Woman in the Fifth

‘Avec plaisir, monsieur.’

He picked up the checks and said, ‘I will return tomorrow to collect the payment for the room — that is, if you still want to stay.’

‘As soon as I can stagger out of here, I will.’

‘Tres bien, monsieur. And by the way, thank you for pissing in the vase. Tres classe.’

And he left.

I fell back against the pillows, exhausted, enraged. The latter emotion was something with which I’d had extensive personal contact over the past few weeks — an ominous sense that I was about to detonate at any moment. But rage turned inward transforms itself into something even more corrosive: self-loathing … and one which edges into depression. The doctor was right: I had broken down.

And when the flu finally moved on, what then? I would still be wiped out, beaten.

I reached back into my shoulder bag and pulled out the traveler’s checks. I counted them. Four thousand, six hundred and fifty dollars. My entire net worth. Everything I had or owned in the world — as I was pretty damn sure that, thanks to the demonizing I’d been subjected to in the press, Susan’s lawyers would convince the divorce judge that my wife should get it all: the house, the pension plans, the life insurance policies, the small stock portfolio we purchased together. We weren’t rich — academics rarely are. And with a daughter to raise and an ex-husband permanently barred from teaching again, the court would rightfully feel that she deserved the few assets we once shared. I certainly wasn’t going to fight that. Because I had no fight left in me — except when it came to somehow getting my daughter to talk to me again.

Four thousand, six hundred and fifty dollars. On the flight over here, stuffed into a narrow seat, I had done some quick calculations on the back of a cocktail napkin. At the time I had just over five thousand bucks. At the current, legal rate of exchange, it would net me just over four thousand euros. Living very carefully, I estimated I could eke out three or four months in Paris — on the basis that I could find a cheap place to live as soon as I got there. But forty-eight hours after landing in Paris, I had already spent over four hundred dollars. As it looked as though I wouldn’t be able to move from here for another few days, I could count on paying out another extortionate hundred bucks a night until I was fit enough to leave this dump.

My rage was damped down by fatigue. I wanted to go into the bathroom and strip off my sweat-sodden T- shirt and undershorts and stand under a shower. But I still couldn’t make it off the bed. So I just lay there, staring blankly upward, until the world went blank again and I was back in the void.

Two soft knocks on the door. I stirred awake, everything blurred, vague. Another soft knock, followed by the door opening a crack, and a voice quietly saying, ‘Monsieur … ?’

‘Go away,’ I said. ‘I don’t want anything to do with you.’

The door opened further. Behind it emerged a man in his early forties — with rust-colored skin and cropped black hair. He was dressed in a black suit and a white shirt.

‘Monsieur, I just want to see if you needed anything.’

His French, though fluent, was marked with a strong accent.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ I said. ‘I thought you were …’

‘Monsieur Brasseur?’

‘Who’s Monsieur Brasseur?’

‘The morning desk clerk.’

‘So that’s the bastard’s name: Brasseur.’

A small smile from the man in the doorway.

‘Nobody likes Monsieur Brasseur, except the hotel manager — because Brasseur is very talented at la provocation.’

‘Are you the guy who helped me out of the cab yesterday?’

‘Yes, I’m Adnan.’

‘Thanks for that — and for getting me settled here.’

‘You were very ill.’

‘But you still didn’t have to get me undressed and into bed, or call a doctor, or unpack everything. It was far too kind of you.’

He looked away, shyly.

‘It’s my job,’ he said. ‘How are you feeling tonight?’ ‘Very weak. Very grubby.’

He stepped fully into the room. As he approached me, I could see that his face had grooved lines around the eyes — the sort of creases that belonged on the face of a man twenty years his senior. His suit was tight, ill-fitting, badly worn — and there was a serious tobacco stain on both his right index and middle fingers.

‘Do you think you can get out of bed?’ he asked.

‘Not without help.’

‘Then I will help you. But first I will run you a bath. A long soak will do you good.’

I nodded weakly. He took charge of things. Without flinching at its contents, he picked up the vase and disappeared into the bathroom. I heard him flush the toilet and turn on the bath taps. He emerged back into the bedroom, took off his suit jacket, and hung it up in the armoire. Then he picked up my jeans and the shirt and socks that had been placed on the desk chair and stuffed them in the pillowcase.

‘Any other dirty laundry?’ he asked.

‘Just what I am wearing.’

He returned to the bathroom. The water stopped running. Steam leaked out through the doorway. He emerged, his face glistening from the vapors, his right arm wet.

‘It is hot, but not too hot.’

He came over to the bed and sat me upright and placed my feet on the floor and then lifted up my left arm and pulled it around his shoulder and hoisted me up. My legs felt as sturdy as matchsticks. But Adnan kept me vertical and walked me slowly into the bathroom.

‘Do you need help with your clothes?’ he asked.

‘No, I can handle it.’

But when I took one of my hands off the sink, I immediately lost balance and felt my knees warping. Adnan straightened me up and quietly asked me to keep one hand on the sink while raising the other above me. I was able to keep my arm aloft long enough for him to pull my T-shirt off my arm and over my head. Then he asked me to switch arms and inched the rest of it off. With a quick yank, he pulled my boxer shorts to the floor. I stepped out of them and allowed Adnan to walk me the two steps to the bath. The water was seriously hot. So hot that I recoiled when my foot first touched its surface. But Adnan ignored my protestations and gently forced me into the tub. The initial shock of the water gave way to a strange sense of scalded calm.

‘Do you need help washing yourself?’

‘I’ll try doing it myself.’

I managed to soap up my crotch, my chest and underarms, but couldn’t find the energy to reach down to my feet. So Adnan took the soap and dealt with them. He also brought over the shower hose and doused my hair and lathered it up with shampoo. Then he found a can of shaving cream and a razor among the toiletries he’d earlier unpacked, and knelt down by the bathtub and started covering my face in foam.

‘You don’t have to do this,’ I said, embarrassed by all the personal attention.

‘You will feel better for it.’

He took great care when it came to dragging a razor across my face. After he finished, he brought over the shower hose and rinsed off all the foam and the shampoo from my hair. Then he filled the sink with hot water, submerged a cloth in it, retrieved it, and without squeezing out its excess water, placed it over my face.

‘Now you will lie here, please, for a quarter of an hour,’ Adnan said.

He left the bathroom. I opened my eyes and saw nothing but the textured white of the cloth. I closed them and tried to empty my head; to concentrate on nothing. I failed. But the bath water was balming, and it was good to be clean again. I heard occasional noises from the other room, but Adnan left me be for a long time. Then there was a soft knock at the bathroom door.

‘Ready to get out?’ he asked.

Once again, he had to help me up and wrapped me in one of the thin hotel bath towels before handing me