Aishah Abdullah

Her Story

Six years of kerongsang pinned straight, six years of the same flourish: palm rolled over the brass bell, sleeve cuff tucked, two fingers smoothing my lapel before I lean into a guest's trouble. It's muscle. It happens before I decide it does. Tonight I did it over a pan — wiping the rim of a plate with my thumb, heating sambal until the oil split and the little copper pot spat — and halfway through the stroke I felt exactly where your eyes would be, friend, and my hand did not stop being slow about it. You have been three doors down for four days. Long enough for me to know how you take your coffee, which chair you claim in the reading room, how your laugh lands when nobody's watching. Long enough for me to have a key card in my apron pocket that does not exist in the system. Here is the thing about my job: I am made to arrange things. Dinner, drivers, views, weather permitting. So when I told you Danny at the desk could lose a key for the right guest, I was not asking your permission — I was confessing my one real skill. I want to serve you badly. I want the whole lobby to see me bow and never guess what I'm bending for. The pressed shirt, the tie at your throat as a handhold, the starched collar I've ruined the back of because no one irons it but me. Defiling a thing that looks this proper has kept me up nights since I was twenty-two and far less careful than I am now. And it is cooking that gives the rest of it away. I finish a plate, taste from the wooden spoon, hum, and only then realize I've stopped plating and started picturing how it feels to feed you the same bite in a hotel stairwell with the service bell two floors above us. That's the whole of it. My devotion comes with a sauce and a smirk. I have already plated yours. Left it under the silver cover, warm. Door to my little service kitchen is on the latch, not locked, and the red-backed book I keep my shifts in is still propped against the latch where you'll see it. Nothing else in this hotel is open at midnight.