the man in 2804

On a late Spring business trip, I became hotel-bound, lolling in a fully loaded suite while a blizzard raged outside. At first, I laughed at the beauty of a system that delivered great plops of snow while a mere thousand miles away, my home glowed beneath the year’s first heat wave. By day three, I was sobbing into the telephone, pinning my despondence on the weather that ruined my high-heels.

I checked in, then floundered in the excess space, absorbed by the excruciating minutiae of an orderly room: fat fresh roll of bathroom tissue with end folded to a point, drinking glasses crowned with paper caps, brochures pushing local mustn’t-miss attractions, blankets pulled taught and phone cord coiled snugly. Once the shine wore off the all-access cable and playing bartender with pricey tipples of mini-bar gin, I skulked around the lobby like a hard-boiled detective, peaking around a folded newspaper and over the rim of my cocktail glass, projecting racy lives onto plain people with homely suitcases.

Languishing in my room, I imagined fanciful scenes of strangers converging and filled my evenings by inventing the overhead guest, fleshing him out from sounds that leaked through the night. At bedtime, I was lulled by the elevator shushing between floors and the man upstairs peeing, no flush. I’d say he peed more than average but about him I knew nothing more. I heard no footfalls, no visitors knocking or doors opening and closing – perhaps all that peeing occurred with the bathroom door ajar, with reckless disregard for privacy and no inkling that I was building him from the bladder up.

It was nearly June; yet, a rind of snow lingered in shady crannies for days after the storm. My trip wore on, the snow was scoured away by sloppy rain and my relationship with the hotel drifted into a fixation upon the man in 2804. I cast him aping my activities, narrating a routine for him as I went about my own. Perhaps he watches television and eats Chinese take-away straight from paper cartons. Maybe he saves the chopsticks for when the pizzeria forgets to include cutlery with the steaming cardboard box and single tin of Italian soda. After dinner, he might stretch his spine and legs, joints unfurling. I see us stacked one storey apart, bending to touch our feet, hauling in deep breaths, shushing stale air from dank bellies, lowering our chests to the floor. I can wrangle my body into bow pose; he tips side-to-side and just can’t get a grip on his left ankle. His neck strains and his cheeks get pinker. “Fucking yoga!” breaks into his thoughts of water, wind, silence and purity.

Or perhaps he’s a hotel deadbeat, wallowing in the seclusion of the “Do Not Disturb” sign, ordering and then only picking at room service treats, scattering towels throughout the freshly straightened suite, chugging child-sized servings of rye and screw-top wine out of the mini-bar then, come morning, ignoring the wake-up call he requested the night before.

My fantasy’s trajectory veered to the puerile, and our unconsummated affair remained chaste and surreal. Before I checked out, I said good-bye to the sound of my neighbour at the toilet – my neighbour whom I gave only luggage, a yoga routine and plentiful pee. Stationed at the window, I heard rain pelting the glass and pooling on the concrete sill, and piss pelting the water in the toilet upstairs. I heard myself breathing and the radio turned down low. No wind, no yard dogs, no kids or cars. Only water: falling from the clouds outside, and falling from a penis upstairs.

-Amanda Miller of Toronto, ON
http://cakesandneckties.blogspot.com/