In the Lobby of the Dream Hotel by Genevieve Plunkett

Author:Genevieve Plunkett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Catapult
Published: 2023-07-02T00:00:00+00:00

Gus had dressed and gone outside to start his car and clear the snow. From where they were seated at the kitchen table, Portia could hear the scraping of Gus’s shovel as he walked it down the length of the driveway. It occurred to her that he was doing this for her, so she would not have to walk home. She imagined the car idling, heating vents aimed upward, the growing mouth of thawing ice on the windshield. At some point, unbeknownst to her, someone—either Carrie or Gus—had laid her wet socks over the tall iron radiator by the window. At the sight of these rumpled socks, Portia’s confidence began to come undone. It often happened like this: some small thing came along and knocked her ego aside just enough for her to see what was really going on. She yawned. She put both her hands over her face because she could not stop yawning, and then she was covering not just her gaping mouth but also her tears.

“I’m so sorry, Carrie,” she gasped.

Gus had come inside and was stomping his boots on the mat. He must have seen how Carrie was standing behind Portia’s chair, draping her arms around her. Carrie might have looked up over Portia’s head and signaled to him with her eyes, because he stood quietly in front of the closed door.

“Do you remember the day you got out of the hospital?” Carrie was asking her. “I brought you flowers?”

Portia did remember, vaguely. Carrie had arrived at Portia’s house in frayed shorts, cut so high on her leg that the blue pockets poked through the hem. One of her ankles was bloody, and her shoes were dusty from where she had picked the flowers by the roadside. It had been thoughtful of Carrie to come and somewhat surprising; Portia had always considered their friendship as strong but unyielding, where deeply private ideas could be shared with the thoroughness of scientists but never to the point of vulnerability. If a beautiful song made them want to weep, they would tear their hair, claw their eyes, exaggerating the urge to cry into oblivion.

“I’m dying,” they said.

“That killed me,” they said. This way they could speak of feelings, hold them up, like signs written on cardboard, without acknowledging them. Not really.

And so, when Carrie came with the flowers, Portia took it as a way to sidestep the rules of their friendship, just enough. A safe gesture of love, picked from the dust and indifference of the shoulder of the road.

“I remember,” Portia said.

Carrie moved around to the front of Portia’s chair and moved her hands, gently, away from her face. “You’re one crazy bitch, you know that?” Her voice was softer now. Loving.

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