My husband’s work has taken him to New Delhi, and I was joining him for a week of hotel adventures while he worked entirely too hard. I had arrived at the hotel Monday and by Friday was getting bored.
I woke up officially feeling lousy, and didn’t get out of bed (except to eat breakfast, I never miss meals) at 11:00. I tried half-heartedly to take a shower, but the shower/tub was very poorly designed, so I quit and just got dressed instead.
The shower is lousy for multiple reasons. First and foremost, the showerhead is attached to the ceiling rather than the wall. So if you don’t want to wash your hair, you are out of luck. I guess I could go find a shower cap, so it is really my own laziness, but it is still really annoying. Secondly, the dials for hot and cold can’t be reached unless you stick your hand right through the shower stream. So you can accidentally scald yourself by turning the water on wrong. Third, if you want to use that darn hose instead (like I did when I didn’t want to wash my hair), the holder for it is at knee level. So it a pain b/c you have to bend down when you want to have both hands free. Fourth, the darn knob for the hose is broken now. So you can’t use it, anyway. Hence my reluctance that morning. It isn’t as though anyone will smell me all day, anyway.
I sat and wrote for a bit; at noon I decided to go for a walk and see the cost of a facial. Maybe I could successfully miss the room servicing this time. Fourth try is a charm….
Eventually, she put a green mask on my face, and I had to wait for it to dry. As soon as she told it me it would be fifteen minutes I desperately needed to use the restroom. Fifteen long minutes. I had wet cotton over my eyes, and thick blankets around my body. The thin lavender skirt I was wearing as a strapless top, provided by the beauty parlor, scratched at my back. I thought about counting, but that seemed even worse then not knowing how much time was left. In the next room over men were listening to the TV. I think a politician was talking- he kept using very short, concise phrases. I kept listen for words I would recognize in Hindi, but I think it must have been a show in one of the numerous other Indian languages. They turned it off. How much time has passed now? I really, really have to go…. I turn my head and the cotton eyepiece falls away. I take them off, peek at the ceiling. I memorized its pattern, just like I have the ceiling tile pattern memorized at my dentist’s office. Once I even counted all of the black squiggle things at the dentist office. But I never could count them all before I left.
I thought about how awful it was for my very energetic cousin to sit on a long flight when he came to visit me in San Francisco. If he could manage those hours, I could manage 15 minutes before I could go to the bathroom. I shifted my feet up. I replaced the cotton things. I squirmed. I signed. My headache returned full force. I still had to go to the bathroom. I wondered if my husband would prefer these fifteen minutes of torture or his five-hour plus meetings. I wondered whether the lavender skirt was actually washed or not. At least I wasn’t thirsty, also. Oh, wait. Some water does sound good right now. I listened to the ventilation system. It reminded me of rain dripping from our walnut tree onto the car. Quick, heavy drips, splattered with a metallic clink. I tried to remember the woman’s name that gave me the facial. I tried to forget that I had to use the bathroom. Surely it has been fifteen minutes by now? In the middle of deciding what I would teach if I ever taught an oceanography course, she walked back in. Thank goodness! She wiped my face, and ordered me to get dressed.
In that complete awkwardness that is never acceptable in America, she stayed in the room to help me dress. I modestly turn around to take the courtesy skirt off of my top, and try to put my bra on, backwards like I always do by myself. “No, no, let me help” she insists. Oh, this is so weird. It is just like the massage. I just get scared away because it is different and the level of modesty is different and it is so awkward to have a random stranger volunteering to hook your bra for you. I threw my clothes back on as she commented on my weight (Who does that while you are standing half naked in front of them?) paid, and hightailed it out of there.
Fortunately, my room had indeed been cleaned while I was gone! I went to the bathroom to inspect my face. I wiped a bit of green from between my eyes. I stared at my pores. I looked the same, except that my eyes were bright red from irritation.
Sigh. I took a pair of ibuprofen for the headache and waited for my eyes to de-redden a bit before I could go downstairs to lunch. I sat around for another eight hours waiting for my husband to come home. I read a lot. I still hadn’t turned on the TV, save for that nap on day 2. I skyped with my sister for a couple of hours. I heard the awful news that Randy Savage had died in a car accident. I ordered a cheese plate from the kitchen, complained to the kitchen about the lack of crackers, and raided our mini-fridge again.
Eventually my husband came home, ordered some food, and he zonked out.
I couldn’t sleep. It sounded as though people were running on sheet metal. Or that there was a strong breeze and someone had left a thick wooden gate open; the repeated thwacking sound as it swung open and shut echoed in my ears for what felt like hours on end. Who on earth does construction at 1:00 am in the morning? Or, if it wasn’t construction work, what on earth was happening?
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