by Andrew Zhou

5:06 AM. Abigail Marsh, party of one. One white purse. Room 107.

Notes: She arrived before the sun and called me by a name I didn’t recognize. I explained that she must have mistaken me for a different clerk. An entire database’s worth of employees staff the front desk, and we all look the same in the dark. Jared, for instance, wears glasses just like mine. The woman tapped a gold-leaf nail against her nose. “Very funny. Give me a room with a view. Away from the Bowl.” It was too early in the morning for me to fight for the truth, so I let her slip the room key from my hand.

• • •

6:10 AM. Calvin Cheung, party of two. Two duffel bags. Room 302.

Notes: Two men stumbled into the desk, their hands tangled in each other’s hair and their lock-and-key lips shimmering with spit. In their heat, I remembered: today is my one-year anniversary of forced independence, when my love of three years sat me down on the couch and turned himself into a past-thing. I was wondering why I woke up this morning thinking about his hair. When it rained, we would get on our knees and trade scrap we found under the beds—two-dollar bills, half-bitten ring pops, lingerie left out to dry, photo evidence. One of the men threw a wad of cash at me. “This is the Vermillion, right? We want your highest room. Up, up, up. Thanks, man.” They staggered up the stairs, throats first. I don’t remember when love became so grotesque.

• • •

8:35 AM. Man with aviators, party of one. One chrome suitcase, one whirling machine with a dirt-caked satellite dish. Room 105.

Notes: A handsome man wearing aviators demanded a room beneath the Bowl. I forgot to ask for his name.

• • •

8:56 AM. Sandy Williams, party of one. One leather backpack. Room 303.

Notes: A woman asked for a room on the third floor. Only half-exposure suites remained, but she didn’t mind. “That’s not my real name, by the way. You know that, right? It’s from a movie.” A cigarette smoldered in her mouth. I didn’t have the heart to follow policy and snatch it from her. “Is there anything to do for fun around here? Something other than bullet holes and gas station ruins?” I told her to visit a museum, to take her pick: the Bakken Junior Heritage House down the street, the Natural History of Artillery Shells exhibit by the docks, the Blue Heart Memorial next door, even the Emissions Observation Deck at the edge of town. “Museums, museums.” She said it like music, then squinted. “Dude, have you been crying?” An hour had passed since the tears dried, so I didn’t think anyone would notice. Once Sandy left, I practiced smiling in a hand mirror.

• • •

11: 44 AM. Kennedy Dupont, party of one. Two plastic grocery bags, one knapsack. Room 307.

Notes: She asked to switch rooms again. In record time, I think. I could fill tomes with nothing but the lunatic Kennedy Dupont flitting from room to room while the building pushes against her diaphragm. She panted. “They followed me, the men with putrid salts. They sang songs of missiles and ruptures, internal bleeding.” I explained once more that no malevolent force has ever been confirmed at the Vermillion, and not for a lack of holy men and cross-wielding charlatans. The natural reigns supreme at our establishment. This time, Kennedy grabbed me by the wrist and hissed. “They aren’t hiding. They want everybody to know. Look. Please, I need you to look.” An hour passed while I hung dirty sheets and blankets over the framed pictures keeping vigil over the building’s hallways. That usually buys Kennedy a few weeks of refuge from her ash-infested imagination. If only we could simply take down these blurred snapshots of the soldiers in their camouflage, but policy is policy. No meddling with artifacts—the photos, the tea-soaked frames, any of it. For good measure, I still provided Kennedy with a new half-exposure suite key when the last bearded general disappeared under linen. Her eyes bulged. “They won’t like that. And I’m the only one who listens to the stories. The only one who wanders their sacked estates.” Kennedy’s knees almost buckled as she shuffled down the hall.

• • •

2:36 PM. Cindy Fierno, party of two. One gray satchel. Room 101.

Notes: Two elderly women approached the desk one clink of their walkers against the tiled floor at a time. They requested Room 304. I explained to them several times, each attempt slower than the last, that there was no longer any such place as Room 304. The sisters recoiled, skin rippling. Apparently, they were no strangers to the Vermillion when they were children. The best hide-and-seek closet resided in Room 304. Nobody could find them there, not even the men outfitted with rifles. “Could you at least tell us what happened?” one asked. “We’ve been out of the country for so long, and the town is so different. That room—it’s beloved to us.” Beloved. The perfect word for a past-thing. I understood. The women listened with grave focus as I rattled off my tourist-ready spiel about the Drop, that decades-old atrocity. I described the sky streaking as fire-powder holes punched through the clouds. I described the din as families fled into basements, the stench as bodies were dumped into manholes. And of course, the silver planes dropping perfect spheres from above. We’re lucky one of them was faulty, a bent screw preventing the industrial shell from unleashing fully, or we would have suffered a much worse fate. We’re fortunate to only have been punished with the Bowl, that crater of missing rooms on the second and third floors bordered by half-exposure suites. If only the rest of town were so lucky. The Vermillion is blessed that way. “Can’t you put some money aside to rebuild the room?” one of the women asked. I informed them that the Bowl, and the positive-space of the Vermillion itself, is an artifact. Preserved property. They sobbed.

• • •

3:30 PM. Unknown, party of N/A. No luggage. Room 214.

Notes: Somebody took the room key while I was away from the desk. I checked the room, but it was untouched. It took too long for me to realize this was where that past-thing and I met for the first time, when we both went to the same wrong room for orientation. I still remember opening the door and seeing him sitting by the window, a notebook in his hands and a beam of sunlight melting gold into his hair. In my off-time I might have stayed there forever, the memory sticking to my feet and keeping me still until I died from exposure, but I heard the front desk bell ring in the distance and knew I was needed. On my way out I spotted a lipstick kiss on the bedside lamp, but now I think it might have been melted gum. Perhaps the mark of a ghost.

• • •

3:42 PM. Dak Priot, party of three. Three silver briefcases. Room 213.

Notes: Three men donning black suits, sunglasses, and pumpkin-colored ties moved in lockstep. The man in front treated his consonants like bullets. “Good afternoon. Have you noticed any suspicious individuals lately? A woman with freckles and dark ginger hair? Have you noticed any severed phone lines? Shattered doorknobs, perhaps?” When I described my discovery of the missing key, the man raised his index finger. “We’ll take the room next door. Don’t bother billing us.”

• • •

3:45 PM. Ramona Johnson, party of one. One cube-shaped backpack. Room 212.

Notes: Once the men’s footsteps receded, a woman rushed through the front doors and slammed sunburnt elbows onto the front desk. Freckles, dark ginger hair, a cashier’s nametag. “What room did you give those men?” I pointed to the empty key hook for room 213, and the woman vaulted over the front desk, snatching the neighboring key with both hands. She whirled on me. “If you tell anybody about me, I will find you again and kill you. I will dig up an old rifle, something that should have burned up with the rest of this hellhole, and blow your brains out the moment you close your eyes to sleep. Do you understand?” I attempted to explain my responsibility to follow policy and record all sign-in interactions—every word, every thought—but she rushed up the stairs without listening.

• • •

4:02 PM. Man with aviators, party of one. One chrome suitcase, one humming machine blooming fungus from its vents. Room 203.

Notes: The man with aviators coughed as he returned to the front desk, his machine whirring in his hands. It seemed to have sprouted since the morning. “Have you noticed any changes today? An unusually high number of check-ins, particularly?” He asked many more questions, all of which I answered truthfully. I couldn’t help but study the man: his brutalist jaw, his hair slicked into raven waves, his eyebrows inching toward a kiss each time his brow furrowed. He belonged on a runway, not on the wrong side of a hotel front desk. “I see,” he said. “I need a room higher up. A half-exposure suite. Quickly.” He would be irresistible if he were softer. I asked if he had noticed any rugged, wistful men outside the hotel, but the man left without answering.

• • •

6:10 PM. Sara Hinaka, party of ten. Ten duffel bags, two coolers. Room 105.

Notes: I had never seen so many people in the lobby at once. Red paint covered the group’s faces, like each one had been doused in blood, their eyes forming spotlights through the gore. The leader shook my hand. A dried patch of paint held one of her eyelids shut. “We just finished a play. We all played planets, stars, the moon—that kind of thing. It’s about violence.” While providing her payment information, she regaled me with the production’s entire plot, starting with the Big Bang and culminating with thousands dying during the Drop, the enormous and the tiny all shoulder-to-shoulder on a single stage. And all that time the group squabbled over the room they wanted for their party, Jupiter lobbying for a room with a view and Saturn demanding one low to the ground. The way they argued reminded me of when I forgot that past-thing’s birthday and showed up to his surprise party empty-handed. I don’t know why I argued back when he started yelling. For some reason, I thought arguing mattered back then, as if there ever existed an argument that didn’t decay into regret. When the group finally settled on the first floor’s single half-exposure suite—a party with no ceiling, no obstacle between the solar system and its costumed twins—I barely kept the tears in. The leader thanked me profusely, flashing her right hand for me as the group exited the lobby. Yellow paint and crimson splatter covered each nail. “I played the bomb.”

• • •

8:01 PM. Dak Priot, party of three. Three silver briefcases. Room 211.

Notes: The men in suits and sunglasses returned. “Good afternoon. Have you noticed any suspicious individuals lately?” I informed the men they had already asked me that very question. The men laughed. Once I described the woman who grabbed the key to room 212, the leader’s face hardened to steel. “We’ll take the room next door. Don’t bother billing us.”

• • •

8:04 PM. Ramona Johnson, party of one. One cube-shaped backpack. Room 210.

Notes: Again, the burnt-auburn woman rushed through the front doors the moment the men disappeared. I gestured at the empty hook for room 211. The woman vaulted over the desk, clasped metal, threatened me. “If you tell anybody about me, I will find you again and kill you.” I asked if she had already checked out of her previous room. She reacted as though I had invented a new language.

• • •

8:46 PM. Mateo Garcia, party of one. One black backpack. Room 207.

Notes: The man who emerged into light wore boots built for the pursuit of power, for the ability to crush femurs in a single motion. A figure dressed head-to-toe in camouflage patterns. “Sir, can you offer any shelter for the night?” While I listed the remaining available rooms, a rifle and pistol gleamed on the soldier’s back and hip. His left index finger twitched. He didn’t wish to impose, so he accepted a half-exposure suite: the one where the toilet hangs in open air and the closet opens up to the moon. I asked why he was dressed up like a soldier when the war was long over. He wouldn’t say, wouldn’t acknowledge the question. “Thank you for your hospitality. And have faith. When the smoke clears, we will be the victors,” he said. The man shivered as though it weren’t the hottest night of the month, and the ceiling fan began to sound like helicopter blades, the warning that precedes the bombs. Before leaving, the man turned back to me, eyes wet. “The one you’re searching for. I hope you find them. It’s no use pretending you don’t want to.”

• • •

8:53 PM. Dak Priot, party of three. Three silver briefcases. Room 209.

Notes: The men in suits, sunglasses. “Have you noticed any suspicious individuals lately?” I told them what they wanted to know. “Don’t bother billing us.”

• • •

8:56 PM. Ramona Johnson, party of one. One cube-shaped backpack. Room 208.

Notes: She slammed her hands on the desk so hard, my teeth vibrated. The key. The threat of violence. “If you tell anybody about me,” she started, and then all the same.

• • •

9:01 PM. Man with aviators, party of one. One chrome suitcase, one thrashing machine forcing branches through its exhaust pipes. Room 308.

Notes: My vision tinted blue before the aviator-fashioned man even finished his descent down the stairs. His mere footsteps inspired electrochemistry in me. The man panted as he approached the desk, a piece of moss dangling from his greenery-heaving machine. In a whisper, he delivered his commands. One last room. The third floor. As close to the Bowl as possible. “My calculations are not yet complete, but I believe I have located a fracture of chronology positioned at the center of the Bowl, perhaps dating all the way back to the Drop itself. I believe this break has widened enough to allow impossible transport. Imagine a black hole drawing everything into its collapse—scrambling sequences, immortalizing the transient, undoing death. That’s why your guestbook is so full, so crisscrossed. Eventually this entire building will capitulate, and there will be no distinction between before and after and now. It’s the only explanation.” The man coughed. “Other than a ghost or two.” As he spoke, I honed in on his chin, the cleft curving almost imperceptibly to his left. That past-thing owned that same chin. How did I not realize until now? And the likeness didn’t end there: one hand on his hip and the other planted on the desk, a bottomless bass voice rattling through my bones. It was like being in love all over again. The man with aviators backed away from me. “God, it already has you.” By the time I remembered to ask for his name, he had vanished up the stairs.

• • •

9:04 PM. Vinnie Reese, party of one. One blue purse, one black suitcase. Room 202.

Notes: Three men waited in line for a room. The first wore that past-thing’s eyes, hazel-flecked.

• • •

9:05 PM. Brennan Lemire, party of one. One shopping cart. Room 201.

Notes: The second wielded that past-thing’s fingers, slender and tan.

• • •

9:07 PM. Sam Biko, party of one. One gray valise. Room 103.

Notes: The third spoke with that past-thing’s tongue, words smooth as ice. Once the men disappeared to their rooms, I strolled around the building’s perimeter, counting museum advertisements and government-approved rubble. A figure approached from the other end of a street. We both stopped, tried to make out each other’s faces.

• • •

10:00 PM. That past-thing, party of one. No luggage. Room 311.

Notes: Almost an hour passed. And then he came. He glided across the floor. That’s the beauty of him—divine movement. The smell of him registered first: peppermint and aged wine. Black hair swept to one side, diamond cheekbones. In my dreams, this moment always blinded me with ecstasy, but in practice, my body flooded with fear. My wish was granted, and it was happening, and I wasn’t ready. “Did you really change your mind?” That past-thing blinked. I continued. “I’ve been waiting here all this time, right behind this desk. In case you changed your mind.” That past-thing looked at me like a raven was emerging from my face, like I was inexplicable. He said that he had no idea who I was, what my lips tasted like, what I wanted more than anything else. He just wanted a room. Any room at all. When I tried to take his hand, he leaped back, so I shouted from across the space. “We met upstairs, remember? I fell in love first, you second. I waited all this time.” I told him everything, how we ran laps around everyone we knew and could never agree who was the better singer, how I pretended to like vanilla just because I thought it would make him like me more, how we both felt like sleeping was a waste of time. I only relented when the man’s hands trembled with fear, when he backed himself into a wall. I wanted to hit him. I wanted to sock the love loose from him. Perhaps he was sick, hit his head on a barbell or a piano and forgot the best years of his life. Perhaps I’m impossible to recognize underneath all this flesh. “You’re tired. Take your key. Maybe you’ll remember in the morning; you always thought your best thoughts in the mornings.” The man who looked exactly like that past-thing fled upstairs. He even sprinted like that past-thing. Yes, it could have been him. I thought he might kiss me before leaving this time.

• • •

11:57 PM. Kennedy Dupont, party of two. Two plastic grocery bags, one knapsack, one red guestbook. Room 309.

Notes: She came right before the end of my shift. Kennedy Dupont moaned, her hair tangled into a noose around her neck. “Need a new room. They’re back. Going on about the heat death of crowds, metal wings.” I thought of offering explanations to Kennedy, namely that an open-air party of planets was being held in a half-exposure suite. It would be simple to mistake their voices for those of specters. But I thought of that past-thing and his eyes and summer-sweet voice, and I took another key off the wall and led Kennedy to her new lodgings. An entire wall was missing, concrete fangs jutting into night. Kennedy begged me to stay. “That way, you can look. You can see them too, can’t you? Packing themselves into the basement, counting bloodied teeth? Reloading all the time?” We laid in bed together, the moon burning in the sky and the sound of laughing planets carrying through the air. Below us, lights winked out. I wrapped my arms around Kennedy’s stomach until her eyelids stopped twitching, and we waited for the men with putrid salts to come. I thought of him; I tried not to.