Bystander by Mike Steeves

Author:Mike Steeves
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Book*hug Press
Published: 2022-02-04T21:21:33+00:00

Part Three

when i moved into my apartment over twelve years ago, the rooms were bare, the floors immaculate, the holes from all the nails and screws that had once held up family photos, posters, shelves, and other art objects and decorations were plastered over, and the walls freshly painted. I had looked at other apartments but in many of them the landlords hadn’t bothered to efface the traces of the previous tenants. I could still make out where the pictures had hung, or the floors retained the pale impressions from where the furniture once stood. Sometimes there were a few items of clothing left hanging in one of the closets, or cans of food in the kitchen cupboards. These mementos gave off an aura, or conjured up images of what the previous tenants had been like, how they had lived and what these rooms had been used for, the company they’d kept or the time they’d spent alone, what they’d talked about, and also the things they didn’t talk about. So there was a risk that even after I painted the walls and scrubbed the floors, and after I changed the appliances and the locks, I might not be able to fully get rid of these traces, to exorcise the aura and purge the images so that when I looked around each room all I would see was my own life reflected back at me.

Whenever I checked into a hotel suite or condo I always did a thorough inspection of every surface, each piece of furniture, the bathrooms, the closets, and especially the bed. If I found any evidence of the previous guests, even if it was something as benign as a slightly depleted toilet paper roll rather than a fresh one, I would fall into a listless depression that might go on for days. I don’t think I’m a clean freak, or that I suffer from some form of undiagnosed neurosis, and I’m not the sort of person who lies awake at night wondering about the last time the bedspread was cleaned, or whether the remote had been sterilized. And the depression wasn’t caused by feelings of inadequacy or low self-esteem, brought on by these small, yet significant lapses by the cleaning staff, even though it betrayed a troubling lack of respect at the highest levels of hotel management for the enormous sums of money that my company had spent there over the years, not to mention all the extra business we sent their way. I think that what really got me down and why I let these small flaws in otherwise impeccable service take on so much meaning is because each time the service in these world-class hotels and accommodations fell below my impossible standards I felt as if it was a sign of a larger problem and what I saw as a global decline in high standards.

It may seem outrageous to consider a small lapse by the housekeeping staff at one of the best hotels in the

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