On the fifth floor I feel the buzz, putting the tape measure against the door of the room with Westin in it. Hoping the guy who’s staying here doesn’t suddenly come out.
I stretch the tape across and hold my breath as I line up with the same spot I did the previous five times.
Twenty-seven feet, four inches.
Same on the other side.
“That’s interesting,” Ruby says.
“What did I say about quiet time?”
I run back downstairs. Pick three spots. Distances between rooms. Measure them and tell Ruby to take notes. Then run the same measurements on floors two, three, and four. They’re all consistent.
On the fifth floor they’re all a few inches off.
Inches though, not feet. Even with the number of rooms, there wouldn’t be enough deviation to add another full-size room.
Which brings me right back to the closet.
It looks the same as all the others. I walk to it and touch the doorframe…
…I press my hand to my chest. I’ve been standing in the bathroom for maybe a half hour now. Or else it’s just been two minutes. Time hasn’t really made sense these last few days. I’m wearing the black dress that Mena liked, along with a black blazer and beaten motorcycle boots. It’s not dressy, but she wouldn’t have cared.
She’d have just wanted me to be there.
A knock at the door. I turn to it, but don’t move, just stare at myself in the mirror, tendrils of mascara snaking down my face.
“January, we’re about to start,” Reg says, his voice muffled through the door.
Another knock.
“Jan, are you in there?”
I couldn’t open the door if I wanted to. I’m frozen in place. Physically unable to move. Just staring at that postcard stuck in the mirror.
The little people made of dots.
“Look, you don’t even have to come out,” Reg says. “Can I just come in?”
With a monumental amount of effort, the kind of effort it would take to move a planet, I tilt my head slightly toward the bed. Mena’s side, still mussed into the shape of her. It still smells like her. I’ve been sleeping on the floor the last few days. I don’t know why. I feel like I don’t deserve a bed. Don’t deserve comfort. Not in a world where Mena doesn’t exist anymore.
“Look just…” Reg trails off, and I think maybe he’s given up on me, as he should, because what is there left in this room? A memory and a dead girl. Which one of those am I? My heart stopped beating in that elevator the night of the explosion. It’s like my body is just waiting to catch up.
Then he says, “We’ll wait a few minutes to start.”
He goes. Still I don’t move.
My legs ache. My back is sore. Maybe I have been standing here a long time. Forcing myself to look at me. My face. Wondering what it was Mena saw inside me that made someone so lovely and special spend her time trying to heal me. Those impact craters on my body that, once, I thought were expressions of love.
She fit herself into those grooves.
She did more than that.
Did you know love could reach inside a person?
I didn’t. Not until her. It probes your skin until it finds a crack. Then it pours into you, liquid gold that hardens and makes you stronger. That’s what Mena told me we were for each other. Kintsugi. The Japanese art of using lacquer dusted with gold to mend broken pottery. So that those cracks are still there, but now they’re features. Celebrations of strength.
She would whisper it in my ear as we made love. When we reached those moments where the two of us were so deeply connected we melded together.
Other voices drift through the door, but it’s like I can’t hear them in real time, I can only recall them. Cameo, saying something about family. Brandon, asking me if I need anything. Mbaye. I don’t know what Mbaye says. His voice sounds like static to me.
By the time my perception catches up with reality, it’s nighttime. I can tell from the crack in the curtains, arranged in such a way so that the first beams of sunrise would fall across Mena’s face to wake her in the morning. Her favorite way to greet the day. Now there’s nothing but darkness beyond them, and the service was supposed to be early afternoon, so I must have been standing for a very long time.
I consider lying on the floor again, just to take some pressure off my ankles, which now feel wooden and swollen. Instead I go to the door and lean out, checking first to make sure the hallway is empty before stepping all the way into it. Then cross to the stairwell and take it to the roof, the sound of my boots echoing off the concrete walls.
It’s a nice night. Warm. A little breezy. The kind of night we would have come up here with some snacks and stared out at the lights of Einstein, the massive machines that keep the place running flashing in red and white, with the occasional shock of blue that lights up half the sky whenever a trip takes off.
I watch three flashes of blue from my spot near the door before I make my way to the lip of the roof. There’s a waist-high wall in front of me. I feel the rough stone under my fingertips. I look out at Einstein. The place I thought held all I ever wanted. And then I found this.
A job I didn’t want, which led me to a love I couldn’t have imagined.
Now it’s gone.
All of it. Everything. I am just a sad little girl who lives in a sad little room and tells rich people to stop being so sad. I will live here for a little while longer and then, one day, with no warning, my brain will stop working. And maybe the TEA will put me on life support and keep my heart beating on the off chance someone finds a way to fix it.
I should sign a DNR.
But frankly, that feels like too much effort. There are easier ways.
I put my foot up on the ledge.
“What a night.”
There’s a crunch on the gravel behind me, and I turn to find Mena.
Mena from about six weeks ago. The last time we were up here. Just spring, and a little chilly, so she’s wearing my red hoodie zipped tight around her, holding a bottle of wine, looking like she’d rather drink me instead.
That night. We swiped yoga mats from the gym and made love up here, under the dark sky and the blue flashes, even though it got so chilly that by the time we were done, our fingers were stiff from the cold.
“I know the lights are pretty, mi reina, but since when are you a moth?” she asks.
It’s not her. I know this is a slip. The electricity surging in my brain. I had drifted toward the edge of the roof, the lights of Einstein drawing me closer, to that thing that I loved, and missed so much I felt the ache of it in my chest.
This is an echo of her. The thing she said to me. Worried I was getting a little too close to the edge of the roof.
But right now, does it even matter?
She looks over my shoulder, at the lights of Einstein. “I miss working there. Though admittedly, the view here is much nicer.”
My throat grows thick. Eyes well with tears. I reach for her. What did I say that night? What was my response to this? I don’t even remember. But damn the rules, what if there’s a chance? “I need to tell you something, okay? Please, I need you to listen, because…”