and if she was careful not to step on the wrong floorboard, if the slats remained silent on her behalf, she might be able to peek into Sigrid’s room.
Quinn tiptoed as softly as her body size allowed, avoiding the raised edges of the boards. She turned the knob silently, and after releasing it, she pushed the door inward, allowing for a gap. She waited.
The first thing she became aware of was Sigrid’s perfume lingering in the air. She took in the rich scent, a fruity and floral aroma like the sweet peas growing behind the house. The curtains were drawn, but an inch-wide gap let in a beam of light. After her eyes adjusted, she made out the man’s jacket draped over the back of a chair. The breakfast tray sat abandoned on the nightstand; the jelly-stained knife rested next to the shredded remnants of a biscuit.
Cadillac Man was kneeling on the bed, next to Sigrid. She must have fainted—her body flat on her back with one leg hanging off the side of the mattress—but there was no shaking of Sigrid’s shoulder, no fanning of air, no smelling salt wafting toward her nose. She watched him undo the top button of Sigrid’s blouse with one hand while pushing her skirt up with the other.
Quinn straightened up as if she’d been awakened by a bang of cymbals, her heart pounding and blood rushing like a fierce river through her ears. Cadillac Man’s hand made Sigrid’s body glide effortlessly with a swaying motion, peeling off her skirt. It rustled to the floor. His pointy shoes hit the wooden planks. Sigrid sat up, propping herself up by her elbows, watching him. Sigrid’s body had the shape of a violin and as Quinn stood watching, she imagined her own ample body struggling to execute such deliberate moves.
Cadillac Man opened Sigrid’s blouse slowly, twisting each button. He ran his fingertip from her throat toward her breastbone, barely dragged it across her neck, but it had left behind a reddish streak on Sigrid’s pale skin. The blouse fell open and he studied her body. He held her left breast, gently at first, then, as if he thought otherwise, his hand clutched and covered it, making it entirely disappear. He lifted his hand, barely grazing her nipples, and meandered down her stomach, then back up, and paused again at her breastbone. He shoved Sigrid back onto the bed—for a moment Quinn wondered why Sigrid didn’t struggle against him when it seemed so violent, making her entire body bounce on the mattress. Cadillac Man crudely removed Sigrid’s underwear, the fabric cutting into her thighs. He got off the bed and on his knees. He kissed her just above her pubic bone, and a finger disappeared inside Sigrid.
Sigrid in turn moved into his hand until he stopped suddenly, removing his finger. While she propped herself up on her elbows again, Cadillac Man got up and unzipped his pants. He grabbed Sigrid by the back of her head, wrapping her hair round his fingers, and then pulled her head back so she had to strain to look at him. Their bodies were statue-like but something seemed to unleash, like horses when the starting gates open. Quinn watched as they moved with the constant sound of flesh on flesh, only interrupted by the man flipping Sigrid onto her stomach. They switched places over and over and then Cadillac Man’s round backside heaved one last time and there was nothing but the sound of heavy breathing.
Quinn was captivated as if she were a hare spellbound by the talons of an eagle. An unfamiliar scent lingered in the room, a scent she couldn’t quite place. Something much more powerful than red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting, something that reached deeper than the stomach, surged through her, sank its teeth into her, leaving her with a terrible feeling of throbbing and longing.
Leaving the way she had entered, silently, unbeknownst, Quinn went back to the swing on the porch. For a while, she kept momentum, but then allowed the swing to come to a stop. Still shaking, her body two steps ahead of itself, she couldn’t erase the image of Cadillac Man’s shiny shoes, their tips pointing upward as if to aim toward heaven. Like her father, he too was no match for Sigrid—he was a man who just showed up and stayed for an hour or two just to move on.
Quinn lost her appetite. It wasn’t that her hunger had ceased, but that the knowledge had emerged that food was no longer what she was after. The thought of meat roasting in the oven and the sound of swirling and rattling ice cubes in a glass of iced tea nauseated her, no longer made sense as a means of comfort. She pushed it all aside just to feel a sadness she had never felt before. How easily people throw each other away. She knew, in due time, she’d look just like her father and people would make fun of her too. The thought of him made her eyes sting—not the way people ridiculed him, nothing like that—but how he had easily cast his daughter aside for a beautiful woman who had never loved him in return.
There she was—Quinn Murray, who had stopped growing at five foot five inches, who had the kind of face people forgot even before they’d stopped looking at it, a girl who had gained thirty pounds since her fifteenth birthday, all of them around the hips.
Satisfying her hunger suddenly seemed no longer suitable. She felt that yearning leave her and she was fully awake, had only one mission. She longed to be like Sigrid, with violin hips and men adoring her, never to be discarded for anyone. Yet there was also a seed of fear inside of her, and she was unsure of its origin, like a dream she was unable to interpret.
She wanted to be powerful, like Sigrid, as if this world was an instrument to be played. She wanted to be powerful, yet there was also this vulnerability that seemed too familiar to shake. And it terrified her.
Dahlia
In the Barrington Hotel parking lot, I take one last look in the rearview mirror; the bruises around my nose are still noticeable but the swelling has completely subsided. I run my tongue over my chipped front tooth. The flaw is barely visible but the tip of my tongue is tender from persistently running over the sharp edge. I’m part of a crew of women who clean the guest rooms. We have been hired on probation and get paid under the table. We go unnoticed—we are actually told to never make eye contact nor speak to the guests—yet we are held to the same standards as the room attendants in their black uniforms with white aprons. They are a step up from us; they help unpack, assist with anything the guest might need, they don’t scrub toilets or change sheets. I get out of the car, fluff my bangs, and check my likeness in the window; my baby blue housekeeper’s uniform is starched, pressed, and fits me impeccably, just as management demands. There are no allowances for stains, wrinkles, and snug skirts or fabric pulling against buttons. At the Barrington, even my crew of undocumented help isn’t allowed to slack off.
Every single time my sore tongue touches the tooth’s jagged edge, I’m reminded how long it’s been since I found Jane in the woods. Seven days—an entire week—and not a word about her identity; she remains in a coma and her name is still a mystery. Watching the local news, I’m taken aback by the absence of appeals to the public and the overall lack of urgency. I am able to abandon the image of Jane in her hospital bed, attached to monitors, but I can’t forget what happened to me in her room.
Since the day I saw Jane last, I have had another episode. I have decided on the word episode until I figure out a more appropriate word.
It happened earlier this morning, in the shower: the calcified showerhead’s water pressure was mediocre at best, yet I felt my hands tingling, starting at the tips. The prickling traveled up my arm, past my neck, into my eyes and nose. I didn’t only feel the water pounding on my body but I smelled the minerals, tasted them like miniature Pop Rocks exploding on my tongue. Every single drop thumped against the wall of the shower stall—individually and all at once—as if the world was magnified while simultaneously zooming in on me, allowing itself to be interpreted. I dropped on the shower floor before my knees could buckle on me. It was over as quickly as it had started. I was left with an anticipatory feeling, a nervous kind of energy that tingled through me like electrical sparks as if I was positioning myself on the blocks to prepare for a race. I remained on the shower floor for a long while, only getting up when I realized I was going to be late for work.
Housekeepers are forbidden to enter through the front door but I’m late. If I hurry and my supervisor, Mr. Pratt, doesn’t catch me between the door and the lockers, I can clock