The Woman in the Fifth

Two

THERE WAS A light shining in my eyes again. But it wasn’t a piercing beam like the last time. No, this was morning light; a stark, single shaft landing on my face and bringing me back to …

Where am I exactly?

It took a moment or two for the room to come into definition. Four walls. A ceiling. Well, that was a start. The walls were papered blue. A plastic lamp was suspended from the ceiling. It was colored blue. I glanced downward. The carpet on the floor was blue. I forced myself to sit up. I was in a double bed. The sheets — soaked with my sweat — were blue. The candlewick bedspread — flecked with two cigarette burns — was blue. The headboard of the bed was upholstered in a matching baby blue. This is one of those LSD flashbacks, right? A payback for my one and only experiment with hallucinogenics in 1982 …

There was a table next to the bed. It was not blue. (All right, I’m not totally flipping here.) On it was a bottle of water and assorted packets of pills. Nearby was a small desk. A laptop was on top of it. My laptop. There was a narrow metal chair by the desk. It had a blue seat. (Oh no, it’s starting again.) My blue jeans and blue sweater were draped across it. There was a small wardrobe — laminated in the same fake wood as the bedside table and the desk. It was open — and suspended from its hangers were the few pairs of trousers and shirts and the one jacket I’d shoved into a suitcase two days ago when …

Was it two days ago? Or, more to the point, what day was it now? And how had I been unpacked into this blue room? And if there’s one color I hate, it’s azure. And …

There was a knock on the door. Without waiting for a reply from me, a man walked in, carrying a tray. His face was familiar.

‘Bonjour,‘ he said crisply. ‘Voici le petit dejeuner.’

‘Thanks,’ I mumbled back in French.

‘They told me you have been sick.’

‘Have I?’

He put the tray down on the bed. His face registered with me. He was the desk clerk who sent me packing when I arrived at that hotel …

No, this hotel. The Select. Where you told the cabbie to bring you last night after you …

It was all starting to make sense.

‘That is what Adnan said in his note.’

‘Who is Adnan?’ I asked.

‘The night clerk.’

‘I don’t remember meeting him.’

‘He obviously met you.’

‘How sick was I?’

‘Sick enough to not remember how sick you were. But that is just an assumption, as I wasn’t here. The doctor who treated you is returning this afternoon at five. All will be revealed then. But that depends on whether you will still be here this afternoon. I put through payment for tomorrow, monsieur, thinking that, in your “condition”, you would want to keep the room. But your credit card was not accepted. Insufficient funds.’

This didn’t surprise me. My Visa card was all but maxed out and I’d checked in, knowing that I had just enough credit remaining to squeeze out, at most, two nights here, and that there were no funds to clear the long-overdue bill. But the news still spooked me. Because it brought me back to the depressing realpolitik of my situation: everything has gone awry, and I now find myself shipwrecked in a shitty hotel far away from home …

But how can you talk about ‘home’ when it no longer exists, when, like everything else, it has been taken away from you?

‘Insufficient funds?’ I said, trying to sound bemused. ‘How can that be?’

‘How can that be? ‘ he asked coolly. ‘It just is.’

‘I don’t know what to say.’

He shrugged. ‘There is nothing to say, except: Do you have another credit card?’

I shook my head.

‘Then how do you propose paying for the room?’

‘Traveler’s checks.’

‘That will be acceptable — provided they are valid ones. Are they American Express?’

I nodded.

‘Fine. I will call American Express. If they say that the checks are valid, you may stay. If not …’

‘Maybe it would be better if I left now,’ I said, knowing that my budget couldn’t really afford multiple nights in this hotel.

‘That is your decision. Checkout time is eleven. You have just over two hours to vacate the room.’

As he turned to go, I leaned forward, trying to reach for a croissant on the breakfast tray. Immediately, I fell back against the headboard, exhausted. I touched my brow. The fever was still there. So too was the pervasive sense of enervation. Getting out of this bed would be a major military maneuver. I could do nothing but sit here and accept the fact that I could do nothing but sit here.

‘Monsieur …’ I said.

The desk clerk turned around.

‘Yes?’

‘The traveler’s checks should be in my shoulder bag.’

A small smile formed on his lips. He walked over and retrieved the bag and handed it to me. He reminded me that the room cost sixty euros a night. I opened the bag and found my wad of traveler’s checks. I pulled out two checks: a fifty-dollar and a twenty-dollar. I signed them both.

‘I need another twenty,’ he said. ‘The cost in dollars is ninety.’

‘But that’s way above the regular exchange rate,’ I said.

Another dismissive shrug. ‘It is the rate we post behind the desk downstairs. If you would like to come downstairs and see …’

I can hardly sit up, let alone go downstairs.

I pulled out another twenty-dollar traveler’s check. I signed it. I tossed it on the bed.

‘There you go.’

‘Tres bien, monsieur,’ he said, picking up it. ‘I will get all the details I need from your passport. We have it downstairs.’

But I don’t remember handing it over to you. I don’t remember anything.

‘And I will call you once American Express has confirmed that the traveler’s checks are legitimate.’

‘They are legitimate.’

Another of his smarmy smiles.

‘On verra.’ We’ll see.

He left. I slumped back against the pillows, feeling drained. I stared up blankly at the ceiling — hypnotized by its blue void, willing myself into it. I needed to pee. I tried to right myself and place my feet on the floor. No energy, no will. There was a vase on the bedside table. It contained a plastic floral arrangement: blue gardenias. I picked up the vase, pulled out the flowers, tossed them on the floor, pulled down my boxer shorts, placed my penis inside the vase, and let go. The relief was enormous. So too was the thought: This is all so seedy.

The phone rang. It was the desk clerk.

‘The checks have been approved. You can stay.’

How kind of you.

‘I have had a call from Adnan. He wanted to see how you were.’

Why would he care?

‘He also wanted you to know that you need to take a pill from each of the boxes on the bedside table. Doctor’s orders.’

‘What are the pills?’

‘I am not the doctor who prescribed them, monsieur.’

I picked up the assorted boxes and vials, trying to make out the names of the drugs. I recognized none of them. But I still did as ordered: I took a pill from each of the six boxes and downed them with a long slug of water.

Within moments, I was gone again — vanished into that vast dreamless void from which there are no recollections: no sense of time past or present, let alone a day after today. A small foretaste of the death that will one day seize me — and deny me all future wake-up calls.

Bringggggggg …

The phone. I was back in the blue room, staring at the vase full of urine. The bedside clock read 17.12. There was street-lamp light creeping in behind the drapes. The day had gone. The phone kept ringing. I answered it.

‘The doctor is here,’ Mr Desk Clerk said.

The doctor had bad dandruff and chewed-up nails. He wore a suit that needed pressing. He was around fifty, with thinning hair, a sad moustache and the sort of sunken eyes which, to a fellow insomniac like me, were a telltale giveaway of the malaise within. He pulled up a chair by the bed and asked me if I spoke French. I nodded. He motioned for me to remove my T-shirt. As I did so, I caught a whiff of myself. Sleeping in sweat for twenty-four hours had left me ripe.

The doctor didn’t seem to react to my body odor — perhaps because his attention was focused on the vase by the bed.

‘There was no need to provide a urine sample,’ he said, taking my pulse. Then he checked my heartbeat, stuck a thermometer under my tongue, wrapped a blood pressure cuff around my left bicep, peered down my throat and shined a penlight into the whites of my eyes. Finally he spoke.

‘You have come down with a ruthless form of the flu. The sort of flu that often kills the elderly — and that is often indicative of larger problems.’

‘Such as?’

‘May I ask, have you been going through a difficult personal passage of late?’

I paused.

‘Yes,’ I finally said.

‘Are you married?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘By which you mean … ?’

‘I am legally still married …’

‘But you left your wife?’

‘No — it was the other way around.’

‘And did she leave you recently?’

‘Yes — she threw me out a few weeks ago.’

‘So you were reluctant to leave?’

‘Very reluctant.’

‘Was there another man?’

I nodded.

‘And your profession is … ?’

‘I taught at a college.’

‘You taught?’ he said, picking up on the use of the past tense.

‘I lost my job.’

‘Also recently?’

‘Yes.’

‘Children?’

‘A daughter, aged fifteen. She lives with her mother.’

‘Are you in contact with her?’

‘I wish …’

‘She won’t talk with you?’

I hesitated. Then: ‘She told me she never wanted to speak with me again — but I do sense that her mother has convinced her to say this.’

He put his fingertips together, taking this in. Then:

‘Do you smoke?’

‘Not for five years.’

‘Do you drink heavily?’

‘I have been … recently.’

‘Drugs?’

‘I take sleeping pills. Non-prescription ones. But they haven’t been working for the past few weeks. So …’

‘Chronic insomnia?’

‘Yes.’

He favored me with a small nod — a hint that he too knew the hell of unremitting sleeplessness. Then: ‘It is evident what has happened to you: a general breakdown. The body can only take so much … tristesse. Eventually, it reacts against such traumatisme by shutting down or giving in to an intense viral attack. The flu you are suffering is more severe than normal because you are in such a troubled state.’

‘What’s the cure?’

‘I can only treat the physiological disorders. And flu is one of those viruses that largely dictates its own narrative. I have prescribed several comprimes to deal with your aches, your fever, your dehydration, your nausea, your lack of sleep. But the virus will not leave your system until it is — shall we say — bored with you and wants to move on.’

‘How long could that take?’

‘Four, five days … at minimum.’

I shut my eyes. I couldn’t afford four or five more days at this hotel.

‘Even once it has gone, you will remain desperately weak for another few days. I would say you will be confined here for at least a week.’

He stood up.

‘I will return in seventy-two hours to see what improvement you have made and if you have commenced a recovery.’

Do we ever really recover from the worst that life can throw us?’

‘One last thing. A personal question, if I may be permitted. What brought you to Paris, alone, just after Christmas?’

‘I ran away.’

He thought about this for a moment, then said, ‘It often takes courage to run away.’

‘No, you’re wrong there,’ I said. ‘It takes no courage at all.’