The Hotel

by Haley Bergeson



photographs by Julia Delmedico
During my time at the hotel only men in acceptable suits were allowed inside. An acceptable suit has clean, straight shoulders. It is made from canvas and features many small distinguishing details. It compliments the authority of a man's body, floating just over the skin and turning him into more of a formidable shape than a human being. A good suit dislocates a man from his individuality and allows him to step into his real and abstract power. It is critical for a man to develop a positive relationship with a tailor who respects him. Otherwise, he will never be guaranteed Respect from outside partners and colleagues. Peter taught me this. 

Peter was very fixated on Respect. Who deserved it, how to give it and how to withhold it, when it counted and when it didn't, when it should be distributed and when it should not. Aesthetic markets are built on the scaffolds of Respect. Respect governs Taste, which regulates the Market. Then it all repeats again, cyclical. 

You might think that Respect is an issue of morality and discernment, but really it's a numbers game. If more than 54% of people in any given room Respect you, you will not suffer the intolerable feeling that your talents (artistic, social, economical) will be overlooked and dismissed. It's statistically impossible; the other 46% will fall in line. You will not die and rot and be forgotten as you may have previously feared, just as I did before I discovered the inextinguishable power of Taste.

Peter put me up in the hotel to focus on and attend to my own Respect-related responsibilities. Solitude in a pleasant environment makes it easier to remember to use a chemical exfoliant, to trim your hair each financial quarter, to take various supplements that increase your chances of appearing young late into your forties (even if you smoke cigarettes), and so on.  All of these were important if I were to become an image for painters. The model must become an obedient figure, in touch with the desires of her audience. Be grotesque, entertaining, adorable. All depending upon the creative demand of the artist, the aesthetic demand of the buyer, and the spirit of the market. And so I was devoted. And devotion was the most beautiful thing I had heard of and the most beautiful thing I could imagine. 

Being at the hotel felt like peering through a keyhole into a divine light. When I woke up and thought I could not go on another day in this kind of solitude, I reminded myself that nuns can understand each other's spiritual states precisely because they are quiet together for so long a duration. Utter one word, and you have ruined everything, knocked back down to an average vibration. And so was the kinship I felt with myself, flipping from my stomach to my back repetitively to even my suntan. Pulling at my satin cap that kept my hair soft, listening to the birds sing and the subtle sounds of the pool as it lapped against its sides, remaining empty and receptive. 

Very few people could afford to live at the hotel. But some afternoons, a girl just my age, similar in stature, set up on a nearby pool bed in a black triangle bikini and reflected light from a foldable mirror onto her face, obscuring her features. It wasn’t intelligent to look directly at her for the sake of my eyes, but she always remained within my awareness, within my peripherals. Over the course of the day, we began to sync up; every 30 minutes or so, we'd peel our soft bellies from the terry cloth beneath us and show our navels to the sky. It made me laugh.

On a particular afternoon, she was accompanied by a girl much like herself. Like sorority sisters they wore the same bikini and sunglasses and held the same bag. The only distinguishable difference  was that her friend had a little kitten she'd brought along on a leash. The kitten moved like kittens and other small animals do, almost animatronic for its newness to its body. It reminded me of the rabbit my father had brought home when I was a child. I'd mistaken the rabbit for a pet.Shortly after, it was served for dinner. We were poor, not cruel, but I didn't care. I stuffed the meat into my pockets and buried it in the backyard. 

No one was going to eat this kitten. It got to go to the pool, and it got to live at the hotel.  The soft breeze pushed its long white coat and made little bald spots here and there. A hand with polished nails ran over its head.

That night, we had to go for dinner with four significant collectors or investors or something. I wasn't sure because I'd hardly been listening, as Peter droned on about a colleague who had embarrassed himself trying to cruise a young man at a Korean spa. Now, at the bar, Peter was distracted, looking for the suited man who would buy one of my portraits. He didn't notice, as I did, that the girls from the pool had reemerged. 

I observed them like one does when they feels alienated, with distinct shame and admiration, at once in accord with, and in total rejection of, their congruity. They were all 5'5'', had French manicures, little white tank tops, low-cut skirts, and boots up to their knees. They were all at the bar leaning into the bartender, asking him questions, and laughing just like I would. I wanted to point out the droll nature of their likeness, I wanted to laugh about it to expel the disturbing feeling it provoked. As if he could feel that urge rise in me, Peter said, suddenly, that we had to leave. It was crowded, we had important people to meet and tastes to instill into these important people's psychological landscapes. Memories to remind them of and preferences to give them. God's work.



Later that night, after all the steaks and martinis and laughing, I made Peter let me set off a Roman candle on the roof to celebrate my painting being purchased. I like the moment before the spark flies into the sky because you're not sure whether you will explode, too. When nothing went wrong, he told me how special I was. That I am one of the very few who can understand that a drive towards death is a beautiful abstraction, not an actionable fact. This understanding separated me from the rest of the world. I was fortunate. Anyone with Taste can see this. That's why I got to live in the hotel. 

I loved Peter very much, but regrettably, Peter did not love me. But Peter did not love anyone. It wasn’t his fault. He had to remain even more open and receptive than I did. There wasn't space to get all filled up with love. Art dealers are working with a lot of electricity. Psychic energy, dreams, spiritual contents, and aesthetic answers to life's biggest questions. All this flows through our great, wide-open economy and is managed by Peter and his colleagues. 

My sister didn't understand why I was happy in the hotel.  But she had never been here.  Had never gently been awoken by the soft light coming in through the curtains. She didn't know the static pleasure of lazily wandering to the balcony to have three pieces of salami, twelve almonds, and a coffee with cream before dissolving your Vyvanse in water and going to the pool in the afternoon. She'd never given stimulants to a collector and told him a story charming enough to convince him to spend over 1 million dollars on a worthless piece of canvas. She'd never been an object devoured by its context, disappeared completely into the Market, dissolving into stacks of green. She didn't understand it was all cyclical. She'd never talked to God the way I had.

Later that night, the collectors were still scattered about the roof like mice. The tallest, most handsome and frightening of them was about to set off the last roman candle,the rest railing lines and forcing me to learn about crypto. I tried to tell the tall handsome one about the enigma of the matching girls, but he didn’t care. Peter says that I make stuff up to make people laugh. That some people can never tell the difference between true concern for surreality and a fun little story you like to deploy at dinners. Suddenly, what had been a bird darted down between us, landing dead on the concrete rooftop, completely still. We were quiet for a moment before the tall handsome one  finally spoke. Birds have heart attacks all the time.

Peter had to stay out to solidify the connections we’d made,  but I was tired. So I left and walked along the colorful hallways towards my room, enjoying the delirium this state of mind induced. But something made me stop short. Squinting, I saw a gentle little white thing only a few meters away. The kitten. She was on her side, and she wasn't breathing very well. Her tiny rib cage moving like a maniacal white balloon. As I approached her, I could hear the smallest wheezing sound pushing out her esophagus irregularly.

I knelt in front of the kitten in total silence, with maybe six inches between my nose and her desperate belly. She wasn't moving freely like something young, but instead twitching every 4  to 7 seconds. Delicately carried her to my room in one flattened hand pressed against my rib cage. I plopped her down somewhat violently on the cool tile of the bathroom floor.  I matched the kitten's shallow breath with my own as best I could, a game like those you play to entertain yourself alone as a child. A sensation of compassion shot from my solar plexus up into my throat.

I began running hot water into the bath. It was roaring like a sonic simulacra. Like when I went to a waterfall with my dad in 5th grade. Like when rain pours and pours and pours on a summer afternoon. Like when a younger brother runs the hose to cool the hot pavement to protect your bare feet. These were white noises which came directly from nature, which were good and regenerating and in communion with creation and destruction and the beating on of the world. When a man throws himself on the sharp rocks at the bottom of a waterfall, the sounds swallow him like he was never there to begin with.

Steam obstructed my vision, and I gazed down, allowing the kitten to rest in my lap. I scratched the nearly microscopic space behind her ears. She was a tiny warm spot. An original dislocated from her nature. If Peter found her, she would have been taken to the vet, and they would kill  her right there with an injection, on a steel table surrounded by veterinarians. I hated that dumb cunt from the pool who must have dropped her running around barefoot with her American Express card. 

Her soft little head made the most minor imaginable figure 8s as her panting increased. She was desperate and in pain. Someone could have stepped on her out there, or worse, a person unlike me, a sadistic person, could have found her and let her live that way. 

I gently peeled her little body from my lap. Her eyes turned into slits, and I submerged her in the warm water. Though she was weak, I saw the corners of her mouth turn upward towards a smile, her long hair floating around her, ignorant of its old gravity. I left her buoyant for a moment, then pressed down. She didn't even struggle. After only a minute or so, she disappeared. 

Peter found me awake on my side on top of the comforter. I remained lifeless as he took off my boots and scratched my head.. Tomorrow I would go quietly to the pool to lay under a perpetual glaring sun situated in a big, blue, wide open sky, surrounded by hundreds of girls with french manicures just like me, listening to the birds we would someday bludgeon with our roman candles. We would continue waiting for God.