Turns out there has to be someone at the desk at all times. So, if the desk person has to go to the bathroom, or duck around the corner for a smoke, or nip down the block for a pastry, the front door to the hotel is locked. I want to ask her what happens to the people who might be inside and want to get out, but I haven’t the energy.

We walk upstairs to our very hot room, lie on our very hot bed, and roll into the centre like a couple of boulders recently blown out of a volcano.

Still, Mimi is in excellent spirits.

“It must have been exciting.”

“What?”

“Uncle Leroy,” says Mimi. “Travelling around. Seeing all of those countries. Seeing Prague.”

“He didn’t travel because he wanted to travel.”

“Still. It would have been an adventure.”

I get up and turn on the television. Most of the channels are static, but I find a show where a woman points to numbers on a large board and then takes off pieces of clothing until she gets down to her bra. On another channel is a game show of sorts where six adults in diapers try to control an enormous beach ball.

And there’s a news channel whose lead story is a demonstration somewhere in the world. Outside an imposing building, police in riot gear are in a confrontation with a grim-faced mob. Men with backpacks and suitcases. Women with babies and cardboard signs. Children holding blankets and toys. All pressed together and milling about like cattle in a pen.

I was hoping for something like Elementary or NCIS or Castle. I wouldn’t be able to understand the dialogue, but the plot would be easy enough to follow.

Mimi rolls over. “It’s a nice hotel,” she says, “but what the hell are those?”

I don’t see what she sees. And then I do.

“Are those spiders?”

There is no good answer to this question.

“I’m going downstairs,” I tell Mimi. “Maybe the hotel has an electric fan.”

“What about the spiders?” Mimi calls out after me. “Ask them about the spiders.”

The woman at the desk seems happy to see me. “Fan?”

“For the room. It’s hot.”

“Hot?”

“Yes, the room is very hot.”

“You are to use air conditioner,” she tells me.

This is one of the problems with language. I know every word the woman uses, and the sentence makes sense. There is a subject, a verb, an infinitive, and an object. Articles optional. When this happens, I always try to guess at intent, and in this case, I can only come up with one explanation.

“The room has an air conditioner?”

“Yes,” says the woman. “Of course.”

I had looked for an air conditioner and had not seen one.

“I will show you?”

“Yes,” I tell the woman. “Please.”

So she locks the front door, and we go upstairs.