118: Thirteen

Bed Thirteen, a void yawning for a brace of sunsets, formed a sanctuary from the discordant symphony of my somnolent bunkmates. I tipped an imaginary hat to the undisturbed haven as I ventured forth to break my fast. Armed with a strategy to conquer the buffet, I staked my claim to a secluded corner, gazing upon the empty faced grazers sleepwalking with heavy sighs into the ever same. By the twelfth hour and twentieth minute, I'd traversed an octet of courses and sauntered to my refuge, anticipating a languorous interlude until motivation came knocking. Yet, an olfactory affront greeted me before the door yielded. A sodden man of ambiguous stature, shivering in water’s cold embrace, clothed in a mere wisp of fabric, was assaulting the senses of the Japanese denizen of bed 14 with a miasma of Hugo Boss vapors. "Very good," he declared, a patchwork of bog paper adorning his freshly shorn visage. Bed 14 choked out an appreciative “arrigato”. The newcomer flexed a sinewy hand. He was toned in an unpretentious way but composed like a cartoon tough guy held together by elastic bands that held him poised always on the brink of an erratic dance. "Stavra of Perecistan, now resident of Bed 13," he declared. "Mike, England," I retorted, feeling the phantom blow. "England me like very good,” he responded, and continued with a litany of anglicisms: "Sherlock Holmes, IKEA, Lock Stock with Smokey Barrels - very good movie, Andrai Lloyd Webber, apples and pears, Silly Billy - very good book, spicy girls, nik naks, I want it that way, Charlotta Church, Westminster abbey...) “Sorry, Book? What book?" I interrupted. "Ah yes, Silly Billy. Mickile Brahman, died very young, very traffic." Ever been subsumed by reality's cruel jest? Swallowed by the merciless vortex of existence's mockery? Engulfed in a cosmic joke wherein you, the universe, and all within were the punchline? Such was my discomfiture. “Wait, what? How do you know that book? No one knows that book," I protested. "It sold like 5 copies and the rest were pulped." "No no, very famous in my country. Everyone read it. Mother. Sister. Even the dog read it. We know it from school then we know it for life. Very good to know English mind." The realization gnawed at my foundations, exposing a literary stain I thought long since expunged. When life has reached a certain pitch of disappointment, its reverberations can crack the very foundations. That book was the literary stain I thought long since expunged; that childish idyll that thought it knew a thing or two about the world; that slur that had slithered from a mocking tongue and beat a headless retreat. "Wait. Who do you know? Do you know Sasha?" I blurted, as if the sticky sludge of malice would act as a salve. "Sasha? Sasha Baron Doyle? Yes yes, Hands of the Basketfeel." "No no, Sasha, pigtails Sasha. With the teeth." "I know no Sasha with teeth......cheddar cheese, Marks and Sparks, lovely jubbly, Stoney Henge, Romulus and Juliette..." Stavra's anglophilic litany droned on as my world darkened. Hastily, I crammed my towel and socks, still damp, into my bag and fled. I bypassed the front desk, seeking refuge in a city hundreds of kilometers distant, knowing it would never be far enough.