I did not have my way back home.
I turned around and stared at the line of doorways behind me. Shit. They all look the same. Which one? It was powerfully unfair. Forgetting something that just fucking happened.
It made no sense. A woman can spend half her life haunted by a sixth grader’s taunt that took place in 1985. But she can have absolutely no idea what happened 20 seconds ago.
Stop. Stay calm. Think. I retraced my steps. Had I passed five rooms on my way to the elevator? Or four? I searched for pointy heel indentions in the red carpet, which was covered with whorls like the forked tongue of a snake. I found nothing, but I kept searching for any trail of string. Did I pass that Emergency sign? What about this room service tray sitting by the door?
Deductive reasoning suggested I had come from the corner room, because his window was larger than mine and the room more of an L shape, so I walked back down the hall. I took a deep breath and knocked on the door. Mine was the tentative knock of the thoroughly unconvinced. The “pardon me” knock. The “I know you’re busy” knock.
Nothing happened. No one came.
I looked at the door beside it. On second thought, maybe it was this one. Perhaps the room wasn’t L-shaped, so much as the furniture was rearranged. Another knock, louder this time.
Nothing, no one.
I wondered if he was in the shower. Maybe he had already passed out, snoring in the same position I left him. People who’ve been drinking can be so hard to rouse.
I went back to the original door. I took a deep breath, and I pounded on it. I pounded with both fists, and I tried very hard not to think about what might happen if I had the wrong door. A guy staring through the fish-eye while his wife asks, “Who is it, honey?”
Nothing happened. No one came.
I looked down the hallway, at the doors lined up before me. Was it me, or did they stretch into infinity? I clutched my hair, then doubled over in a silent scream.
I slumped down the wall and sat in the patch of space between two doors. I closed my eyes and stayed still for a very long time. I wanted so many things in that moment. I wanted to call Anna. I wanted to call my boyfriend, but he wasn’t my boyfriend anymore. I wanted Bubba, and the calming way he curled up on my chest, paws barely touching my neck, so I could feel the tiny patter of his heart and the boom in my own rib cage. Almost like our hearts were having a conversation with each other.
I don’t know how long I sat in that hallway. Ten minutes, ten years.
When I finally stood up, I had a plan.
IN COLLEGE, WE joked about the “walk of shame.” It was the term for the bleary-eyed stagger of Sunday morning—when you had to pass coeds who raised their eyebrows at your tangled hair and your one broken heel. The great thing about a term like “walk of shame” is that its cleverness leaches the embarrassment from the act. To endure a walk of shame was not shameful anymore, because you were participating in a rite of passage, familiar to any well-lived life. Like so much of our vernacular—wasted, smashed, obliterated, fucked up—I never thought much about it.
But heading down to the concierge desk in the middle of the night was a true walk of shame. I swiped a knuckle under each lid as I rode down in the elevator. I straightened my wool skirt. I tried to look like a woman who had not just emerged from a hole in the ground.
“Bonjour,” I said to the concierge. My voice was chased by those hollow echoes that come in the wee hours of the night.
“Good evening,” he said. “What can I do for you?”
Above the desk, a series of clocks kept time around the world. It was only 8:30 pm back in New York, which sounded so safe and far away.
“I left my purse in someone’s room,” I said.
“Not a problem,” he said, and began tapping on the computer. “What room was it?”
I shook my head. I traced a figure eight on the counter with my index finger. “I don’t know.”
“Not a problem,” he said. More tapping. “What was the guest’s name?”
A tear slipped down my cheek, and I watched it splat. “I don’t know.”
He nodded, his mouth an expressionless line. But I could see the pity in his eyes. He felt sorry for me. And somehow this pebble of sympathy was enough to shatter my fragile reserve. I crumpled into tears.
“Don’t cry,” he said. He took my hand. His fingers were dry and cold and they swallowed mine. “It’s going to be OK,” he said.
And I believed him, because I needed to.