A Small World of You and I

If walls could talk, I’d have told them they were never alone. It’s grown increasingly clear that they’ve made this meeting a habit and it’s with regret that I must make my confession; I've watched every moment of their romance with undivided attention.

The young couple meets in the hotel every week without fail. They come separately, at different times, but always to the same room. Sometimes they eat and sometimes they talk, but on every occasion, they find themselves tangled together in one elaborate manner or another.

I have, of course, witnessed many young couples act in a similar fashion; using this hotel room as a meeting place for dalliances deemed improper in respectable society. Our proximity to the innumerable West End restaurants, theatres, and shops has made the little room I encompass one of the most renowned secrets Piccadilly Circus has to offer; particularly for those who thrive in the night. Yet, none have interested me quite like this pair.

Perhaps it is because they seem to share a genuine connection, unlike so many of the others. Or perhaps it is just because they come so often, and I grow bored of the mundane.

This is not the sort of establishment civilised society frequents. Rooms are for rent by the hour, and you’d be shocked at how quickly one grows bored of seeing the same prostitutes turn tricks for the regular men in polished suits. Dirty deals grow predictable and the unwavering knowledge that humans will continue to say one thing and act the scandal regardless grows to depress me. In fact, the only scandal I can imagine for humanity at this point is having none to gossip about at all.

But—these two. This young couple enthrals me, in some way. Take the last time they were here, for example:

“Maria,” the one who I have learnt to be Peggy whispered. They were wrapped together on the floor at the foot of the bed, and even from my unending vantage, it was difficult to see where one girl stopped and the other began.

Peg’s short red hair had curled up on one side as she rested it against Maria’s chest. I’d noticed some ten minutes before that their breathing had synchronised at some point in the aftermath, and I’d been so mesmerised by the sight of two organisms becoming one that it took me a moment to realise I longed for lungs, myself.

“Hmm?” Maria answered, and the hand which had been carelessly stroking her lover’s hair paused.

“Maria, I don’t want to leave this room.”

Maria sighed, her dark eyebrows contorting together until they almost appeared to kiss the centre of her forehead. So many fine lines for one so young, I thought. Her tanned skin and luscious hair seemed to dim as she exhaled and clutched Peg’s head closer.

Finally, she nodded. “I know,” she replied. “But you know as well as I that we must.”

Peg shivered but nodded all the same, though her throat seemed to constrict as she spoke her next words carefully. “I feel bad for John sometimes, you know?”

Maria frowned. “But, I thought—”

“Yes, I know that he’s not what I want. And, though he often finds himself in the company of that Sheila girl from the theatre, he is good to me, Ri.”

There was a pause, and I wondered to myself how it must feel to love another who could be but conditionally yours. Maria seemed to struggle to find the right words, and as my gaze flickered between them and everywhere all at once, I grew sure that the beginning of something was unfurling before me.

“I truly hate this, you know?” Maria muttered. “I hate being jealous of a man who can offer you nothing but his sex. I hate knowing that this can never exist outside these four walls.”

“I know how you feel, Ri. I can’t remember the last time I caught sight of a shooting star and wished for anything but to be by your side wherever I may be. I long for you always, and this twisted world has told me I am wrong too many times for me to feel my humanity.” Peg sighs. “Do you ever wonder if we are wrong?”

Wrong? I admit I had never considered that any person could be fundamentally so in their being before that instance.

“Wrong?” Maria had asked. “How could we be wrong in this? Yes, I want you but I also treasure you. How could I be wrong for that when another would be deemed right? When John is and always will be what is right? How am I so different from him, anyhow? Why should this room be our entire world?”

I thought, then, that I had never had any choice but to be on their side. In a world of hatred and vanity, I have been abused as a rest stop for complex choices and regret. It’s rare that I am afforded the chance to feel like a safe haven, and perhaps I also fell in love with the notion of being meaningful for just a little while.

At her musings, Peggy laughed; full-bellied and in earnest. “I’m sorry,” she had chuckled after calming a little, “I just got this strange image-comparison of the pair of you in my mind and was floored by your differences.”

Maria snorted once, shaking her head in dismissal but then began to truly laugh. And, I, who had never even seen John before, determined that I wanted to laugh at the mere picture they had painted. With no physical features of my own, it can be difficult to untangle the puzzle which is the human’s guide to who’s beautiful and who is not. From what I can tell, they all have heads and limbs of various descriptions, which carry them from place to place. However, it’s become highly apparent that there are subsections within these groups that determine some level of self-appointed worth. Ludicrous, if you ask me—but I can fathom that Maria looks more like the sort of person typically found on posters and film.

“You’re ridiculous,” she laughed and shoved Peg’s head, which was resting on her shoulder, with a knock of the arm.

Peg giggled and wriggled to settle back into her spot, but a flick of her eyes to the ticking clock on my surface fractured the smile on her face. “I really do hate this,” she sighed again.

Maria twisted her neck and I watched the same deflation melt through her body. She relaxed once more, then asked; “What do you hate more, being hated by men or being adored by them?”

Peggy snorted. “Adored. Their love comes with violence more often than roses.”

Maria grinned and nodded, wrapping her arms around Peg’s small frame as she shuffled her in closer and kissed the top of her head. “A bouquet of knives?”

“Precisely,” Peg had laughed and I had to agree even more firmly with their decision to choose one another if their representation of the opposite sex was truthful. For my part, I have seen neither weapon nor flower pass through the halls of this particular hotel—though the police did roughly drag that one gentleman away last week…

“Perhaps it is better that we are hidden away, then.”

All at once, the small smile which had been resting on Peg’s face began to wilt. “What if I’m beginning to fear I cannot stand to hide any longer?”

Maria frowned. “I’m not sure I understand; what do you mean?”

“I mean—” Peg sighed. “I’m just not sure if I can keep doing this. The longer we remain each other’s secrets the more that this begins to feel illicit. Like, we’re confirming everything they whisper about people like us, you know?”

A pause. “Peg, I know what you’re feeling but it’s not like we have many other choices. You know that there are so few places where we can be seen as who we really are, and you told me you didn’t want to be seen with me at any of the parties and clubs that I told you about.”

Peg’s head was already shaking when Maria drew to a close. “Not that—it’s not…” She huffed and her voice grew thicker as she continued to speak. “I just can’t do this anymore. Every day, it grows harder. When I go out to tea with Cathy and I hear about her perfect life with her perfect husband and her perfect children, it’s like being I’m stabbed in the chest.”

Maria was silent for a long moment, and that was the first time I hadn’t resented being incapable of speaking my own thoughts. There were no words to fully encompass the magnitude of all I felt at the revelations Peg had thrust upon me; how complicated it is to be human and feel everything at once.

“So what’s worse,” she finally said. “Having to love me in confinement, or the fact that you love me at all?”

Peggy had squeezed her eyes shut, and there was something strange about the notable distance between two people who were so physically entwined with each other as she slowly shook her head again.

“I don’t know,” she whispered, “sometimes I feel that it is both that pains me. On my most selfish days, I confess I’ve wished I’d never loved you. But, I do—love you, that is.”

“You do?” Maria had asked, voice uncharacteristically soft.

“I do, Ri. You know I do. I love you because I couldn’t help it and because I choose to continue loving you on even the worst days. I hate the confinement of this room but I adore being free of it all, even for just a couple of hours.”

I think something solidified in Maria’s person, then. She nodded once. “I understand, Peg, I want to be free, too.”

Peg’s brows furrowed and out the side of her eye, she shot a furtive glance toward the beam which ran through the portions of the room. “What would you hate more,” she began, “to live without me in the world outside or stay within this room and just shut it all out?”

A stillness came over Maria, and there were a few beats of silence where it seemed neither of them breathed.

“I’d choose you,” Maria replied after a few moments. “I’d always choose you.”

“Maria, I…” Peg sat up a little and looked Maria in the eye. “What if we just…escaped.”

“Peggy, what are you suggesting?” Maria asked with an edge in her tone which hadn’t been there before.

“We meet here tomorrow night with some supplies and we just go.”

Maria squints. “Go?” She questioned. “Go where?”

“I don’t know,” Peggy waved her hand, “go anywhere! Just disappear and live somewhere remote—just the two of us! We can do it, Ri, I know we can!”

I watched them with the same morbid fascination that one might offer a relatively uncomfortable first date. Maria began to slowly nod her head. As her eyes began to light with the promise of a better future away from my room, and they made their plans to travel to Spain, I worried that mine was the sort of room which could only harvest the darkest feelings and experiences that humans had to offer. Without them, I’d be doomed to a predictable future of human struggle.

Is this the trouble with love? It hurts too much when it ends?

“But what about John?” Maria had asked.

“If we do this right, we’ll be as good as dead to this world by the time we’re out of the country, and ghosts can neither betray nor be betrayed.”

Maria nodded, and I understood then that this room would bear the memory of their ghosts long after they left.

They moved in a flurry and spoke logistics I did not understand, intending to meet in my room one last time before they left the world they know behind in favour of an imaginary one in which they might be free.

If walls could talk, I’d have told them their plan was the sort of recklessness that only love could conjure. I’d have told them that I wish I could follow.

I would have never thought to warn her that sometimes love isn’t enough.

They left yesterday in a flurry of promises and faith in the other to have cut ties with all they know and warn those who would miss them that they do not desire to be found.

They planned to meet at 7 pm.

I do not have ears but I wish I could cover them as the sounds of Maria’s muffled sobs pierce the silence of the room.

She’s folded in on herself at the edge of the bed, arms wrapped around legs as chin balances on knees, body as small as a child's. I’m helpless to watch as her eyes continue to stare into the vast nothingness that surrounds the darkened hotel door and with every breath she takes, I, too, am willing it to swing open.

Her eyes flicker to the clock. 8:56 pm.

Another cry wracks her body and I’m alarmed at the redness I see in the blotches on her face. Her fingers move like claws to tear through her hair and drag through the dampened tresses.

Over the past two hours, I’ve watched her despair and rampage through the room with the hopelessness of one lost to the heartbreak of retained and futile hope. The nightstand lies on its side and feathers line the ground; down from the split pillows which now rest in tatters. The curtains half hang from the pole and the gradual flickering of the Circus spills through the exposed window, casting a senseless disarray of light and sound throughout the room which matches the mood within.

An entire world died here tonight.

As she stands and walks to the door, I wonder whether things might have been different if they hadn't had but a room to be themselves. If I could, I'd ask her if the pain of hiding, and lying, and denying that godly love between two individuals rivals that of the heartbreak which was forced into existence by factors that lay outside.

I'd ask if the room magnified their love by putting it beneath this dust-covered microscope. Made it into a story when it was really just a life.

As she leaves this small world once made beautiful by laughter, Maria pauses to wipe her eyes.

And, though a part of her seems sad to go, I know she'll find the freedom she seeks outside of these four walls.

If walls could talk, I'd ask her to make a better world.

//

"A Sense of Sex and the Night" - the History of Piccadilly Circus - Flashbak