My Dark Vanessa(76)
I want to steal the chart, but when they hired me, I had to sign pages of confidentiality agreements, bolded statements about the legal consequences of sharing medical records. I make do with visiting the chart every day, pulling it out from its spot on the bottom shelf and transcribing the notes into my journal, underlining the phrase unmarried but insistent in not wanting children. It makes me think of the only part of Lolita I truly hate, the passage where Humbert imagines first having daughters with Lo, then making granddaughters with those daughters. It makes me remember, too, the thing I’ve almost forgotten—him asking me to call him Daddy on the phone while he jerked off on the other end.
But these thoughts are like water-smoothed stones I pick up and study with cool eyes, then let fall back into the lake. In the quiet of the hospital, the oscillating fan stirs my hair as the thoughts sink to the bottom of my brain and disappear beneath the muck. I close the chart, pick up another stack, file it away.
2017
One of the front desk clerks called out sick, leaving Inez stranded on a sold-out Saturday night, so I abandon the concierge desk to help her. When I was first hired eight years ago, it was for a front desk position, and I still remember the basics. Inez has to teach me the updated computer system, her voice rising into a question as she explains the sequence for making a reservation, checking in a guest. I can’t tell if she’s nervous around me or merely annoyed. If I say something self-deprecating after screwing up, she exhales a quick succession of “you’re fine, you’re fine, you’re fine.”
The hours fly by despite my brain fog, or maybe because of it. The bartender brings me a dark and stormy and Inez breaks into a grin when I offer her a sip, the two of us crouching behind the desk as we pass it back and forth. I forget how it can be to work alongside someone, the camaraderie that emerges when dealing with customers: the repeat guest who insists we have put her in a different room this time, even though we let her come around the desk and see her reservation history and that it’s always been room 237; the couple who brushes off our warning that the cheaper street-facing room will be loud and then an hour later comes to the lobby upset about the noise. Inez is good at dealing with the complainers, bats her eyes and clutches her hand over her heart as she says, “I am so sorry. I am just so sorry.” She lays it on so thick it throws the guests off guard; they almost always end up assuring her that it’s ok, no big deal, and when they leave, Inez mutters a string of obscenities under her breath.
“I thought you were just the boss’s daughter,” I say, “but you’re actually good at this.”
She squints at me, deciding whether to be insulted.
I add, “You’re better than I am. I can’t fake sympathy,” and her face melts into a smile, won over by the flattery.
“When people are angry, they’re looking for a fight,” she says. “You act submissive, they back off.”
“Yeah, that’s the same strategy I use with men.” I look to see her reaction, if she’ll smirk in recognition, but her brow only furrows, vaguely confused.
I watch her click around on her computer, the screen lighting her face. She’s seventeen but looks much older, airbrushed makeup and flat-ironed hair ending in a perfectly blunt line. Wearing a string of pearls and a white silk blouse under her suit, she appears put together, already better at being a woman than I am.
“You’re very insightful,” I say. “You seem mature for your age.”
She gives me a sideways glance, her guard still half up. “Uh, thanks.” She turns back to the computer, hunches her shoulders so I can’t see the screen.
At nine thirty, after the rush dies down, a man approaches the desk—fortysomething, handsome, short. His reservation is for one night, a Jacuzzi suite facing the garden courtyard. He’s requested a special turndown to be waiting upon his arrival: dimmed lights, bubble bath, rose petals on the bed, champagne on ice.
As I check him in, I tell him everything is ready and waiting in the room. “Assuming you still want the turndown,” I say, glancing around the lobby. He seems to be alone.
The man smiles at Inez. Even though I’m the one checking him in, he hasn’t stopped smiling at her since he stepped up to the desk. “That’s perfect,” he says.
He pockets the key card, heads back toward the elevators. Inez turns to file his registration slip, and I watch the man pause halfway across the lobby, hold out his hand. A woman rises from one of the wingback chairs. She glances over her shoulder at the front desk, locks eyes with me, and I see she’s not a woman at all. She’s a teenager in Converse sneakers and an oversized sweater with sleeves that fall past her wrists. While they wait for an elevator, the man nuzzles his face into her neck and the girl hiccups a laugh.
“Did you see that?” I ask Inez after they get on the elevator. “The girl he was with. She looked fourteen.”
She shakes her head. “I didn’t see.” She looks down the list of checkins, all highlighted green. Everyone’s in their rooms; we can relax. “I’m going to eat,” she says.
I think of the done-up room, the rose petals on the bed, the churning bath bubbles, the girl’s uneasy giggle as he pulls the baggy sweater off her body. As Inez heads for the kitchen, I picture myself making a key and going up to the room, bursting inside, digging my nails into the man as I yank him off the girl. But what would that do other than cause a scene and get me fired? She looked willing, happy. It’s not like he was dragging her up there. Standing behind the desk, I swallow the last of my drink and watch Inez come back with a plate of pasta. She shovels it into her mouth as she walks, flecks of red sauce on her white blouse.