They’ll Assume You’re
Grateful for the Work
by Anika Carpenter
The job description for Assistant Concierge will not include scrubbing Château Cheval-Blanc out of boxer shorts or scooping human shit out of a roll top bath. It will not specify that you’ll be sent to go fetch chicken buckets and pornographic magazines. At your interview, no one will mention the monster in room one zero nine, or that you, as the newest member of staff, will be expected to meet all of his demands.
You’ll stand unmoving in the corner of the monster’s room, looking on as he carefully cuts up images of naked bodies, creates warm-hued collages of muscular men adorned with headdresses formed of arms, legs, breasts. You’ll oblige when instructed to turn these artworks into greetings cards, to write sarcastic platitudes inside each one, address them to old head teachers, former employees, ex-wives, extricated children. You’ll agree to sign them with your name, your full name. The monster will look you in the eyes as he seals his messed-up missives into envelopes, his saliva thick as egg white.
The fact that the monster will never lay a finger on you, that you won’t ever find out if his dry, lichen-coloured skin is warm or cold to the touch, if his long glossy hair is as heavy as decking rope, whether his breath on your neck would smell of stale cigar smoke, or rotting meat, that he’ll never say “a boy like you should consider yourself lucky to have the attention of a man like me,” will be something that your employer will fail to share, and they will not mention the risk that, if you displease the monster, he might throw you from his bedroom window and claim you jumped. They won’t speak of the ways he might lament your obvious emotional issues and condemn the hotel’s negligence.
But you’ll be prepared for all of this.
In your pockets you’ll carry seeds of doubt, dark and crisp as dead carpet beetles. You will grind them into a fine powder, with which you’ll lace the monster’s Gordon and MacPhail. The mixture will render his skull nothing more than a great calcium distilling vat; the easy sway of wheat and rye unsettling his every thought.
You’ll have come to understand the necessity of unshakable self-worth, and be painfully aware of the devastating power of undermining commentary. It will be hard to conceal a grin as you critique the derivative composition of the monster’s greetings cards, his hackneyed choice of wording. You’ll struggle not to giggle as you tell him he’s brave to wear such youthful clothes, and when you extol the benefits of just a little fresh air to skin etched with experience. Your chest will ache from suppressed laughter after you’ve lamented that someone of the monster’s stature ought not have to hide himself away. He will bellow then, “You sully this room with your mediocrity. You are an ineffectual spec, drifting on a tide of inadequate education and miniscule desires.” He will storm out without a backwards glance, missing your smirking. In the street he’ll yell himself hoarse, cursing the hotel’s incompetent staff, its second-rate aesthetic. He’ll put his fist through the window of a laughing cabbie’s taxi, he’ll be backed into a corner, wrestled to the ground, carted off. As you leave room one zero nine, you’ll lock the door behind you, drop the one and only key down the laundry chute.
You will stay in the job long enough to see the monster, hollowed from weeks of pleading, being permitted back into the hotel, but only to sit in the lobby, and only if he keeps his mouth shut, and his appearance clean, if his tips are generous enough for staff to afford spa treatments and holidays. You’ll see the monster sitting, watching with resentful admiration as reception staff greet elderly couples burdened with cheap luggage and young women in last season’s dress suits. You’ll serve the monster one whiskey after another, each spiked with uncertainty and fear, each warming his organs in a way that makes them itch; a discomfort for which he won’t be able to afford the cure.
The Molotov Cocktail 