Chapter 5: The Shining

Following the coronavirus lockdown in Spain last Sunday, Kate and I became the only tenants of our residential hotel. No other guests come or go. No host or clerk can be found at the front desk. No cleaning ladies sweep the hallways or change the towels. And yesterday, after the Spanish government decreed that all hotels must be emptied by next Tuesday, we realized that we seem to be the only ones standing between the hotel and full compliance with the law.

In our solitary confines, we have taken to walking up and down the hotel’s beautiful staircase for exercise. These are broad, marble stairs with wide treads and short risers. They are museum clean. There is a massive oak banister, which curves gracefully under the palm of one’s hand — though we dare not touch it because we are working on our core muscles . . . and exactly how long can COVID-19 live on a wooden surface, anyway?

The elegant stairs twist around an old-fashioned caged elevator that, when we first moved in, fascinated us with its exposed mechanics — weights and thickly-braided cables — serenading us with its clicks and gentle thuds as it moved up and down. Now, the elevator is nothing more than a stationary box.

Up and down we climb, one step at a time.

In Europe, the ground floor is 0, one story up is 1, and so on. Here, the walls are decoratively painted with the ordinals: Primero, Segundo, Tercero. We play games, first going all the way down, next doing a set of stairs twice on the same story. My mind wanders. I don’t hear a word Kate says from a landing above.

In the absence of maid service, I eventually head outside and make my way alone to the cleaning-supply aisles of the shop next door. They are a fastidious cleaner’s delight, and I am reminded of a thought I had when we were leaving New York City as the virus was advancing: We are going to a place where people clean like their lives depend on it — and now they do.

On our first day in our hotel room, my nostrils flared with the familiar smell coming from the soap dispenser in the kitchenette. It was the same soapy-piney substance I smelled rising up from the sidewalks on morning walks during our previous trips; the walks in which every Spaniard seemed to be outside cleaning walls, sidewalks, and door thresholds, and during which we felt bad about tip-toeing around the suds and interrupting their work, sheepishly repeating “con permiso” every six yards or so.

My mind returned to my task at hand. The diverse selection of brooms in the small store is heaven for the cleaning cognoscenti. I had my choice of flagged or unflagged trim, and thick-gauged to almost corn-silk soft bristles. Push or sweep. There were micro-fiber dust cloths of every texture and color. Even the generic garbage bags were superior to the name brands in the States.

As I made my way back to our residential hotel hauling three large, heavy bags with a five-foot broom handle sticking out, I glanced at the shiny marble stairs, considered walking up the three flights to our room . . . and then pressed the elevator button.

©2020 Kay Diaz