Welcome To Wherever You Are (2 page)

Meanwhile outside, Eric and Nicole unstrapped their suitcases from the flatbed truck and faced the hostel’s mucky glass doors, propped open by two buckets of sand and littered with cigarettes butts from around the world. Eric removed his sunglasses and mumbled something to himself about jumping out of a frying pan and into the flaming bowels of hell.

‘If I’m going to have the American experience Mrs Baker wanted me to have, then I’d like to meet people in the same boat as us, not a bunch of cheerleaders on Spring Break,’ Nicole began snootily.

‘So you were serious when you said we were staying in a hostel and not a hotel, then? I hoped you were kidding.’

‘All the travel guides say it’s a rite of passage to stay in Venice,’ she replied defensively. ‘John Steinbeck, Jack Kerouac and Truman Capote were supposed to have spent nights under this roof back in its heyday.’

‘Oh, did they? And who are Steinbeck, Kerouac and Capote, just out of interest?’

‘Um,’ Nicole paused, and wracked her brain. ‘Blues singers?’

Eric shook his head at her ignorance and let out an exaggerated sigh.

‘Besides,’ Nicole continued, ‘the only difference between a hostel and a hotel is the letter “s”.’

‘Yeah, and in this case the “s” stands for “smells like a shit hole”.’

Nicole was aware she was fighting a losing battle. For the most part, Eric was her kindred spirit – he could make her laugh like nobody else and he’d been there for her in her darkest days when she’d needed him most. He’d given up his career to spend the last six weeks with her in America on the hunt for something that might not even exist, so she was willing to forgive his occasional moodiness.

‘Are you looking for a room?’ smiled Tommy, ignoring Eric’s presence and focusing entirely on Nicole. He was instantly attracted to her warm smile, her fresh face and her casual attire of cut-off shorts and white vest. Such attention didn’t go unnoticed by Eric. She, meanwhile, was surprised by Tommy’s British accent considering his California tan and surfer-dude look, albeit a slightly skinny surfer dude.

‘I emailed a few days ago to book a private room for three nights,’ Nicole replied.

‘The Internet connection’s a bit iffy and nobody checks the emails,’ replied Tommy apologetically. ‘We don’t have any private rooms left, but we’ve got a couple of free beds in a dorm?’

‘We’re expected to share with other people?’ interrupted Eric.

‘That’s the hostelling experience,’ smiled Tommy.

‘No, that’s the homeless shelter experience.’

‘It’s $20 a night each, plus a $5 key deposit. You’ll be in room 14; your beds have clean sheets on them already, blankets are an extra $2 a night, as are towels. There’s food served every night in the kitchen, although the chef’s not Gordon Ramsay, so don’t go expecting much. Oh and there’s free beer on Wednesday and Saturday nights at the party in the lounge. I’m Tommy – if you need anything, just come and find me.’

Nicole and Tommy shared a smile and, as she paid him in cash, a cockroach scuttled across the counter.

‘Are those complimentary?’ asked Eric wryly.

‘Only if you buy them dinner first,’ replied Tommy.

While Nicole grinned at the lame joke, Eric frowned at Tommy and picked up the pair’s luggage and headed towards the staircase. A thin man in baggy clothes and a patchy beard attempted to slip in behind them, unnoticed.

‘Oi, there’s no reason for you to be here, Wayne,’ said Tommy firmly, and shook his head as the man left without argument.

*

‘Don’t think I didn’t see you giving him a look,’ Eric began as he and Nicole made their way along the hostel corridor, examining their new surroundings.

‘What “look”?’ she replied in mock innocence, and willed herself not to break into a schoolgirl blush.

‘A look that’ll put you on the sex offenders’ register for ten years.’

‘He’s not that young.’

‘You’re thirty-two, sweetheart, he’s old enough to be your son.’

‘Yeah, if I had him when I was about twelve,’ sighed Nicole, stepping over a discarded trash bag. ‘Okay, so the rubbish doesn’t make it the Hilton.’

‘It does if you mean Perez Hilton. Why don’t we just find a couple of cardboard boxes and sleep under a bridge tonight?’

‘Anyway,
Grazia
says it’s flattering to be thought of as a cougar by a younger man.’

‘A cougar? You’re more like one of those mangy old alley cats on their last legs and with no teeth and half an ear missing,’ Eric offered with a cheeky grin.

Nicole’s lips moved, ready to respond, when the door to their room burst open and four young women in swimsuits ran past them, carrying beach towels and chatting in a language neither she nor Eric understood.

‘Of course hostelling isn’t
all
bad,’ conceded Eric, turning his head to watch as they disappeared down the corridor.

The cardboard sign manager Ron had stuck above the six-feet by three-feet cubbyhole with the words ‘Internet Suite & Café’ was wishful thinking, Tommy decided.

One desk with two green back-to-back iMac G3s and an ancient modem that required six minutes before a connection was made did not constitute a suite. Likewise, a vending machine that reluctantly dispensed lukewarm coffee all year round failed to make it a café. But with a poor cell phone reception in the hostel, it was the quickest and cheapest way to surf the Web and catch up on emails.

Tommy inserted his quarter into the vending machine, pressed number nine, counted five seconds like always and kicked the base, before it angrily spat brown powder and water into a plastic cup.

He sat down, logged into his iCloud account and scanned his messages. The only new ones his  contained were those offering Nectar points, his online credit card bill – which he deleted without opening – and a weekly mail-out from online clothing retailer Mr Porter.

Tommy scanned his Facebook timeline updates and clicked on an image in his Friends section so a profile slowly loaded. He checked when it had last been updated; some nine weeks earlier when they were still together. Irked, he addressed a new email to
[email protected]
and put three question marks in the subject line. ‘
Where the hell are you?
’ he wrote and then jabbed the send button.

As he leant back in his chair, his wallet fell from the pocket of his shorts. The corner of a small photograph poked out. Tommy picked it up, opened it and stared at a picture of his parents.

TWO YEARS EARLIER – NORTHAMPTON, ENGLAND

From his seat at the kitchen table, Tommy watched his mother through the window, standing alone on the decking in the rear garden.

She stared blankly across the lawn, through the wire fencing and into the recently ploughed wheat fields; her body only moving to take long drags from a menthol cigarette.

Tommy had observed her rapid decline from a vibrant, enthusiastic mother-of-three to an empty shell in the space of hours. He recalled how, when he was a child, he had nagged her to quit her ‘stinky sticks’ as he loathed the smell, and for well over a decade, she’d gone without. But since
that
day
,
everything changed and she had travelled from nought to sixty a day in a less than a week.

She remained with her back to the house Tommy had grown up in; a place he now avoided when possible. What was once a home crammed with spirit and comfort was now just a shell inhabited by three vacant bodies.

Tommy turned his eyes towards the goldfish swimming in circles around the glass bowl on the worktop. The bowl contained no ornamental garnishes, only sandy coloured pebbles where one lonely fish swam day in day out, round and round, going nowhere. The symbolism wasn’t lost on Tommy.

Suddenly the door to the hallway opened and his father entered. Once a tall, imposing figure, he too had noticeably withered, Tommy thought. Then, on spotting Tommy, he stopped in his tracks. Father and son made eye contact, neither saying a word, before he turned to leave.

‘Dad, please,’ began Tommy, and he rose from the table and grabbed the crutches propped up against it. His father paused, but without looking back, exited the kitchen and quietly closed the door.

‘It wasn’t my fault,’ Tommy called out, as the fish swam another aimless lap.

TODAY

‘Pretty comfy,’ nodded Nicole as she tested the bottom mattress of a dormitory bunk bed nearest the window.

‘Probably because it has extra layers of skin shed by the last hundred people to have slept on it,’ replied Eric, choosing the one above her.

‘For God’s sake, Eric, you’ve spent all day bitching and moaning. Believe me, I’m as frustrated as you are that we haven’t found anything yet but at least I’m trying to make the best of it. Please, can you just stop complaining for five minutes and meet me halfway?’

Eric dropped from the bed to the floor below and looked at his friend sheepishly. ‘Sorry, Nic, I’m just tired, hot and bothered. And this place isn’t exactly what I was expecting.’

‘I know. I think the pictures they used online were taken a few years ago, but we’re here now, so let’s have a look around, take some time out to rethink and make the best of it before we continue, shall we?’

Eric nodded as Nicole looked around the room. Each dormitory had four curtainless double-length windows, and with no air conditioning, they were the only way to let out the stuffy air of eight bunk beds and sixteen sweaty bodies. Above them, damp clothes were pegged to washing lines running the length of the room, and in the corner was a shared bathroom next to a small area housing grey lockers.

But while the rooms were shabby, Nicole liked that the walls were plastered with photographs of past guests framing a map of the world. Coloured cotton threads linked faces to countries and, despite Eric’s vocal reservations, there was an aura about the hostel that Nicole admired.

Suddenly, she noticed a woman sitting with her legs outstretched appearing to place newspaper cuttings into a book. Her skin was pale, her frame dumpy and Nicole noted that despite the heat, she wore jogging bottoms and a long-sleeved T-shirt. Nicole smiled at her and the woman smiled shyly back.

‘Shall we see if our stowaway has made it intact?’ asked Eric, pointing to a cardboard box in the centre of Nicole’s suitcase.

But before Nicole could reply, there came a thumping sound followed by the sudden appearance of a pair of skinny legs appearing through a ceiling tile. It was quickly followed by a man falling to the floor in a heap of tangled limbs and dust. An astonished Nicole and Eric hurried towards him, urging him not to move, then to wriggle his hands and feet one at a time. Small fragments of plasterboard were caught in his wiry, Afro-style hair, and under the dust, his face was tanned and freckled. A roll-up cigarette remained between his lips despite his plunge.

‘I’m fine guys, I’m fine,’ Peyk reassured them in his Anglo-Dutch accent, and smiled as the door burst open and Tommy appeared.

‘What the . . .’ he began, his eyes darting around the room between Peyk and the hole in the ceiling the hostel’s handyman had created.

‘It’s all good, Tommy-boy, it’s all good,’ smiled Peyk, before picking up an electrical cable from the floor and leaving. Nicole and Eric looked at each other and then Tommy, awaiting an explanation.

‘Probably best not to ask,’ said Tommy, knowing that like God, Peyk moved in mysterious ways. ‘I was coming to find you guys anyway – I was heading out for my break and wondered if you wanted a quick tour of Venice?’

‘We’ve got some unpacking to do,’ Eric replied dismissively, and went back towards his bunk.

‘Well, do you mind if I go?’ asked Nicole.

‘Do what you like,’ said Eric, his attitude resembling that of a sulky teenager.

He glanced over his shoulder as Nicole and Tommy made their way out of the door and vowed to nip their burgeoning friendship in the bud. There was too much at stake for him to stand idly by.

‘Your boyfriend doesn’t like slumming it, does he?’ began Tommy as he walked through the hostel and towards the reception with Nicole.

‘Oh, Eric’s not my boyfriend,’ she replied, ‘We’re friends, that’s all, and ignore him when he moans because if he’s not complaining about something, he’s not being Eric. Once he gets used to the place, he’ll be fine.’

As they made their way out of the building, Tommy smiled when he spotted Savannah coming towards them, slurping a thick milkshake through a straw. She pushed her black Jackie O-style glasses up into her platinum blonde bob and grinned.

‘Hey you,’ began Tommy.

‘Hi, honey, where are you guys off to?’

‘Nicole’s just checked in so I’m showing her the local sights and sounds.’

‘And you’ve pounced on her already?’ teased Savannah. ‘You could at least give the girl time to unpack.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ joked Nicole while Tommy’s face reddened.