Outside, above the entrance, dusty tricolours were hanging limply from flagpoles. In the lobby, an enormous chandelier loomed overhead, trembling on account of the Dublin traffic outside. I reached the front desk and caught the attention of a woman in an alice band.
"Could you help me?"
"No," she said firmly. Then turning to a woman who was buffing her nails, she said with infinite weariness, "Can you do this one?"
A few minutes later I was in the lift. I pressed a grimy button. The metal box clanked upwards. It stopped. I alighted.
I found the door of room 69 and let myself in. The wallpaper was green and cream stripe. The bed cover was russet and hairy. There was a hideous painting of Venice at sunset screwed to the wall.
This room, I saw, had not been touched since the workmen signed off 30 years ago. There were cracks in the walls. The plug sockets had come away. The window overlooking the street (which was actually a door) had no lock. To commit suicide, all that was necessary was to turn the handle and step forward. The toilet was cracked and there was a slimy puddle on the floor nearby. But the piece de resistance was the half a dozen envelopes for the disposal of sanitary towels nailed to the wall beside the cistern.
I told myself not to be depressed. The whole point of being a raffish bohemian was that one got to stay in places like this and later to talk wittily about them. That was when I heard the sound of girlish chatter coming through the thin plasterboard wall from next door.
"Oh you wouldn't - you wouldn't dare, oh you are..." the speaker trilled. I wondered if she was reading for a part in a remake of a Carry On film.
Then I heard a male voice saying, "I'm not taking no for an answer."
I hurried to my publishing event in the Collins Hall downstairs. After several other people had spoken, it was my turn. I said why I wrote for children in general, and something about my new novel.
Afterwards I had dinner with some writers. The conversation turned to the University of East Anglia creative writing MA and the greatest product of that course - Ian McEwan. The talk that followed was so academic that there was no opportunity to gossip or bitch.
Midnight found me once again at the door of my room. As I was about to insert my key into the lock, I heard the unmistakable sounds of sexual congress. They came from the same room as the talking earlier. Oh no, they wouldn't be, would they? - I thought to myself.
I let myself into my room. And oh yes, they were. The earth was moving next door and so was the furniture.
Well they can't go all night, I thought. It will have to end. So I turned on the television to drown out the sounds of orgasm and had a cup of tea.
When the television went off 30 minutes later, all seemed quiet next door. But as I pulled back my covers to get into bed, I heard what sounded ominously like the soundtrack from an adult film. They were watching the adult channel. The sound was on low, which was very thoughtful of them. But a few minutes later, as I lay in bed waiting for sleep, I heard superimposed on the sounds of fiction, the sounds of fact. The couple were having sex while they watched other people having sex.
I found the earplugs without which I never travel, and put them in. I could no longer hear the lovers banging away. What I could now hear was the sound of my own breathing, and my own being. It may seem like a reasonable trade-off, but actually trying to get to sleep with the sound of your lungs thumping away is only slightly easier than trying to get to sleep with two people going at it like rabbits.
But I managed. I nodded off. Then sometime in the middle of the night a plug fell out. I woke. They were still at it. The plug went back in. I nodded off again. When I next awoke the grey light of a Dublin dawn was slanting through the glass in the death door.
They must be done by now, I thought. Out came the earplugs. But they were still going strong.
I had a shave and got dressed. Next door they had the shower on and were in it together, judging by the sounds.
"Go on, go on," he was urging while she was obligingly doing whatever it was she was doing. Then he cried out and she shouted joyously, "Are you feeling better now?"
I went to the dining room. The man in the chef's hat had a glass eye. He prepared me a dish of watery scrambled egg and anaemic mushrooms and then, handing me the plate, said, in a fake American accent, "Have a nice day."
I had a meeting and I didn't get back to the sixth floor until nearly 11am. As I approached my room, the door of 68 began to swing open.
She came out first. She was plump like a model in a Rubens painting. She had Nana Mouskouri black-rimmed glasses and lacklustre black hair. Her ankle-length denim dress reminded me of the smocks I had seen the Mennonite women in Canada wearing.
He was next: thin and white. He had very short hair and rimless glasses. He was like one of those ethereal young men in an early Chagall painting.
It didn't make sense. I was expecting Christina Aguilera and Justin Timberlake lookalikes, not real people like this pair. But they had come out of room 68.
"Good morning," she said, in a squeaky voice.
Her lover nodded.
"Good morning," I said.
