March 13 2007
This has been edited to reflect the new chapter numbering.
Postcard from Vail Colorado. Sunny warm days, amazing vistas, and my body is keeping up with my ambitions. When I ski alone I write ideas on my cell phone. Quiet evenings good for organizing my thoughts and fleshing out the outlines.
I finished Chapter 7 - find a passage below - which is a milestone. Really a remilestone. 8 is roughly the halfway point, maybe a little less but close enough that it's starting to feel downhill. It's also the point at which the first draft completely bogged down, which is funny since it's the one chapter in the first draft from which I could salvage more than half the pages. I don't know if writing the next chapter without any previous draft to abandon will make it easier or harder, but I'm encouraged.
from 8.1
The reception was a tiny space tucked to the left of the front door, opposite a single lift. The clerk was a large girl, stuffed in her navy-blue suit. She doggedly keyed the details of Elisabeth's passport. While Elisabeth waited the lift opened, but no one was inside. It happened again seconds later. "Trouble with the lift?" she asked.
The clerk shook her head. "The garage is below hotel," the clerk said, her accent flatter and broader than Rex's. "Two nights, aye?" Elisabeth nodded. "People was stealing from the rooms, tellies mostly, taking them to their cars. So they make it stop here every time. Here's your key." It was a real key, big and metal, attached to a heavy plastic fob. "Third floor. And a message. Ms Crane?" Elisabeth nodded. "Taking a rest now. Will call seven forty-five. Anything else?" Behind Elisabeth now stood a woman and a man, similar navy suits but not uniform, each with two small wheeled carry-on bags. The woman eyed Elisabeth's light colourful clothes with puzzled distaste.
Her room was furnished in walnut veneer and black metal, sturdy but nicked and scraped. Tube telly, three-position manual switches on the set-top box. Elisabeth couldn't imagine someone stealing it. At least the toiletries were shrink-wrapped. A loud American couple walked past her door, their steps rattling it in the jamb. If the clerk hadn't mentioned Magda she would have gone to another hotel.
She looked out the window at the grey dusk. Days were longer in the north and she had gained an hour, but something in her brain insisted it should be dark by now. Her window looked into a smaller window in the shingled third story of an old grey building. Bottles of industrial cleaning supplies on the sill. She thought of the nasty closet for the conference server. She missed Rome. She was cold and she wanted a cigarette, less for the smoke than for the warmth of the flame.
She opened her suitcase and fished her wrinkled green coat out of the bottom. She left. In the lift she didn't bother pushing a button. Tarnished strips of chrome in the lift's wall panels distorted her reflection. Her unkempt hair looked crazy. Maybe the hotel was contagious. The lift doors opened at reception. What a fucking dump.