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I calculate every minute in rent and council tax. I am skilled at hearing without ever listening, respond but do not engage. I have talent and now I have bought a hands-free phone I can pant as I iron tea towels and sheets, moan during a silent video of Pretty Woman.
I promise myself that when my numbers come up or when my great aunt in that big house in Cromer has that final stroke, I will put the phone down, yank out the plug and throw it out of the window. No more lies about underwear, as I pick melted chocolate from my jeans or read Madame Bovary.
I am adept at lip reading but sub-titled DVDs are more convenient. La Haine, Wings of Desire are less intrusive as a man on a bad mobile line suggests I pleasure myself with a wine bottle. Regulars ask for me by a name at the call centre, I chose Anna, a woman who died in a Tolstoy story.
They like her, appreciate all Anna’s art and craft. They say thank you, some ask how she’s keeping after business is done. Now and then I hang up on those who abuse her, bruise without touch. As for the rest, she can sell a credit card whore formed from dirt words, a polished rib of my voice.
Alone in a small commercial hotel you summon other thoughts, tell yourself the shower curtain is the colour of a silk scarf you bought in Dublin last November, drink lukewarm herbal tea from a mug you have carried with you since Kiev, remember rice on a patterned plate in Cambridge, how the weight of technical dictionaries strained your back on the train home from Frankfurt airport. The tiny buff tag on the tea bag catches you out.
Numbering evidence from Bosnia. Sixteen days of written statements made to a commission in The Hague. Four days of photographs. Forensic. Focused. No faces. A metre stick laid beside a trench gave a sense of scale.
Buff cardboard tags on body parts. Tissue samples. Skulls. Bones. Catalogued. Identity unknown. Shown neat rowed to the lens. Rewind.
J five stroke seven four nine. M eight oblique three two one. Translate the numbers. Never stumble over one. Pour from one jug of language to another. Never lose a single drop of blood. Never stop to open flood gates to unprofessional emotion. Justice requires precision.
Life is in the detail. Death is in the detail.
Fast forward. Fast fast forward. Summered forest floor green flushed with nettles. Echolalia of meaning in your head, different taste in your mouth.
They brought six soldiers here. They dragged six boys here. They executed them here. They shot them here. Gesture left to speak. They buried them here. They hid them here. Gesture left to speak. Pause. Rewind. Play Kosovo.
There are stains on the bottom sheet. I never think now about their source, just the residue of people I never meet.
I fret over the Do Not disturb signs, it will all need doing eventually, beds, bins, towels, everything’s mine
to arrange properly, tidy their mess line up the sachets of shower gel, clean the toilet, dust the trouser press.
They leave me clues from what remains, what they do, what books they read, whether they chew gum, those grains
of fine sand caught between their toes, which I can identify from near the pier or sand dunes by their texture. I know
more than they think. The wet patch of tears on the pillow, the stale smell of sex, the blonde hairs that match
those left by the woman in Room Ten in her hairbrush, beside the photograph of a tall man and two smiling children.
When he checks out he may leave a tip, a fiver on the bedside table, I’ll pocket it, check the mirror for the seal on my lips.
This is a season of small insanities. The hotel heaves with constant activity. Guests arrive and check out without notice, just a note propped on the bedside table. One guest has changed from a double to a single and then back to a double in less time than it takes me to polish the lobby, dust out my pigeon holes. It rains continually and some guests tap the barometer in hope of change. I wipe their fingerprints from the glass. Late at night I answer their calls for ice.
I check who wants waking with morning tea, which newspaper they need to start the day. I walk the corridors, eavesdrop at doors for the sounds of laughter, sighs and weeping, conversations, the click of a suitcase being closed for another moonlight flit. In my back room I tune in the radio to the weather and a late-night quiz show. There are no questions that I can answer. The front desk requires a new black biro. Better during these strange times to write in light pencil in the register.
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