NEEDLING

Was writing in my long-hand journal the other day and this is what I wrote:

ROOM NUMBER 53

Missed two rooms today, and both times it was because there was another person in here with me. Room number 53. A regular. He checked in already and he keeps going up and down with the elevator, in and out of his room. He’s waiting for his girlfriend, so he sticks around shooting the shit. Room number 53 is a man in his early thirties, skinny, wearing blue jeans and a denim jacket. Looks like he’s worked most his life. Started out in his teens, he told me later, working with the city’s trash clean-up crew, he explained at lengths, and was quickly moved up. He works some other place now. He’s got a team of folks under his responsibility he says to me with pride.

At one point, these two kids are standing outside the glass door looking in checking out the place when one of the two steps in. The other waits outside with the luggage. Never a good sign. That means: 1) they’re not sure about the place; 2) whether or not they can afford our prices; 3) they’re thinking probably not. If the hotel is empty or somewhat empty, whenever a couple of clean looking students walk in, the back-packing type or the here in Paris on their first interview type, when they inevitably ask the inevitable question about room prices, you can give them a little rebate on the spot.

“How much for a room?”
“Two people?” You ask even if you already know the answer.
“Yes…” by this time they’ve seen our price chart and they’ve started making faces.
“A room for two people is ‘so much’, but hey, you two look like good folks, I’ll give you a little deal and I’ll even throw in breakfast, whadda you say?” This takes them off guard right away and you can work with them from there. It works most of the time.

But here’s the rib. You got another customer in the reception area and that guy you didn’t give a discount to, well… there’s not much you can do except give the two kids the regular price and hope they won’t go away like you’re certain they will.

The kid is reticent, so I offer him breakfast thinking for a second there might be a chance, even with room number 53 leaning against the counter. This kid, he’s considering it, but I already know the answer, and what’s worse… I can’t do a thing about it. Back outside, he argues with his buddy, looks at me through the glass door and, before he waves and shakes his head ‘sorry but no’ I know, they’re going to go look somewhere else.

Now, this guy in here, he observes the whole exchange without a comment till after they leave.

He’s bored and a bit nervous, I think. When he talks, he’s jittery. He knows that what he’s saying doesn’t mean a thing neither to him nor to me, but it’s too much for him this waiting, and he’s got to talk, and when he talks he insists on each detail as if that was going to change something.

He steps in and out of the hotel. Once to bum a light for his last cigarette, once to buy a paper bag full of candies from the street vendor, another time for hamburgers. None of it makes the time go any faster, and in the end, he spends most his time leaning against the counter telling me his life story.

The kids were the second room I missed for the exact same reason.

Room number 53 hasn’t seen his girlfriend in over a month. Usually, they both get here at about the same time mid-afternoonish. This time, he got here it was barely after lunch, and he didn’t have nothing else better to do than to hang about the lobby. It’s alright a little bit, makes the time go by faster, but all afternoon gets a little difficult. At least, he’s not the bad sort, and what he says is interesting some of the time, relatively speaking. When you’re sitting behind the same computer for twelve hours straight, your perspective change a bit.

He’s glad he doesn’t live in Paris anymore.

“Don’t get me wrong, there’s no place like Paris. Paris is Paris, it’s the only Paris around, no place like it anywhere else in the world, can’t replace Paris with no other city I know of. Know what I mean?”

He takes a break to chew on his toothpick for a second and look out the glass doors. The Paris conversation came after the hamburger outing. There’s nothing else to do but to nod my head in agreement and wait till he gets going again, or till he goes back up to his room. This is a one way conversation. He could care less about my views on Paris. Typical customer-who-likes-to-talk attitude. I’m behind the counter, or the barman is behind the bar, or the waitress is politely waiting on you, and there’s nowhere you can go, even if you don’t want to listen to what the customer says. If the customer stays polite, stays away from such topics as bedroom topics – I’ve had those as well and I instantly shut them off, I don’t want to know what you do in your room, I’m here to rent you a room and take your money, that’s all – if you don’t have fifteen other customers waiting, then there’s not much you can do. Like I said, I don’t necessarily mind it. Depends.

“Still, once you taste the quiet streets, the calm of living outside the city, then you just can’t come back. Know what I mean?”

This is when the kid with his buddy waiting for him outside came in. Room number 53 doesn’t move an inch from the counter. He concentrates on his toothpick and the chewing of it. I faintly hopped he would take that as a cue to go have a smoke outside, or go back up to his room, that maybe he could see I had to work. Nope. Not an inch. No way to open negotiations with this kid.

The kids steps out of doors and waves no to me.

“Quand même, avec le p’tit déj… mais bon, p’t’ête y zont pas l’argent, quoi… ” (Even with breakfast included… well, maybe they simply don’t got the cash, you know…)

He stresses the word “breakfast,” and continues his monologue on something or other. I shut him out and think this kid, he would have taken the room had I gone down two Euros, five tops. This kid, he was tired of carrying that suit case from one hotel to the next, I could see that. Even if the prices were still a little higher than what they had figured on, they would have stayed with a little insisting and a free breakfast.

Room number 53 takes me out of my reveries and asks me if perchance I don’t have a cigarette… he smoked his last one. No cigarette, sorry.

…

When he first walked into the hotel he told right off he didn’t know me.

“Bonjour, monsieur,” I said.
“How you doing. Who are you? I don’t recognize you. You see, I’m a regular.”
“I’m new, don’t know everybody yet. I only been here a couple of month.”
“That’s why I didn’t recognize you. I’m Mr. so and so.”
“Nice to meet you, sir, I’m Francois. Do you have a preferred room?”
“Number 45.”

That didn’t sound right to me. I looked at the key rack and it was just as I had feared. We don’t have a room number 45.

“We don’t have a room by that number.”
“Oh yeah… uhm… must be room number 54, then… I must’a inversed the numbers.”
“Okay.” Sound reasonable enough, I let my guards down a little. Not entirely, you never know in this business what kind of tricks people are going to try and pull on you.

I give him the appropriate key-card after he pays for the room. He jumps in the elevator like he’s in a real hurry to get to his room and two minutes later he’s back downstairs handing me the key-card.

“That’s not the room,” he says. “Must be room number 53.”
“No problem.” I hand the key-card to number 53.

He feels a need to explain.
“Normally, we get a room with a shower, not a bath…” That being the principal difference between 54 & 53.
“Don’t worry about it, it’s all good.”

He’s not satisfied.
“Once, we got room number 54 with the bath and all. Me, personally, I don’t care, you know what I mean? I don’t mind a bath, a shower, hey… you know, it’s the same to me. But my girlfriend, she got sick in room number 54 once, and then she couldn’t regulate the hot water or something in the bath, you know, and she burned herself in there with the hot water being so hot and all. If she comes up to the room and she sees it’s number 54, she’s not gonna bother sticking around, and then what? You know what I mean? She’s the boss, what she says goes.”

He was all exited.

Afterwards, after he had tried staying in his room watching television, he came back down to chat, the afternoon was simply going too slowly for Room number 53. He leaned against the counter and started going all about the bathtub and how he has to have a shower or else, and he’s not the boss when it comes to deciding about bathtubs and showers.

“It’s been a month since I’ve seen my girlfriend,” he announces as if this explained everything including the universe.
“Everything needs to be just right, know what I mean? I don’t need no bad memories to be brought for no good reasons. You know? Only good memories, that’s what I need right now.” He leaned a little further into the counter and stared out the glass door thinking about what he’d just said.

“Only good memories, you know what I mean? Only good memories,” he repeated one last time.

And apparently, good memories are a plenty in room number 53.