. Who. Then decides she’d rather not. Instead she shifts her attention to the television screen and to herself within its frame. What she might resemble, lounging here, she already knows. Probably enough has become of her though for that not to count very much. And it only might be true. And equally, might not be. By now sufficient wine has been drunk to ignore no one worrying at her ear anymore. To be alone in the head is bliss. Now is the hour to take full advantage of the quiet. She lies back against the headboard and lets her legs stretch, pondering her body like an inexorable event. Until the thought surfaces that this might also not be. She takes another sip before conceding it really isn’t actually and that was a foolish thing to think. Still. The body, always. She suspects she’ll always in some way favour it and so, for this short while, elects to mute the perpetual fear of just how precariously life hangs by its thread. And she slips it soon enough. And finds herself quickly nudging into the next. And this she doesn’t mind at all – meditating on how a few drinks bring the further joy of shearing away the female body’s perpetual role as ill-fitting attire. Look in the screen at these legs, arms, even these breasts, even this stomach will do. And she is fond of her skin, although somewhat more when out of it than when firmly within. This is the way of the world, she thinks, or how the world has been, more often than she’d choose.

Never mind.

She could live days like this, in the calm relax, but when the other pang triggers, she is not surprised. She is well acquainted with the peccadilloes to which her solitude, when bibulous, inclines. This is why she’s already clocked that the hotel bar is a mere two minutes’ walk – right, back up the corridor. And why she knows, should it not suffice, the wider locality is likely stocked, with everything, or one, she might require. She permits this a longer than fleeting thought before the boundaries of the plan are reasserted and she opts for the breeze blocks again.

Outside, the conjugal dark romances around. Music from the bar. Bats against the moon. The wall breaks at the left, which she hadn’t previously seen. There is light from the ‘courtyard’ next door. Fewer birds of paradise. A table and two chairs. The ribboning profile of a young man – maybe young? – with curly hair. She thinks he is smoking a Gitanes. She thinks he is looking at her. So, summoning up all her available ambivalence, she leans back against the door frame.

Warmed PVC on her spine. Smoke exhaled through her nose. Cicada click somewhere. Nip gnats or mosquitos. She is far from home or however that place may be best called to mind. Where the stuff is. Not the heart is. No, some heart is there and nowhere near enough wine has passed through her yet to make that any less true. Perhaps she does not wish it true. Or maybe just not for a while. Either way, she is untied enough to meet his eyes, briefly, then look away to the sanctuary of the distant night sky. Closing in nonetheless, too.

And thrum beyond the walls. Traffic to the east, audible but not uncomforting in its part as the perpetual route to away. For her escape is not the immediate game, content as she is to watch him shift his weight casually from the right foot to left. It appears they’ve simultaneously elected not to speak. Already too late, she knows, for an ‘Evening’ or ‘Salut’, or comradely remarks about their ugly hotel and complaints about the heat. And if his eyes invite acknowledgement, there’s nothing to be done about that. All she offers is a pass of glances for the span of their cigarettes. Hers ambiguous, she ensures. His, it appears, calculating the odds but, when he raises a hand, she nods. There’s no further encouragement she’s willing to give but … she is still there. And when he lights another cigarette, she lights another too. When he moves closer to the gap, she does not move. She is sure now she has ten years on him, which – at her age – amounts to nothing. Accounts for nothing too. Trawling for youth has never been her thing. In fact, her purview has been the opposite, really. But as he takes another step, looking likely to speak, she scrapes the one-third-smoked cigarette out and goes back in. As is the plan. As is that plan.

Inside, she closes the screen and assumes this does not seem dramatic or unreasonable. Who wouldn’t close their screen on the multiplicity of biting things out there? And most especially because she’s about to put on her bedside lamp.

But now she’d like to be busy in her body so has another drink. She’d like to reaffirm the plan so goes to the sink in the bathroom through the high-smelling air and rubs the remnants of make-up from her face. She thinks of the whiteness beneath as an absence of face. She knows this isn’t true, of course, and excoriates herself for such drab submission to the inglorious work of the world. But when it suits her, it suits her to use it too. Besides, she feels that war can never be won. No. She doesn’t feel that at all and that feelings are just fish to be fried. Rather she thinks, to keep herself in, she will decide to think: I could not turn myself on anyone looking like this. Again, she knows that’s a lie – in the gripping moment no one’s primary concern is eyeliner. So, resorting to an illogic that makes reasoned argument mute, she now says to herself: I haven’t gone bare-eyed for years. But what about the life before those years? Well, that was some time ago.

Further, push further. What’s as effective as self-disdain? Make-up first, now the strappings. Whittle those illusions away.

Time to take her bra off and fake relief from its dig – although the bands of red, where flesh fights the expectation of it, are surely real enough. She will not say she’s no model, despite the plan, and bridles at the assumption she should honestly find this a cause for regret. If asked, she would say she is a person, a woman, and this body is the only one she’s got. Thirty-five years of using and inhabiting it. Still going strong despite the life she’s lived and sadly, and regretfully, she’s known more than one who cannot say as much. She experiences no sense of triumph in this – possessing enough longevity to have made it into mid-life. She just thinks: leave me alone. She goes, instead, to the bedside table. She kills the bottle of wine. She puts a reasonably clean T-shirt on. She considers going outside again. Then hears several voices somewhere in the corridor beyond. It’s an echo box clearly, so if they’re going-to or coming-from, she cannot really tell. Conspiratorial, she thinks, happy-sounding? Her inadequate French means she cannot be sure. It forms a suspension though, makes her swallow slow. When she was young, she was mad for a group too, down the pub, summer Fridays, tapering off to chips. Her place on the periphery was rarely in doubt but she loved it all the same. The jokes of others. The stories made in her head about what transformations occurred simply by being present. What future awaited and what sophistications would grow out of herself once that future had come. She’d expected it to be opened and entered – like it would all be as simple as that. She is not sorry though, or thinks her innocence a fool, or forgets how innocence can create its own type of cruel or forgets that knowing and innocence can rub along quite happily for a while side by side. She decides to smile at this because she knows innocence never does win. Besides which, the past cannot be unpicked even if she possessed any eagerness for it and she really does not. She has almost always been a woman kneeling at the altar of ‘And then?’ ‘And next?’ A shuffle in the corridor a few doors down now. Theirs. So, they were going in. However many. For whatever reason. Some music starts up. Well, the bass anyway. Unusually she doesn’t become irate at the invasion of her inner ear. Sentiment must be at work somewhere, unfortunately. The seep of alcohol and sense migrates to the days and life after life in the group finished, the life of moving on to only one. The one and only, as she’d thought of him. Don’t. Don’t think of that. Too late. She already has. And remembered how she’d welcomed it, the construction of complex circles of her own. Their. Their circles. Spun and spun. She’d banked on them lasting a lifetime but they had managed only some. They’d managed enough though that she’s unlikely to forget and has not. It’s the reason she regulates her orbit at an angle to all that. Pleasanter on the eyes, and life. Christ! These walls must be paper thin. Come on. In the morning she thinks she’ll probably eat a few croissants. Come on. Will she have jam? Yes, that’s right. She might well have them with jam, if they have it … will they? She’ll have to wait, with bated breath, to see. Right now, she decides on more wine.

Now there’s a snap in her celery, a spring in her step. She’s passed through the mawkishness to where the sugar is going great guns in her blood. She does not think she can get very drunk. A plateau has somehow been reached. Yet, she drinks some water, to pace herself. A nod to the plan she is still in possession of. One more cigarette then she’ll head for bed and everything’s worked out fine! She knew it would. A little self-restraint but not punitive amounts. And this cork slides out so easily now. It could almost be a sign. She doesn’t believe in signs. She pours very carefully, to proclaim her sobriety intact. The result is the very same.

Out.

Outside the sky’s a horror of fight and bruise. Velour black, pumped with racket, gored by orange. She lets the heat, though, tempt her in. Less blast oven to it now and more ember, although questions about what’s burnt there remain. No. Do not remain. Have been dealt with by the plan. A plan without a B. Simple to follow. In each circumstance recollectable. As she does even now, and despite the sound of the gritty slide open of next door. These doors could fall forward, it feels like. Or like they may already have done and been slotted back in until the next fall-out. Engineering has never been a preoccupation but they do seem to wobble and hotels … you know … However, with nothing to be done about that, she lights her cigarette up and, escaping the tedium of contemplation, settles into the centre of the world.

Hello.

Good evening.

How are you?

I’m fine.

She knows that his glance and her body combine. She has been here before so there’s no meeting of minds she would less willingly pretend to pursue. Indifferent to this, he lights up too, as she knew he would, ushering in the beginnings of dance and excuse. Both expected and clung onto until the very last. She knows how quickly the time can pass between too soon and too late. She has the plan but appreciates he knows nothing of that. ‘And you?’ She can’t help it or liking the dance. It’s the lift she can’t resist, secure in the knowledge the plan sits in place to avoid any trouble produced. So, she looks through the gap right into his face. Smiles into the smile she knows awaits. There, seen. And seen. Bodies usually go to where this look leads but she takes all the time of it she wants. She can tell he’s practically there, doing the maths of her and where. His other smile. His body shifts. He pretends to be searching out his English. She guesses he doesn’t have to look hard. It’s just a few seconds in which to hide stepping forward. That’s a honed skill but no less enjoyable for it. There’s pleasure in knowing she’s read it right – she could, and she sees that. A lick of hormone. She’d like to. She’s fairly certain she’d enjoy it too, until no one wakes in her ear. How has she gotten this close? Why did she come out here? It just could be nice – nothing hefty, without risk and so hived off from everything else as to almost not exist at all. No one doesn’t buy this excuse. No one knows her too well and that she doesn’t give a toss for nice, not really, because no one’s head is screwed on. ‘May I join you?’ rings through the gap. No one follows her eyes, then reminds her sharply: What you did once, in this room – or one so like it as to be virtually the same – this would not be that. And that … is not the plan. That, in fact, is the why of the plan and you shouldn’t have to be told.

So, no, to him.

Yes, to herself – if this were an advert for some kind of self-help.

Bloody no one. Is there no escape?

Actually, I was just going in but … have a nice evening.

What a pity but … you too.

This, despite the expectancy in how he still waits. She finishes up her cigarette, snuffs it out in the grey sand beneath, curatorially nods her goodnight, then rises and steps back indoors. No one, it seems, is capable – and from wherever she stands – of getting anyone ignored. Further to this, no one ensures, once she’s inside, that she lets the inner door slide. Shut. Tight. That she locks it loudly. That she makes of it a point of pride to do this without apology. Because, no one reminds her, she isn’t sorry, not really. She has nothing to apologise for. But, just beyond no one’s reach, she thinks … well …

No.

The stink of bathroom floor. The smallness of her case. All the hours of getting here and … and …

… now the room seems even browner than before. That’s the difficulty; plans sabotage odd stealths of enjoyment, inevitably. No matter. No matter. She says it again. She retains her privacy, self-possession, and a nearly full bottle of wine. Fill the space. Flood the mind. She’d like a radio, or music, anything to barrow the assembling muddle from her head. No such option appears to exist. So, dusty barefooted, she permits herself to rumple the sheets, fill her glass to the brim and lay her head on the beige patterned pillow, down. From dimensions beyond the breeze blocks, lights throw shadows above. A paradise of birds? Of bars? She’s too tired to decipher of what. Her tongue cleaves a swallow of wine to her palate, then lets it trickle down too. In a while it will become her. She’s now patiently awaiting that time.

And it comes. Into itself. As it always will. Her eyes inch back to the glass and, suddenly, she is …

Roll. There is no one to see you roll and roll right off the bed. As your arches roll across the mock parquet. As your knees do not exist. As your shoulders open like you have wings. As your brain starts to lead from the back. As your body notices space is a trick. As your fingers wrap around the remote. Turn it on. TV. Zapped into light. Whither now? Abroad, to French television tonight. The dark. And hotel rooms alone. Everyone knows what that means.

Primarily pinkly personnelled pornography. Popularly, perseveringly and – periodically perceivably painfully – protractedly pursuing previously private perspectives of perfectly pumped penii practically pummelling professionally pruned pudenda and precisely depilated, pucely pert or – more pedantically – patently pedestrian posteriors alike. Period – as in Full Stop, and not of the bleeding kind.

You are not American, and this is stupid.

But.

Principles carry no precedence here.

But.

Phraseology is not the priority.

But.

Punctuation is in no way the point.

But.

But what?

I like what I see.

And as it goes into her, ideas resurrect of next door. Other outcomes could still be available to her. She knows, were she yet keen to try, it wouldn’t be too late to change her mind. She probably won’t though. She’ll be better off sticking to whatever her addle recalls of the rapidly fragmenting plan. Certainly, she retains wit enough to recognise the better of bad worlds is this. And actually – now no one’s done chewing her ear – does the impetus exist any longer? Hard to know. Almost nothing does. Behind, behind the eyes. Too late now, too late will be the cry. Alas, the moment has arrived to succumb to her descent. She’d badly rather call it her descant but, even in this state, she remembers she cannot sing.

Slip then.

Slip right down.

Then she feels it in the parts of herself where feeling still exists. And she likes the sensation, plus the simple filth, unhinderedly being at one with it. Unbolted in her body and seceding from thought. Patterns hint that by morning her position may have altered but tonight, she can live like this. Will. So, my hand does the strange familiar until my eyes have grown tired of the screen. The encroach of boredom never takes long but its accelerant, the participatory loss of the mind, remains the best absence of all. Even buckling forward into its end, I do not spill my wine. Have. Have it. Lose it a little. Lose it entirely. Gone. A moment. A moment. Now, quickly sequester my sprawl. Limbs. Knickers. Put the glass safely down. Set a match to inklings of thinking about … but then go to sleep. And not the sleep of the just. Nor the sleep of dreams. Where the brain lies undiscerning of everything, is that even sleep?

Sound.

Down.

Down.

Down.

Sleep.

Something.

Sound.

Noise.

Clamour.

Cacophony.

And so pervasive now, she opens her unwilling eyes. Is it inside her? No, outside her. It’s not of the mind. Then where? Outdoors? No, indoors. The sun is so bright. How come she’s so parched? Brown blinds up. Curtains wide. Yesterday’s T-shirt somehow grown tight. Sex audible everywhere.

Oh.

Eyes look. No. She can’t turn her head. Fingers look and, efficiently, find the remote. Down by her side. There on the bed. How does it work? Luckily there is an instinct and it navigates swiftly to OFF. The welcome silence also comes as a shock, as the escalating moans are arbitrarily shut up, forever unconsummated now. But that’s their own problem. It’s her ears’ reprieve – the cooling quiet in which she begins collecting herself. She’s here on her own, which makes the plan a success. By the sound of it, next door is now boiling his kettle. For tea or coffee? her re-forming brain idles. Tea or coffee? Oh.

She can hear his kettle boil, then pins dropping all over France.

Oh God oh God. Why is the night? The body yes but not much else left intact. Was that the plan? Why would that be the plan? Why would she ever make a plan like that?

She knows from precedent what comes next so sits up, electing to listen to life next door instead. And hears it. Clearly. He’s already up and apace. His shower-curtain rings clatter, clearly, open and shut. So clearly, in fact, she’s certain she could identify exactly which type they are. She doesn’t hear him sing in there but if he did, she would. Clearly. She hears the water flow, stop. She hears him step out and the towel snapped from the rail. Clearly. She imagines his waist. She can’t actually hear any coffee getting made – spoons, stirring – but, because of the kettle, thinks he probably does. What she next clearly hears is the metal strap of his watch, picked from the desk? Maybe? The side table perhaps? Hears it wrung round his wrist until its clasp clicks. Clearly. So clearly, she hears this, that the only room left within her for self-deceit now collapses completely in. There is no possibility, she admits, of her ‘entertainments’ having gone unheard, unless … Unless? Why bother herself? Too late, too late is already the cry. Ear plugs or earphones or Valium or what? Dance and excuse. Why did she choose the latter last night? The hard end, the steep side, the long way round. How do so many others never get this wrong? Why do so many others see these problems a mile off and so go a mile out of their way? She is tired. No. Avoiding the truth. No. She’s just been here before. In this place, which she’s now ruined. Only once. Not in ages. Not in years. It amounts almost to nothing, those twelve, thirteen hours but. But. But. But. They never will return again. And from here she can see right back to here, but then. To the way he swore at the tyre. To the grease under his nails. How they had found it in the middle of some very weird rain. ‘Birds of paradise?’ he’d suggested when she’d racked for the plant’s name. ‘This place is so grim,’ he’d said, after he’d ordered some wine, and she’d said, ‘It’ll be fine.’ ‘Oh yeah,’ he’d said, ‘it’ll be fine.’ Which, in fact, it was. All of it was. And far more than that.

Next door zips his case up and she is recalled. To head hanging, hand wringing, the whole medley of awful. It’s too soon to reframe last night as a blank but she’ll try to just as soon as she can. Because that is the plan. That is now the plan. But in the mode of confession, and given all that has passed, can she truly say coming round on his side of the wall would have been so much worse? If she’s being honest, and she thinks she is. Maybe though she’s not ready to think. Just leave it for now, knowing there’ll be an assessment, in due course, some other time. In this moment there is only spectacular shame. Blah blah. I’ve come to talk to you again. Etc. Etc. Ad infinitum, and beyond. France has won the match.

She hears his door open, then close. Turn of a key, old-fashioned key, in its lock. She follows the tread of his footfalls right up the corridor, with its strange frame of light and its microphone logic, until expensive shoes strike the tiles of the foyer floor. Then stop. At the desk? His just about audible salutation receives a conspiratorial ‘Salut’. She recognises the clerk’s voice and hears knowing in it. He knows. He heard. Everyone did. Then even her poor French makes out a question about breakfast. Where they serve it, she thinks and Oh God.

Oh God. Breakfast.

Has she paid for that, or not? Inevitably she’s suddenly empty. She is completely starving. She won’t leave this room though. She absolutely cannot. The merest glance across the breakfast room would eviscerate her now. But can she bear to call for room service? Or is that just, not yet? She checks her watch. She checks herself. She thinks there’s still time to decide.


Copyright © 2020 by Eimear McBride