Chapter 4 - What the Water Hid
The storage room smelled like flat soda and hot plastic. I sat on an overturned milk crate with my shirt pulled away from my skin, wringing the hem over a mop bucket and trying not to make noise about it.
My blazer hung on a shelf bracket above me, still dripping. My badge had fogged from the inside. I kept looking at it like it could tell me what to do next.
I hadn't planned to remember it all at once. It came back in pieces, the way water gets in your ears and then moves when you tilt your head.
Twenty minutes earlier I'd been on the terrace with a tray.
It was my third pass with champagne. The manager, Denise, had told us to stay left of the pool, work the curve near the skyline side, don't block the photographer. The stone around the pool was wet already from splash and condensation. My shoes were non-slip in theory. The catering company bought them cheap in bulk.
I remembered the weight of the tray. Eight full glasses. Cold sweating against my palm. The patio lights were bright enough that I could see my own reflection in the pool when I passed it.
She was there at the edge with two men. The blonde woman in the silver dress.
I'd seen her when I first came up on the service elevator. Hard not to. One shoulder bare, sequins catching every light, laugh carrying over the city hum. She'd posed for a photo with the skyline behind her. One of the men had offered her his champagne and she'd waved it off.
On my pass, I slowed near their group. That was my mistake. Denise said don't hover. I hovered.
One of the men reached for a glass at the same second she turned. I don't know whose hand hit the tray. I felt the shift. A glass tipped.
Champagne went across her dress. Not a full glass. Just enough to darken a line down the sequins near her waist. She looked down and stopped laughing.
"What are you doing?" she said. Quiet, not loud. That was worse.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I'm so sorry. Let me —"
I reached for a cocktail napkin on the tray with my free hand. The tray tilted more. I corrected too fast. My shoe slid half an inch on the wet stone.
She stepped back from me and her heel hit the pool coping. She grabbed my sleeve to steady herself. Or I grabbed her arm. I still couldn't separate it. Her earring brushed my cheek. Cold metal. Her fingers were tight around my wrist where the tray was.
"Watch it," she said. "Are you serious right now?"
Behind her, I heard one of the men laugh, short. Someone lifted a phone. Not mine. One of theirs. Pointed low, like they were getting the stain on the dress.
"Don't," she said to them, without looking. To me she said, "Back up."
I tried. That was when I felt it — pressure at my shoulder, and my own foot going out from under me at the same time. Two things happening so close they became one thing. The tray went light in my hand. Glasses lifted for a second like they might stay in the air.
I didn't scream. I remembered that clearly. I sucked in air because I knew what was coming.
I hit the water sideways with my phone still in my blazer pocket.
The cold knocked the breath out of me worse than the fall. Chlorine burned my nose. My blazer ballooned and then dragged. My shoes pulled me down. The tray hit after me and glasses broke somewhere above, muffled.
Underwater, the terrace lights turned green-blue and wavering. I could see the surface and the legs of the high table through it and the shadow of people moving to the edge. My hair came loose around my face.
I kicked. My hand found the coping. Somebody's shoe. Somebody moved back.
When I broke the surface, the first thing I heard was her laughing. Or what was left of her laugh. Sharp now, surprised. The men were behind her. I wiped water from my eyes and saw the city behind them, too bright, too calm.
In the storage room, I stopped wringing my shirt. My hands were shaking. I pressed them flat against my thighs.
The push versus slip wouldn't settle. If she pushed me, it was with an open palm at the shoulder as she steadied herself and shoved off. If I slipped, it was my shoe on wet stone and my own correction that took us both to the edge and only I went in. Both felt true in my body. The pressure and the slide. I couldn't pull them apart no matter how many times I replayed the half-second.
What I could pull apart was the phone.
It had been in my right blazer pocket, zipped halfway. Company rule was phones off and in lockers, but Denise let us keep them if we kept them hidden for time checks. Mine had been on. I remembered checking the time in the elevator: 9:42.
Water and phones. I thought it was dead. But on the pool edge, after I'd climbed out, it had lit up in my hands. The screen had been bright. Too bright.
I reached up now and took the blazer down from the shelf bracket. The pocket was damp and heavy. I unzipped it the rest of the way and slid the phone out into the towel I'd wrapped it in.
I hadn't pressed record. I knew I hadn't pressed record. But I remembered the way my phone acted when the side button got held down in a tight pocket, how it would start a voice memo or the camera would wake if I squeezed it wrong carrying trays.
Underwater, everything had pressed against me. The lining. The water. My leg when I curled to kick.
I stared at the dark screen and my stomach dropped in a way the fall hadn't done.
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Nobody had jumped in. Nobody had reached a hand down. The only thing that had gone in with me and stayed with me the whole time was the phone.
If anything had seen exactly what her hand did at the edge — slip or shove — it wasn't a person. It was that.
