Living in Hotels

by Eva Konstantopoulos

 

The day Anna left me she said she was going to a hotel.

“No one can follow me,” she said.

She could give the guy at the desk any name she wanted and he wouldn’t ask too many questions – usually none even. She would have her chair and curtains and queen-size bed and shower cap and mirror and working toilet and toilet paper and white towels, all properly folded and ironed and cleaned, and little soaps and sewing kit and whatever else came in the packaged deal. A nice, snug home for only $40.00 a night at a Ramada Inn or Motel 6.

“I could get used to living in hotels,” she said. “A lot of normal people live in hotels. People with families and friends. People who don’t work sixty hours a week at Starbucks.”

“That’s not fair, Anna. We all can’t just do everything we want.”

She held her book bag defiantly. It was too heavy for her.

“You’re all red again. You could come with me, but you probably wouldn’t be happy.”

But Anna could be happy. Everything would have its place, the lamp on the night table, the bible in the drawer.

“It’s like being on a film set. Only I can sleep there and shower there and every morning someone I don’t even have to love will make my bed and bring me breakfast.”

“Breakfast will probably cost extra.”

Anna pulled her hair into a ponytail, she sighed, “Forty bucks is small change in the dollar sign world of dreaming. And dreaming doesn’t come cheap. Don’t you get it? I can dream for as little as twenty dollars a night, just until my bones settle awhile, and then I’ll be fine the next day, and I can go on with it, just go.”

She dragged her book bag out the door. Where she was going, she wouldn’t say, but she figured the important thing was the leaving, and if I didn’t understand that by now then there was no point in staying anyway. When she got there, wherever there was, she’d know when to stop. Park her car and walk up the driveway to the house of her new life.

 “Good luck finding a house in the city!” I called as I heard the clunk clunk clunk of her baggage dropping down the stairs.

 

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