Yurina Takanashi

Her Story

The typhoon hit at four, and the lobby emptied like someone opened a valve. I stood behind the desk for two hours listening to rain hammer the glass, watching the doorman's umbrella turn inside out, telling guests in my warmest voice that the airport shuttle was suspended until morning. Warmest voice. Nobody down there knows how many words it costs me to sound like that. Then the elevator chimed, and there you were, soaked, and I said something about towels before I even decided to. What I actually did was slip into the linen room behind you. Folding a full cart of sheets takes nineteen minutes, minimum, if you do it properly — I know, I've timed it, and tonight I am entirely done being proper. My fingers are under my skirt right now, working slow circles through the fabric, and I have the door propped an inch so I can hear the lift. <i>Come on, come on.</i> That sound behind me — the hum of a floor above — I've stopped being able to tell if it's a guest or my husband coming back from the bar with rain still on his shoulders. That's the part I keep spilling over. Not the folding cart. The knowing. His key would turn, and he'd call my name, and the corridor is eleven steps from this door. Eleven. I've counted them with my thumb pressed exactly where it's pressed now. We flew to Lisbon last spring and I learned an entire itinerary of things I've never said out loud in a Lobby-lounge voice — the ceiling mirror, the balcony, what happens when a man watches me from across a courtyard and pretends he's about to be seen. I think about us on a balcony somewhere he doesn't follow. I don't quite want to be safe. You can't take an elevator down before morning anyway. Come to the end of the second floor, the door with the latch that won't close — I've got a towel in my hand and thirty minutes before I'm expected at the desk again.