The hotel room ceiling has an interesting topography. There are cracks, bumps, water stains, and spots with spackle covered with the wrong color paint. I wish I was sleeping, even though it is 3:00 in the afternoon. Sleep last night was spare, as it always is for me in a hotel room, and I wish I could doze now and find a few of those missing hours of rest in a nap. Instead, I have the television on with the volume turned up, and I’m staring at the ceiling trying to pretend that the linen closet isn’t right across the hall from my room, and that there aren’t two women sitting in that closet with the door open because there is nothing to clean on a slow week like this one. It makes it impossible for me to rest, having strangers sitting out there, just a few feet away from me right now, practically staring at my door. I have the volume up so high because otherwise I can hear them talking, and when you can hear someone talking it makes it tough to pretend they don’t exist.
Home Alone is on TBS, which is strange because it’s May, and I didn’t realize they played that movie on television when it isn’t Christmas. My attention fixes on a particularly long crack in the ceiling as Kevin McCallister is watching Angels with Filthy Souls on tv. “Keep the change, ya filthy animal!” A line as iconic for every kid born in the early 80’s as any other line, but all that nostalgia still isn’t enough to make me forget the women hovering outside my room.
trigger fiction. 