When I say I’m a ghost, I’m not being literal.
I’m very much alive. Or at least some days I hurt just enough to know I’m still clinging onto a heartbeat. No, when I say I’m a ghost, I’m referring to the fact that people rarely see me. I’m the girl in the background. The average height, average weight, average hair color, non-event that eyes skip over instead of lingering on. I slip silently through this yawning city I live in without smiling. Without having to greet anyone for days at a time. It’s been that way for the last six months. It’s rare that I have to speak to strangers, and when I do it’s perfunctory; people know instinctively that I’m not primed for small talk. Today is no exception.
“Here’s your room key, Ms Fredrich.” The receptionist in downtown Seattle’s Marriot hotel slides the plastic key card across the marble countertop. Once she’s withdrawn her hand a safe distance, I reach out and palm it.
“Thank you.”
Eyes down, she’s stapling the paperwork created by my payment. “So…business or pleasure?” The warmth in her eyes dies when she finally looks up at me and registers the blank look I’m wearing. The smile slides from her face like butter from a hot knife.
“Business,” I tell her, because nothing has ever been truer.
“Okay, well…I hope you enjoy your stay.” She looks away as soon as she’s done with the appropriate front desk script. She doesn’t ask why I’ve turned up at her hotel with no bags, or why I’m only booking in for one night. Or why I’ve left a spare key card at the front desk for a Mr Hanson. She doesn’t ask any of that; she’s not supposed to. Eli’s given me a rundown of how this thing will play out, and so far it’s almost to the letter. I lift my purse from the desk and head to the elevator, straightening my coat.
Twenty-two, twenty-one, twenty, nineteen, eighteen….
I watch the numbers light up one by one. Each disc, the size of a dollar coin, lights up and darkens in turn, and the elevator descends while I wait, patient and unblinking. There are other people waiting for the car to arrive. If this were an office building or a shopping centre, I’d take the stairs; closed spaces and I aren’t exactly the best of friends, but since this hotel is forty-seven-floors high and I’ve booked a room on the forty-second floor, I’ll just have to tolerate the inconvenience of their presence.
The doors slide back and I walk in first. The other hotel residents—four businessmen—are staying somewhere mid-level, and I don’t want them brushing past me as they exit. It’s easy to label them as mid-level guys. They’re wearing mid-level guy suits, and all four of them have mid-level guy haircuts. Their accommodation is being paid for by a cost centre funded by an accounting department, and accounting departments don’t spring for penthouses. They spring for double rooms with en-suites that have access to the gym and not much else. No mini bar for you, Mr Corporate.
The lift doors roll close and I retreat within myself, pressing my back against the rear wall of the elevator car. I close my eyes, exhale down my nose. This will all be over soon, but my heart still dances in my chest all the same. The fear of being trapped, of what I am about to do, is like a coiled snake, ready and waiting to wreak havoc on my insides.
“Hey. Hey, are you okay? You’re looking a little freaked out.”
One of them talks to me. He thinks my panic is tied to the elevator ride, which it is, but only partially. He has brown eyes, a soft, warm color that reminds me of melted chocolate. He has dimples, too, probably twenty-three or so, around my age. He looks nice. The kind of nice I might have dated once upon a time, before…before any of that became impossible.
“I’m fine, thank you,” I tell him.
“Good.” The guy with chocolate eyes smiles at me. “Deep breathing sometimes helps my sister. She’s not fond of elevators either.”
He’s so sweet. Way sweeter than I deserve, considering my purpose here today. I reward him with a watery smile—he grins back—and then the doors open, and the four of them leave. I jam my hands into my pockets to stop them from shaking. I’m alone for eighteen floors, which is better than being trapped with four strangers but still not great, and then, finally, it’s my turn to alight. This hotel is much like any other I’ve stayed in. The only difference about it, the thing that will define it from all others in my memory for as long as I live, is that I’m here for a very specific reason: to have sex with a total stranger. And I’m doing it to find my baby sister.
******
By the time I’m inside and my coat is hung neatly on the hook behind the door, I’m pretty much ready. I’m wearing what I’ve been told to wear—black lace. Eli, the private investigator I hired to help me find my sister, wasn’t any more specific than that. He’s the one who set this whole thing up.
“Sometimes money just isn’t enough to buy what you’re looking for, sweetheart. Sometimes it takes a little more…persuasion to buy information like this. I tell you what…I’ll share what I know in return for a little favour.”
“What kind of favour?”
“You spread your legs for a paying customer and I’ll tell you everything you need to know.” The disgusting pig has the audacity to smile. “Oh come now, Ms Romera. Don’t look at me like that. You want to find your sister, don’t you?”
And in the end, I’d agreed. He was right; I do want to find Lex, and I’ll clearly do anything to make that happen. Even if I’ll never be able to live with myself afterward.