ICE
By Georgia Lee
Athens is 100
degrees in July and Greece is falling apart. It’s too soon after mother died
for me here, but there was no refund. I hide in my hotel room. From my balcony,
the Acropolis blazes, golden at night. I can’t go there.
Nothing
works - cell phones, e-mail, even the room phone is dead. I’m cut off.
But the thing I
miss most is ice. I ask for it in restaurants. Thick Greek eyebrows lift. Nostrils
flare in insult. They plop two, three cubes at most. They don’t last long.
At home, iced
water, tea, coke, anything, means ice and lots of it. We buy plastic bags and
smash them on the hot pavement into broken pieces. I hear the crackle of it. I
taste icy beer on a summer day.
Sunday morning, I
sleep late. I dream armies of strangers invade my childhood house, tearing down
a strong white façade that never existed.
I wake up. My upper body disconnects from the lower.
The center won’t hold the parts together. I stretch. It hurts. As the dream
fades, I wonder how I will get out of bed today. Oh yeah, I’m going on a tour
in this place I’ve never been before. The reception man gave me a brochure last
night. I love tours. We learn things from tour guides that we don’t have to
figure out by ourselves.
I can’t go out yet, not even to the free
breakfast on the 6th floor. I press the room service phone button,
where a little man carries a tray in a jaunty hat like the 1940s.
“Front desk? Room
service is busy. They will call you back.”
I turn toward the
window in bed. The sun burns my eyes.
The phone rings.
“Room Service. You dialed wrong number.”
“But I pushed the
button with the picture,” I say, like a child.
“That’s wrong. You
dial 6071 now.”
I don’t say the phone hardly works at all. Why
is the picture still there? Hotel phones once had dials, then buttons. One operator
took care of everything. What happened to her?
“Can I get a toasted cheese sandwich with
fries, two Diet Cokes and a bucket of ice?”
She repeats my
order, “A bucket of ice?”
“Yes, a bucket.”
I eat
on the balcony. The sun is fiery. The fries are cold. But! I fill a glass of
ice and watch Diet Coke fizz to the top.
I’m not sure they do this here, but afterward,
I put the tray outside the door. Housekeepers scurry around, speaking Greek. I
ask them to clean my room.
I walk downstairs
from the 2nd floor to the lobby. I walk head first into the jagged
edge of the steel door.
Alone on the stairs, I touch my forehead. It’s
hot and swelling. A dot of blood bubbles up. I’m dizzy, but I stand there and
start to cry. Nobody will see me.
Then the door
opens. It’s a housekeeper that I didn’t see in the hall. She is much younger
than I, with round tea-colored eyes.
“Miss, are you
hurt?”
“I’m okay,” But
I’m not. “My face. I ran into the door.”
“Come, come,” she
says, takes my arm and leads me to an open room that she’s cleaning. She finds
an clear acrylic chair, brings it to me.
“Sit,” she says. “Should
I call a doctor?”
“No, no, it’s not
that bad.” They have doctors here?
“I’ll call for
ice, for the swelling.” She picks up the phone, speaks in Greek.
From the minibar, she hands me a cold plastic water
bottle.
“Hold this to your
head.”
Then she opens another
water bottle.
“Now drink this
one,” she says. I don’t understand. “It’s clean and cold. ” I cry and hold the
cold bottle to my head. She cleans the room, asks how I am.
“I have a tour at
3.”
“I’ll call, take
care of that.”
A man appears at
the door with an ice bucket. The housekeeper wraps ice cubes in a paper towel
and presses it to my head, then hands it to me.
Soon, the ice
numbs the pain that is still underneath. It really works.
“I’m okay now,” I
say.
“Okay now?”
I put the paper
towel on the table by the bucket. “Can I take this ice back to my room? I really
like ice.”
“I’ll take it for
you,” she says.
I stand up and fall
into the arms of this stranger. She holds me.
“Thank you, so
much, for helping me.” I start to cry again.
“Please don’t cry,”
she says.
She walks with me
to the stairs.
“Try to feel good
the rest of the day,” she says. The door closes behind me and I walk downstairs
to the lobby.
“Tour is closed on
Sunday,” reception says.
“But the man last
night said daily.” I point to April through May, like he did.
“Closed Sunday.”
Maybe I need a
massage, facial, something.
“The spa?”
“Closed
Sunday.” I don’t say the book in the room said daily.
“The gym?”
“Closed. But we
can open for you.”
“The
gym then.”
“I’ll
get my colleague to escort you.”
The
colleague leads me to a dark glass elevator with tiny cold lights shining
through like stars through black holes. We don’t talk.
He
unlocks the gym and turns to leave.
“Lights?”
I say.
He
flips a switch and he’s gone.
I
pick up light weights. My routine comes back. I don’t have to figure it out or
ask for help.
Back
in my room, it’s like nobody was ever here. On the table is the bucket, half
full of ice, swimming in cold water. I dip my fingers in it fish out every cube
into a glass that I fill with the cold water. I don’t care if it’s clean.
I didn’t give her money. I didn’t
even think of it, though I had some. She didn’t wait around, like most do,
waiting for a tip for everything.
I take a shower and
wrap a white towel around me like a blanket. I lie down on the sheets and the
air conditioner cools my skin. I drink three glasses of iced water. I roll each
cube around in my mouth.
Outside the sun is
sinking. The Acropolis comes to life. I may never go there.
But I’m on a tour
of a place I’ve never been before.
No comments:
Post a Comment