(Deleted from final draft)
She had arrived at the hotel the night before they were due to meet. She wanted to set the scene. If she had booked in on the day, the 11am check-in arrangement would have left her with no time to organise and she would have been flustered and anxious, she wanted at least the pretence of being in control.
While the outside looked the same, the inside had lost the 80s business hotel aesthetic. Gone was the separate reception desk, the heavy, patterned carpet. Gone too was the gloomy bar with its dark wood furniture and low lighting. And the restaurant with tables which had been set with heavy white tablecloths, starch folded napkins, pre-set with heavy-stemmed glasses arranged diagonally above the knives, the heavily weighted EPNS cutlery, the rosebud vase with a single carnation, the candles, the ashtrays, all replaced by uncovered wood tables and fast food. The hours they had spent in the flicker of the candlelight, drinking bottles of Sancerre, the preamble to sex. The scorching brightness of the contemporary corporate space it is now, makes the idea of all those gloriously seductive hours, feel bleached and just a sepia memory.
The space is open lobby now. The reception, lounge, restaurant, and, newly added, business centre are all one continuous, casual space where guests can eat, work, and socialise simultaneously. Odd to think that their relationship would probably never developed in this space. Looking at it, she realises how much of it hinged on dark corners, was hidden, secret. She can’t imagine how seeing him in the context of this open space design language, will affect their conversation? Too many imponderables there.
Strangely, in spite of all the refurbishment and outwardly different appearance, something of the old version lingered. The scent of cleaning materials in the Ladies toilet revived a memory of them fucking furiously in there. She was dizzied by the strength of it. She catches the reflection of herself in the mirror, sees desire, the history of it gazing back at her, an old memory that still lives in her body, a complicated mixture she couldn’t disentangle if she tried. She had stopped voicing her desire long before she stopped feeling it. She should have outgrown the need to beautiful to someone, to be wanted. The cruel thing is the expectation that with age her desire should have settled, curled inwards, become quiet and undemanding, but it doesn’t want to be parcelled up, stored away. The tracings of the old histories of him live inside her. Her body remembers the nights and thinks there are more nights that should be lived.
She looks at herself in the mirror. The phosphorus glare of the lighting in the toilets amplifies how pale and tired she looks, barely visible. She wonders what the point of her is now, she was never sure even as a child and now she has no idea.
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