Night shift

I hope you find it within yourself to change—like how you love me as if you have your hands tied, and every day I go to work more tired than the last. Today was long, as the days so often unforgivably are. An hour into my shift, guests requested an additional night towel, or a spare bottle of shampoo.

They laughed at their own mindlessness.

“I forgot my shaving cream.”

“Can you bring an ice bucket?”

“My do not disturb sign is torn, and I’d hate to be disturbed.”

“You’d look better if you smiled.”

Their laughs ricocheted off the chandelier that hung above the granite that kept me separated from the lives they lived.

“Please, I’m tired,” I wanted to say, but the people couldn’t help but want more. And I couldn’t help but to appease them. I just smiled the widest my cheeks could bare, “My pleasure.”

I swiped room keys and charged for incidentals and summoned bell boys with rough hands and the smell of sweat that mixed with their grassy cologne.

At a quarter til nine, I laid down on my back in the break room with my feet up the wall to give my sore body some relief. I kept my head hovered inches off the ground and fixated on the dust building in the corners of the boxy room and the smell of expired lunch meat that no one bothered to clear from the fridge. I thought of you in splitting seconds while my skirt was high on my thigh and the drum in my head pounded just shy of rhythmically.

When the bell chimed at the front desk, I sprung to my throbbing feet and pushed everything else aside to accommodate the people who never stopped needing things.

It was a couple who rang it. They stood with a bent knee and protruding hip—bored eyes. I was distracted by the rock on her ring finger that hovered over the metal chime, ready to ring again. I thought about their lives together—how he must feed her strawberries in the penthouse suite and buy her lace to wear only for him. They must live in the suburbs, the nice part, different from where I go home to. I’m sure they travel by car service. They didn’t seem like kind of people to huff and swerve through busy traffic, or swipe a card through turnstiles and pack like sardines in subway cars.

She twirled her ring. I thought about how the cost of a silly symbol of dedication could have fixed all of our problems. With that kind of money, we could hire someone to fix our roof and finally get rid of that bucket that catches the leak, which also has a crack in it by now. With that kind of money, I could afford food that you actually want to eat—maybe you’d even massage the hands that cook for you. We could be happy again.

“The bar?” The posh man said again, and the woman hung on his arm and giggled.

How foolish I felt for getting so distracted by the idea of what their lives were like—by what ours could have been.

“It’s closed,” my voice was soft and squeamish, “I’m sorry.” I knew how to apologize effortlessly, and I knew how to pretend that it made up for any of my shortcomings.

He scoffed—wasn’t used to being told no, that can’t be done.

“Is there another bar you’d recommend?” He wasn’t rude, though certainly impatient. That’s something you’ve never been, and I love you for that.

“Corner of 43rd and 7th,” I said, “I’m sorry.”

They whisked away with an airy breeze that carried them.

When my shift was over, I slipped into the chaos of the street, feeling myself shrink down amongst the skyscrapers. I passed people asleep on the sidewalk with an outstretched hand holding empty cups, begging for grace even in their dreams. I passed bakeries receiving bags of flour and dough to prepare for the morning rush, and I passed a man carrying a Christmas tree over his strong shoulder—the tip of his nose vulnerably red and tender.

I walked to the pier where the sailboat sat stationary. You used to meet me here, back when you had a job, too. We’d buy beers from the corner store and drink them from brown paper bags, sharing a smoke and dancing in the clouds we puffed. You used to tell me about your dreams for your life, and sometimes, I was even in them. We’d go home together, hand in hand with sore bellies from the joy we found in the simplest of things.

Even though our lives have changed, I still so often wait for you there, and you so often do not show. I find peace there still, despite everything, in the sound of sirens behind me—emergencies greater than mine. In the clouds moving and dissipating above me. In the moonlight cast and rippling on the water, where I dreamed of diving into the deep end of sour disappointment so that I could listen to you leave me. Maybe then I’d be free and without worry. Though, I always stayed on land—my body dry and coiled, my mind fogged and addicted to your indifference.

On my way to the train, I passed the couple sitting with cold shoulders in the bar I had recommended to them. The sight of them froze me. I hadn’t expected to see them, and suddenly things didn’t feel as small anymore—they felt contrived and calculated, like I was meant to peer into things that crumbled before me. The woman was crying. Her lip quivered, her man cast by his apathy. I stood there passively, as I so often did, observing what I could not control. My reflection was faint in the glass. Their lives were moving—mine was not. Had I caused this? I breathed in the cold night air, no one aside me to laugh with, but no one aside me to make me cry, either. I left them there, after the man almost caught me staring. I resumed my walk to the station, where I’d return home to a life where no one needs me, not even you who sleeps in my bed, and maybe I’d like to keep it that way. Maybe I’ll find solace in that.