Oblivion by Patrick Holland

Author:Patrick Holland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Transit Lounge
Published: 2024-06-08T00:00:00+00:00

I went back to the bar and bought a cigar. I got the bartender to clip it. I told a joke that he did not understand, though he feigned a smile and I brought the cigar to my lips.

You cannot smoke that in here, sir.

Oh, forgive me.

Out there if you would, sir.

He pointed to the waterfront patio.

I nodded. I walked to the darkest spot on a little pier and flicked open my lighter and threw the passport with the credit card inside it in the water. I smoked.

Sir?

A woman’s voice. The girl from the desk.

Sir, would you come in please? The police are here.

I repeated the commissioner’s lines to the police, certain that the more I spoke the less I was believed. When the questions were over I walked through the bland strip-lit corridors and past anonymous doors to my room. The hotel got dimmer as you ascended through it. Recessed low-voltage lamps washed the floors with just enough light so the guests did not trip. Lamps faded from white to soft gold and at last blue with the passing hours. No light struck glass. No glare. The walls were semi-transparent, the edges imaginary. The dreaming corridors took on the pleasing and pacifying quality of infinity … 2500 rooms in Marina Bay Sands. The City of Dreams in Macau had 2200 rooms, the Sands Cotai in Macau had 6000, the First World Hotel in Malaysia near 7500 …

… 2188, 2189, 2190 … my room, and the events of below seemed a little less real.

I changed in the room and then swam in an under-lit lap pool on the same floor. I swam to the edge where I had left my clothes and took out the burner phone. I ignored the commissioner’s warnings and tried to call Nishimura but the call was aborted. I checked and the phone had a Singtel chip, no reach beyond here. I fell back and put my head under the water.

The dark windows gave onto a nebulous city and my face was upon it. There was another lap pool beside mine. Through the semi-reflective glass a woman was swimming. She stopped and put her arms on the edge of the pool and meditated on the city as I had. She turned and our eyes met. She was only a few yards from me yet we could not speak. I stared at her for a time. She let go of the poolside and dived deep and swam again. The hotel was discreet to the point of secrecy. The thousands of rooms were a dream of shared solitude – two thousand souls passed with the proximity of a family yet in silent estrangement. In a hotel like this you were barely in the world, and now the events of downstairs lost yet more reality. They seemed made of the same dream stuff as the woman swimming in silence beside me and I felt peace. An elevator ghosted up the side of a building across the water, into the

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