A text in several courses with room service and musical accompaniment. About a date with Elsa. By Esmeralda.
Intro and a little greeting from life: WIND – Charlotte Brandi and Dirk von Lowtzow
‘I would like to go to room 117. Can you please give me the card?’
Impatience rages inside me. It’s raining outside. My long, dripping wet hair is shedding droplets of glitter onto my coat and the black marble-tiled floor. Small rivulets of water run down my forehead and collect on my upper lip. The heavy leather bag in my right hand glistens in the warm Christmas light of the holly garland above the reception area. It is wonderfully warm in the hotel reception. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see a cosy fire flickering in the fireplace further back.
I feel an unpleasant pressure on the top of my left foot. The delicate silk stocking I’m wearing must have slipped in all the hustle and bustle. I hurried across the street on high, thin heels to escape the storm as quickly as possible. In the twilight of the approaching evening – honking cars, splashing puddles, an icy wind that found its way into my high-necked, full-silk bodysuit and stabbed its cold tentacles into my neck and shoulders.
The person at reception hands me my keycard. It has a different room number on it.
‘You’ve been upgraded. Your colleague has already checked in.’
I look puzzled.
‘How nice, thank you very much,’ I reply and reach for the card.
‘We’ve already provided you with champagne and a small greeting from the house. Please contact us if you would like anything.’
The first course
I happily get into the lift. A long journey to the higher floors begins. When you have seen so many hotels, the impressions you have left behind blur in your memory. All the hotels blur into one. Small peaks stand out from this melting mass. Like lost biscuit pieces of ice cream. The really nice hotels. The really bad ones. Maybe you at least remember them. Sometimes you are torn out of this all-one-hotel dream. A robot hoover that suddenly rolls across the carpet in the corridor. A real bunch of flowers in an unusual place. An open door… .
‘There you are!’ shouts Elsa as I enter. I close the door and can’t believe my eyes. As I walk across the deep, soft carpet through the huge room and finally reach the bed, I see her lying on it. Surrounded by flowers, a champagne glass in her hand. She is wearing a huge, bright candy-coloured jumper made of the softest, fluffiest angora wool. I feel something inside me, a feeling of admiration. There is more. My belly is dancing. But I can’t grasp it.
‘Come over here to me! Have a seat! I have something to tell you, Esmeralda!’
I let my bag slide to the floor next to the bed and spread my rain-soaked coat over a deep armchair. The room is bathed in brown-red amber light. Elsa has gone to great lengths to make it cosy. She has lit a palm-sized rose-coloured scented candle on a side table. As I approach, she sits up lasciviously. We embrace each other. I hold her gently, like a delicate tissue paper, and breathe in. A beguiling scent envelops me! Heavy sandalwood. Sugar-brown tonka bean. Is it her shampoo? Her perfume?
‘Where’s the rest?’ I ask with a laugh, releasing us both from the embrace. ‘Did you hide it from me?’
‘Oh dear, no,’ sighs Elsa, the most beautiful woman I’ve ever had the pleasure of smelling and admiring, ’that’s not it. He’s just cancelled on us.’
‘No! Hence the upgrade? Now I understand! What a lovely gesture!’
‘You’re all wet, love! Come on, I’ll help you out of your boots.’
Elsa hops off the bed and lovingly and skilfully undoes the laces of my boots and lets herself slide off my feet. She carefully straightens the silk stocking on my left foot, which has slipped out of place. Then she disappears into the bathroom and returns a few seconds later with a towel. She dries my hair and my face. Thoroughly. Carefully. Gently.
The second course
Pressing a glass of champagne into my hand and dropping the towel, she jumps back onto the bed and digs a remote control out of the depths of the pillows and blankets. She switches the programme’s music down a little. I lie down next to her and touch her jumper for a moment. Elsa’s flawless skin, fresh and innocent underneath, dazzles me. I can’t take my eyes off her, even after she asks me if I like the song. I hear Judy Garland singing a song about a yellow paved road… we’re off to see the wizard… .
I say ‘yes’ and keep looking. To Elsa. This enchanting beauty.
Every hotel room in this world is a gateway to non-time. You draw the curtains. And you see, the room is everywhere in the world at once. And an hour in there could just as easily be a minute, could just as easily be a day, a second. Anything you want. The people who meet here are trapped in a Barbie dream house art space. They are whoever they want to be. The outside – reflective emptiness. If it weren’t for the treacherous flowers in the room and if they didn’t carelessly drop their wilting petals, time would stand still. ‘Come as you are,’ sings Wilhelmine over the wonderfully high-quality speakers of our dream house room, ’And bring everything about you with you!’
‘It’s boring!’ Elsa suddenly exclaims. ‘It’s incredibly boring! How can he do this to us! He’s cancelling at such short notice. Yes, he’s apologised. And we have this beautiful flat. I was really looking forward to our date together. The three of us, you know!’
‘I understand. I was looking forward to it too. You’re so beautiful!’ I blurt out. I blush. And I see Elsa’s cheeks blush slightly too. My gaze wanders down her soft, round cheeks to her mouth, which is so seductively open. Oh, that neck! I want to touch it. And then I want to explore the shapes that this fantastic pink jumper caresses. I want to explore her hips and touch those beautiful legs that lie stockingless and radiant next to me. My breath quickens. I help myself to a luscious, quail egg-sized grape from the ivory-coloured plate that Elsa has placed on our bed. It’s nice to be so close to her. I breathe. I eat another grape. Her fingers! Oh, those hands with the pale pink coloured Shellac nails. Perfect!
I imagine Elsa touching me with it, playing with my hair, stroking along my back and gently moving over my flanks to the sides of my breasts. She approaches my small breasts gently but firmly and then, very slowly, fluttering around my breasts in fine circles, dancing towards the centre… . She plays with them. She teases me.
‘Let’s order something to eat! Take your pick! Let’s have a really big dinner together!’
Oh, I adore Elsa. She has the best ideas! Elsa sits on the pure white damask bed in her fluffy jumper like a wondrous pink angora bunny. Cosy, inviting and looking at me expectantly with her bright cloud eyes.
I jump up, shake myself briefly and hurry to the phone. The carpet is warm. I sink into it. My knees give way. My legs are asleep. Something sticks under my foot. While I wait on the receiver for the voice on the other end, I feel what’s stuck to my sole. A large, white petal. I detach it from the sole of my foot. It is crushed, wrinkled. It smells of harsh citrus notes and sugary rose oil. I hold it up to the light, the fine veins of the petal emerge fragile. Soon it will be brown.
-‘And fries, do you have fries?’ I ask room service on the phone. ‘Wonderful! Thank you!’
I grin audaciously as I hang up the phone, tossing my long hair back in a wide arc. And ‘When she kisses her, her hands are shaking. And she realises she never wanted a knight”-singing, I dance back to my Princess Elsa, who is reclining on our flower bed.
The third course
‘There’s lobster and chips?’
‘Absolutely, you’ll be thrilled! We’re eating Belgian today!’
I’m already looking forward to watching Elsa scoop out the lobster claws, her rose-coloured lips enveloping the delicious meat.
‘Make yourself comfortable, yes!’ Elsa orders me and, after looking at me questioningly and pointing at my stockings, pulls them down.
At first her fingers just pluck at my calves, then they skilfully move to my thighs, loosen the lace waistband a little from my skin and roll the stockings down, wrapping them around my leg. She throws them across the room behind her and laughs.
There are many ways to eat a lobster. The loving way, the greedy way, the seductive way. We’re eating it Belgian today. This is the pure way for the hungry. A lobster without everything. Warm and fragrant, it lies before us. I take the stainless steel scissor tongs and slice open its crisp, red-glowing shell. Splashing broth spreads over our thighs as we kneel around the silver platter. I can see Elsa’s concentrated admiration in her slightly dilated eyes and her fingers fiddling with her right knee.
The lobster tastes best with butter sauce. And with fries, of course. Anticipation and hot desire rise in me. I loosen a pair of scissors and hand them to Elsa so that she can remove the finest meat. We eat the lobster while SOFFIE’s voice can be heard on the TV, singing about caviar and lobster in abundance. Yes! There’s always a place at the table! No more high walls! Our hands are full of butter sauce.
‘It’s true! Butter and chips! Esmeralda! You great one!’
I’m so pleased that Elsa is excited. My gaze wanders along her lips towards her cleavage. A piece of lobster meat has found its way there and hangs delicate and white on Elsa’s radiant velvety skin. I want to lean towards her and kiss it off her skin with my lips.
A warm feeling pours over my legs and snaps me out of my dream: the butter sauce tureen has tipped over. The oil spreads all over the bed and my skin. Elsa laughs. She is bewitched by the aphrodisiac power of the lobster. Elsa, your aphrodisiac mouth beguiles me. You are so beautiful in your innocence, you legendary one!
‘Never mind. There’s still enough butter for us,’ Elsa comforts me.
She doesn’t even realise that I didn’t jump up like that. I smile at her. -‘Yes, never mind,’ I confirm.
We slurp up the last of the lobster legs. We wash it all down with the last of the champagne. Elsa’s lips glisten red and hot. Butter lips. I look up from my glass and the buttered bed into Elsa’s grey-blue sky eyes. She looks into my green misty lake eyes. Sky and lakes merge together.
Time would stand still in a hotel room if it weren’t for the petals that were treacherously wilting.
Little adieu and outro: Guten Tag, liebes Glück – Max Raabe and Palast Orchester ft. LEA
Esmeralda’s song list for this blog text
- 1) WIND – Charlotte Brandi and Dirk von Lowtzow https://youtu.be/OE-N8uBNTNI
- 2) Elsa-Paula Carolina https://youtu.be/ZY-tVOZjfe8
- 3) FollowTheYellowBrickRoad-JudyGarland https://youtu.be/1cwCIkKFFR4
- 4) Kommwiedubist-Wilhelmine https://youtu.be/dc39EOGqeEY
- 5) Alssiesieküsst-Paulinko https://youtu.be/4Kino5tTkE4
- 6) ForeverSpring-SOFFIE https://youtu.be/M-klKqj-7Lo
- 7) Guten Tag, liebes Glück – Max Raabe und Palast Orchester ft. LEA https://youtu.be/DvAgZG1HJDs