Carpe Noctem

It was some time after 2 AM and they lay stuck together in the hot space of the bottom bunk in a crowded room in a youth hostel in Amsterdam.

“I wish we had some privacy,” Jelena whispered. Ed, being always awake and committed to the sanctity of impulse and unrestricted desire, also inspired by a stiff prick, her warm breasts and the wetness of her mouth, suggested they go get a hotel room. Life is short, right?

“Don’t worry, I’ll pay,” he said. She didn’t need him to repeat it. They got up and quietly gathered their bags and packs in the middle of the dark, stale sweaty room with 14 people snoring and sleeping and dreaming a reality.

They tumbled down the stairs into the 24 hour bar and Jelena told the plump matron in French that they’d be back in a couple of days. Would she mind storing their bags? The old portly lady smiled over her coffee and paper and said OK. They put them behind the bar and back near the kitchen in a spare room.

“Au revoir, ma cherie.” The matron said, as they flew open the door into the cool, damp night air.

They caught a cab and Ed asked the cabby to drive into the city centre. They cruised the streets of Amsterdam passing figures clothed in shadows, beneath bumblebee lanterns, over vaulted bridges passing old churches and the occasional modern building. There were many people out strolling and rolling in the cold wet wee hours of a random weekday in April. Jelena leaned her head on Ed’s shoulder and he held her fair hair in his fingers, staring at the lights on the water, the lights on the street flashing by, intoxicated by the sweet spontaneity and exhilaration of acting according to the promptings of his own true heart.

On one narrow street, with tall gabled buildings side to side, Ed spied a hotel; there were no guidebooks or maps this trip. He asked the silent cabby to stop. Jelena paid him the fare and they gathered their gear and sauntered into the lobby. Ed was immediately shocked by the grand marble and well-lit cleanliness of the place. There was one there more shocked than he. A man with an alabaster face and teeth made of brass stood stiffly behind the marble countertop in a pressed grey suit. He saw them, held the pose, like an actor at the end of a performance, holding the moment, stretching it, looking down at the two voyageurs with insolent curiosity. They sauntered up and Ed leaned his old corduroy elbow on the marble and asked him the price of a room.

It was far higher than he was, willing to pay, but with a momentary reaffirmation of his reckless determination to live freely and spend carelessly, he began filling out the form. Half way down, pondering what address a man can put down when he has no permanent home, it occurred to him that he might be able to easily find a cheaper spot for them to get hot and have some fun. Jelena stood by him, a practical woman, observing all this silently, a tired little monster, with blond hair mussed and tangled, leather jacket crumpled, her hand on hip. She tossed him a look that said, “Let’s get outta here.”

Ed looks at the man with the countenance of stone. “Sir, this is a lovely hotel,” he said in a very affected British accent, “but I think we’ll try somewhere else. Sorry, cheers.” The man looked down over his long disdainful lip with his blank ball baring eyes as Ed and Jelena spun like in a waltz grabbing their gear and out the door. On the street, who is fortuitously leaning on the hood of a cab smoking a fag? The same cabby. He grinned, said nothing, their late-night chauffeur, and put the bags back into the boot. This time Ed politely asked him if he’s knows a more affordable spot.

“I think I know the place for you and your friend,” he said.

He takes them back across the main bridge to The Hotel Ibis, a tall high rise that was just a few blocks from the hostel. The price of the room was just barely half of the alabaster suite. Ed scribbles Perry’s Oxford address on the form, figuring that will do. They rode up the lift feeling that effortlessly smooth and serendipitous flow that happens sometimes when you are on the road. There is a splendid view from between the curtains of the old church and plaza, and the canal below rippled with golden ribbons of lantern light. Ed rolls an index finger sized spliff and watched Jelena as she gazed out at the scene. This girl from Bosnia, a student of philosophy, whom he knew back in Boston many years before, and only on two occasions, once at a restaurant and the next up on her rooftop in Jamaica Plain fucking beneath a harvest moon. But it was Now that meant everything to both of them. Ed slides up behind her, kisses her neck, inhaling the sweet scent of traveling, the blended aromas of trains, busses, roadsides, the scent of wet wool, tobacco, sweat, coffee, leather, hope, and adventure, the strong smell of long weary roads and magic meetings.

The sky is slightly brightening in the east. Ed closes the curtains, curls his arm around her waist and guides her to the king size bed.