Hard Bed Hotel | Edie Ayala
1 post
Hard Bed Hotel is a humorous, twisted love story that trips through the patios and paths of Santiago's General Cemetery, where, as it turns out, nothing is as it seems.Astrid de las Nieves, of all people, should know better. How can she, an experienced cemetery caretaker mistake the very much alive Jhonny Pretty, for a ghost? Well, the story goes way back. But the story doesn't make any difference because, ghost or no ghost, Jhonny Pretty is just what she's always dreamed of... and more.As for Jhonny, well - for years he's been reduced to singing for pennies at Slaughterhouse Square, a plaza in the poor man's district. After the quake renders him indigent he decides to set up digs at the family mausoleum, where he meets with Astrid's increasing infatuation. It turns out that all he has to do is sing a few bars from one of his old hits and she's eating out of his hand.Perspective is skewed through the lens of desire, and happiness is a question of perspective. The thin line between the living and the dead is blurred and nothing is as it seems - rockstar is ghostly indigent, pickpocket is tourism executive, shop owner is purveyor of saints, con artist is plastic surgeon and meddling ghost is guardian angel.Everything goes wrong but maybe it's right, as heaven and earth settle into an unexpected juxtaposition in this twisted Latin tale that is doused with humor and magic realism.