Chapter 7 - A Quiet Question About That Morning
The hallway behind the dressing suites was narrow and too warm, the carpet drinking up every sound. I sat on the little bench outside the staff door with his gray jacket still over my shoulders, my hands tucked in the sleeves so I wouldn't pick at my apron. The ice in a bus tub was melting somewhere close. I could hear it ticking.
He stood across from me, not too close. He'd loosened his cuffs since the corridor. Without the jacket, the black shirt made him look different, less like someone's fiance and more like someone waiting out a long night.
"You've been watching her table all night," he said. It wasn't an accusation. He kept his voice low enough that the guard by the exit wouldn't hear. "Not just tonight. Tell me why."
I looked down at my shoes. They were the same ones I wore for every shift, the left toe scuffed white from the kitchen door.
"That morning," I said, "I got here early for setup. That's all."
He didn't move. "Then what happened that morning?"
I breathed in through my nose. The air smelled like hairspray and clean towels from the dressing rooms.
Last spring, I worked a banquet downtown. Not here. A hotel with a low ceiling and a bar that backed up every twenty minutes. I was on water refills. There was a man at table twelve who kept switching his soda with his wife's wine when she went to the bathroom. He laughed about it when I caught him. Said she needed to loosen up. I didn't say anything then. I was new and I needed the job.
I paused because my throat went tight.
"Later she fell on the stairs," I said. "They said she was drunk. She wasn't. Not that drunk."
He frowned. "You think someone switched her drink."
"I know what I saw," I said. "A hand moving a glass when nobody was looking. I didn't stop it. I told myself it wasn't my place."
That was the part I had never written on any incident form. I carried trays and kept my mouth shut and learned how fast people decide a woman had too much.
He leaned his shoulder against the wall. "And tonight?"
"I was clearing near the bar," I said. "She was arguing with someone. The woman in green. It wasn't loud, not yet. It was the way she held her clutch. Tight. Like she was trying not to make a scene."
I remembered the bar light catching the bottles, the bartender shaking something in a tin, the clink too loud.
"Her glass was on the corner of the service tray ledge," I said. "I was supposed to leave it. I know that."
"What did you see?" he asked.
I shook my head fast. "I didn't see it clear. That's what I'm trying to say. There were a lot of hands. Someone reached past to get a napkin, someone else paid. I saw a hand near her glass that I didn't recognize. It was there and then it was gone."
My fingers twisted in the jacket sleeve.
"I panicked," I said. "I thought about table twelve. I thought if I was wrong, I'd get written up for touching a guest's drink. If I was right and I left it—"
I didn't finish. I didn't have to.
He was quiet for a long second. Down the hall a door clicked and a woman laughed, then went quiet again.
"You took it because you were scared to leave it," he said, slowly, like he was testing the words.
I nodded, my eyes burning. "I set it on my tray and walked. I didn't drink from it. I didn't pour anything out. I just needed it off that ledge."
"Why didn't you tell security right then?"
"Because I couldn't say what I'd seen," I said. "Not really. 'An unfamiliar hand' sounds crazy when it's a crowded bar. And she was already looking at me like I stole something."
He pushed off the wall and took half a step closer, then stopped himself. His hands stayed at his sides.
"If someone hears this wrong, they'll say you made it up to cover yourself," he said.
"I know," I said.
"But if you're telling the truth," he said, "you didn't steal it. You moved it because you thought it wasn't safe."
I looked up at him. His face didn't soften exactly. It changed into something more careful.
"We still don't know what was in it," he said. "The test will tell us that. But I needed to hear how it looked to you."
Behind us, the staff door buzzed. My supervisor's radio crackled. I pulled the jacket tighter around me and stood because I thought I was supposed to, my legs stiff from sitting.
May you like
He held up a hand. "Wait here," he said. "Don't talk to anyone about that morning yet. Just wait for me."
I sat back down, the bench creaking under me, and listened to his shoes go quiet on the carpet toward the light.
