3. Monique #2
I check the doors a fifth time and tell myself it's the weather.
A repeat guest comes to the desk before midnight, and I know him. This is his third stay this season, a mild man, the kind who'd rather suffer than complain.
"I don't want to make a thing of it," he says. "There's a hum in the room. Three in the morning, every night, this low mechanical sound." He makes a flat sound in his throat. "And I can't sleep through it."
I take his room number, then pull the maintenance log, then pull two other complaints I half-remember. They line up the way I hoped they wouldn't — three rooms, one vertical stack, the same forty minutes before dawn.
"There's a ventilation riser that runs that whole line of rooms and a rooftop unit that cycles on a schedule.
My guess is it kicks on for its predawn run, and the riser carries the sound down the stack.
A baffle on the unit, or moving the cycle an hour, takes it out.
I'll flag it tonight, and I'll move you to the quiet side of the building right now so you can sleep while they sort it out. "
He looks at me like I've done a card trick. "How do you know all that?"
"I read the building." I'm already cutting his new key.
When he's gone, Juan's at my elbow. "You should write that up."
"I did. Six months ago. Three pages, with the riser diagram."
"And?"
"And it's in a folder with my name on it that nobody has opened." I slide the key card across. "Good fix either way. He sleeps tonight."
Juan looks like he's got more to say about it, but I let it go before he can find the start of it.
The doors open, and the rain comes in with him.
I hate myself a little, immediately, on schedule.
Weston enters damp at the shoulders, his jacket gone dark with rain. He moves with that walk that's never in a hurry.
He's barely off the mat when a man two steps ahead of him fumbles — phone in his ear, coffee in one hand, rolling bag in the other. The bag tips as the handle slips from the man's grip and falls toward the floor.
Weston gets to it first, and I get to it second. His hand and my hand close on the same handle, and the backs of our fingers press warm against each other for half an inch of a second. Then we both let go, and the bag stands up between us.
That's the part I'll be carrying around the rest of the shift. Something I could file.
"Got it," he says to the guest, who's still on his call, who nods at us both and rolls on.
We straighten. We don't look at the half-inch.
On the walk back to the desk, I take myself in hand. He's a guest.
The watch on his wrist is worth a quarter of my yearly salary. Whatever passes between us at two in the morning lives on his side of a line I've never crossed. I don't do this anyway because giving a man a piece of yourself means you might not get it back.
I've watched what men do with the pieces — they want, take, and leave the damage standing where you have to keep living in it.
I learned that before I could spell it.
I get my work face back on, and that's when the lobby acquires a woman.
She comes through the doors at an angle, boots and a sweater three sizes too big, drunk in a controlled sort of way. A guy follows half a step behind. I dislike him on sight. Not dangerous. Just persistent. The kind who's decided the night isn't over and sees no reason anyone should disagree.
"I'm locked out," she tells the lobby in general. "My key, the door — it's a whole situation."
"I can help with that. Name and room?"
“Iris Blackwood. Suite 1203.” The last name comes up, and my face stays exactly where it is.
The guy leans on the desk. "We were just gonna grab one more…"
"It's late," I say to Iris, not to him, and then to Iris, "I'll have a fresh key for you in two minutes." Then I turn to the guy, pleasant and flat with no handle anywhere on it, "There's a cab line out front. The doorman will flag you one."
He hunts for an opening, but there isn't one. He pushes off the desk and says something to Iris that she doesn't quite turn for.
The doorman has the cab door open before the man can convince himself that leaving was his own idea.
Iris watches him go, with little expression on her face.
Then she turns all her attention on me. "How old are you?"
I glance up from the computer. "Old enough to be at work."
"Do you always look this serious?"
That’s a compliment for me. I smile. "It's a serious building."
"Do you like working nights?" Her gaze drifts around the marble lobby, then back to me.
"I like the quiet."
She studies me for a moment, one elbow resting on the desk. "You should smile more."
"People tell women that too much."
She blinks, and something moves behind the drunk and the boredom, awake and sharp. "Okay. That's a good point. That's actually a good point." She drops both elbows on the desk. "You're funny. Nobody here's funny. Everybody here's polished." She says it like it tastes bad.
"Your key card." I hold it out.
"You didn't ask why I'm out this late."
"Not my business."
"See, that's great, because everybody asks. Wes asks. God, Wes asks like it's his — "
"Iris."
He's there, and I don't know how long he's been there. He's crossed the lobby with all that gruffness turned protective, looking her over the way people look for injuries. "You okay?"
She rolls her eyes hard enough to take her head with them. "Stop saying it like I survived a shipwreck. I lost a key."
I look at him, then at her — the last name, the walk, the jaw — and the whole thing comes together fast.
"You're related."
Iris's gaze goes slow between us. Me, him, me again. Her whole face opens up.
"Oh my god."
"Iris." His voice goes flat. He knows exactly where the conversation is headed. "Don't start."
"You're prettier than he said."
A luggage cart rolls somewhere on a far floor, and that's the only sound for a second. Weston doesn’t look at me, and I keep my eyes anywhere else but him.
Iris looks thrilled with what she's made.
"Good night, Iris," he says.
She takes her key and goes backward two steps so she can keep grinning at the both of us, and I put my hands flat on the desk so they have somewhere to be.
The lobby settles after they're gone, and the settling is louder than it should be — the ice machine ticking behind the wall, the rain on the doors, a phone going unanswered two floors up.
Then the singing starts, and the drunk man comes down louder than usual as he works himself up out of the elevator. He complains about his room, the noise, the service, and nothing at all.
Juan is already crossing the floor with an easy greeting and the shepherd's walk. It's routine, so I barely look up.
Then the drunk man breaks away from him; he was meant to be going upstairs to his room.
He moves faster than Juan can finish with him and speaks louder, shaking off the shepherd's walk. He turns mid-lobby, and the complaint has found a target — me.
Coming back across the marble with his volume up and his face gone wrong, he has something mean rising under the drunk where the self-pity used to be.
He hits the desk with his palm and leans, taking the whole counter and grabbing my wrist. He's close enough now for me to smell his drink, and the words coming out of him are looking for somewhere to land.
Juan's moving. My other hand reaches for the phone automatically.
Then a voice comes across the lobby from behind the man, low and even, and its levelness is the worst thing about it.
"Step away from her!"