INVERNESS: Enter Hamster

We’ve checked in.

It’s a small room, four bunks and an upstanding row of lockers. The walls are painted blue, peeling. The beds squeak.

We settle in, unload, and before long someone is rattling their key in the lock. The door swings inward, pressed open by a thick hand. In steps the new tenant. A mound of meat wrapped in a fur collar, tank top showing beneath, pockets full of beers. His jacket is too small, pinching his shoulders into peaks, jeans ragged, faded, hanging in folds around his ankles. He reeks of cigarettes and cheap beer.

Kevin and I stand.

His close-set eyes shift to the empty bed.

Kevin says, “Hey, man.”

His skull is shaped like a squash, or a flower vase; he has a wide face and narrow forehead, irregular features twitching beneath a heavy brow and basic crew cut.

His lips jumble into a grin, lopsided and full of gaps.

Introductions are made.

He’s called Hamster, says he’s Polish—we can hardly understand a word he’s saying. He shoves a can of beer in my hand and raises it in a gesture of wellbeing, “Power! More power to you both!”

The sinter qualities of Hamster are soon revealed.

He finishes his beer and leaves the room, red-faced and leering, pointing a finger at us. He says something about sharing a bottle. The door closes.

We look at each other, at the can of cheap beer in my hand.

We’ve got to finish the awful bastard.

Should Hamster discover the unfinished beer in the hostel room—his rage at our ungratefulness might kindle violence.

I act quickly, rushing to the window in an attempt to dispose of the beer. It gurgles and flows down the sill and onto the window below. Kevin panics. I rush into the hallway and into the bathroom, pouring the evidence into the toilet. I then returned to the room and tossed the empty can into the trash, were it was visible at the rim.

We were safe, for the time being. Though outside danger lurked in every narrow street and shadow, our wellbeing suspended by fate, a simple choice of pub—where might Hamster be, on which stool, in what bar?

We precede into night, into the sleepy town of Inverness, minds at ill ease, delirious. Fever dream of death at the hands of a violent madman.

We walk into the Hootananny’s. My glasses fog, stepping into a wall of humidity—body heat and sweat; it’s packed and everyone has a beer, crowded around the bar and an empty stage with two stools.

An audience of wispy Scottish girls in sleeveless tartans, men dressed in tweeds, t-shirts and wool caps, laughing and drinking.

Standing room only.

We order drinks and the crowd goes wild as a man takes the stage and unboxes a glitter-green accordion.

A finger on my shoulder. I turn and am greeted by a pleasant smile—Megan, an Aussie girl from our Hostel—she invites me to sit with her and her friends. I wave Kevin over. We sit. The music starts and the pub ignites.

The steamy atmosphere, red-walled and irregular, clatters with stomping feet and table banging. Jigs and shouts and hurrahs. Couples dance, twirling and spinning, or learning how, and it’s all so damn Scottish!

That guy really knew how to play that accordion.

Megan and I danced and the night continued to spin.

We returned to the hostel late. Kevin slid the key in the door and pushed it open. We stepped inside.

There was no sign of Hamster.

We slept.