Hotel de Strange, Pt 1

[WP] This hotel is strange, to say the least. Few ever check in or out, and those guests you see stay for long periods of time. There is no pool, but when asked you are supposed to direct people to the third floor. You are not to make eye contact with the cleaning staff. The pay is nice.

*****

I am only working here because life grew a little too dull, a little too miserable. Before diving back into society and reinventing myself as an architect, an engineer, or perhaps even a florist, I am taking a well-deserved break.

I have been here for ten years.

The Grand Nova is located close to a river because it is situated in a European city and all hotels in all European cities are situated close to rivers. Sometimes I stare at the river and I am reminded of Heraclitus, the philosopher. A man can never step into the same river twice for it is not the same river and he is not the same man. I pray to God that he was right because one day I want to leave The Grand Nova and I want to leave it as a different man than the one I am today.

Jürgen Feldt. 33. Former gifted child with the wonders of the world within reach. Currently a receptionist. This is only an intermediate stage.

"Are there any more towels?" says Jessica.

"In general?"

She frowns. "It was not a rhetorical question. I'm out of towels. I want more towels."

She has been here even longer than I have and this is the first time she has asked me about towels. It is with some irritation that I have to admit that she has aged gracefully—that means, of course, that she has aged imperceptibly. If you can afford to stay at a hotel for a decade, you can afford plastic surgery. Rich people get thousands of micro-adjustments. I read in a tabloid magazine that this was how Leonardo Di Caprio remained youthful and that all major plastic surgeries are, like all major revolutions, acts of senseless violence masquerading as the solution to emotional woes. Now that I think about it, it was a peculiar message for a tabloid magazine.

"Hello? Earth to Jürgen. Anybody home?"

Jessica stands dressed top-to-toe in hot pink, in sharp contrast with the 50 Shades of Gray decor of the lobby. By that I mean both that gray is the predominant color and that only bored housewives of a certain age could possibly find it appealing. "Sorry," I say. "I will get you some towels. How many would you like?"

Her hot-pink lips curl downwards. "One. I would like one towel. Why would you assume I wanted more than one?"

I want to tell her that she had been using the plural, 'towels', several times. But you never argue with guests. "Forgive me. I will bring one towel to your room."

She walks off in a triumph of heels.

Every day I listen to podcasts. I am learning, and I am sure their lessons will be useful in my forthcoming life as an architect, engineer, or florist. It is never too late to reinvent yourself. In a podcast episode on the life of esteemed biologist Conrad Waddington, I learned that cells are analogous to people. They start off being 'pluripotent' and this means that they are filled with potential. Then they follow a trajectory along what Waddington called the epigenetic landscape, where they bounce around like coins in an arcade pusher game, and for every fork in the road, they encounter their potential gets depleted. Their opportunities dwindle and eventually, they become actualized—they end up as a specific type of cell with a specific function. Just like people. We bounce around and we end up a job. But Waddington emphasized that cells could backtrack, that they could climb back on the epigenetic landscape and they could reinvent themselves. Just like people. Just like me.

Gene comes running up to me, wheezing. "Have you read the paper?" he asks.

"Which one?"

He shakes his head. "Any of them! Well, no. But the story should be in all of them! An alien aircraft has crashed. In France. A farmer discovered it while plowing his field, and his horse changed color. Can you believe it?"

I can't believe it. "Oh my."

"Yes. It should be in all of them. The reason why they're hiding the information, I suppose they don't want to alarm people. But they have the right to know! Aliens! Visitors from a different planet. I wonder what they might want."

"They probably want to go home."

Gene stops and he stares at me for the longest time. "What I meant was, what do they want with us?"

"Maybe they don't want anything. Maybe they just crashed."

He howls with laughter and I take a step back because the laughter of a single man in an otherwise quiet room is like the cry of a wolf in the night in the woods.

"Crashed!" he repeats. "That's a good one, Hermann. That's a good one."

"Jürgen," I grumble. From what I have gathered, he has been staying here for even longer than Jessica. You'd think he'd have bothered to learn my name.

"I think they are curious about us," he says. "I think they want to understand us."

"They will be disappointed," I say.

Gene nods. "Too bad they crashed in France."

He leaves me a tip, as per his ritual. He comes up to me, he talks nonsense, and he leaves me a tip. It is strange. Does he know that he is acting crazy? If so, wouldn't this level of awareness inoculate him from bizarre conspiracies? He clearly knows that he's not doing me a favor, and also I'm the one doing him one—that is why, I suppose, he always leaves a tip. Still, it's strange.

Again I stare out at the river Schmerz and I think about Heraclitus whose works have only been discovered in fragments and I think about all those scholars all throughout history who have built their careers on them. Fragments. Glimmers of wisdom, illuminating minds for thousands of years. I could never produce fragments like that. I can make coffee strong enough that you can feel your brain waking up with only a mouthful, and I suppose that is the closest I will ever come to imitating Heraclitus. I will not be a scholar or a philosopher. I will be an architect. Or an engineer. Or a florist.

A man walks into the lobby, a stranger, and for a brief second, I am convinced he has stepped fresh out of the river. No, it's just the rain. He's not even that wet.

I can feel the engine of angst revving deep inside me. A new guest. We never get new guests. We get old guests, and eventually, they disappear. They don't even check out. One day the housekeeper just informs you that Miss Fletcher is gone and that Mr. Gaust-Fromm cannot be found. I have a sneaking suspicion, however, that they are all still here. On the third floor.

"Good evening! How can I help you?"

My jaw feels awkward. It isn't used to smiling, the necessary muscles have all grown fat and lazy.

The stranger has a red beard, but he's wearing an expensive suit. He's not a pirate, then. Or perhaps he's a rich one. He gave up the life of plundering the seven seas and now he's a hedge fund manager.

"Mr. Feldt! I am delighted to see you."

A stranger who knows your name—that's a worse terror than that of a lone man laughing. "Yes," I say because I don't know what to say.

"How's business? I like to check in every now and then."

"Would you ... Would you like me to check you in?"

He arches his bushy red brows. "What? No. Did you mistake me for a guest?"

"You're not a guest?"

The man bursts out in laughter—a double dose of terror.

"I am Cornelius Hafst. I am the owner."

The owner. That makes no sense to me. I know that hotels have owners, but I have somehow convinced myself that this needn't be true of The Grand Nova. It simply exists, next to the river Schmerz, and it always has. "The owner," I repeat, slowly.

He looks around with excitement and wonder. "My dear! Look at what they have done to this place! It looks brand new!"

It looks the same as it did when I started working here. Perhaps he's got the wrong address. "The Grand Nova has always looked like this, I think." I am hoping that he will hear the name and he'll smack his forehead with the realization that he's not in the Leonardo Royal or the Red Pint or any of the other bland, gray hotels nearby.

He laughs. "You are so young and so naive. It looked nothing like this on its opening day."

It is the first time in a long while anyone has called me young. I decide that I like this man. "Is that so?"

A cleaning lady exits the elevator and from the look on her face when she sees the man, I realize that he is, in fact, the owner. She drops to her knees. I think that's a bit much. She sobs.

"Veronica!" Cornelius cries. "I am delighted to see you."

He said the same thing to me. The sparkle in her eyes when he says that makes me embarrassed for her.

"Mr. Hafst, are you here for your ..."

He holds up a flat palm. "Not in front of the boy," he says.

I'm not a boy. I'm a man. But it's not like I can say that out loud. But I can say 'boy' with an amused inflection. "Boy?" I say, with an amused inflection.

At this, he chuckles. "Ah, to be innocent," he says and he enters the elevator along with the cleaning lady. They go up.

Now that he is gone, it occurs to me that he is a charismatic person. And it seems he knows our cleaning lady well. I don't even know her name. And I have worked here for ten years.

I decide to tag along. Taking the stairs, of course. Halfway up the carpeted set of steps, a number flashes in my mind like a scream: 3. They were headed for the third floor.

At first, I question myself. No, they can't have gone there. That floor is sealed off. You can't go there. But perhaps you can, if you're the owner. Oh. It is probably designed to be some sort of private residence and with no one living there, someone must have decided it didn't make financial sense to maintain it. But it was strange.

"Finally! Hey, where's my towel?"

Oh no. I forgot all about Jessica. "I'm on it."

She trips my leg and I crash onto the floor. My nose! It's bleeding! I check. No, it's not bleeding.

*****

TO BE CONTINUED