Our room is pink. Management might argue salmon. The ceiling is cushioned, and features a scalloped pattern that brings to mind cafeteria napkins or plush paper towels. Over the bed there is a cluster of cuts in the ceiling, jagged little stabs of brown around the bright twist of a halogen bulb that is hanging from a couple frayed wires. Some of the cuts are ringed with a faint stain, which is probably just water but looks for all the world like that yellowy antiseptic goo that nurses used to apply to playground scrapes before adding a bandaid. Wounds, basically. I'm guessing knife marks, though neither of us can quite figure how the game was played. Did someone just lie on the bed and throw a knife at the ceiling? Did that actually happen?

Flanking the window are a pair of vine & leaf patterns, stenciled in a fairly terrible brown. Grayish yellowish greenish brown. It's especially bad against the pink. The wall is a nubbily plaster texture and where the nubbles stick out the brown tends to clot and smear ominously. Above the windows a couple drapes - both neatly cinched with twine - are held up with a metal curtain rod that appears to be connected to its wall mounts with two golfball size wads of scotch tape. Rather, the rod tips are attached with tape, but not very well. Lauryl had just come in from the shower a couple days ago when the tape gave, dropping the whole rod/curtain/tip assembly on the the dresser with a crash. The left tip now stays on the bureau. The right one dangles from its tape like a threat.

In the corner of our room is a little brown table that matches the little brown tables out in the common area. It's more of a desk really, and I had even considered using it as such when we arrived, but clothing piled and towels were draped and the bed is significantly comfier. Instead, I've adopted one of the velvety couches out by the TV as this week's office space. This works except for the mornings, when the woman who guards the hostel at night (and who may or may not be one of the owners) is watching her shows. She's usually there in there before 8, working on her laptop near the window and half watching CSI or Miami Vice with the subtitles on. As far as I know she doesn't speak english, but is the only one around here who watches english-language TV.

Earlier today, the grandfatherly Texan finally engaged me on the subject of the impending economic apocolypse. I had been waiting for this, having listened to him introduce a similar sort of discussion a few days ago with the buck toothed English/Canadian woman. I overheard the words "total chaos, panic in the streets" and decided to stay out of it. He's as tidy a dresser and as they come, and we noticed during dinner this evening that you can generally judge what 1/4 of the day it is by what he's wearing. In the morning it's a shaggy blue robe - vivid, like the blue of Grover's pelt - with dark leather slippers. He gets up early and makes himself a breakfast of sliced fruit. Never rushed, hair perfectly combed. (One can easily imagine his slippers having a specific spot near the bedstand.) By 10:30 he's fully awake and disappears to change again, this time emerging in pressed slacks and a polo shirt. He's got that on for the rest of the morning and during days like today is inside as much as I am, spending most of his time on the iPad, which he separates from his lap with two couch cushions. The cushions he takes to bed. I'm not sure exactly what time the track suit comes on, but at some point he dons a navy blue track suit - complete with white shoes to match the suit's white piping - and goes out for his walk. To be honest I've never seen him return from these walks, but by the time dinner is being prepared he has changed again, this time in to a different pair of slacks, evening shoes, and a mustard colored cardigan.

The little market down on the corner is open until all hours. We used to check - you can see light from their shop spilling in to the street if you lean out the front window far enough - but now just know. Knowing things like that feels good when you're traveling. Around dinner we'll head downstairs, say hello to the thuggish little terrier that guards the bar next door, and wander in to peruse the day's selection. The store itself couldn't be more than 10' x 30', and what with the sheer density of produce has the feel of a well stocked fallout shelter. An onion, garlic, three eggs, a tomato, six potatoes, an avocado and a half liter of Pilsner™ costs $2.20, paid to the two women in the back watching soaps. Then it's back again to dice it all up, add heat, spice and sit down to one of those little brown tables for dinner.

Comments

Su Padre
In his irresponsible youth, which included riding the rods out to Los Angeles c 1927 after decking some palooka on a streetcar in Woonsocket, sleeping in hobo camps and working in lumber camps in Oregon, passing a night in jail for vagrancy somewhere out West and singing and acting in various variety shows and amateur theatrical productions, your estimable grandfather, Edmond Martin Laffan, spent a few days with a couple of bank robbers who were on the lam. They were holed up in a rooming house, which in the era before hostels, was just the sort of place people on the run from authority of any sort would repair to in order to plot their next move. These were desperate, twitchy guys with pistols in their belts and a shotgun leaned against the wall. They were also ridiculously crude, had acne and spent their days either stationed at the window, drawing back the curtain from time to time to see if G-Men with tommy guns were crouching behind cars on the street below or eating canned beans and farting. They had a competitive game--I"m getting to the point of this story--which involved lying on the rooming house bed and hawking and spitting gobs of phlegm up at the ceiling. Most projectiles never made it that far. But when one did, it was a cause for celebration and another point scored. Your reference to yellowy antiseptic goo brought back wonderful memories of childhood listening to your grandfather speak about his shady past. I presume his pals were ultimately rounded up or shot up, like Bonnie and Clyde. Maybe they just moved on to the next rooming house. But maybe, just maybe, they eluded capture and made it all the way down to South America like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. In which case, raise your eyes with reverence, my son; you may be looking at a little bit of history. At least the location--down a long dirt road in some remote town-- makes sense. After all, the only plausible explanation for your Texan with the impeccable grooming and well-pressed wardrobe is that he's a hit man for the cartels, taking a little R&R between jobs.