A Map of Glass - Jane Urquhart [20]
“Could you come back in a couple of days?” asked Jerome suddenly.
Sylvia felt a combination of hope and panic stirring somewhere near her heart. A couple of days. She remembered the kind of bargaining for time that she had been forced to engage in with Andrew on phones and at the thresholds of departure, the faint air of irritation—or was it pity?—that would enter his voice or his expression when she asked for something sooner or something more. She was well acquainted with bargaining. She looked down before speaking. “Please,” she said, “please let me start before then.”
Jerome glanced toward Mira. “All right,” he said. “Tomorrow. But not until the afternoon. I’m not fit for company in the morning.”
A wave of relief passed over her. “I’ll be here at two,” she said, pushing on the metal bar that opened the door to the outside. She glanced back at the girl. “ Which way is the hotel?”
“Turn left at the end of the alley. Then left again, and two blocks south.”
She was about to say thank you but found herself in the dimness of the late afternoon on the opposite side of the door.
Sylvia had never experienced the bought neutrality of rented rooms and so had no idea what would be expected of her when, with a pounding heart, she approached the desk at the end of a lobby decorated with potted plastic plants, glass tables, and a few oversized black leather chairs. She managed to ask for a room but the demand, in return, for a credit card was even more unnerving. She decided to produce the partner card Malcolm had given her for household items, realizing that using it might prove to be the key to her whereabouts. “We keep the details on file while you are here,” the clerk told her, “but you can pay with cash if you wish when you leave.”
“In five days,” she said. She might need a full week. She could bargain later.
Once inside the room she took stock of her surroundings, wanting to learn the objects with which she would live. Thankfully, there was not much to know: stuccoed walls painted off-white, a coffee maker with a small collection of tea and coffee supplies beside it, a television hidden behind the doors of a cupboard, a desk on which rested a leather folder containing information about the hotel, writing paper, a pen, and a few envelopes. Three chairs, a bed, two bedside tables, a telephone. In the bathroom were towels, washcloths, some tiny plastic bottles that she discovered were filled with shampoo, conditioner, and moisturizing cream. Tub, toilet, washbasin. Back in the room, she unpacked the album, the two green notebooks, and the hardcover book, and put away her clothes, but left the mapping materials in the suitcase. Then she walked across the floor to the opposite end of the room. Lined drapes covered a window that looked out to a brick wall. So, there would be no view to contend with and for this she was grateful: she knew she couldn’t digest the panorama quickly enough for her to be comfortable with it. She opened the folder on the desk to the section entitled “Room Service.” Sylvia knew about room service. When Malcolm had been away at medical conventions, the arrival of room service at the door of his room had sometimes interrupted the early-morning call he always made to her, to find out how she was managing alone. She managed well alone in the house with which she was so familiar, everything in it measured and learned years ago.
She would have to summon this room service—she hadn’t eaten since the morning. Placing the order was another anxiety that would have to be dealt with, but she felt, somehow, she could manage if she did this right away with hunger gnawing at her stomach. She lifted the receiver, pushed a button beside the words Room Service, and talked to the woman who answered. When the meal arrived, fifteen long minutes later, the girl carrying it seemed flustered, overheated, and, to Sylvia’s relief, not much interested in her. “Just leave the tray outside the door when