"The Hotel" by Richard Garcia and Carol Potter

The Hotel

Walking from the parking lot to the rear door of the hotel, its neon sign blaring against the night, it is as if the sky has been peeled away, and we see the night for the empty, starless darkness that it really is. Standing in my room by the window on the sixth floor I look down and see a mermaid swimming in the pool below, back and forth through the blue water, her scales and fins gleaming gold and purple — she looks up and waves at me. I call my friend on the twelfth floor. There is a mermaid in the pool, is the message I leave. My friend is riding her bicycle through the hotel corridors. Later at dinner, I tell her about the mermaid. After all, this is Los Angeles. Marilyn Monroe lies in the mausoleum across the street, and Gilbert Roland, and Fatty Arbuckle, and Rin-Tin-Tin. And if the camera of our lives pulled back to an aerial view, we would see that we are surrounded by the real estate of cemeteries, outnumbered by the dead. But there is hope, and at dinner in the lobby I look just behind my friend and smile. I say, There are angels behind you. It is a choir in white robes, each singer sitting on a stair on the mezzanine, each holding a white rose and looking up and smiling at an invisible photographer on the balcony. Each singer is waving. The stairwells are waving. The mezzanine is waving. The convex mirrors at the end of each hallway that make what is far away seem closer and what is closer seem farther away look into each other’s reflections as if the hallways were lengthening. And who among us can say if the bicycle lying in the corridor on the twelfth floor in front of the elevator with its front wheel still turning, if the shimmering tops of the trees below the windows, if the choir in their white robes, if the white roses in the lobby, if the egrets lifting from the pool, if the mermaid, are waving farewell, or welcoming us back to the hotel. You turn and look behind you to see if I am joking, no, there are angels behind you on the stairs spiraling up through the mezzanine, and yes, there was a mermaid in the pool. 

Richard Garcia and carol potter

Richard Garcia is the author of the books The Other Odyssey (Dream Horse Press), The Chair (BOA Editions), and Porridge (Press 53). His poems appear in many journals, including The Georgia Review, Poetry, and Ploughshares. Carol Potter's recent book of poetry Some Slow Bees (Oberlin College Press, 2015) won the Field  Poetry Prize in 2014.

Headshot: Sarah Poe

Photo Credit: Staff