hillwalker
02-05-2011, 11:49 AM
TARGET PRACTICE
I don’t know why this belt grows tighter every day. My waist is no thicker than Laura’s, I am sure. She is one of those vegetarians which probably explains how slender she is. There is something about her smell. Her pheromones perhaps. A certain lushness surrounds her body; with underlying traces of foliage and fecundity.
I could become a vegetarian as easy as that. I really could.
Laura’s skin glows like fire. Her complexion is flawless and lightly bronzed like burnished gold. She and her friend, Jodie, are from Perth. I heard her tell Derek when he showed them to their table last night. But when I ask him later he says it is not the same place we drove past in the van on our way here. I can remember the grey banks of snow along the flat river. That ring of hungry ridges that seemed to bite at the sky. Marcus said it was the Arctic Circle.
Jodie I do not trust. I cannot put my finger onto it. There is something about her…. her hair to start with. It is short and red; not a natural red. More metallic; like a flashy sports car or that cheap, cranberry lipstick Marie sometimes wears.
Laura has blonde hair. For me, it was a long time ago to have hair that colour….. when I first was living in Vilnius. But I could dye it again if I wanted to.
When Marcus sees the girls he tells everybody he would like to screw them - but he thinks they are both Lezzies. I cannot understand if it is a joke he is making about them, but I know that he is wrong because Laura told Derek they are both Ozzies. When I say this to Marie she just laughs in that crazy way that usually makes me want to grab her and press my tongue inside her mouth – or to try and poison her again.
- - - - -
Tonight the girls have taken forever to order dinner. Jodie asking for more rolls; such a sneer on her face as if she has an attitude problem. I have no idea what Laura sees in her.
I keep an eye on them as I alternate between tables 8 and 14. In the bay window are two couples on a sight-seeing tour. Here from Edinburgh they tell me, as if I give them a sh1t. And on the next table are four middle-aged men. On a railway holiday they said to Mrs McLeod. They are reading their timetables and making enthusiastic sounds like little boys slobbering over nude pictures. One of the men, the one with purple tinted glasses, smiles at me. I know he would enjoy to see me spreading naked. I smile back at him as I serve him the broccoli. I hope he will die soon.
Now the red haired girl wants to know about the Carbonara sauce.
“Excuse me, this pasta dish. Does it have any meat in it?”
I shake my head.
“No, not really. There is a little amount of bacon, I think.”
She smirks.
I fix my eyes upon Laura’s long, blonde hair and the most perfect parting down the centre of her head. There’s a tiny scar on her top lip.
I long to reach down with my fingertip to smear it away - like erasing a mistake. Probe inside her upper lip and feel for the edges of her teeth. Massage my finger along the sharp tips of her incisors and the softest padding of her gums. Explore the architecture of her palate.
Laura smells of lilac…..
Later I watch them both as they sit together in the small side bar away from the main lounge area. Sipping lagers. Reading the brochures about the Victorian Doll Museum and the local whisky distillery. There is no chemistry there at all.
I look for Mrs McLeod inside the office behind Reception. I will do the evening rounds. Marie is busy emptying the dish washer. Chef has his eye on Marie and she is happy of his attention.
I make a discrete tap on every door. Once inside each room I draw the curtains, tidy up the bathroom and turn down the bedding. I love this time of day when the guests are back here for the night but I am still free to wander into their rooms. Like some kind of invisible interloper.
Room 27 is a double room with a queen sized bed.
A blue and grey rucksack is slumped onto the floor next to the television table. The top is unfastened but it contains nothing of value. The wardrobe door will never shut properly in this room. When I changed the beds last Saturday Mr McLeod was trying to replace the screws inside the hinges. He is not very skilled. It is still no better. That was the morning I stole my little screw-driver from his tool box. He does not know I took it, of course.
A large, red back-pack is collapsed underneath the hangers. I find Laura’s name inside the top flap. Her printing is exquisite.
The wardrobe is almost empty. All it has are four bright coloured tops, three pairs of slacks and some hipster trousers. There is underwear folded in the drawers. White cotton pants and a dark blue lacy pair; three washed-out sports bras, one grey and the other two black; several brightly patterned bikini bottoms that smell of the ocean. I pick up one with blue penguins. I sift the skimpy, rainbow-coloured ribbon of electric light through my fingers and imagine how Laura must look when she is wearing it. Salt spray and bubbles of foam glistening on her legs; her toes flexing in the wet sand
Dirty linen is all over the bathroom floor. I hang the bath mat above the radiator even though the hotel heating is turned down for the summer. I arrange the towels along the bath’s edge. Dried suds and a scum of flaked skin stain the bath itself. I twist the hot tap on for a few seconds and use a face flannel to wipe it all away. Tiny dark flecks are trapped in the well around the plug hole like cigarette ash. I erase them too.
I wonder if Laura helped Jodie shave her legs. Did she squirm beneath the bubbles the same way my step-sister, Emilijah, did when I held her under?
I spin on my toes to face the mirror above the hand basin.
The pink razor is caked with the detritus of Jodie’s body hair.
I wonder whether Laura’s hairs are dark. Or the colour of golden wheat….? Does she shave herself completely?
A jar of ‘Vaseline’ and a scraper for skin of the feet. One tube of sensitive toothpaste. Two toothbrushes in a glass – one red, one green. I rub my thumb back and forth along their bristles. Alongside the glass is a spray-bottle; lilac perfume. Laura’s I feel sure.
Marie once got into trouble for using someone’s skin gel on her hands. The woman noticed her scent as Marie served her coffee that evening and made such a fuss. Marie laughed when I told her later exactly what I had done. Imagine that b1tch trowelling on her make up; dabbing her wrinkled cheeks and throat with a blend of moisturiser and liquid oven cleaner.
I breathe in the invigorating aroma of their hormones like a mermaid drowning in diesel oil. I sway in the light. The putrid green walls pulsate like turtle-skin….. the nicotine-stained ceiling corners….. the mottled pattern of polluted snowflakes stuck onto the glass of the window….. the entire room filling with poison. I need to get out.
- - - - -
Wednesday is my half day off. I get to stay in bed until eleven.
I throw the alarm clock at Marie’s bed as it shatters the morning. She gets up and skulks to the bathroom next door. She does not undress in front of me the way she used to.
When I awake for the second time it is after nine. The whole building seems abandoned despite the riot of the kitchen and the thud and squeak of the linen trolley as Lena changes the bedding.
It is sweltering underneath this sheet. I emerge like a disrobing ghost, cross the room and stretch out on Marie’s bed. I hold my handkerchief against my nostrils and breathe in the morbid scent of lilac, imagining the taste of Laura’s delicate breath. I close my eyes and see her gaze fixed upon my face. The way that wisp of loose hair flips over her right ear.
She wears tiny turquoise studs top and bottom. I wonder whether or not Laura is pierced elsewhere. A nipple perhaps, or even her navel.
My senses shrivel up like leaves touched by frost. Ivy leaves like those that trailed the walls outside our privy.
I could get my labia pierced….. if I wanted to. There is nothing to stop me.
- - - - -
Wednesday night is here. It is Alec and Moira with an accordion on Wednesday nights. I try to hurry with the servings before they arrive. Their music jumps out of every corner of the room and makes me grow very frightened.
There are three new coach parties of old people but Derek sees to them as usual. They love his tight black trousers and smart white shirt and red bow-tie.
I wear a white blouse fastened to the neck with a ruffle of collar like a halter around my throat. I hate it. I hate being waitress in a horrid little hotel - when I am fully medically qualified - a midwife with two years’ experience. I have already delivered more than a thousand little babies to this world. Sometimes I want to scream at all their faces.
I will get a job very soon as midwife.
Four prawn cocktails for table 9. Two Dover sole, one goulash, one tuna salad.
The girls creep in twenty minutes late. Jodie has a maroon cardigan tied across her shoulders and a pair of sunglasses resting above her forehead. Laura is wearing a sparkly pink t-shirt that says ‘Man-Teasers’ and a pair of small denim shorts. I notice the top button of her shorts is unfastened.
Derek is watching me closely from the carvery table as usual. He comes across, smiles nervously and asks if they have had a good day. They flirt at him with their eyes as he shows them to table 14.
“Oh, Monica?”
My heart skips a beat.
That is not even my name. I am Morta. But here I have to wear this badge with an English name that people can understand.
Jodie is wearing her x-ray sunglasses now; staring into my skull. I stare back.
I can see the junction between her sphenoid and zygomatic bones. I could press my ball-point pen right there. Laura only has to say the word. I could push it all the way into the soft tissues of her brain. It would take one blink of her eye. Nothing more.
“Yes, miss.”
“Yes, could you get us a couple of cold drinks while we wait?”
I come back from the bar with a little tray. A glass of white wine for Jodie that I spat into while the barman had his back turned. A half pint of ice-cold lager for Laura, her glass dappled with beads of condensation. She reaches for it before I get the chance to put it down beside her napkin.
Her top lip becomes coated with froth as she takes the first mouthful of golden liquid. I watch her throat gulp like a fish taking bait.
I could lick that from her lips if she would let me. I could lick it away so easily.
Marie is due to work upstairs again tonight. But Marcus is on kitchen duty. She has a crush for him. I volunteer to cover if she serves coffee in the lounge, knowing she will agree. She thinks I am pushed over.
From the window of 27 I can see grey rooftops beneath us on the left. Four large white coaches fill the car park; their engines still ticking from the heat of the day. The hazy sky above the rounded, pink hills begins to spin. I almost lose my balance as I straighten the curtains.
When I turn down the bed I find a single blonde hair attached to one of the pillows. Laura’s gift to me. I pull it loose - unspinning the silk from a spider web. I run it across my tongue like a razor. Suddenly I picture Emilija’s alabaster forearms turning red red red.
Now I have discovered their secret. Laura sleeps on the left side next to the window. I wonder if she faces the sun when it comes up each morning the same way I do; her back pressed against Jodie’s breasts….. her body cradled in Jodie’s embrace.
We could share my bed in the same way; cuddling innocently in the clammy night; my arm resting in the gentle curve between her ribcage and the swell of her hip. My fingernails inches from her pubic bone.
Inside Laura’s back-pack I find a crumpled plastic bag. It is musty with the whiff of dirty clothing; damp t-shirts, twisted brassieres and sweaty hiking socks. A green top printed with ‘Great Barrier Reef’. A denim waistcoat and a pair of faded, blue under-pants with a pattern of yellow stars.
The bathroom window is too stiff to open properly. It is jungle-hot with stale steam and the residues of their ablutions. I inhale like a scuba-diver starved of air.
Before leaving I draw a heart in the faint condensation on the mirror.
- - - - -
We have a black and white television in the staff room next to the kitchen. Sometimes I watch. But tonight it is too hot to even think about sitting here.
I close our bedroom door and stand beneath the open sky-light. I focus on Marie’s bed wedged under the ceiling comb. The top half of her duvet is folded back. I grab her t-shirt and press it against my face for perhaps…. thirty or forty minutes. Her body always smells of shortbread.
I feel myself begin to suffocate. My tears have dried by the time I slide between my sheets.
I hold the limp blue fabric of Laura’s pants to my face and inhale every floating atom trapped within its weave, desperate for breath. I breathe in for so long that my blood boils and my face flushes red with the exertion. A secret constellation of scents - her sweat, her perineal aromas and traces of micturation.
My tongue touches the silken material like a finger approaching blue flame.
Our bed is a swamp of perspiration. The only sounds are the words we are whispering; names repeated like Hail Marys. Two bodies overdosing on the same drug. My own breath an ache inside my throat.
- - - - -
The alarm rattles like an angry child but the sun streaming through the sky-light has woken me hours earlier.
I sit upright and watch the soft shapes of Marie humped under her duvet. Her face is turned to the plastered wall. The swelling of her buttocks is always there like a heart shape upside down. The air inside our room is hot and stale and smells of unwashed laundry.
I clamber off my bed and stand naked in the hazy sunlight for a few minutes, swimming in its heat and texture. I tilt the sky-light wider then scratch the dark curls on my belly. I want to tear all the pale skin and flabby flesh off these bones until I emerge as perfect as Laura.
I slide one foot then the other into her panties and put on my uniform before Marie stirs.
Eddie the night porter is waiting to unlock. He says all has been quiet. I cannot understand. My heart is thumping so hard. I prepare the self-service counter. Then I wait.
I will stand by Laura in her hour of need.
Suddenly people start to come in. I smile and search their faces. Here comes Jodie as eager as ever. The red-haired b1tch is somehow still alive. She is helping herself to a glass of juice now. I am blind with fury.
I stagger into the kitchen, grab a toast rack and take eight fresh rounds from under the multi-grille. I smell my unwashed fingers – they are contaminated with the nocturnal scents of my body. I smear my left hand across each square of hot, wholemeal bread; smudging my tacky fingerprints everywhere until my taste permeates the fibres of every single slice.
- - - - -
The linen trolley is always squeaking as I push it along the corridor. I feel trapped in this narrow tunnel with the floor creaking under my feet like a sinking ship. The dark corners hide every way out for me. Locked door after locked door. A loose piece of hair keeps flipping over my right ear into my eyes. I swipe it away with my free hand.
Lena is covering Reception today. She stopped me at the bottom of the stairs. The two girls are cycling all the way from this hotel to the coast….. as if I care. I have no interest in watching their departure.
Clouds of poison shroud the furniture in their empty room. Musk and hairspray and sun blockage.
I am all fingers. On Jodie’s side of the bed dust spills down like flaking skin from the tassels of the lampshade. I reach under the bedside table, unplug the lamp from the wall and take out my little screwdriver. In less than one minute I have attached the wires back into their proper places.
I walk round to the other side of the bed to remove the top sheet and suddenly I am forced to surrender.
I sculpture my hands across the empty shape of Laura’s body, my secret accomplice, still imprinted on the sheet. I kneel on the floor and rest my face against her pillow.
The bathroom door is wide open. From here we could have watched Jodie as she examined herself in the speckled mirror. Her sagging breasts are much smaller than mine. She could almost be a boy. She scratched lazily under an armpit then the fingers of her right hand guided the razor blade along her green veins. Braids of clotting blood ran down her wrists then dripped onto the floor. The shape in the mirror becomes Emilija’s lifeless body. The way I held her close to me; her blood soaking my shift and her bones so cold and perfect beneath her skin.
I blink away my beautiful dream and snuffle my face into the pillow to taste Laura’s mouth and savour the dregs of her saliva. I spread my arms out and smother my face into the rumpled bed-sheet where she lay. The pungent scent of dirty bedding and talcum powder and skin residue and bodily leakages. I push my head deeper into the depths of the cave of the bed in search of richer scents; my belly pressed hard against the mattress edge as I inhale the ripe, tainted butterscotch of her feet and the dank, crimson poison of her womanhood.
- - - - -
The bedroom door clicks shut behind me. It is after ten-thirty and I still have my chores to finish before the early lunches start.
New tourists are already trickling in like guests late for a wedding. Mrs McLeod gives me one of her dirty looks.
I begin to dust the staircase. Four American girls have put their bags into rooms 12 and 14. I can hear them now as I polish the banister. They talk so much….. complaining about every single thing.
Kelly, the tall girl, stands outside room 14 waiting for the others. I do not exist for her yet. She reminds me of a squaw; a Cherokee bride. She is wearing a charm bracelet, and on her hand she has a blue tattoo of a howling wolf. My mother used to tell me I was a wolf-child. Perhaps I am Kelly’s true sister.
Her complexion is flawless and lightly bronzed like burnished gold. Her long, dark hair is arranged into braids.
I could wear my hair the same way as easy as that. I really could.
- o – 0 – o -
H
I don’t know why this belt grows tighter every day. My waist is no thicker than Laura’s, I am sure. She is one of those vegetarians which probably explains how slender she is. There is something about her smell. Her pheromones perhaps. A certain lushness surrounds her body; with underlying traces of foliage and fecundity.
I could become a vegetarian as easy as that. I really could.
Laura’s skin glows like fire. Her complexion is flawless and lightly bronzed like burnished gold. She and her friend, Jodie, are from Perth. I heard her tell Derek when he showed them to their table last night. But when I ask him later he says it is not the same place we drove past in the van on our way here. I can remember the grey banks of snow along the flat river. That ring of hungry ridges that seemed to bite at the sky. Marcus said it was the Arctic Circle.
Jodie I do not trust. I cannot put my finger onto it. There is something about her…. her hair to start with. It is short and red; not a natural red. More metallic; like a flashy sports car or that cheap, cranberry lipstick Marie sometimes wears.
Laura has blonde hair. For me, it was a long time ago to have hair that colour….. when I first was living in Vilnius. But I could dye it again if I wanted to.
When Marcus sees the girls he tells everybody he would like to screw them - but he thinks they are both Lezzies. I cannot understand if it is a joke he is making about them, but I know that he is wrong because Laura told Derek they are both Ozzies. When I say this to Marie she just laughs in that crazy way that usually makes me want to grab her and press my tongue inside her mouth – or to try and poison her again.
- - - - -
Tonight the girls have taken forever to order dinner. Jodie asking for more rolls; such a sneer on her face as if she has an attitude problem. I have no idea what Laura sees in her.
I keep an eye on them as I alternate between tables 8 and 14. In the bay window are two couples on a sight-seeing tour. Here from Edinburgh they tell me, as if I give them a sh1t. And on the next table are four middle-aged men. On a railway holiday they said to Mrs McLeod. They are reading their timetables and making enthusiastic sounds like little boys slobbering over nude pictures. One of the men, the one with purple tinted glasses, smiles at me. I know he would enjoy to see me spreading naked. I smile back at him as I serve him the broccoli. I hope he will die soon.
Now the red haired girl wants to know about the Carbonara sauce.
“Excuse me, this pasta dish. Does it have any meat in it?”
I shake my head.
“No, not really. There is a little amount of bacon, I think.”
She smirks.
I fix my eyes upon Laura’s long, blonde hair and the most perfect parting down the centre of her head. There’s a tiny scar on her top lip.
I long to reach down with my fingertip to smear it away - like erasing a mistake. Probe inside her upper lip and feel for the edges of her teeth. Massage my finger along the sharp tips of her incisors and the softest padding of her gums. Explore the architecture of her palate.
Laura smells of lilac…..
Later I watch them both as they sit together in the small side bar away from the main lounge area. Sipping lagers. Reading the brochures about the Victorian Doll Museum and the local whisky distillery. There is no chemistry there at all.
I look for Mrs McLeod inside the office behind Reception. I will do the evening rounds. Marie is busy emptying the dish washer. Chef has his eye on Marie and she is happy of his attention.
I make a discrete tap on every door. Once inside each room I draw the curtains, tidy up the bathroom and turn down the bedding. I love this time of day when the guests are back here for the night but I am still free to wander into their rooms. Like some kind of invisible interloper.
Room 27 is a double room with a queen sized bed.
A blue and grey rucksack is slumped onto the floor next to the television table. The top is unfastened but it contains nothing of value. The wardrobe door will never shut properly in this room. When I changed the beds last Saturday Mr McLeod was trying to replace the screws inside the hinges. He is not very skilled. It is still no better. That was the morning I stole my little screw-driver from his tool box. He does not know I took it, of course.
A large, red back-pack is collapsed underneath the hangers. I find Laura’s name inside the top flap. Her printing is exquisite.
The wardrobe is almost empty. All it has are four bright coloured tops, three pairs of slacks and some hipster trousers. There is underwear folded in the drawers. White cotton pants and a dark blue lacy pair; three washed-out sports bras, one grey and the other two black; several brightly patterned bikini bottoms that smell of the ocean. I pick up one with blue penguins. I sift the skimpy, rainbow-coloured ribbon of electric light through my fingers and imagine how Laura must look when she is wearing it. Salt spray and bubbles of foam glistening on her legs; her toes flexing in the wet sand
Dirty linen is all over the bathroom floor. I hang the bath mat above the radiator even though the hotel heating is turned down for the summer. I arrange the towels along the bath’s edge. Dried suds and a scum of flaked skin stain the bath itself. I twist the hot tap on for a few seconds and use a face flannel to wipe it all away. Tiny dark flecks are trapped in the well around the plug hole like cigarette ash. I erase them too.
I wonder if Laura helped Jodie shave her legs. Did she squirm beneath the bubbles the same way my step-sister, Emilijah, did when I held her under?
I spin on my toes to face the mirror above the hand basin.
The pink razor is caked with the detritus of Jodie’s body hair.
I wonder whether Laura’s hairs are dark. Or the colour of golden wheat….? Does she shave herself completely?
A jar of ‘Vaseline’ and a scraper for skin of the feet. One tube of sensitive toothpaste. Two toothbrushes in a glass – one red, one green. I rub my thumb back and forth along their bristles. Alongside the glass is a spray-bottle; lilac perfume. Laura’s I feel sure.
Marie once got into trouble for using someone’s skin gel on her hands. The woman noticed her scent as Marie served her coffee that evening and made such a fuss. Marie laughed when I told her later exactly what I had done. Imagine that b1tch trowelling on her make up; dabbing her wrinkled cheeks and throat with a blend of moisturiser and liquid oven cleaner.
I breathe in the invigorating aroma of their hormones like a mermaid drowning in diesel oil. I sway in the light. The putrid green walls pulsate like turtle-skin….. the nicotine-stained ceiling corners….. the mottled pattern of polluted snowflakes stuck onto the glass of the window….. the entire room filling with poison. I need to get out.
- - - - -
Wednesday is my half day off. I get to stay in bed until eleven.
I throw the alarm clock at Marie’s bed as it shatters the morning. She gets up and skulks to the bathroom next door. She does not undress in front of me the way she used to.
When I awake for the second time it is after nine. The whole building seems abandoned despite the riot of the kitchen and the thud and squeak of the linen trolley as Lena changes the bedding.
It is sweltering underneath this sheet. I emerge like a disrobing ghost, cross the room and stretch out on Marie’s bed. I hold my handkerchief against my nostrils and breathe in the morbid scent of lilac, imagining the taste of Laura’s delicate breath. I close my eyes and see her gaze fixed upon my face. The way that wisp of loose hair flips over her right ear.
She wears tiny turquoise studs top and bottom. I wonder whether or not Laura is pierced elsewhere. A nipple perhaps, or even her navel.
My senses shrivel up like leaves touched by frost. Ivy leaves like those that trailed the walls outside our privy.
I could get my labia pierced….. if I wanted to. There is nothing to stop me.
- - - - -
Wednesday night is here. It is Alec and Moira with an accordion on Wednesday nights. I try to hurry with the servings before they arrive. Their music jumps out of every corner of the room and makes me grow very frightened.
There are three new coach parties of old people but Derek sees to them as usual. They love his tight black trousers and smart white shirt and red bow-tie.
I wear a white blouse fastened to the neck with a ruffle of collar like a halter around my throat. I hate it. I hate being waitress in a horrid little hotel - when I am fully medically qualified - a midwife with two years’ experience. I have already delivered more than a thousand little babies to this world. Sometimes I want to scream at all their faces.
I will get a job very soon as midwife.
Four prawn cocktails for table 9. Two Dover sole, one goulash, one tuna salad.
The girls creep in twenty minutes late. Jodie has a maroon cardigan tied across her shoulders and a pair of sunglasses resting above her forehead. Laura is wearing a sparkly pink t-shirt that says ‘Man-Teasers’ and a pair of small denim shorts. I notice the top button of her shorts is unfastened.
Derek is watching me closely from the carvery table as usual. He comes across, smiles nervously and asks if they have had a good day. They flirt at him with their eyes as he shows them to table 14.
“Oh, Monica?”
My heart skips a beat.
That is not even my name. I am Morta. But here I have to wear this badge with an English name that people can understand.
Jodie is wearing her x-ray sunglasses now; staring into my skull. I stare back.
I can see the junction between her sphenoid and zygomatic bones. I could press my ball-point pen right there. Laura only has to say the word. I could push it all the way into the soft tissues of her brain. It would take one blink of her eye. Nothing more.
“Yes, miss.”
“Yes, could you get us a couple of cold drinks while we wait?”
I come back from the bar with a little tray. A glass of white wine for Jodie that I spat into while the barman had his back turned. A half pint of ice-cold lager for Laura, her glass dappled with beads of condensation. She reaches for it before I get the chance to put it down beside her napkin.
Her top lip becomes coated with froth as she takes the first mouthful of golden liquid. I watch her throat gulp like a fish taking bait.
I could lick that from her lips if she would let me. I could lick it away so easily.
Marie is due to work upstairs again tonight. But Marcus is on kitchen duty. She has a crush for him. I volunteer to cover if she serves coffee in the lounge, knowing she will agree. She thinks I am pushed over.
From the window of 27 I can see grey rooftops beneath us on the left. Four large white coaches fill the car park; their engines still ticking from the heat of the day. The hazy sky above the rounded, pink hills begins to spin. I almost lose my balance as I straighten the curtains.
When I turn down the bed I find a single blonde hair attached to one of the pillows. Laura’s gift to me. I pull it loose - unspinning the silk from a spider web. I run it across my tongue like a razor. Suddenly I picture Emilija’s alabaster forearms turning red red red.
Now I have discovered their secret. Laura sleeps on the left side next to the window. I wonder if she faces the sun when it comes up each morning the same way I do; her back pressed against Jodie’s breasts….. her body cradled in Jodie’s embrace.
We could share my bed in the same way; cuddling innocently in the clammy night; my arm resting in the gentle curve between her ribcage and the swell of her hip. My fingernails inches from her pubic bone.
Inside Laura’s back-pack I find a crumpled plastic bag. It is musty with the whiff of dirty clothing; damp t-shirts, twisted brassieres and sweaty hiking socks. A green top printed with ‘Great Barrier Reef’. A denim waistcoat and a pair of faded, blue under-pants with a pattern of yellow stars.
The bathroom window is too stiff to open properly. It is jungle-hot with stale steam and the residues of their ablutions. I inhale like a scuba-diver starved of air.
Before leaving I draw a heart in the faint condensation on the mirror.
- - - - -
We have a black and white television in the staff room next to the kitchen. Sometimes I watch. But tonight it is too hot to even think about sitting here.
I close our bedroom door and stand beneath the open sky-light. I focus on Marie’s bed wedged under the ceiling comb. The top half of her duvet is folded back. I grab her t-shirt and press it against my face for perhaps…. thirty or forty minutes. Her body always smells of shortbread.
I feel myself begin to suffocate. My tears have dried by the time I slide between my sheets.
I hold the limp blue fabric of Laura’s pants to my face and inhale every floating atom trapped within its weave, desperate for breath. I breathe in for so long that my blood boils and my face flushes red with the exertion. A secret constellation of scents - her sweat, her perineal aromas and traces of micturation.
My tongue touches the silken material like a finger approaching blue flame.
Our bed is a swamp of perspiration. The only sounds are the words we are whispering; names repeated like Hail Marys. Two bodies overdosing on the same drug. My own breath an ache inside my throat.
- - - - -
The alarm rattles like an angry child but the sun streaming through the sky-light has woken me hours earlier.
I sit upright and watch the soft shapes of Marie humped under her duvet. Her face is turned to the plastered wall. The swelling of her buttocks is always there like a heart shape upside down. The air inside our room is hot and stale and smells of unwashed laundry.
I clamber off my bed and stand naked in the hazy sunlight for a few minutes, swimming in its heat and texture. I tilt the sky-light wider then scratch the dark curls on my belly. I want to tear all the pale skin and flabby flesh off these bones until I emerge as perfect as Laura.
I slide one foot then the other into her panties and put on my uniform before Marie stirs.
Eddie the night porter is waiting to unlock. He says all has been quiet. I cannot understand. My heart is thumping so hard. I prepare the self-service counter. Then I wait.
I will stand by Laura in her hour of need.
Suddenly people start to come in. I smile and search their faces. Here comes Jodie as eager as ever. The red-haired b1tch is somehow still alive. She is helping herself to a glass of juice now. I am blind with fury.
I stagger into the kitchen, grab a toast rack and take eight fresh rounds from under the multi-grille. I smell my unwashed fingers – they are contaminated with the nocturnal scents of my body. I smear my left hand across each square of hot, wholemeal bread; smudging my tacky fingerprints everywhere until my taste permeates the fibres of every single slice.
- - - - -
The linen trolley is always squeaking as I push it along the corridor. I feel trapped in this narrow tunnel with the floor creaking under my feet like a sinking ship. The dark corners hide every way out for me. Locked door after locked door. A loose piece of hair keeps flipping over my right ear into my eyes. I swipe it away with my free hand.
Lena is covering Reception today. She stopped me at the bottom of the stairs. The two girls are cycling all the way from this hotel to the coast….. as if I care. I have no interest in watching their departure.
Clouds of poison shroud the furniture in their empty room. Musk and hairspray and sun blockage.
I am all fingers. On Jodie’s side of the bed dust spills down like flaking skin from the tassels of the lampshade. I reach under the bedside table, unplug the lamp from the wall and take out my little screwdriver. In less than one minute I have attached the wires back into their proper places.
I walk round to the other side of the bed to remove the top sheet and suddenly I am forced to surrender.
I sculpture my hands across the empty shape of Laura’s body, my secret accomplice, still imprinted on the sheet. I kneel on the floor and rest my face against her pillow.
The bathroom door is wide open. From here we could have watched Jodie as she examined herself in the speckled mirror. Her sagging breasts are much smaller than mine. She could almost be a boy. She scratched lazily under an armpit then the fingers of her right hand guided the razor blade along her green veins. Braids of clotting blood ran down her wrists then dripped onto the floor. The shape in the mirror becomes Emilija’s lifeless body. The way I held her close to me; her blood soaking my shift and her bones so cold and perfect beneath her skin.
I blink away my beautiful dream and snuffle my face into the pillow to taste Laura’s mouth and savour the dregs of her saliva. I spread my arms out and smother my face into the rumpled bed-sheet where she lay. The pungent scent of dirty bedding and talcum powder and skin residue and bodily leakages. I push my head deeper into the depths of the cave of the bed in search of richer scents; my belly pressed hard against the mattress edge as I inhale the ripe, tainted butterscotch of her feet and the dank, crimson poison of her womanhood.
- - - - -
The bedroom door clicks shut behind me. It is after ten-thirty and I still have my chores to finish before the early lunches start.
New tourists are already trickling in like guests late for a wedding. Mrs McLeod gives me one of her dirty looks.
I begin to dust the staircase. Four American girls have put their bags into rooms 12 and 14. I can hear them now as I polish the banister. They talk so much….. complaining about every single thing.
Kelly, the tall girl, stands outside room 14 waiting for the others. I do not exist for her yet. She reminds me of a squaw; a Cherokee bride. She is wearing a charm bracelet, and on her hand she has a blue tattoo of a howling wolf. My mother used to tell me I was a wolf-child. Perhaps I am Kelly’s true sister.
Her complexion is flawless and lightly bronzed like burnished gold. Her long, dark hair is arranged into braids.
I could wear my hair the same way as easy as that. I really could.
- o – 0 – o -
H