Hotel Ambrose

Chapter 1.4

I was lying on my bed in the dorm a couple of days later, reading the book Dirty Joe gave me, when Jungle Jim shuffled in and sat on the end of the bed. When I looked up my heart jumped. Everyone else was outside in the sun. We were alone. His nose was in plaster.

"Pretty bad, huh?" he said, touching his nose.

I opened my mouth but nothing came out.

"It itches," he said. "What're you reading?"

I showed him. People like Jungle Jim aren't usually interested in books, but he took it from my hands and looked at the cover. He flicked through it. "Lots of pages," he said, and handed it back to me.

Then we started talking. I'd never talked to Jungle Jim properly before. It was okay I guess.

"Why're you here?" he said eventually.

I shrugged.

"Where's your mum and dad?"

"Dunno."

"They dead?"

"Dunno."

He didn't say anything else – just seemed to go off into space. Then after a while he said bye and shuffled out of the dorm again. Weird.

I asked Dirty Joe about it the next morning. Ever since the day with the cat I would go to see him on his morning break. He always had coffee in a thermos and teddy bear biscuits. I thought teddy bear biscuits were only for kids, but then Dirty Joe was a kind of kid somehow – a big one. He gave me a little cup of coffee and a biscuit to dunk with. I liked it. We weren't allowed to have coffee and biscuits at Crapper.

"What's it with you and questions?" he said. "Jesus. Have another biscuit."

I had another biscuit. I stared at Dirty Joe while I ate it because I knew it bothered him – he always looked away and coughed and would end up telling me to stop staring at him for Christ's sake.

This time he didn't. He spoke over the top of his coffee and the steam went away into the air. "I guess I can tell you what happened. You're mature enough, I suppose."

"What's mature?"

"Jesus. Look, just promise you won't tell anyone."

"I promise. Stick fifty needles in my eye."

He squinted off into the hot bright light. "Did Jim ever tell you about his father?"

"Yeh all the time. His Dad's got a real shotgun. He went to jail once for shooting it. He has one of those cars with the big fat wheels at the back. One day he broke Jung – Jim's arm and that was when he ran away."

"Strange how we admire those who hurt us most."

I think that was when I first realised Dirty Joe was more than just someone who mowed lawns and buried cats.

After a while he said: "When Jim went to hospital he learned that his dad had died."

"How'd he die?"

Adults don't like it when kids ask that, but I never saw the big deal. It's worse to say somebody passed away. That's stupid. Nobody ever just passes away. It sounds like you're fading into a ghost or something. What if a train hits you, or you're pulled into a big machine? People die, gruesomely sometimes.

"He slit his wrists in the bathtub," Dirty Joe said.

"With a knife?"

"I don't know."

"Did all his blood come out?"

"I guess."

In my mind I saw a guy who looked like Jungle Jim but older and wrinklier, getting into a bathtub and slitting his wrists. I wondered what it would be like to die like that. I wondered if it would hurt a lot. I imagined him nodding off and sliding down into the pink water.

I looked up at Dirty Joe. "I won't tell anyone."

"You're a good boy Benny."

And that was the end of the thing with Jungle Jim.