It’s difficult to find a legitimate reflecting pool these days. I don’t pretend to know why, but ‘money’ is always a good guess. Budget hotels have mostly done away with pools. Upscale venues maintain them too well.
A reflecting pool has to exist in a hotel and it has to be indoors. It has to be at least somewhat enticing so decrepit is fine, but dirty isn’t. The fewer windows, the more stifling the air, the thicker the smell of chlorine, the better. Bonus points for pools that are unnecessarily deep. Bonus points for a slippery diving board. Bonus points for a mildewing sauna somewhere nearby.
But the only really important thing, besides the pool itself, is that it has to be available at all hours. It has to be available at 2:30am.
‘More a phenomenon than a destination, the Wayside ‘Reflecting Pool’ exists as a sort of litmus test for mental well-being- an indicator of the direction one is taking in terms of, say, self-actualization.
The magic moment is 2:30am. Faced with a hotel pool so late in the evening (so early in the morning) a traveler might determine whether they’ve acted on a leisurely impulse or if their life has devolved into a series of disjointed scenes acted out in liminal nowheres.’
Hector is asleep in the room as I walk barefoot down the stained carpet of a budget hotel, the name of which I’ve already forgotten. I check the room key and see it’s for a ‘Marriot,’ either purchased at some liquidation or else a self-deprecating joke.
I stand, barefoot, in the elevator- also carpeted. Hector and I have been given a room on the top floor, the fifth, with a view that, due to the plains, overlooks the interstate for miles in both directions. I meant to write, this evening, and spent it hypnotized instead.
I have a bad feeling about the reflecting pool. Worse than I expected, I mean.
The pool is situated in the center of a windowless room ,brightened only by light from the open door. My silhouette wavers in the water, though there is no reason for the pool to be disturbed. I switch on the lights- too bright- and confirm I am the only swimmer this late. The floor is pebbled cement, slick with moisture. Drops of condensation fall from the ceiling and soak into the shoulders of my t-shirt, which I wear, self-consciously, until I am at the very edge of the pool. The water is the same temperature as my body. Sliding into it feels intimate and violating and when I sigh, the sound of my disappointment echoes in the room like a ghost.
I’m lost, aren’t I?
-traveler
