Love Hotel

Completely and entirely graceless this fella at the desk. What makes it worse he's difficult to duck. Cheap Love Hotel not surprising perhaps. (A new deal in recent days advertised on the banner outside the rear entry in the lane shows midnight to noon fifty-five a pop, Mon-Fri ONLY.) Three-four times a week water gushing in the pipes at one, two, three AM like a plane coming over for Changi. If it's not through the walls behind the bed-head it’s gurgling down the drain in the floor. 
         Standard is a preliminary wash immediately the room is entered; clean-up not long after and bringing up the rear, Wait for it! the squeaky wheel of the Room-attendant’s cart. 

         On first taking a room there two years before Shithead said the fourth floor was free of hanky-panky, the Turd. 
         With the irregular shifts impossible to escape the man. Neat clean-shaven jumpy Jerk. Coming down the stair up he springs from his chair looking round the corner. Perfect, exemplary patience maintained all the while, still somehow the fella has sniffed out the disgust. This morning like most mornings left hand hovering for the credit card at the machine, right above for the receipt. Tearing off, the first slip retained by the office and only second for the customer, quick-fire flashed across the counter. Minimizing the encounter. 
        - Watch out Buster! You've got it coming.

        On the corner by the river in the little park the Indon lasses use for their Sunday picnics a pair of old Malays had filled five large yellow plastic bags with leaf-litter. One point one meter, nearly a metre diameter. Just collecting the last few newly fallen around one of the boles. Inside the cabin of the truck waiting on the street, the fella who has it good, the driver with something like fifty dollars added per month, sits slumped behind the wheel restrained by his belt in the best imitation of a corpse seen in the last couple of days. The sleeping postures visible on every side over the island call out for serious pictorial treatment in a survey of this broiling mass of concrete, steel and glass athwart the Equator.