This series was written for the international art and culture magazine Garage, but never published because they couldn’t get the illustrations right. The hotels were suggested by the late Rina Aroussi of The Travel Business.
It’s 3 a.m. You rise from the sea-scented foam of your bath, centered in the acreage of your suite like a throne, and dry off with a towel as thick and white as whipped cream. You can’t sleep. You don’t want to. Soon it starts: the World Cup. You’ve been waiting for this since before you could think.
Earlier, in the lobby, you watched the Italian team arrive, kissing the gleaming hardwood floors, humping the Philippe Starck furnishings in metrosexual ecstasy at being back among urbane design motifs after a month of barbaric seclusion on the Bolivian Altiplano. You slipped your keycard to the central defender, the captain of the team. There: that’s the click of the door.
