“Love your shoes,” I told her as she passed.
She glanced down, because that seemed to be the automatic reaction when someone complimented your shoes, and then looked up at me. “Thank you.”
“Heading out to a show?” I asked.
“No. Private party. Some friends.”
“Have fun. There’s no rain predicted for later, but the wind will be pretty high.”
“Thanks for the warning.” She smiled at us both, then closed her long white coat and wrapped the belt around it to keep it closed.
Yeah, still very put together. In my youth, that’s the sort of look I aspired to. Never did quite make it. I look profession in my work attire, and I know how to do my makeup and accentuate my good parts, but I could never manage such casual put-together-ness.
“Percy, right?” she said to me before heading out.
“That’s right.”
“Thanks again for checking on…my friend. Her flight was cancelled.”
“I was sorry to hear that. She won’t be rebooking?”
“Not this trip. So it’s just me.”
I nodded to her party clothes. “At least you have friends to enjoy the city with.”
“Exactly.” She walked out the door with another smile, but the smile made me frown.
There was something…brittle about it. Like she’d had to force the expression. Which, of course, had my curiosity going. I was surprised by how curious I was about Dr. Yergunson. To be fair, I was always curious about the people coming in and out of this place. That was one of the reasons I loved my job, and wouldn’t hear of being promoted into a back office. I did this work so I could chat with people. I like people, even if some of them can be a little hard to take. So me being curious about a guest wasn’t unusual.
But there was something about Dr. Yergunson and her situation. Something tickling at the back of my brain.
Anyway. I faced Dan again. “Did they get the ice machine fixed on Three?”
“He has to come back tomorrow. Can’t figure out what’s wrong with it and thinks he’s gonna have to replace some parts.”
“Sure the owners will love that.”
“You’re on Three tonight, right? Wanna cover the desk for me on my break?” He wagged his eyebrows at me.
I tucked my chin and gave him my best Auntie look. “I am here to sleep. I am going to sleep right on through your shift and most of Miguel’s.”
Dan laughed. “I remember those days. Exhausting but worth it.”
“Will Becky’s worrying ever ease? Cause I’m not sure how much longer I can take Lilith dying of dengue fever, you know?”
“The worries change, but no, they never go away.” He shrugged. “If it helps, the paranoia about illnesses never eases.”
“Helps a lot. Thanks.” I snort laughed, then yawned suddenly, quickly covering my mouth.
Dan chuckled. “You better go take advantage of a free night to sleep. I promise to only wake you up in case of emergency.”
“If Becky calls in the middle of the night, talk her down. You’re a dad. You know all the things to say.”
“You sure? Between the two of us, we might diagnose Lilith with some rare disease that sends Becky down another WebMD search.”
“Don’t. You. Dare.” I pointed a finger out at him in warning. I did have a pretty good don’t-do-it face. If I didn’t smile, I could look pretty mean, even if I didn’t intend to. I inherited that from my dad. It was one of the many things we had in common and I still missed him sometimes when I pulled out the “face.”
Dan raised his hands in surrender. “I promise not to make things worse if she calls and to only disturb you if it’s an actual real, have to go to the emergency room type, emergency.”
“Thank you.” I went back to smiling. “Have a good night!”
I figured I’d watch some TV, settle in, enjoy the peace and quiet for a few hours before falling asleep. I usually didn’t get to sleep until close to midnight, one in the morning on a normal night.
But after my shower, I was so exhausted, I fell asleep the minute my head hit the pillow, with Agnus Hosfelder’s new baking show running on the TV in the background.
Four
Despite my exhaustion, and being a New Yorker who is used to background city sounds while sleeping, the sounds of someone banging loudly on metal woke me up. I scrambled for my phone to check the time. Three in the morning. My television was still on, though the cooking shows had moved on to something that was probably an infomercial. The TV was the only light in the room. The ambient city light was blocked by the blackout curtains I’d remembered to pull shut before my shower. So it was pretty dark in the room. And that was good for sleeping, but not great for the adrenaline rush I’d come out of sleep with.
It took a few moments to realize the banging wasn’t someone knocking on the room door. I’d assume full blown emergency and Becky really had had to take Lilith to the hospital. Or there was a fire in the building. Even the thought of that gave me the shudders. We live in dread of hotel fires in the hospitality industry.
But the knocking banging sound was definitely not coming from my room door. I rubbed my eyes and crawled out of bed, slipping a padded flannel shirt over my pajamas because I’d kept the room cool to sleep better. I’d been wearing pajamas pants and t-shirt to bed since Lilith was born and Becky and I would be taking turns getting up in the middle of the night with her. No time to worry about putting pajamas on before getting a crying baby. If I got into my robe, I’d considered it a bonus. And when I wasn’t sleeping in my own home, I felt like I should be ready to run out in case of emergency without having to think too much about it.
Winter time, and my pajama pants were flannel, which were warm enough with the padded shirt. But still I shivered as I walked to the door to check on the banging noise. It was loud enough it was probably disturbing other guests besides myself.
I looked out the peephole first, to see if I could see anything in the immediate area. Nothing right next to my door. So I eased the door open and looked up and down the hall. The banging sound seemed to be coming from the direction of the ice machine.
Oh no. It was still broken and not supposed to even be plugged in. I went back inside to grab my room key, then hurried toward the ice machine cubby, hoping to avert a disaster. I could have called down and had Dan handle this. I wasn’t on duty and I was here to sleep not solve ice machine problems. But I was close and this wouldn’t take but a minute, I was sure.
The ice machine was inside its own little room about halfway down the corridor, a few doors away from the elevator bank. There was also a soda vending machine, but it was outside the ice machine’s room, freestanding in the corridor. The room for the ice machine wasn’t large enough to put anything else in with it, so the soda machine got relegated to the public hallway.
Worried the ice machine was back to shooting out random amounts of ice all over the floor, I edged up to the cubby, but there’s no ice shooting into the hallway. The banging and noise was louder. And someone was cursing up a storm.
Guess they really wanted some ice. At three in the morning. From a broken machine.
I sighed and pulled on my professional mask, even though I was wearing pajamas, and turned the corner into the ice machine cubby, prepared to ask if there was a problem and could we help.
Only to see a man I’d never seen before crouched down with his hand up the ice machine shoot, cursing and banging the machine. I couldn’t tell if he was stuck or reaching for something. Either way, he wasn’t happy about what was happening.
Neither was I. The machine was already broken. This wasn’t gonna help. And who was this guy? He wasn’t a guest, unless he’d checked in very early or very late and hadn’t gone back through the lobby while I was on shift. It was possible for me to miss a guest for a day, maybe, depending on timing. But unless I’d just had a couple of days off, I knew most of the people, at least on sight, that came in and out of the hotel. In fact, I prided myself on recognizing faces of our guests.
I hadn’t been off for a couple of days. And the hotel wasn’t busy enough for me to have missed someone completely unless they checked in with Miguel super early and hadn’t left their room since.
Because we weren’t very busy, I even knew exactly how many rooms on this floor had guests. And I could literally place all of them by face—I’d have to look up a few names. I’m better with faces than names but I get the names eventually. None of the people on this floor were this man.
Now, I know he could have been from another floor. That was possible. But the other floors had working ice machines. Why come to a different floor for a not working ice machine?
“Can I help you?” I asked, my voice professional but neutral. None of my usual friendliness. It was three in the morning after all.
