Lost in Hotels (29 page)

Two steps later, I stand inside the lair of the man I have been fixated on since our first meeting. I expected a dark boudoir of masculinity, and instead, a creamy white space surprises with its stylishness and purity.

“It’s so lovely, David, and totally not what I was expecting,” I say.

Two long powder-gray sofas are staggered on opposite walls with a Hermés throw laid over the arm, and an edgy photograph of a blonde woman smoking a cigarette on a bus stop sits on a white wall with plaster wainscoting and a crown of carved moldings. A marble fireplace looks inoperable, either out of lifestyle or in actuality, with its perfectly clean innards and wicker basket with birch branches in front of it. Two elaborately tall columns stride either side of a wall that leads to the dining room; its white lacquer table looks unused with its six cubist chairs that sit in a corner overlooking a storybook street scene. Two mirrored doors push open to the kitchen with its bare countertops and single coffeemaker that looks as if it had been left on from earlier in the day.

David doesn’t do a tour or even mention much of anything about the apartment that feels like just another hotel room, albeit a bit larger with its decor that anyone would feel comfortable to live in and lack of personal touches that makes it feel like absolutely no one lives here.

“Do you mind if I use the bathroom, quickly?” I ask.

“No, not at all,” he says, still consumed with his mail. “Just go through the living room, and you’ll see it in the hall on the way to the bedroom.”

Despite the continued lull in our conversations, the inside of his home captivates me. I make my way back through the living room with its few photographs of David and friends on vacation and a family photo at a formal wedding somewhere long ago. On a higher shelf, I notice another of him and a woman, which I cannot properly see on my turn down the short hall. I glimpse into his bedroom and see a perfectly made bed with a herringbone quilt and two oblong pillows in the same pattern.

Hoping the bathroom would be the lone one in the apartment stocked full of his personal items, I’m disappointed to find a simple sink protruding artistically from the wall with a Damien Hirst photo of a pill in place of a mirror and a toilet next to it. There’s an arrangement of perfumes and hand soaps from Asprey that I test one by one, but none of which are the woodsy mandarin scent of him. His towel racks are lined in three pressed linen hand cloths, not towels like virtually every other person I know has in their bathroom.

“Catherine, come in here,” David says as I exit the bathroom and see he’s removed his suit and stands in his dress shirt and boxers in a corner of his bedroom. The fabric walls are the subtlest of gray colors, and I notice a television is on.

David flops on the bed. “Come sit with me.”

I sit on the edge of the bed as he pulls the covers over him, now lying there in just his white boxers.

“This is my favorite place in the world, just lying right here in this bed and flicking on the TV set and letting my mind simply go blank.”

My dress doesn’t compress well when lying down, and I try to pull it under me as not to give the illusion of a fat ballerina.

“What do you watch?” I ask.

“It really doesn’t matter. Sometimes, one of those singing quiz shows and other times whatever movie happens to be on.”

“I didn’t take you as the movie type,” I say.

“I really don’t watch it. I just let it wash over me and take away all that I was thinking about in the day.”

My hand reaches over and caresses his warm body under the sheets; his smooth chest, with its spare few hairs and down his torso, he feels like a Greek athlete cut from marble and leaves me just a little self-conscious about my own body, even if it gets better and thinner with each day. My hand dips down to feel his dick, soft and lying to the side with its fleshy tip as a door buzz interrupts us.

“So I think that’s your car. I was hoping we could cuddle a bit, but I know you have to work tomorrow,” David says, somewhat to my dismay that we won’t be having sex tonight after all. Perhaps he’s upset that I chose not to stay with him, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t stay most of the night. I jump to my feet as David rises from the bed lingering with the covers in lieu of seeing me to the door.

“So, text me tomorrow when you are done with your interview,” he says with a kiss on the mouth without a hint of second thoughts on his part.

“Yes, I will,” I say, quietly making my way out the bedroom door. I can see the car through the window below, its lights beaming in the night sky.

“I’ll send a car for you, and we will leave from here.”

“Okay, see you tomorrow.”

I retrace my steps through the living room and into the hallways, shutting the heavy wood door behind me. I take the staircase because it’s prettier, rounding my way back through the lobby and outside where a shiny black Mercedes, like the one I saw on the walk, waits with a driver waving from the front seat. Even with my disappointment from what the night was to be, I find solace in plopping into the rear of the sedan with its new fragrant leather and dark windows. The London night flashes in the window like a movie of my own life: the marquees near Piccadilly, the store windows on Oxford Circus, toward Soho to Shaftsbury Avenue, and on to Convent Garden that feels so very far from him this night.

The following day, I busy myself with work through the morning and until the late checkout of two o’clock before texting David that I’m finished with my interview. I lunch quickly at a small bistro called da Polpo near the hotel that makes the best quinoa salad I’ve ever had, with crew of dining actors on break from their theater practices. It’s overcast and intermittently rainy at times; a struggle for my mostly summer wardrobe that doesn’t include a proper trench this season.

“Meet me in 30 at Paddington. Got delayed obvi, let’s train it, more fun.” Alas, at 4:00 p.m., a text finally arrives from David as I sit stranded in the hotel lobby with my plot of luggage. There’s no car sent or excuse as to the delay, just a beckon to Paddington Station with which I gladly comply. The hotel clerk takes longer than usual to summon a cab, but it finally arrives. The driver hesitates to get out of the taxi as the bellman struggles with my hard-sided luggage into the rear of the cab. The rain is thicker than it was earlier; falling as if an angry man is sitting above in the heavens with endless buckets thrown on our windshield, and making me wonder how I will ever make it inside the train station without being drenched.

There, in the doorway of Paddington Station in a smart slicker and a cute hat, is the man I adore. The rain is falling on him as he rushes to grab my bag that he kiddingly struggles to lift before rushing it inside and me along with him. He could have easily remained inside, which I expected, but his presence on the street side, waiting for me in the rain, washes away all disappointment from the day before.

“I can’t believe I made you come here in the rain, on your own, and in the worst of traffic!” he yells above the train announcements that lend a romantic soundtrack. He holds me tightly around the shoulder before rearranging our bags and making our way through the terminal that glows anew when on the arm of someone like David. We make our way to our rail track where the yellow and green locomotive purrs and uniformed agents whistle in the background as other trains ready for Chichester and Redding and Manchester.

“So, where is it we are going, exactly?” I ask.

“Well, technically the wedding is in Somerset, but we are going to Bath. That’s closer to the hotel where we’re staying,” he says as we board the front of the train and make our way through the glass door and into a dark interior space with tables and booth-style seats; we take the third vacant one. David heaves our luggage onto the shelves above our seats, his bare stomach and small patch of hair below his naval exposed under his plaid shirt.

“You’re not exactly a light packer, are you my love?” he says as he comes to a seat across from me. “That’s good to know.”

“It’s actually the bag that’s the heavy part; it really doesn’t fit a lot.”

“I see. And you advise people how to travel?” he asks with a sarcastic grin.

“Yes. I advise people how to travel fashionably and that bag is a hit,” I reply as his grin widens.

We are seated in the first-class cabin. On the train, that simply means assigned seating, and I believe a free beverage of choice at the snack bar in the forward carriage. I can already smell its sizzling grill and too-fragrant meat pies. The train staggers to a forward motion before hitting a steady speed, and the rail station begins to retell the story of my previous day’s journey to London in reverse. David’s eyes home in on the weekend edition of the
Evening Standard
, his eyes speeding horizontally behind chunky black reading glasses that sit precariously low on his Roman nose.

The horizon turns from urban to rural in a matter of three pages of the
International Herald Tribune
with its condensed take on major news stories of the day and American trends that feel a little stale, likely by writers with stories that weren’t immediately picked up by top-tier newspapers. The rolling grasslands of almost fluorescent foliage are suddenly interrupted by a horse-shaped figure carved out of the hillside.

“David, what is that on the hillside there?” I ask interrupting him from his paper folded over in fourths to an article that has enveloped him since boarding.

“You mean that … there?” he says, peering up from above his glasses. “That’s one of the white horses. You’ll see a lot of them along the way. They’re really old. I think before Jesus Christ.”

“What do they mean? Are they like crop circles?”

“Not sure, really. They’re made of rock, I think. They usually represent some sort of historic figure or notorious battle, if I remember correctly,” he says and returns to reading his paper.

I put down my own newspaper and pull out my iPad to do a quick research of hill figures and discover there are actually a variety of newer figures made for various advertising and cultural celebrations. But this particular figure is the Uffington White Horse that’s almost five-hundred-feet long and made of hand-dug trenches filled with crushed white chalk dating back to three thousand BC. While questionable that the figure is even a horse, the carving was meant to symbolize the dominance of the nearby castle under the same jurisdiction.

I quickly check my e-mail to discover a picture that Matt sent me of Billy playing at daycare, which auto-expands on my screen. I attempt to conceal the reflection created on the window and glass behind me. David looks up briefly, only to look down again at his newspaper that now resembles something that should be tossed in the trash. I fantasize about showing him the picture, falling into a conversation that absolutely must happen, and yet, I can never push myself to the point of uttering the words.

“So tell me about the wedding we are going to … what’s her name again?” I ask.

“Her name is Alexandra, we were very good friends in university. She’s marrying Ben, who I also knew, but not as well, at the time.”

“Did you date Alexandra?”

“Well, I wouldn’t necessarily say date. But we were good mates for almost the entire time at university.”

“Does she live in London now?”

“Yes, they live in East London. Ben is in advertising; his father started a very large PR firm in the fifties that he now assists in managing.”

“And Alexandra, does she work? I assume not.”

“She does work. She works at an art publication called
POP
. Have you heard of it?”

“No, not really. Although it sounds very familiar.”

I truly wish he had told me a fellow journalist was getting married, as I probably would not have put myself in a position of meeting someone so connected to my New York life. While
POP
is really just a UK art publication, it also has a fashion component and likely overlapping contacts that could reach into my New York world. Given my own magazine is nowhere near as prestigious or hip as
POP
, I hope I have nothing to worry about.

“Well, it’s a very big deal in London, and it’s owned by Roman Abramovich, the Russian owner of Millhouse, and his girlfriend Dasha Zhukova runs the whole operation. You do know them, right?”

“Yes, of course, but just from what I’ve read.”

“Well, they’re lovely and know how to throw quite the party if you’ve ever been in Saint Barth or Miami for Art Basel.”

There’s an exclusionist tone to David when he speaks of people in his own world and me as an American, or maybe just as a normal not-wealthy woman. I’m sure he means nothing by it, but it rings condescending, especially when he makes virtually no eye contact during the explanation.

There’s little more conversation before the announcement calls out our stop in Bath, which is far more of a city than I was expecting, complete with its own large shopping street and jam-packed downtown.

Life moves at warp speed with David. The minute we step off the train, a driver greets him and takes everything, including my bulky purse, on him physically, so much so that he resembles a human mule in a full suit as he walks the terminal. Beads of sweat roll down his temple; he’s a husky man with too much hair gel and a scent that’s three spritzes too much of a fragrance from the early nineties. We make our way down the stairs and to his awaiting car that starts with a remote, and we seclude ourselves in a perfectly cool backseat.