"You don't look happy." Said my driver while he did his job on the long road which I had asked him to take. We were heading to the hotel where I should have gone and lodged respectfully, other than have myself properly mocked like I was in Julia's place.
She didn't want singletons like me. That was enough diss.
"You, too, you don't look happy." I retorted.
"Because I've been the one doing the driving to and fro to no useful location," he said, and for the first time in his life, his voice sounded like that of a man. Maybe his body was beginning to balance imbalanced hormones.
"So, you now sound like you are a man for real." I laughed. "Come on, you won't drive all your life."
He sighed like a woman and continued till I tapped at his headrest.
"That hotel," I ordered.
He stopped before the hotel like other chauffeurs do and honked at the guards to come do what they did best in front of hotel buildings. They came forth and first, they opened my door, and I stepped out of the car, but unlike the other day, I didn't head straight to the receptionist's stand.
"Hey," I said to my driver, "You can go home now, remember not to carry ladies around with my car."
He saluted me in the car, and I went off while the guards followed me with my luggage which was just one bag with a few clothes and a wristwatch.
"Good morning, ma'am." The receptionist greeted me on seeing me. She was wrong to use the word morning because it was already past twelve, but I had no business correcting her and making her feel less of herself.
"Rooms you haven't booked off?" I asked with a weak smile this time.
She raised a brow and smiled as though she won the lottery.
"Your favorite room is not booked." She handed me the card without waiting to hear me speak.
"I guess I should make a different choice today." I smiled.
"Oh, because you had visitors who came after you left." She whispered. "Don't you want them anymore, they look rough and ill-mannered, like the police secret intelligence."
I paused. It wasn't funny. Words had just slipped through the lips of gossip, and such words, I knew I shouldn't be taken lightly.
"It wasn't your room, ma'am." One of the guards said. He was the one with my bag. "It was the police and a few Interpol officers. They had the warrant to come pick an international criminal who was caught on camera entering this hotel."
I smiled. My mind had gone far and wide, but he just calmed me with his words. It was soothing enough, more than is required.
"I still want a different room." I faked a smile.
"Good." She searched for the rooms that were not booked yet. "Room 0034."
I submitted the first card she handed me, and she passed me the card to room 0034. I gave her a smile and a nod, and took off to the lift, followed by the guard with my bag.
"This is where your business with me ends." I took the bag from the guard and entered the lift alone. It was part of their duty to help lodgers take their luggage to their room, but not for people like me. I liked doing it myself, and I owed no one an apology for my choice. It was just my way of living.
The lift closed up and took me to the floor I pressed. I stepped into the walkway with doors at both sides, and the first thing that welcomed me was the loud moaning of a woman who was being brutally banged in one of the rooms.
The rooms here seemed to be reserved for regulars and simps, who come to hotels to unleash what they had so far been practicing with sex dolls in their rooms.
I walked past the room, but then, one of the doors was pushed open, and a man, a grown man, and a grown woman, popped out of their room, kissing and touching each other like in the movies. I was ready to punch both of them if they dared their bodies to touch mine, but they were careful enough to keep their madness to the wall instead, while the man's fingers dug under the lady's gown.
I didn't see what happened next. I had to rush to my room 0034 so I wouldn't lean into a corner and finger myself as Julia said earlier at her place.
Wicked Julia.
***
The room wasn't anything like my favorite room. It had a different scent, a different set of furniture, a different feeling, but I was here to adapt to something different from what I've always had.
The moaning from two rooms beside mine rippled into mine, and I heard the sound of something breaking quite hard and then was the sound of loud music. Maybe, my room was near the club in the hotel.
I made it to the door, threw it open, and saw drunk couples walking into the walkway, doing all the silly things couples do when they a drunk.
"Hey, why are you peeping like you are here to spy on us?" one of them asked. "Where is your man, get him to pipe you in there, or you can go down the club and get yourself a man that will make you feel like a woman."
They walked past and barged into one of the rooms. It was then I realized that the rooms on this floor were not necessarily a thing for the cards. They are manual, too.
"Hey, are you lesbian?" a lady asked. "I can suck your clit for fun."
I said nothing to her, so, she booed me and walked away. They were perverts who wouldn't mind themselves, but I had made up my mind, that I wasn't going to my favorite room.