UNPUBLISHED WORK

EXTRACT FROM 'THE NEW DAY'

Chapter 1

I’m at the end, at the terminus of my journey. I step out into a dusk hazing over the red lights and grimy neon of the streets surrounding King’s Cross station. Still drunk, and always fucked up, I’m riding the nausea merry-go-round, and the sick bucket of my mind is threatening to spill again at the slightest movement of my inebriate being. So I allow my course to be forcefully navigated by the push and shove of commuters leaving the station, and inadvertently end up by the taxi rank. A black cab stops for me, and the driver asks where I want to go. I don’t know, I tell him desolately.
The divine light of a lurid hotel sign, perceptible in the distance, brands my blankness necessarily, helping me along with this very trying conversation.
“Do you know of any cheap hotels around here?” I ask him.
“The back streets around here are full of them… Do you want a lift or not, love?” he asks, irritated.
“Yes, take me to a hotel.”

“Do any of these catch your fancy?” the taxi driver asks as he slows the black cab down through a street of rundown hotels. At the end of the street a metal coffin is being loaded into a coroner’s van parked outside a hotel.
“Stop outside that hotel right at the end of the street. They look like they have a vacancy.”
“Righto,”
He drops me off right outside the hotel. Like the intransigently funereal hotels lining the road, white paint holds together its crumbling Victorian façade. The grim, tattered canopy above the main entrance is emblazoned with the name of the establishment: THE NEW DAY HOTEL. I eye the five-storey hotel from top to bottom, savouring every inch going down. My optical descent stops dead at the pavement in front of the hotel, which, lightly-sheened with rain, reflects the hotel sign flashing ‘VACANCIES’ to any passing traveller. I walk over to the neon stigmata on the pavement, go down on my knees, and kiss the spot just like Pope John Paul II. I climb the hotel’s three entrance stairs and, pausing on step from the main entrance, I look up to survey the hotel again: verticals converge; coming back down, I jump abruptly at the leery face of an old man looking out of his hotel window.
“What are you doing?” the old man asks me.
“Checking the place out, seeing if it suits my purposes. Y’know, room to think, time to kill. Maybe get a decent night’s sleep for once.”
“Twelve by ten feet of anonymity is far too much room to think, my dear. I booked in here from that express same purpose – that’s why I’m still here seventeen years later.”
“Don’t worry, I don’t intend to stick around long.”
I enter the dimly lit hotel. The reception area is furnished with the usual desultory hotel paraphernalia – keys on walls; letters in pigeon holes; dog-eared flyers advertising restaurants, taxi firms, and language schools lie untouched in display boxes. A middle-aged dwarf lady is behind reception, sitting in an armchair, watching the news on a portable TV. I walk over to the desk. The woman catches a glance of me as she turns to pick up her coffee mug. She takes a sip of her coffee, slides off the armchair, and walks over to the desk. She steps onto a wooden block to bring herself up to a more convenient height.
“Yes, can I help you?” she asks perfunctorily.
“Yes, I’d like a room, please.”
“Single or double?”
“Erm, double, please.”
“How many nights?”
“I don’t know. What’s the date today?”
“It’s the last day of August.”
“Then book me in until the last day of September.”
“Okay, I’ll have your bill ready for you in the morning. I need a £100 deposit right now, though.”
I go through my messy wad of uncounted notes, peel off the necessary tender, and slide it over.
“What happened to the person who just checked out?” I ask her.
“Eh, that was Mr Dougan. He was a strange one. He had an unhealthy taste for water. It killed him in the end.”
“What – he drowned?”
“No, no. He used to drink gallons of the stuff. The doctor said it was probable he overdosed on water; his body couldn’t handle it and his brain burst as a result.”
“Shit… Anyway, I’d like a room on the top floor.”
“Sorry, but we don’t have any available at the moment,” she says, unknowingly sabotaging my suicide. Got some available on other floors, though.”
“Are you sure you don’t have one empty?” I ask, pleading almost.
“I can put you in a room one floor from the top. I’ll let you know if any on the top floor become available, okay?”
“Okay, thank you.”
“What is the purpose of your stay – business or pleasure?” she inquires dubiously.
The hotel proprietor’s cursory suspiciousness puts me on the obvious defensive. I can see she’s thinking: a girl on her own can only mean one of four things – she’s either a whore, a junkie, a lonely rich bitch, or a suicide, all of which are interchangeable.
“I’ve been travelling around a lot.” I explain in a pathetic and totally unconvincing jovial tone. “With the summer nearly over, I’m back home in London. So I’m booking into a hotel until I can find, erm, more permanent accommodation.” I smirk derisively at my private joke.
“Okay, sign in.” she slides the visitor book over to me with one hand, and hands me a pen with the other. Shit, my name, I forgot about little things like that. I sign in initially as SUE. E. ZIDE, but decide I need to be a little more subtle than that and scrub out the name ZIDE and replace it with the clumsy, unoriginal pseudonym of SMITH. Meanwhile, the hotel owner takes a numbered set of keys from the wall and hands them over to me with a receipt. “Room 34, fourth floor, second door on your right.”
I take the keys and receipt from her, pick up my bag from the floor, and walk over to the lift.
“Excuse me, Miss, er, Smith.” The hotel owner calls out after me. I stop and turn and face her. “Yes?” I reply.
“Why do you want a room on the top floor anyway?”
“Closer to God.” I inform her, pointing sky bound.
Inside the lift, I press the fourth floor button, and elevate myself to a higher ground.