hotel

It was enough. A bed to sleep on, a TV, a bathroom with a shower. Even a microwave--a nice touch. She didn't even have to leave her hotel room to eat, if she didn't want to. She felt like she was disrupting something just by being there. The place was soulless and pristine. Every room would be identical to hers, except hers was the only one with her bags and her stuff set out everywhere.

It was the perfect shelter from the world. She wasn't expected to be human here. She could cry and mope and do nothing, watching stupid television, eating bad microwaved food, drinking the cheap wine she'd picked up when buying her bad microwaved dinners. It was expected. She would leave no mark here. Any mess she made would be cleaned up at checkout, rented out to someone else. Some businessman would come in here and sleep in the same bed and flip through the channels in the evening, even though he never watches television, and he has a book he brought along just for this purpose. He'd stand at the window where she had all the curtains drawn and stare out over the vacant parking lot, and find the view less than picturesque. He would eat at the continental breakfast she avoided. He would probably not wonder who else had shared this room. It was carefully designed to prevent such thoughts.

At three am, after some movie she had already forgotten was over, she stepped onto the little balcony for a cigarette she was probably not supposed to have. It was cold out for summer, almost unpleasantly so, but the chill reminded her she was still alive. Even once the hotel had completely erased evidence that she had been there, she would still have that.

She finished her cigarette and went inside and fell asleep watching an infomercial selling some cleaning product she had no memory of upon waking.