Ethan: I’m not trying to pressure you. I just hate that this is where we are.
I read it once. Then I put the phone on the desk and walk to the sink.
The hotel bathroom is too bright at this hour. White tile, chrome fixtures, my reflection in the mirror with flushed cheeks and hair beginning to loosen from its pins. I turn on the cold tap and run water over my wrists until my pulse stops insisting on itself.
The wording is so him.
I’m not trying to pressure you.
That is the sentence men use while pressing their hand against the door.
I just hate that this is where we are.
Whereweare.
As ifwearrived here by accident.
As if the geography of a relationship changes itself while no one is responsible for the travel.
I dry my hands slowly. The towel is thick and white and faintly stiff from hotel laundry. I fold it back over the rack because the action gives my hands something to finish. Then I return to the desk. The message is still there. I pick up the phone and type nothing.
There are answers available. Too many of them. A clean one. A cruel one. A patient one. A final one. The kind where I remind him that we are not anywhere together. The kind where I tell him that where he is and where I am no longer share a map. The kind Sophie would read aloud in a dramatic voice over takeout in her apartment while declaring it “surgical.”
Instead, I lock the screen. I set the phone face-down. Then I open the laptop. The rest of the day becomes work because I make it become work.
I refine the Santa Livia piece until it stops wobbling. I cut a sentence about the lamb because it repeats what the previous sentence already proved. I move the line about restraint closer to the top because Diana is right more often than is convenient, and discomfort can be precise. I send the revised draft at around 4:30PM and receive no immediate response, which means Diana is either in a meeting or making me wait because she knows waiting annoys me.
Both are possible.
I go downstairs thirty minutes later.
Lucia is at the front desk, speaking to a British couple who have arrived with six bags and the stunned expression of people who believed cobblestones were decorative. She looks composed, as always, but one hand rests on the desk with the slightest pressure at the fingertips.
The husband says, “We were told the room had a view.”
Lucia says, “It does.”
“Of the courtyard,” the wife says.
“Yes,” Lucia says. “That is the view.”
“We expected something more Roman,” the husband says.
Lucia blinks once. “The courtyard is in Rome.”
I stop near the small table of tourist brochures and pretend to read one about Vatican tours while the couple processes the fact that Lucia has not technically insulted them.
The wife says, “We meant something with landmarks.”
Lucia’s smile appears, gentle enough to be fatal.
“Of course. The landmarks are outside. The room is inside. This is usually the arrangement.”
I have to look down at the brochure.
By the time the couple leaves, Lucia turns to me.
“You heard nothing,” she says.
