Book a night to check in at ten, pin a stop to three in the afternoon behind it,
and the rail said 13:46. True enough as arithmetic — with no hour of its own the
chain works the first stop backwards out of the first one that has one, so three
minus a fourteen minute drive minus an hour standing there — and nothing anybody
asked for.
A door that opens at ten, with nothing ahead of it deciding otherwise, IS the
hour: the day starts there and runs forwards. Reached later it stays what it was,
a floor, and a floor below the arrival changes nothing — which is what keeps a
hotel behind an afternoon stop at its real arrival instead of dragging it back to
its check-in.
Maurice
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