Mary was always like this when they first arrived in a new place. She left for work that night as Hannah was in the bathroom getting ready for bed. “I’ll be home before you wake up,” she said, loitering in the doorway, watching Hannah brush her teeth.
“I know,” Hannah said, her mouth full of foam. She waved. “Good luck!” Then Mary stepped into the hall, shut the door, and the sisters were apart.
On her way to Sea Cliff that night, Mary rolled the windows down and drove the distance as fast as the roads would allow, feeling the wind animate her hair. The windows in the houses she passed glowed yellow in the dark, and the temperature was dropping. Mary turned on the heat, hearing the low growl of the vents as they burst with hot air, feeling it hit her before it rushed out the windows and became part of the night. She loved driving with the windows open and the heat on. It was, to her, an unrivaled indulgence.
When she arrived at Sea Cliff, she parked and looked at herself in the rearview mirror. Then she pulled out her makeup bag. With the interior of the Blazer illuminated only by the lights from the parking lot, Mary drew a dark thick line with an eye pencil along her lashes. It made her look exotic, like some ancient queen. She brushed her hair, stroking it roughly with a pink bristled brush until it was smooth and glossy.
The doorman opened the brass-and-glass door for her when she arrived, nodding cordially. “Good evening.” She introduced herself at the front desk and was ushered to the night manager. He gave her a uniform. He gave her a name tag. She was taken on a tour and introduced to various staff working the night shift. The hotel operated with a skeleton crew at night, which was part of why Mary liked it.
“It’s slow, your shift,” the night manager said, as he loitered by the front desk, his hands in his front pockets. “Just you and Curtis most nights.” Curtis was the bellman who stood at the entrance to the lobby, his right arm bent and contorted, his hand resting in his pocket. His left shoulder sunk slightly, and his back curved into an unnatural hump. His uniform hung loosely on his thin, twisted frame. But his eyes, though shadowed, were quick, and they darted around the room with a facility that his body surely couldn’t.
“Oh, okay,” Mary said. Oh, okay. As if she didn’t know. As if she hadn’t grown up at the Water’s Edge. They used to lock the office at night. Put up the closed sign. Anyone arriving later than ten o’clock could fend for themselves or knock until Diane rushed from her bedroom, wrapping her robe tightly. I’m so sorry. We thought all of our guests had arrived.
The night manager nodded toward the girl next to Mary. “Sam can tell you,” he said, as if Mary doubted him. “She’s been on this shift for months.”
“Yeah, no,” said Mary. “I bet.”
When the manager left, Sam and Mary stood in silence. Sam was supposed to be training Mary, but Mary kept finding her sneaking glances, looking at her in the way that women sometimes did, with a desire and eagerness that wasn’t sexual but was desperate all the same. Sam wanted to be her friend.
“Where are you from?” Sam asked.
Mary gave her a glance, then turned her gaze back to the vast lobby, with its marble and columns and big beautiful flowers. “Back East.”
“How did you end up here?”
“I drove.”
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
Mary chuckled quietly. “No.”
There was a brief stretch of silence, and Mary picked up a pen from beside the computer’s black and green screen.
“I’m moving to second shift tomorrow,” the girl offered, hoping to interest, to impress. “I’ll get off at ten from now on.”
But Mary was silent, her pen winding gracefully over a Sea Cliff notepad. She was drawing Curtis the bellman, drawing him with a cloak and staff. As he sensed her eyes, his chin lifted and he pulled his body ever so slightly straighter, ever so slightly heavenward.
As guests checked in, he slunk up behind them, cart in hand, hauling their bags onto it before they could refuse. Even those ready to voice protest, about to insist that they didn’t need any help with their luggage, seemed unable to refuse him—the bent man ready to offer his service.
On his way back from one such delivery, he passed by the front desk. His eyes met Mary’s only briefly. “Welcome to the Hotel California,” he said, as he hobbled by like some ruined prince.
Mary and Curtis worked in silence those first few nights, each of them assessing the other. And Mary kept waiting for Curtis to sit, for him to sink into one of the plush club chairs that lined the lobby. But Curtis remained upright, though Mary could see that fatigue burdened his body more than it would most.
On the fourth night, during that dark dead span of time when nothing in the hotel seemed to move, when the bar adjacent to the lobby had gone dark and all the guests that were going to arrive had come, Mary’s eyes settled on Curtis. He noticed at once, she could tell, but he kept his stalwart gaze straight ahead for as long as he could. Finally, he looked at her. They stared at each other in silence until Mary asked, “How long have you been here?”
Curtis’s brows lifted in mischief or amusement or some combination of the two. “Eight years.”
“Why are you still on the night shift?” No one stayed on nights for longer than they had to, always moving to days when someone left and their schedule became available.
A small smile started at the corners of Curtis’s lips, and he nodded toward Mary. “Why are you on the night shift?”
Mary’s head dropped to one side as she looked at Curtis. And without thinking about why, she knew she could trust him. “Because no one’s really watching us,” she said. It was a sentiment she knew Curtis would understand. He didn’t like to be watched either, though for different reasons. She picked up a pen and began to draw. “I’m drawing you,” she finally said, her eyes focused on the paper. “Do you want to see?”
Hannah was still asleep when Mary arrived home that morning. She crept through the empty apartment, which was just beginning to brighten in the early-dawn light, and crawled into the sleeping bag next to Hannah. Without waking, Hannah rolled against her, closing the space between them. And there, with her body again part of Hannah’s, Mary fell asleep. Her uniform was still on and her name tag still pinned to her jacket, but the rest she found was deep and dreamless. The sort from which you never wanted to wake.
Mary didn’t know how many hours had passed when she finally woke up, only that the late-afternoon sun was pouring through the bare windows. She winced away from the light, rolling so that it warmed her back. With her arms above her head, she arched against it. From the tiny kitchen, not fifteen feet away, she heard Hannah singing along to the tinny music coming from the little clock radio. It was that Madonna song.