Girl in Snow(11)

“No thanks,” I say. I glare until she turns away.

I’ve only seen photos of New York City at sunset. Waning honey light paints the buildings, a golden wash. Skyscraper lights flicker on one by one—pinprick samples of every sort of life possible beyond this one.



It’s Lucinda Hayes’s fault that I have two jobs: babysitting for the Thorntons and housekeeping at the Hilton Ranch.

People leave traces of themselves in hotel rooms. Crumpled tissues, earplugs covered in sticky wax, the occasional condom. Last month, I found a digital camera. Last week, a love letter.

Querida, querida,

You are an ocean, and I dream only of salt. When I wake, you are sand in the cracks between my teeth.

—Madly

They come in every Tuesday. Madly comes at six thirty, Querida follows at seven. I think they’re in their late twenties, but who knows. Ma says love takes years off a woman’s skin.

Every Tuesday, they check into a room—Aunt Nellie gives Madly a swipe key, smacking her gum and smiling conspiratorially. He waits in the fake-leather armchair by the window until Querida shows up, her battered purse slung over one shoulder. Querida is pretty in the way of a woman who does not try to be pretty. She wears no makeup; some lumpy knitted hat, and her T-shirts are too tight (but this seems like an accident). It’s how she smiles—shy at first, as she compulsively twists a lock of long black hair. You can practically see her heart jumping out of her chest.

They walk to the elevator, shy. Madly lifts her chin carefully, with one finger, and Querida blushes scarlet. They talk at a safe distance—like they’re afraid they’ll burst into flame.

The night Lucinda died, Aunt Nellie and I shook our heads from the reception desk until the elevator doors dinged shut. Aunt Nellie turned to me, like she had suddenly remembered I was there.

“Jade, are we paying you to stand here and gossip?”

It wasn’t gossip because we hadn’t said anything, but I gathered my cleaning cart anyway. I’d spent the previous two hours constructing a pyramid out of toilet-paper rolls, and now I had to be careful crossing doorframes. The pyramid was wavering, precarious. I trundled the cart past the housekeeping supply closet and into the staff elevator, where I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirrored doors as they closed.

I was the furthest thing from a woman in love. Drowning in the folds of my maintenance polo, bleach-stained apron pulled too tight across my waist. My hair wrestled its way out of a ponytail, and makeup pooled beneath my eyes.

Every Tuesday, I push my cart into the room that shares a wall with Querida and Madly’s and I hold my breath until I go half blind. I never hear a thing. I can only imagine how they sound, all gasping whispers, the careful hush of skin on skin. The night Lucinda died, I stood in a room that had already been cleaned and wondered how it would feel to be touched like that. Eager and desperate.

Ma’s shrink says I suffer from a debilitating lack of direction. Most of the time, this doesn’t feel as bad as it sounds. But sometimes, I’ll wake in the middle of the night, terrified for no reason. Once, I dreamed of The Birth of Venus and I woke up crying because of her marble skin. The hillside curve of her. I took a sip of water from a plastic cup, even though it had been sitting on my nightstand for days.

Querida, querida, I thought, and this made things better.

I like hotel rooms. Humans are disgusting, every single one of them. Even Querida. After I found the love letter in Room 304, I pulled a clump of black hair the size of a roach from the shower drain.



When I come home from school three hours early, Ma isn’t supposed to be there. She volunteers on Wednesdays at the animal rescue down the street so she can call herself a nurse at book club.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

The oven clock reads 12:47 p.m. Ma sits with her legs propped up on the kitchen table, reading HGTV Magazine. Cigarette smoke uncurls in the early-afternoon light, spiraling above her dyed chestnut hair like DNA.

“Personal day,” she says. “It’s all so sad. Did you come home because of the news?”

Ma stubs the cigarette out on a marble coaster and leaves the butt there, ringed in greasy red lipstick.

“News?”

“People have been calling all morning. They think they already have the fucker who did this.”

“Who was it?”

“You know that boy down the street? Cameron Whitley? His dad was Lee Whitley, that rogue cop from a few years back.”

She smiles. Ma loves being the one with this information. I’m disgusted by her faded lipstick, curled over yellow cigarette teeth. She wears a revealing silk bathrobe with soup dribbled down the front, patterned with Japanese cranes, the outline of her sagging breasts clear beneath thin fabric. Often, I’m certain that Ma is the worst person in the world. Other times, I pity her.

“Oh,” she says. “Chris Thornton called. He knows it’s last minute, but I told him you have the night off from the hotel. Can you babysit tonight?”

“No.”

“I already told him you would. He sounded rushed; you could go over now.”

“I don’t want to.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Fuck off, Ma.”

“Nice work—you’re grounded. And you’re going to babysit. That man’s wife is very sick; you know better than anyone. I don’t know how I raised such a selfish brat.”