CLEANER II: Chapter Six - Part Sixteen

MELISSA

My heart rate was elevated as I slammed the door shut on Dahlia’s room and hurried down the corridor back toward the stairs. It ramped up even higher as I hastily descended the stairs.

I stopped on the lower corridor, glancing down the passage to see if Dahlia was there. She wasn’t. I went on further down, checking each level. On the ground floor I looked for the British cleaner to ask if she’d seen her, but she was nowhere to be seen. I hesitated, wavering, my body swaying as though I’d just stepped off a dizzying playground roundabout. I eyed the unmanned reception desk and went across.

There was an electronic bell pusher with a cracked top on the counter for garnering attention but when I pressed it it made no audible sound. Most likely it was broken or out of batteries. I waited tensely, then sighed, squinting toward the gloomy back of the building. I checked the time. I went to the outer door and scanned the pool area; across to the bar. There wasn’t a sign of Dahlia.

I went back to the reception desk and waited, pressing the silent buzzer again, then sighed heavily and went to the nearby door leading into the staff only area in back. I paused, unsure of myself, then pressed open the door.

Beyond was a narrow corridor with doors running off it. No one was visible. In the silence I could almost hear the dull, throbbing, thump of my pulse in back of my ears.

Feeling out of place and entirely uncomfortable, I passed this first portal and went to the next door. It looked like the kitchen. I pushed inside. It was dingy as hell: cramped and dirty. This entire building needed to be condemned. It would never have passed a health and safety inspection without some greasing of the wheels. Maybe that was how they did things here. Or maybe Greek health inspectors either didn’t give a shit or didn’t visit this place. There was nothing above board about it.

The room was empty but for one man, a tall skinny native with a thin moustache, bags under his eyes and sallow cheeks. He looked both suspicious and bored by my appearance initially; then came the second wave of reaction as he registered my looks and figure, and despite my tension this helped to sooth me: the acknowledgement that he found me attractive.

But then I got my own second wave and only felt anger, because I knew I was teetering on the brink of losing these looks again. They would start to slide immediately for sure, knowing the steepness of my depression, and be gone completely within a month or two as I squandered the progress I’d made by shovelling food in my gob from morning to night to placate the raging demons in my heart.

The man said something in Greek but the shift in his expression as he saw my reaction illustrated that he could tell I didn’t get it. He shifted to English without waiting for a response to the first hail. “Yes? Can I help you?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m looking for someone. Uh Dah—“ I stopped myself. “Her name’s Melissa. Chapman.”

His features shifted again and it was this shift that made the penny drop, just as it had when I’d run into the cleaner outside earlier. This wasn’t a random hotel employee. This was him. This was the nasty little shit who had been treating Dahlia so badly all summer.

Hearing her name (my name), he evinced the kind of distaste one might reserve for picking up the soggy, decaying trainers of a teenage boy: that instantaneous combination of tactile and olfactory revulsion. It encapsulated everything he thought of her in a moment of what was, to me, clarity. It made me wonder if she had seen it in him or if he even saw it in himself.

They were still seeing one another as far as I knew but he clearly hated her guts. It was striking in its obviousness. But again, I was sure somehow that he didn’t even acknowledge that himself.

“I haven’t seen her,” he said, keeping his words measured with what seemed to be some effort. “She’ll be here later working. She has the middle of the day off.”

“Thank you,” I said, turning my back on him and cursing to myself.

I considered trying another door and asking around but that seemed pointless. Nevertheless I wavered, pausing at an external door. I pushed that open and checked the little smoking courtyard outside to be sure. She wasn’t there.

I hurried back to the foyer and left the hotel through the front door, going down the bumpy drive to the street.

There was a shopping area with restaurants a walk away. I wondered if I should go down there and look for her or go back up to her room. I’d shut the door now so I couldn’t wait inside.

I was so angry with myself for messing this up. I should have managed it all differently. Today had been a disaster. If only I could have rewound the day and tried again but all I could do now was try and salvage something. Or maybe that was the worst play. Maybe hanging around and trying to find her was the wrong move. Maybe I should have been giving her time and space to think.

But then again, how could that help? The impression she’d been left of me was of a manipulative nutter with childish ideas about forcing her to swap lives with me. I’d blown our “friendship,” such as it was, out of the water with my outburst. All that crap I’d spouted... She must have thought I was crazy! If I left her to herself now then every minute she was just being given more time to dwell on what an idiot I was – how stupid an idea all of this was and ever had been.

And that was the horror of this of course. It was stupid. It had never been sane or sensible to consider, for either of us, the idea of taking on the other’s life. Whenever I thought about it, it always seemed like something that couldn’t really be happening. It was just so preposterous! How did we even get as far as we had already? I had no idea.

But I did know that this wasn’t going to go any further unless I could find her fast and try to mend the damage I’d done. Maybe if I could show her a calmer side and try to work back to persuading her. I knew she’d told me she didn’t want to proceed but just maybe she could be persuaded to give it a bit more thought. If given another week or so to think about it, maybe I could inveigle my way back into her good graces and persuade her to continue after all.

“Oh Christ!” It was hopeless. It was mother-fucking hopeless.

Feeling increasingly frantic, I hurried down the side of the road toward the distant tourist area. The pavement was largely non-existent and I almost hobbled myself in my heels several times within the first three minutes. I was far too tense and uptight. I wasn’t thinking straight. I wasn’t coordinated. Half way there I made myself stop and pressed my hands to the sides of my temple.

“Just calm down,” I murmured. “Calm down or you’re going to fuck this up even more.”

That was the real worry: that I was so tense I’d charge on in there and make things worse if I did see her. I was supposed to be a master manipulator, carefully plucking the threads of my web as I drew her in toward my slavering jaws. I wasn’t supposed to be like this: All panic and flap, sweating and panting like a toddler in mid-tantrum.

Why was I saw overwrought? Why couldn’t I calm down?

But the answer was obvious. The question was moot.

I was overwrought because I’d had a winning lottery ticket in my hand (or thought I had) and now, because of my own messed-up actions, that ticket was out of my fingers and fluttering away in a breeze just fast enough to be carrying it further and further from my reach. I was going after it, desperately, chasing it down, but every time I reached for it, the very action; the sweep of my frantic arms; was blowing a wind that pushed it further away. And there was a cliff just ahead. If I didn’t reach that lottery ticker before it got there then I would forever lose my chance and might as well pitch myself over the edge to my watery and rocky doom.

“Just calm the fuck down!” I snapped at myself. “Calm the fuck down!”

I pressed my hands tightly in on my head; hard enough for it to hurt. Then I hurried on, getting more and more frantic, just unable inside me to take hold of my rampant spirit.

I could have had everything. I could have had it all. But I’d ruined things or I'd let her ruin them, and I’d only made things worse.

All was lost and it was my fault.

There was no chance for me to rectify this now. I’d blown it.