"Living in Hotels" by Eva Konstantopoulos
“Sure, Anna. Whatever you say. Hey, where’s your bible? I’m feeling rather spiritual. I think I want to say a prayer.”
“You only say my name when you don’t get your way.”
I punch my fist against the bed post.
“Look,” She speaks softly, “I care too much about you to be with you. You’re messy. I’m messy. We mess each other up.”
A hollow rustle sparks inside me, a low guttural scream, “You don’t know that.”
I have an itch to shout something. Pointless numbers that fill our life together, debit card passwords and Whole Foods receipts, pant sizes and worn minutes spent waiting for the T. Anything to push the space between us with noise so fierce her hair will blow back, along with everything she has ever said, along with each of these walls, and the empty box of tea, and even the sky. With nothing to hold her dreams in place, she’ll have no choice but to come back.
Anna coughs, “I can stay here if I want. I know that. I can stay still.”
“Please. Even if you killed yourself, you wouldn’t stop moving. Your nails would grow, your hair would grow. You’d rot like the rest of us. Besides, you call this living?”
I pick up a Doritos bag and crumple it noisily into a ball.
Anna crosses her arms, “I think you should leave.”
“I’m not leaving until you pick this place up.”
“Don’t tell me what to do.”
“You think this is real – this room?”
“I’m not your little doll. Did you come just to boss me around?”
“Fine. I’ll leave…when you clean up your mess.”
The wet wasteland of sheets divides us, her in her place, me in mine. I sit on that bed until the only sun in the room is the captured photograph on the wall. She hardly breathes, and I don’t because I’m afraid I’ll never see her again.
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