As soon as he accustomed his eyes to the dimness he saw there was no one in the lobby. An artificial palm, its raffia swathings loose as a two year old's diaper, stood in a wooden tub. Eight chairs were placed in neatly opposing rows, four covered in once-black leather, cracked and split, the wrinkles worn brown, four wooden, humbly straight. There was an air of peacefulness independent of the dark, the quiet, the emptiness, an assertion that there was no need to hurry here, that there was never a need to hurry here.
He lifted his arm to look at his watch. The sweep-second hand was not revolving. He put the watch to his ear; there was no tick. He wound it, shook it; it didn't start. He slipped it off his wrist into his pocket, and loosened his necktie.
He stood in front of the brown counter whose top was shiny with the patina of leaning elbows. There was a bell with inverted triple chins and outpopping pimple, an open register turned indifferently toward him, a bank of empty pigeonholes. He picked up the chewed pen with the splayed nib, bronze-shiny where the ink had dried on it. He had to tip the black scumcrusty inkwell far over to moisten it. It scratch-scratched across the top line on the page, engraving his name but only staining the depressions here and there, mostly on the downstrokes. Oddly, instead of the capital, he wrote down the city he had once lived in, the city where he got his first job.
After registering he hesitated over the bell. Instead of ringing it he picked up his bag and walked to the shadowed stairway. Up ahead he saw a low-watt bulb staring bleakly on the wall. The area around the globe was a grimy green, outside the magic circle the pervading dark brown was undisturbed. The carpet under his feet was threadbare and gritty; through his shoe-soles he felt the lumps of resistant knots in the wood, and the nailheads raised by the wearing-down around them. He gazed ahead.
There was a landing halfway up, opening on a narrow hall. Light came through fogged windows set close together along one wall. The other was papered with circus posters, the brightly lithographed elephants and hippopotami faded almost to indiscernibility, the creases burst open like scored chestnuts. The Governor hesitated, went on up.
At the second floor he turned left, noting how spacious this hall was in contrast to the one below, how comparatively bright and clean. Most of the doors were slightly ajar, not inviting perhaps, merely indicating they were receptive to a tenant.
From the outside there was nothing to choose between them yet he felt the choice was important. Further, it seemed to him that opening a door would commit him; he must choose without inspection. Thoughtfully he passed several. The one he finally entered opened on a large room with two tall windows. Thin, brittle curtains drooped palely from the rods. Two dressers, the high one bellying forward, the low one supporting a tilted metal-dull mirror, were thick with cheap varnish that wept long blob-ended tears. The double bed was made, the coverlet turned down, the lumpy pillows smooth and gray. On a whatnot in one corner a glass bell enclosed two wax figures, a bride and groom in wedding finery. The wax bride was wringing her waxen hands.
The Governor put his bag on the foot of the bed, took off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, went to the sink. The faucets were black-spotted, green-flecked, with remnants of nickelplating and long dark scratches. The basin was orange-brown and gray-white. He turned on the HOT. There was a quick hiss and a slurp of thick, liquid rust. He tried the COLD. The slurp was the same but there was no hiss. He looked around the room again, saw the washstand. The knobbly-spouted pitcher stood in the center of the knobbly-rimmed bowl. The water appeared good despite the dust floating on top. He poured some in the basin and rinsed his face and hands.