Objectionable Conduct

Kate dashes from a sketchy relationship and lands in the middle of another at the Hotel Wilhelm

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Objectionable Conduct

The Hotel Wilhelm. Actually, this is the Cefa Hostel in Dar Es Salaam, but I imagine the Wilhelm would look like this, if there was one.

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Reader discretion: Language; mature themes.

COLD HAS A SMELL—moss, dirt, piss, metal.

The hotel room had that smell, but it would do. Kate sucked deep the ripe air and let giddy freedom elbow aside her anger.

Cold as the room was, the solitude was exhilarating, so long as her bastard husband Cyrus didn’t show up.

She had spotted the hotel, thank Christ, a lone light with white pillars and archways down a dingy street. It spread wide its green-lined path, straddling the route a few blocks ahead.

Kate hurried toward it.

It blocked one of the five streets that led away from Five Corners intersection—a nucleus for human noise stoked by street vendors selling happiness in red plastic cups or, for a few dollars more, bliss in tiny envelopes.

On the fringes, diners, hucksters and drunk philosophers sat in street-side bars, judging college students in town to blow off Shakespeare and hydrological dynamics for a few days.

Kate’s husband, Cyrus, envisioned himself the grandest of all judges. Kate had been with him, what, three years? How had she done it? She questioned her self-esteem for sticking with him for so long.

At his best, Cyrus was a snob. When he climbed into the bottle, he twisted into something much, much worse.

He became a dude, an overaged frat-house bro, made all the worse, to Kate’s thinking, because Cyrus didn’t know enough to know what he didn’t know.

Miraculously ignorant, Cyrus clung to the pretence of his superiority and argued his four-pint dissertations to party goers wherever he found them. He had, don’t you know, three semesters of local college to show off.

Cyrus especially liked to single out young women, corner them like a terrier on a mouse. He pleasured himself on their discomfort, never physically, but feeding his self-worth and his pathetic rum and coke ambitions.

Kate cringed when Cyrus picked up the drink. She wanted to smack out every word from his whingeing mouth.

She’d agreed to this vacation hoping it would revive old emotions, help her love him again, or at least, help her find peace so she didn’t murder him.

It backfired. Three days into their romantic escape, the veneer fell away. Kate saw Cyrus a hundred times more repulsive than before and tonight the last veil had been torn from her eyes.

Cyrus invited two young women to share their outdoor table at one of the bars on the strip. The women accepted because open chairs were like gold.

Kate watched Cyrus, how he tail-hung them like fish on a scale to get their measure.

He leaned back, stroked his shabby beard and mansplained his belief that modern feminism was incompatible with today’s capitalistic society, in which competition and efficiency were king. Feminism be damned. Diversity be damned.

“What would the professors and speechifiers at your little university have to say about that?”

He leaned over and poked the woman sitting across from him in the left breast, challenging the college logo on her golf shirt.

Kate stormed out.

The last words she said to him were, “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

She blended into the street crowd and hurried toward Five Corners, less than a block up. He called after her, but she ignored the drunken hollering. She didn’t look back. He wouldn’t chase. He would never sink to her level.

When she reached Five Corners, she turned right, the quickest escape from Cyrus’s eyes. She had felt him watching her back as she left, but finally, she made the corner and vanished.

This street differed from the others. No wild college crowd, only a few drunks on curbs and benches. No streetlights.

Ahead, about three blocks, the once majestic, gleaming-white Hotel Wilhelm blocked the route, as though nobody had reason to go anyplace else.

The hotel squatted in a pool of green with gnarled trees and squawking parrots, a paradise existing long before the city grew around it, long before there was a Five Corners.

Its park and gardens were surrounded by a 10-foot-tall iron fence, with broad gates yawning wide and a cobblestone drive directing cars and pedestrians to the archway at the front doors.

The hotel had just two floors. The second floor was rimmed by an expansive balcony with a green-trimmed roof overhang and white and gold posts. It was cut in the German fashion of the First World War, hence the name. Wilhelm II lost the war and an empire, but not his hotel namesake.

It proved no tricky business to get a room at the Wilhelm, although Kate was less excited about her good fortune when she learned the place was more motel than hotel with all rooms leading directly outside.

She had hoped to hide out in a hotel with warm carpets and indoor hallways but she was short of choices. She could crash here or try her luck back on the street.

She paid for a second-floor room. Pricier, but she liked the added safety of being off the ground floor.

Out the office, up the stairs, turn right, follow the concrete balcony around the first curve to room number two-one-one.

She stepped in. It wasn’t bad. The room passed her assessment. The cold and the smells weren’t great, but it was fair enough for the price.

Her temper gradually eased although it simmered in the background. It would take very little to get Kate worked up again.

She knew Cyrus expected her to turn up at their Vrbo rental because that’s how Cyrus’s brain worked. One hundred percent, he’d finish his drink to give her enough time to come to her senses, then he’d swoop in to their vacation apartment, thinking to find her apologetic and waiting.

Fuck him, Kate thought. When she didn’t show by morning, then he’d sure miss her. Fuck him.

Maybe she’d disappear. Drop off the world. She could catch a bus to a new place where she could start a fresh vacation on her own and leave all Cyrus’s shit behind.

I ain’t never going back. Not ever.

He’d be in an especially pissy mood after her leaving, but that only stiffened her resolve. She would get herself gone at first light.

She snapped the sheets, checked for bedbugs and stains. All clear. She kicked underneath the bed and heard a satisfying thump, telling her the bed sat on a pedestal so nothing could hide underneath. The single closet was empty, and the two rugs, one on each side of the bed, were shaken and returned to the cold concrete floor. The inspection calmed her nerves and with that complete, she sat on the edge of the bed.

She lifted her chin and yelled. It felt good to let go, to cheer the snapping of the chains. She clamped a hand over her mouth.

Shit. Quiet, idiot. You’re in a hotel.

She giggled. She had done it. Broken free. No more Pseudo Cyrus, the piss-pants scholar holding her under. She’d stuck it out far too long with that cancerous worm.

She’d have to buy new clothes, makeup, almost everything she had brought with her on the trip was back in their rental apartment, but that didn’t matter. She had her credit cards and an urge to pile up debt for the cause.

She had carried a small backpack to the bar and it contained her wallet, passport, a small toiletry bag, even a change of shirt.

She nodded. Yeah, she ain’t going back to get her things. Cyrus can keep that old shit.

She took a shower and stood for several minutes under the stream, letting the water warm her. She felt better than she’d felt for weeks.

After, she dressed in the loose T-shirt from her pack and fell back onto the bed, eyes closed.

She sighed content, confidence flowed back into her and through her like blood. She cracked her eyes into narrow slits.

Nope, no regrets.

Suddenly, she leapt to her feet and screamed.

Shit. A face.

She’d seen a face looking down at her from a narrow window above the door.

She hadn’t noticed that window before. The glass was frosted, but it was open. It swung upward from the bottom.

Kate shrieked again and stamped on a nail file she’d left lying on the floor. It jabbed a small hole in her foot and started to bleed.

Her mouth slack, her scream silent this time, she stared at the thing in the window, a moon-round face with gleaming white teeth and a moustache.

The face vanished, fell out of sight. Kate heard a loud crash and yelp.

She rushed to the door, ready to fling it open and confront her peeper, but stopped, hand on doorknob. What of the danger?

Fuck. What should I do?

She hesitated to give the face time to run off.

After counting to 10, she flung open the door. Nothing. Nothing with a heartbeat. There was a ladder, splayed and broken where Kate assumed it had fallen when the man with the face tipped, crashed and scrambled away.

Kate checked around the corner, then over the edge of the balcony. She screamed at the back of a man in a grey shirt. Even in the dark, she noticed a limp, no doubt sustained in the fall.

He’s making for the fence beyond the garden, she thought.

“Stop him,” she yelled. “Somebody. Get that man and bring him to the hotel.”

Nobody heard, or if they did, they paid her no mind.

Kate pulled on her jeans and ran downstairs to the office. The man who had checked her in earlier was working the front desk.

“A man, a fucking pervert, was peeping into my room. He had a ladder and everything. Go get him. He’s outside right now, trying to get away. He’s across the garden at the side of the hotel.”

John, a 40-something -year-old in a bright blue dress shirt, high collar with tie and sharply creased black suit with pin-stripes, looked her over head to toe casually, shaking his head as though not wanting to be drawn in.

He had no time for this, he thought. He was off work in an hour and still had a lot of work to do before leaving.

“It was probably Antoine and it’s nothing to worry about,” he said. “He’s crazy. He’s nothing. He won’t hurt anything.”

John sighed. It was always the same. Antoine was caught peeping. Antoine was chased off. Antoine returned a few days later.

John had warned him, repeatedly, and he’d nod enthusiastically like he understood, but it didn’t stick.

Kate stared holes into John.

“You know who it is?”

“Yes,” John said. “It’s Antoine. He’s crazy but it is nothing to worry about. He’s intellectually challenged.”

Kate shook her head. “What the fuck?”

“He’s intellectually challenged,” said John. “It means he’s retarded.”

“I know what it means.” Kate was near to shouting. “What the fuck is he doing peeping into people’s rooms and how are you OK with this?”

“Oh, no, no. You misunderstand. I’m not OK with it. We chase Antoine away when we see him. He comes around now and then. But he doesn’t understand what he is doing. He is like a child.”

“I don’t care if he is like a child. He had a ladder and a whole pervert set-up to spy on me. Don’t pretend he doesn’t know what he is doing. He knows. He knows. I want you to call the police.”

John placed his palms flat on the counter. “No, I don’t think so. It’s not a problem. It’s Antoine and he is gone now.”

Kate blustered. “That solves nothing. I don’t feel safe knowing he’s lurking around doing God knows what. What do you suggest I do? Am I supposed to go back to my room and go to sleep and pretend nothing happened?”

John shrugged, nodded. “Well, yes. I’m sorry, but I don’t see what else I can do. Antoine wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

Kate wagged a finger in John’s face.“You know, that’s what George said about Lennie.”

John shrugged again. “I don’t know what that means.”

His calmness, his rejection of her emergency irked Kate as much as the incident itself.

“You need to call the police. Get them to arrest him. I bet you even know where he lives. Yes, you do, don’t you? You said he’s here all the time and you know exactly where to find him. Send the police to pick him up. Right now. Do it. Do it right fucking now, or I’m going down to the police station and I’ll report you, too.”

“Well,” John hummed. “It’s not so easy as you think. Antoine is well-liked around the neighbourhood. Everybody knows him and loves him. He is the neighbourhood good luck charm. He doesn’t do any harm.”

“But he does do harm,” Kate said. “He just peeped in my window and it scared the fuck out of me. It’s frightening and horrible.”

John persisted. “But there is nothing to be afraid of madam. He is harmless. He doesn’t know what he is doing.”

Kate persisted. “That man Antoine,” she pointed aimlessly around, “could be anywhere right now. You have no clue where he could be. And he harms every woman, every person he peeps at. I want it stopped. For good. I want you to phone the police right now or I will.”

John sighed, resigned. “What if I ask his mother to come in and talk to you? Would that help?”

“You know his mother?”

“Yes, she works at the hotel. She is going to relieve me and mind the night desk. I’ll phone and ask her to come in right away.”

Not 10 short minutes gone, a flustered woman wearing a beige kaftan, handbag tucked, puffed through the door and pulled up at the front desk. Behind her, the face from the window.

He was larger than Kate guessed, fatter, bulkier, not taller. And older. She had guessed him to be about 20, give or take. He was closer to 40.

“This is the woman?” She pointed at Kate.

John nodded. “It is so.”

The newcomer smiled and approached. “You look like a gracious lady. My son, he means no harm. He is challenged, you know? He doesn’t know what he does but he means no harm to you or anybody.”

“But he did harm me,” Kate said.

“How did he harm you? Where did he touch you?”

“He doesn’t have to touch to do harm. There are many different kinds of harm. Many different ways to hurt.”

“I see,” said Antoine’s mother. “Well, I will personally see to it. Antoine will be punished, you can be sure.” She dusted her hands as if the affair was settled.

Kate was unimpressed.

“What do you plan to do?”

“Ha,” Antoine’s mother scoffed. “You don’t believe I am serious. Well, let me tell you what I will do. I’ll shut him in his room, you know, so he will never be out of my sight. I’ll keep him home from school. I’ll take away his waffles at breakfast. Is this what you want?”

Kate bristled. “Why are you making me feel like the bad person? I’ve done nothing.”

Antoine’s mother sagged. “I’m sorry. I’ve had a long day already, you know, and I have a whole night ahead of me at work. Forgive me. “Please, listen to me now. Let me take Antoine home and that will be the end of it, yes? There will be no more, you know,” she waved her hands in emphasis. “No more of this running around the neighbourhood. But please, he doesn’t understand what he is doing, you know. He is just curious about other people. He doesn’t care that you are a woman, it is because you are an outsider.”

She moved closer and touched Kate on the arm.

“He is no danger. This is what I have been saying to you. He is no threat. He is like a child playing at silly games. Please, let me take him home and I will see that it never happens again.”

“It’s too late,” Kate said. She nodded over the woman’s shoulder, in the direction of the door as two police officers entered. “I phoned them while John was calling you.”

The police clicked cuffs around Antoine’s wrists and took statements from Kate, John and Antoine’s mother, who pleaded with them to let her boy go.

Through it, Antoine swayed front to back, but remained silent.

“We have to take him,” one officer said. “We will keep him over night so the lady knows he is not roaming around. We must keep the city safe for tourists. You can collect him in the morning.”

“In the morning? I can’t leave him in your jail until morning. Look, he is a child.” Antoine’s mother howled and pulled on the police officers’ jackets.

She gripped her hands in prayer and begged Kate to ask the police to let her boy go.

Kate shook her head. “It’s for the best. He has to learn.”

Antoine’s mother cried to the sky. “They will hurt him. You know the stories of what they do to little boys in jail.”

One officer shook his head. “We’ll make sure he has a cell to himself. He’ll be all right. There will be a fine to pay, though, to get him out. I figure 200,000 shillings will cover it.”

Antoine’s mother wailed. “That is an entire week’s pay. I can’t do it. I can’t afford it. Please, just let me take him home and I will handle everything.“

She turned to Kate. “I am very sorry madam. Antoine is very sorry. Please tell the officers you made a mistake. Please.”

Kate started for the door.

“I refuse to feel bad about this. I won’t feel safe if I know that man is walking around free.”

She let the door swing shut behind her, climbed the stairs to the balcony where she looked down over the side to the parking lot and saw police leading Antoine to their car.

She felt a twinge of guilt but pushed it down and turned to her room.

Below, a woman wailed.

The End