The Queens Hotel

Bedtime. Everything is perfectly in order. Perfectly routine. I lay my head on my pillow and drift off after a few minutes.

“Rap..Rap..Rap!” Someone is knocking on my door. Hard. I climb out of bed as quickly as I can, race to the door and look through the peep hole but all I see is an empty hallway. Perhaps whoever it was ran away. I am perplexed but not too worried. Some kind of isolated incident. It’s 2am. I return to bed and sleep soundly for the rest of the night. In the morning I am puzzled but not alarmed.

But the next night it happens twice – at 2am and 4am. The sound is unmistakably my front door and each time I am up in an instant to look through the peep hole but see nothing.

Then again twice the following evening. I start to think about my neighbors. The most obvious candidate is the guy downstairs who plays music at ridiculous levels into the night. My neighbor and I have both called the police on him. Then there’s my neighbor himself – of twenty years – who once mentioned that I have on occasion kept my tv on after his bedtime. And finally, there’s the older lady down the hallway, formerly a school paraprofessional, who seems increasingly unlike herself and who apparently has accused the super of entering her apartment without permission.

The knocking is now nightly and increasingly frequent. I have started taking notes detailing the time when I am woken and the sound I hear. The noises are no longer confined to the door, they could be the walls, floor or ceiling or a general kind of exploding. But most of the knocking sounds are still coming from the front door. I’m wearing hi-tech Japanese earplugs, but they seem to make no difference.

I ask my young friend Andrew, a former student now in his twenties, to install a Blink camera on my front door. It links up with my cell phone so that I can see a clip whenever someone passes the door. I spend hours looking at the “footage” from the camera and marveling at the number of people who move up and down the hallway day and night. But, to my frustration, the times I record waking up do not synchronize with activity in the hallway.

The knocking continues. I am losing a lot of sleep and realize I’m starting to get a little kooky. One night, after a back-to-back knocking episode, I smash on my neighbor’s wall at three in the morning. I go downstairs to confront the young man I called the police on and receive a very testy flat denial.

I convince myself that there’s a blind spot where someone standing by the side of the door and leaning backwards could knock on the door unseen by the Blink camera. I ask Andrew to install a second camera on the door jamb at right angles to the first one.

My neighbors start to ask me what’s going on with the cameras. Their best suggestion is the unhinged lady down the hallway. My camera shows she is up a lot in the night and occasionally stands looking at the camera though she never touches it or bangs on the door.

One day it occurs to me, “Could this be me?” After all, I do have a history of unusual problems arising in my head – but nothing like this.

I learn to use the voice memo application on my phone. I learn that I don’t snore much which is nice to know. But there doesn’t seem to be much else going on the tape except a lot of banging from the elevator shaft and radiator. I can’t be sure what I’m hearing but there doesn’t seem to be a strong correspondence between what’s on the tape and the banging sounds that are still regular and which I am still noting on paper.

To be certain, I must find a completely silent place to sleep.

I decide I must spend a night in a hotel.

I start to look for a local hotel online. I don’t want to spend too much but equally don’t want to end up in what my mother would call a “Knocking Shop” with mirrors on the ceilings. There are new hotels in Long Island City, but they are expensive. There are places close to JFK but since the object is to avoid as much external noise as possible it doesn’t seem to be a good idea to be adjacent to an airport runway.

Finally, I notice the Queens Hotel on Queens Boulevard, newly built on land formerly occupied by acres and acres of lots with used cars for sale. Its $160 a night.

I call to enquire. “Do you have quiet rooms facing away from Queens Boulevard?”. “Oh yes sir”, replies the person at the other end of the line in an uncertain accent.

I arrive with my overnight bag the following evening at 8pm. The building is new with a glass front. The lobby is very spartan but clean with a vending machine and two couches.

“I booked to stay tonight; my name is Lamb”. The receptionist gives me a look as though my arrival is a complete surprise to her but then locates my name in a book. “OK, we take you upstairs”.

She summons a man from behind a curtain. The receptionist hands me an electronic key, looks at it and says, “You lose, ten dollars”.

The elevator is small and the 6th floor hallway seems unnaturally cramped for such a new building. Eventually we reach my room, 6G, and the attendant departs with a small tip.

I look around. Everything seems to be in order with a nice bathroom, a large firm mattress and a big tv. But then I hear noise from behind the closed curtains and when I open them, I find myself looking down on the noisy prospect of Queens Boulevard.

Back I go to reception, “When I booked, I did ask for a quiet room. Do you have rooms at the back that face away from Queens Boulevard?”

“Oh yes” says the receptionist, switches my electronic key and beckons the attendant to take me upstairs again.

5F is configured exactly as 6G but faces onto the quiet expanse of Elmhurst. There is a couple down the hallway who sound like they are having fun but they quiet down soon after I arrive. I spend the rest of the evening watching tv.

As I drift off to sleep, I have my notepad and pen and by side and my phone set to voice memo. During the night I hear knocking four times, each time making a note of the time before falling back asleep but in the morning when I check the times against the voice memo there is no sound.

The knocking is coming from inside my own head.

The next morning, I check out of the hotel. “Your door key please. Have a nice day”.

At home I realize the cameras are useless and that I owe two of my neighbors an apology. My next-door neighbor accepts my apology in good grace. The guy downstairs doesn’t and threatens me with the police. For what exactly I don’t know. Harassment? I learn that the old lady down the hallway was removed on a gurney while I was in the hotel. She never returns.

The knocking in my head immediately begins to recede. After a week its almost gone. It’s as though establishing its origin has eliminated its purpose.

Nevertheless, I am keen to ask my psychiatrist about the episode.

“Is it voices or music”, he asks.

“No”

“Then don’t worry about it”

____________________

Psychiatrists’ reaction “Nothing to worry about”