THE TEAPOT MOVED
Written today and first published here
The stranger wondered if the rest of the hotel's users thought he was a stranger. The rooms were of a style suitable to the passing trade so in fact all the guests should have been strangers. This particular stranger was no different. One never considers oneself to be a stranger. All the others were strangers, surely. The others were real strangers inasmuch as they were not only strangers to each other but, strangely, to themselves.
The stranger was without a name, although he could remember signing the guest register at the reception desk earlier in the day. Now being nameless was not a good sign. Perhaps he was a stranger, after all. Just like the rest of them: sitting solitary in his bedroom: dependant on room service and the entertainment from the TV and the use of en suite facilities and the trouser press.
He hadn't taken advantage of room service as yet but he continued to inspect the tray of free goodies always left by good hotels for weary strangers with which to refresh themselves. A few individualised bags of infusable tea or coffee. Scattered tabs of milk or sugar. Wrapped gingernut biscuits. Strangely, for such a set of freebies, a bone china teapot was set upon the tray: to be used for steeping rather than just a teacup directly open-mouthed for a tea-bag's dunking. An electric kettle was already full of water. He wondered how long it had been stagnating there. He could see the only source for water was from the sink's cold tap in the bathroom. Strangely, despite travelling all day with few comfort-stops, he had not yet been forced to use the bathroom's facilities. He shouldn't have been surprised. Only true strangers would be unaccustomed to the relative strength of their own bladders.
The red glow of an advertising sign just outside his room's window was relentlessly pulsing. Strangely, the window possessed usable shutters rather than curtains. Strange for England. He stood up and stared down at the city's main-street. Despite it being the rush hour, there was very little traffic along it. Only an odd taxi turned up outside the hotel with guests: more strangers, no doubt. He shrugged. He was determined not to slip into being a stranger himself. It would be all too easy to become someone else's stranger, a person who simply shuffled about a hotel bedroom at a loose end, listening for others behaving similarly, given the sufficient thinness of the walls between them.
He returned his attention to the tray of freebies. He had already given a cursory glance at the room service menu, but he was always reluctant to use it. It always made him feel self-conscious and slightly awkward. He never knew what to do with the dirty plates after he had eaten. Whether to give a tip or not. Despite having plenty of money, he always resented paying through the nose simply for a waiter to bring the food to his room. 'Never', 'always': he couldn't possibly be a stranger to be able to use such words about his general behaviour and feelings. That rather satisfied him. Maybe he would venture downstairs later to see if he could find the hotel's dining-room. There was no reason, of course, why he would not be able to find it. But there was always a doubt.
He then heard the stranger next door shuffling about. Having been sitting on the bed, the stranger next door was probably visiting the en suite bathroom. The TV next door could not be heard through the wall, so it was probably still switched off. Possibly for fear of accidentally igniting the Porn channel rather than the News one. The former made him feel dirty.
'Dirty' reminded him. He needed freshening up in the bathroom. He hoped it would also be full of freebies. But nothing was really free, was it? Room rates always included overheads.
When he returned, the trayful of freebies was glowing more readily in the onset of dusk from outside while the advertising pulse continued but at a slower shutter speed. He suddenly saw that the teapot had been moved. Never had the stranger been so frightened before.