The Hotel Texas is nestled on a dingy side street in the left ventricle of Rome, just far enough from the heart to not have too many pedestrian tourists, overpriced souvenir shops, and inauthentic restaurants. Entering the hotel is tricky, as the building is ancient; the lift shivers with arthritis; there are no signs or plaques. An Indian man speaking his language on the phone in the small security room at the main foyer stares at me instead of the four black and white dated security television sets. I wave, say Ciao, ask for the hotel. He doesn’t stop speaking, and keeps his eyes on me like I’m a thief in preparation to flee. He toes open the door and cocks his head; I ask again. He jerks his crown upward and lifts three fingers. I avoid the geriatric lift; it reminds me of my grandparents, all the creaking and unsteadiness.

They don’t believe in safety here. No steps have grip, and the marble is sleek and slippery. Thrice I lose my footing and nearly plummet, surely to my doom, yet owing no debts to the hotel, only a few payments on my card and, I suppose, rent for the month. Lugging luggage up the stairs takes a toll on my wrists, too, and I’m confused if the man meant an American third floor or a European, since it seems to be inconsistent, with floor 0 and 1 meaning the first set of stairs. I pass carefully carved oaken doors, looking into small offices, including an optometrist, according to the eyeglass symbol, a lawyer, a real estate agent, an angio-specialist.

I finally walk into Hotel Texas and my expectations rise—Texas’s rep in the world is size, everything is bigger there: the highway interchanges and the monstrous pickups, the racks of ribs and extra-large glasses for beer, the landscapes and width, even the asscracks.

Quickly as my expectations rose, though, they plummeted as rapidly, as I feared the lift would freefall, cables snapping, crashing into each barricade like a ping pong ball of death. Maroon carpet, not red; partially damaged paintings, not finished; splintery wooden chairs with little cushion, not winged, velvety armchairs; a totally empty lobby, not replete with backpack-bearing guests checking in or out.            

Out walks the concierge, if he could be called one, as he wore a simple pullover with cigarette burn holes in the bicep areas of the left sleeve. Nose slightly off center. Probably broken before. Eyes narrow, furtive, pinecone-colored skin that looked the same texture. Arab, could’ve been, but perhaps I just couldn’t decipher what true Romans looked like. He welcomed me with a Ciao and then immediately began speaking English, as if my sweater said ugly American and not Servizi Ecologici. Perhaps it was the haircut, the unshaven neck, the lost expression.

“Ciao.”

“Hi. Checking in. Last name Cagnetti.”

“Cagnetti, si, si. You are Italian, yes? Of blood?”

“For one. A European mutt otherwise.”

His brows meet. Was mutt offensive to the Romans? Had I called them all dogs? Did he understand I just meant mixed and diluted, like dirty bathwater? Either way, he let it slide.

“First time to visit Rome?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, okay.” He leans over and procures a small quadri-folded map, clicks a pen. “We are here.” He draws a star; Hotel Texas is not listed on the map. “Two, three minutes’ walk is the station. But you must go to all places by foot, for walk is the best way for see Rome.” He draws lines well within the small streets and circles all of the necessary landmarks: Fontana di Trevi, the Pantheon, the Colosseum. Time to time, he asks if I know these places, have heard of them, and I say I have, I do.

“Va bene.” He folds the map and tables it. “You have a double bedroom. Please, your passport.”

I hand it over and he examines it, looks me up and down as it’s been some time, and I’ve gained a few pounds, shaved off my moustache, and gotten more narrow eyed in my older, jaded age.

“And the other?”

I think he means identification. Pull out my driver’s license, credit card.

He waves. “No, no, person. You have a double room.”

“Oh.” I blink, not sure if it’s an etiquette issue, like I shouldn’t be taking up space from two other travelers. “There’s no one else. It’s just me. I wanted privacy. “

Is a lie still a lie if the man doesn’t know any better?

“Fine, fine.”

Aloud, my voice is assertive. Inside, a whimper that I should call you, despite the time difference, the other differences.

“Now, your room.”

He leads me back the way I came and says how ancient the building is, how they and most other places in the city have only upgraded the essentials. We walk the claustrophobic hallway, he the horse, me the cart.

“Here is your room. It isn’t very good or extravagant, but it does have a private shower.”

“That’s fine. I only need a pillow.”

“Yes, yes. Well here.” He presses the key into the lock, opens it. The shower is narrower than a phone booth, tight and protected by a hard plastic accordion curtain. The double window is open, and across the courtyard, an apartment building’s balconies wear blankets, sweaters, denim. A small garden with a few rows of dirt and pots with sticks, aluminum, and leaves is on a rooftop. Even though it’s early afternoon, a cat howls, guttural, in heat, begging feral males to come mount.

The room has a sink and a mirror. I reason I could pee in the shower, maybe even wash my clothes in the sink. I check for a stopper; there is none.

“Now come, I show you the rest.” He watches me lock my door, approvingly nods, then shows me the two shared toilet rooms, each with chains to pull to flush the toilets instead of handles on the sides. We walk down another set of stairs nearly identical to the first except there’s no lift, just a sizable gap in the middle of the spiral. These alternate stairs too are death traps, but mostly hopeless, because if you did fall off the side, you couldn’t grab the lift for one last desperate clutch at life.

“The front door,” he says, and he gestures to two story-high wooden doors set into the wall I hadn’t noticed when I walked in. “They open here.” He shows an electronic keyhole. “Back in.” He leads me again up the stairs we descended.

“We leave at night, so this is all security, for which you have responsibility. This back door to the hotel—you open, see? Then lock when you pull. And slam behind you, or it won’t close.”

That’s the thing about old places, cars, homes—there are myriad tricks to make them work. Added security when strangers can’t make it work.

Like I was a guard. Like I was a sentry. Like I was a centurion.

“Now, payment.”

I had booked online off a website for hostels, a website that was notorious for always telling me I found the last room or that the hostel was about to be fully booked, so I needed to act fast. Bullshit. I expected a card reader if not a cash register, or some kind of banking app. Neither is visible. He steps behind the counter and pulls out a few notebooks.

“So, there is problem with Nexi. It’s on the Italian news right now, payments are being corrupted, frozen. Some hack. So, cash, no Visa, as you specified. You can find ATM? I’ll give you a list, even a bank.”

I’d chosen Hotel Texas because Riverbanks wanted cash up front and that made me think of runners, police called on me for trespassing, no proof I was cheated.

“Sure,” I say, “I’ll get the money.” I half-form a plan to rip him off, but I need a place to crash, so I know I won’t.

“Okay, va bene, tonight, hopefully. But tomorrow if you can’t. We sleep, you know.”

I assure him I’m good for it, as if I’m copping a kilo and need to off it in record time. What if I don’t pay? Would he fight me, hold a razor to my balls, or just summon one of the military men below? Would they arrest me? Can the military make civilian arrests? I understood nothing about this strange, ancient city. Men in full camo and berets pace the street, hands behind their backs, glaring around, watching—for what, I don’t know, because this nondescript, indiscriminate side street would hardly be a good location for an attack or bombing. They’d claim, at most, one or two hundred lives and get killed in the process. Bad ratio.

* * *

The room’s windows are pull-open with a sizeable latch almost too stuck for me to handle. I wrench with my legs, hear a slight splinter; I don’t want to ruin more of this building and add another moment of destruction to Rome. Picking at my cuticles, I settle half on the sill, post with the other leg, and look down. The courtyard is a cavity between four buildings; the grassy center circled off by an assortment of rocks features the cat I’d heard earlier, sprawled on her side, asleep. A pigeon flits around her head, beaking at worms, ants, beetles. I’ve seen a number of tiny lizards around—would pigeons, starving enough, attack and devour a lizard? They’re not birds of prey; in Rome, actually, they’re scavengers, scouring sidewalks for discarded bread, melted gelato, half-chewed dough.

The few bicycles and scooters sit haphazardly around the perimeter; theft, it seems, is of no concern to these people, as no bicycle has a padlock or chain. You can’t easily steal a scooter, either, so they’re safe. A small boy suddenly runs, his shoes slapping the stones, and the cat snaps awake to her front paws, wildly jerking her nose around. The boy runs on, and a woman, presumably his mother, follows, shaking her head, digging in her purse. Neither of them pay attention to the cat, still on high alert. From another direction, directly below me, the concierge shuffles out, lighting a cigarette. I watch him for a few minutes. He smokes fast, like he’s calculated how much money he loses per second his tobacco burns if he isn’t inhaling it. When he’s finished, he tosses the butt toward the grass. The cat sniffs, jumps back, nostrils probably singed.

I lose interest and decide to take a sleeping pill even though it’s barely seven. I unpack the essentials from my suitcase, set the room up for habitation, do some pushups, pretend to do sun salutations, then crawl into bed.

As soon as I lie down I slip into a crevice. It turns out the term “double bed” was quite literal—there are two twin mattresses situated next to each other instead of one double mattress. I don’t know if the hotel was cheap or if this is the norm in Rome.

I swallow the pill without water, cough, turn, and count down.

I count to a thousand, imagine myself asleep, tense my muscles for ten seconds and then relax, but the trick doesn’t work. After half an hour with my nighttime thoughts I roll across the gap and rummage in the tiny wastebin for the sleeping pill wrapper, hoping it was a Tylenol PM and not a dud. They’ve never taken this much time, and I hadn’t snorted a line or slammed a shot of vitamin B to counteract the effects. Finding the wrapper doesn’t bring me any solace; I took the right pill, and now I’d be awake for god knows how long, as sleeping in strange places never came easy to me.

The Hotel Texas room is the darkest I’ve ever been in. Through the window, the night sky is a void, not a star visible, and I note how different the light pollution is here compared to so many other parts of the country. There are no lamps in the courtyard, only two tiny lights in the doorway arches. The neighbors across the way don’t even have televisions flickering; their curtains are not illuminated from within. The moon is obscured by clouds. Instead of drawstring blinds on the window, there are wooden covers pulled open with a handle. I close the window and plunge the room into total blindness.

It reminds me of a story your grandma told us once when we visited her for tea. She usually told the same stories and made the same biscuits and used the same china, but this particular instance, for whatever reason, she explained how she’d seen a movie in which the female lead was blind throughout her life, but thanks to the miracle of science, she was slated to receive a surgery that would restore her vision. She went through with the surgery and had fantasies and dreams about how everything would look and what colors were and how depth perception would work, as these were all things explained to her, albeit poorly and without a single frame of reference, yet explained all the same, so she knew them only by name alone. She wore a bandage around her head like a blindfold, no pun intended, your grandma said, and then, after the two week period of recovery, she took the blindfold off, but kept her eyes tightly shut, and then, precariously, shuddering, she opened them. The kicker was that it was during the New York City blackout of ’77, but the woman had not been made aware of that, not least of all because she didn’t use the light switches in her house except to turn on the fan or garbage disposal. And when she opened her eyes, expecting to see the pattern on her carpet and the sheen of her stove, she saw nothing. Her blinds were drawn and her lights were off and nothing was visible, not even her hand next to her face. And she was so overcome with rage and futility that she took the steps she had memorized to her balcony and threw herself off. Which was quite a morbid film to make. Yet the story was memorable—your grandma had a fervor while telling it, and when she was all through and you and I sat there in a staticky silence, she sipped her tea and said so that’s that.

Nearly midnight, and the hotel’s squeaks and creaks sound more invasive, haunting, but the television below offsets the creepiness—it marries the old world and the new, likely confusing ancient ghosts of Roman washerwomen.

From above comes a small, slight moan, as if from a stubbed toe or the first rub of a neck massage. Then another. And more. Rhythmic, and obviously, it’s sex, but there is no way of telling anything else. The monotonous constancy could point geriatric, but it could also mean a woefully unskilled or pencil-dicked man, or even a tremendously boring, vacant, stagnant woman. The lights had to be off, the covers pulled up to their waists, fulfilling a duty or succumbing to a habit instead of acting out of passion. I decide to count the moans instead of sheep. At 25, I become suspicious that it’s actually a porno, but at 50, I’m convinced it’s a recording, something surreptitiously taken by a woebegone lover during the final time-passing fuck, saved on voice record because a clandestine camera in the closet for a full blown video would lead to loads of legal trouble, and played on repeat on lonely nights, or perhaps every night while he masturbated but never tried to cum, just fell asleep and woke up to the same sounds.

I don’t find out; they end up lullabying me.

* * *

In the morning, I wake up suddenly as the cat had—a door slammed in the hallway, twice, then gently the third time, like someone doesn’t know how to use the lock and is frustrated the latch won’t catch. I throw on my travel slippers and a tee, head out into the hall. Even though I have a private shower and sink, the other seven rooms share a toilet. It’s not a long walk, but frustrating to have to go out into semi-public instead of staying in the comfort of your own room to squat.

Ahead, an older, slender man with spindly paperclip limbs is hugged around the waist by a girl sporting a black skirt; her ear is pressed to his sternum, turned away from me, so all I see is the scrunchie holding her hair up in a ponytail. They have backpacks, not suitcases, so they’re likely waiting for the lift to go into town and make the rounds of Rome. It wasn’t built in a day, but it can be explored in two. Both orient to me as I draw nearer, though, and the girl turns, continually keeping contact with the man’s chest, scraping her nose against him and her cheekbone and her eyelashes. She’s young, her face still mostly unformed, smooth as apple skin, scholastic, whereas he is anything but—not scholarly, not young; older than me, for certain. They still clutch each other and I reason they’d be skittish if they were illegal, but maybe the laws are different in Europe, like you can fuck teenagers if they write a letter of intent, or you promise their parents marriage, shared finances and dependence, access, funds.

I can recognize the love between fathers and daughters—it’s rooted in comfort, stems from protection. It’s carrying the little ones on your shoulders or letting them curl up in your lap after a silly heartbreak. It doesn’t involve hands that low on the back.

Both stare at me, almost accusingly, but I don’t have an obviously underage girl clinging to my hips, so I only nod and turn back to my room, ignoring the sting in my bladder. I’ll just pee in the shower.

* * *

Breakfast at Hotel Texas is free, but it’s very sad and consists of coffee (how these Italians love their coffee), a biscuit, and a small ham and cheese sandwich, middle-school sized. We line up, a close crowd, while the concierge’s wife (I assume; she has a ring and wears the same color that the concierge had on yesterday, the maroon that matches the carpeting) pours cup after cup. He, meanwhile, assembles the sandwiches, a one-man conveyor belt. I defer the sandwich and double up on my coffee, take the smallest biscuit; the group facing me glares while the rest side-eye. Their dagger eyes hold mine even as I drink my coffee in the corner alone, brushing away the crumbs and little pig bits. They must know something, share an important dislike about me. Was I snoring loudly through the night, the chesty, cavernous sounds carrying through the thin walls and disturbing all of my neighbors when all they wanted was rest, respite from a day of diving into the past? I’d robbed them of that, kept them all awake while they prayed for a way to sleep through the just-not-consistent-enough bellow, because people usually can get used to anything given enough time and regular exposure. Had I sleepwalked unwittingly, made everyone listen to my somnambulistic shuffling feet as I paced on some stress-induced plane of existence? I was used to hostility, but it was how I was raised, in apartments where neighbors always watched from behind window blinds and metal mesh screen doors.

No one says a word, though—not even in Italian to each other in rapid fire slang in case they think I might understand. Surely they’d have the conversation when I leave, all those hidden invectives I couldn’t be privy to.

I try to push them from my mind as I explore the city, but they remain. Everywhere is a crowd, unfamiliarity, the same types of eyes and stares. Did I cause that delay in traffic from crossing prematurely? Was I the reason the tour guide lost a person? Did I hold up the line at the pizzeria because I wanted to use my Visa instead of Euros? I don’t know. What I do know is there’s a crosshairs on my neck, and I don’t know who’s aiming.

You’d tell me I was being paranoid, that the Romans, unlike the rest of Italy, are generally sick and tired of the tourists and are as standoffish as anyone, belying the usual filial charm from the rest of the townsfolk. I’d agree, secretly, but I’d keep the tally all the same.

* * *

I return, later than intended, and the street is quiet, void of the military figures, the few businesses, the families, and no sight of my fellow flatmates, if you could call them that. I open the door electronically with the key given to me. Here’s what’s odd about a hotel in an apartment: you’re sharing space with travelers as well as residents and you’re intruding in a sense on the lives of those who are there all the time and not for a weekend. Their habits won’t be disturbed just because a stranger is on the perimeter.

As I cross the courtyard, muffled dual yells escape the building; not high up where the Hotel Texas resided, and not on one of the floors with important people, but the ground floor, where a few doors have welcome mats, potted basil, wooden birds. The hollers alternate, male and female, sometimes a baby’s screams, shrill. I ascend the stair, spirally, and enter my room, open the window, gaze down into the courtyard again. The cat is gone, probably off hunting the lazy pigeons. Who knows where the concierge is, his wife, even the cleaning crew. Suddenly, the yells I’d heard when I entered amplify. A woman emerges, speaking spitfire Italian, hands and arms flailing around as she talks to someone who follows her outside, a man, blue-collar looking wearing a tank top, also yelling, but hands low, beckoning. The Italians gesticulate a lot, but even if you don’t know what that means, you can still read body language. A punch, for example, indicates anger. A slight pull away when sitting next to your woman on the bus means she’s very close to leaving you at the next stop.

A few of the baby’s screams escape, but they’re not as consistent as the adult’s tones. I can’t make out any words, but I don’t need to. I don’t speak Italian, but I do speak violence, and to a lesser extent, rage.

Why are our eyes inexorably drawn to car crashes, to brawls, to shouting matches? Was our voyeur gene protective at first to let us know that threats were near? But if so, what perverse mutation turned the gene fetishistic?

I watch as the woman points here and there and darts her head like a hawk, and he pivots, shifts, bobs his shoulders like dumb waiters, head following her movements a second behind, the cobra to the charmer. Her voice escalates; a shutter across the courtyard opens, another nosy neighbor investigating; a heavyset woman with a hand towel looks down, but not my way.

I don’t know who’s winning the argument, but suddenly I do, because she says something hurled like a spear, and before she can continue, the man cocks his arm and slaps her. A slap borne of love, palm to cheek; not knuckle-first, one born of intention and brutality. It echoes for a moment, carries up to the balcony window then vanishes.

I glance at the other windows, but the heavyset towel woman doesn’t gasp or dash inside to grab a phone. She just plops the towel on the rail and straightens the folds for even sundrying. Below, the woman, or more appropriately now, victim, holds her face and shakes, her spine facing the man. Another genetic mutation—we never kept our backs to the threats, especially those who’d just harmed us, and now with marriage, we can, as if there’s no chance another blow, this one maiming, perhaps killing, will come. Yet none does. Perhaps she’s familiar with this, tests limits on a routine basis, and he has to keep her in line the way all animals recognize—with pain, because vocal commands can only take you so far. I promise myself that if he hits her again, I’ll holler—not run down, it’s three flights, but I will use the weapons of discovery and humiliation to make shame pour down on him, a personal thundercloud. I make this promise because I know I will not have to follow it through, as all the best assurances are—empty, satisfying only one party.

The man does not apologize, I can see by his motions, or beseech her; he does not reach out, whether passive or aggressive, and she does not flee in a rush to escape wrath or in a stupor in disbelief, just stands away from him, apart. The heavyset neighbor closes her shutters. The cat saunters in, slinking between both man and woman, not caring or aware of the recent fight, and resumes her place in the patch of grass, yawning, stretching her paws. The sun still glares, water still flows through the plumbing in the walls next to me, a phone still rings somewhere above.

I say to no one in particular, but perhaps the cat, the heavyset woman, the couple, the Lolita and her Humbert, the man in the tank top, the woman with hands like mouths, the unseen baby who finally fell silent, but perhaps most of all, to you—this might be love. This might be love.