RE: Two Months In Europe With Lachlan
12-12-2016, 02:25 AM
I slap the cellular telephone to my ear, wait a second, and only hear ringing. Oh, right. I unlock the screen, accept the call, and then listen to the wail of a faxular fail. I absently hurl the phone across the room and roll over, groaning. I can find it again when it rings again.
I roll over some more, tossing and turning, eyes clenched shut. The rotary phone rings and it snaps my gaze towards headboardways where I notice water sluicing out of the bathroom and onto the carpet. Pink water, with stripes of red. I sit up in bed, look at my still-bleeding hand, look at the red stain I've left on my nice white pillow and the comforter, and take two long steps into the bathroom.
Slosh slosh. Figures these European sinks would clog the first time you try to use them. I turn off the running water. The water's so murky and red in the sink I can't even tell what's causing the clog — rusty pipes? — so I have no recourse but to roll up my sleeve and wince as I feel around for any obstruction in the basin. Apparently, the rag I had used to staunch my gash had acted as a plug.
No matter. I drop it where I stand, hoping it absorbs at least something from the floor, and stride back to pick up the phone before it stops ringing.
This time, to my complete surprise, it's not a fax at all! It's a person, but all they have to say is "sorry, wrong number," before they immediately hang up — perhaps "person" is a misnomer, since the likeliest explanation is a crank caller.
I hear then the harsh vibrations and melodic tones of my haphazardly-discarded cell phone. I sigh and cast my attentions throughout the room briskly until I aurally locate its position with a growing sense of abject horror. My careless toss must have landed my cell phone behind the radiator! Every second, it melts and warps further. I panic, and for some reason my first instinct is to try to go directly through the radiator, and I end up singeing off some hairs and possibly cauterizing my wound.
No, I must be smart about this. And I am smart. Again I briskly stride back to the bathroom, and again wrap my hand in the now-soaking towel, trying to adjust it into a crude mitten while walking back.
I inhale sharply and finagle my hand behind the radiator from below. From this angle, I am privileged to admire the details of the fake seashells glued onto the radiator, and wonder if that is in any way fire-safe. My makeshift glove emits a rank steam, a faint smell of death, as I, actually, successfully close my fist around my phone.
Knock knock. “Laundry,” says someone. “Sir? Hallo?” I jolt upright as I hear whoever the hell struggling with the door key, my door key. I try to get up to rush to the door and open it for him, but I nearly break my wrist! A gripping hand is too bulbous for the crevasse.
The door opens, deaf to my protests, and a kid (and it is just a kid, sixteen at a stretch and looking ready to pick a fight over it) has a wicker basket on some kind of cart with handles, and stares at me like this whole situation is somehow my fault. I stare back at him, flop-sweat mightily exaggerated by the proximity to the radiator.
“You’re not sleeping.” Vaguely accusatory, before he glances down like he remembered his place. “I’m here for laundry.”
“I.” I turn to try and face him, but my shoulder protests and a ridge on the radiator makes just the right amount of contact to really scorch a mark on my elbow. I settle for half a gesture. “Do not. Need my laundry. Done.”
The kid frowns, glances at the door (my door, still open to the hallway and anyone who cares to peer in,) takes a good long hard look at a crumpled note in his pocket, double-checks the door.
“Yes you do. Room 324. Mr. Korhonen said. This room.” He’s getting frustrated, but he’s one of either polite or doggedly dense enough to not comment on the lingering fog of blood or the fact I’m still sitting by the radiator. I wonder if I could just hand him a wet towel and send him on his way, but that would entail consigning my phone to the ravages of European central heating or letting him into the flooded bathroom. I wonder if I could just melt him behind a radiator instead.
The rotary phone rings and I disconnect its cord from the wall with my leg while he pulls my comforter into his wicked basket. "Leave it!" I shout. "I assure you, young man, that I know what my problems are and laundry is not one of them," I say. It’s hard to be haughty when you’re stuck behind a radiator, but hopefully I manage it.
"You've got... blood. Sir," he says, as if adding the title makes up for his impudence. "It's all on your shirt. And the pillow." He coughs, from the smoke.
"It's my blood, I'll be fine. Now leave, so I can attend to my business in tranquility," I say, affecting calm as I can feel the rag crisping up around my hand. The still-soaked inner layers are approaching boiling point, or feel like it against my enclosed hand. Despite myself, I am crying. I don't think he can tell against the cascades of sweat, luckily.
The kid looks ready to protest, before shrugging and wheeling his cart out of my doorway. He slams the door on the way out. Thank God. Now my problems in this world shrink, briefly, to only one:
How am I ever going to extract my cell phone and hand from behind the radiator before anything burns? And assuming I do that without burning my room down, what should I deal with next?
I roll over some more, tossing and turning, eyes clenched shut. The rotary phone rings and it snaps my gaze towards headboardways where I notice water sluicing out of the bathroom and onto the carpet. Pink water, with stripes of red. I sit up in bed, look at my still-bleeding hand, look at the red stain I've left on my nice white pillow and the comforter, and take two long steps into the bathroom.
Slosh slosh. Figures these European sinks would clog the first time you try to use them. I turn off the running water. The water's so murky and red in the sink I can't even tell what's causing the clog — rusty pipes? — so I have no recourse but to roll up my sleeve and wince as I feel around for any obstruction in the basin. Apparently, the rag I had used to staunch my gash had acted as a plug.
No matter. I drop it where I stand, hoping it absorbs at least something from the floor, and stride back to pick up the phone before it stops ringing.
This time, to my complete surprise, it's not a fax at all! It's a person, but all they have to say is "sorry, wrong number," before they immediately hang up — perhaps "person" is a misnomer, since the likeliest explanation is a crank caller.
I hear then the harsh vibrations and melodic tones of my haphazardly-discarded cell phone. I sigh and cast my attentions throughout the room briskly until I aurally locate its position with a growing sense of abject horror. My careless toss must have landed my cell phone behind the radiator! Every second, it melts and warps further. I panic, and for some reason my first instinct is to try to go directly through the radiator, and I end up singeing off some hairs and possibly cauterizing my wound.
No, I must be smart about this. And I am smart. Again I briskly stride back to the bathroom, and again wrap my hand in the now-soaking towel, trying to adjust it into a crude mitten while walking back.
I inhale sharply and finagle my hand behind the radiator from below. From this angle, I am privileged to admire the details of the fake seashells glued onto the radiator, and wonder if that is in any way fire-safe. My makeshift glove emits a rank steam, a faint smell of death, as I, actually, successfully close my fist around my phone.
Knock knock. “Laundry,” says someone. “Sir? Hallo?” I jolt upright as I hear whoever the hell struggling with the door key, my door key. I try to get up to rush to the door and open it for him, but I nearly break my wrist! A gripping hand is too bulbous for the crevasse.
The door opens, deaf to my protests, and a kid (and it is just a kid, sixteen at a stretch and looking ready to pick a fight over it) has a wicker basket on some kind of cart with handles, and stares at me like this whole situation is somehow my fault. I stare back at him, flop-sweat mightily exaggerated by the proximity to the radiator.
“You’re not sleeping.” Vaguely accusatory, before he glances down like he remembered his place. “I’m here for laundry.”
“I.” I turn to try and face him, but my shoulder protests and a ridge on the radiator makes just the right amount of contact to really scorch a mark on my elbow. I settle for half a gesture. “Do not. Need my laundry. Done.”
The kid frowns, glances at the door (my door, still open to the hallway and anyone who cares to peer in,) takes a good long hard look at a crumpled note in his pocket, double-checks the door.
“Yes you do. Room 324. Mr. Korhonen said. This room.” He’s getting frustrated, but he’s one of either polite or doggedly dense enough to not comment on the lingering fog of blood or the fact I’m still sitting by the radiator. I wonder if I could just hand him a wet towel and send him on his way, but that would entail consigning my phone to the ravages of European central heating or letting him into the flooded bathroom. I wonder if I could just melt him behind a radiator instead.
The rotary phone rings and I disconnect its cord from the wall with my leg while he pulls my comforter into his wicked basket. "Leave it!" I shout. "I assure you, young man, that I know what my problems are and laundry is not one of them," I say. It’s hard to be haughty when you’re stuck behind a radiator, but hopefully I manage it.
"You've got... blood. Sir," he says, as if adding the title makes up for his impudence. "It's all on your shirt. And the pillow." He coughs, from the smoke.
"It's my blood, I'll be fine. Now leave, so I can attend to my business in tranquility," I say, affecting calm as I can feel the rag crisping up around my hand. The still-soaked inner layers are approaching boiling point, or feel like it against my enclosed hand. Despite myself, I am crying. I don't think he can tell against the cascades of sweat, luckily.
The kid looks ready to protest, before shrugging and wheeling his cart out of my doorway. He slams the door on the way out. Thank God. Now my problems in this world shrink, briefly, to only one:
How am I ever going to extract my cell phone and hand from behind the radiator before anything burns? And assuming I do that without burning my room down, what should I deal with next?
peace to the unsung peace to the martyrs | i'm johnny rotten appleseed
clouds is shaky love | broke as hell but i got a bunch of ringtones
eyes blood red bruise aubergine | Sue took something now Sue doesn't sleep | saint average, day in the life of
woke up in the noon smelling doom and death | out the house, great outdoors
staying warm in arctic blizzard | that's my battle 'til I get inanimate | still up in the same clothes living like a gameshow
clouds is shaky love | broke as hell but i got a bunch of ringtones
eyes blood red bruise aubergine | Sue took something now Sue doesn't sleep | saint average, day in the life of
woke up in the noon smelling doom and death | out the house, great outdoors
staying warm in arctic blizzard | that's my battle 'til I get inanimate | still up in the same clothes living like a gameshow