Lagged.
Thursday January 1, 2009
It was two o’clock in the afternoon when his plane landed, but his watch said midnight. He had no idea anymore what time his body thought it was. At the hotel he yawned mightily when the clerk handed him his key-card. She smiled. He grinned and shrugged and shook his head.
He stood a full three minutes before the hotel bar, his overnight bag hanging limply from his shoulder, before he figured out he didn’t want a drink.
The elevator was empty and silent.
He got turned around in the labyrinthine hallways, distracted perhaps by the weird thin light shining through the windows here and there. Not what he was used to seeing in hotel halls. He jiggled the card in the magnetic lock and then pulled it out and turned it over and jiggled it again before the little green light lit up and he could open the door and step inside and take a long, deep breath.
She was lying on the bed, wearing wine-colored lace, filmy and brief. From her fall collection, no doubt. The nails on her fingers and toes had been painted to match. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and stubbed out her cigarette in an empty water glass and stood, and never once looked him in the eye.
“How did you know?” he said. “How do you always know?”
“Do you care?” she said. She turned her back to him and slowly pulled her lacy underwear over her hips and down those long, long legs. He let the overnight bag fall to the floor.