What Midtown Taught Her

Three versions of me sit in these mirrors and I keep looking at all of them at once, which is something I've never been able to do before. The center panel shows me straight on. The left and right panels catch my sides, slightly behind, the angle that no bathroom at home has ever given me. I've been in this hotel room for forty minutes and I've spent most of them here, on this cushioned bench, in this specific light — the vanity bulbs running warm along the top of the frame, the kind that flatten nothing, the kind that show everything at the same temperature as truth.

I'm still in my skirt. I didn't plan to be. I sat down to take off my earrings and then I looked up and saw myself looking back from three directions simultaneously and I just — stopped. The city is a low hum somewhere below the glass.

Twenty-something floors of distance and it still comes through, a constant frequency, almost like pressure. I've started to use it as a kind of baseline. When the room feels too quiet, I remember it's there. I study my own face first.

That's the student in me — establish the control condition before you change anything. My jaw is loose. My shoulders have dropped in a way they don't usually drop until much later in the evening. I look, in the center mirror, like someone who has decided something without quite finishing the decision.

Then I look at what my hands are doing. My right hand is in my lap. My left is flat on the bench beside me, fingers slightly spread against the upholstered fabric, which is cool in a way that surprises me — cool despite the warmth of the room, despite the warmth the bulbs are throwing. The contrast registers along my palm and I hold it there, cataloguing it.

In the side mirror, from the left panel, I can see the hem of my skirt. It has ridden up from sitting. Not far. But enough that I can see the specific line where the fabric ends and my thigh begins, and something in my chest contracts at the sight of it — not embarrassment, exactly.

Recognition. I look like someone I want to pay attention to. I shift slightly on the bench. The skirt moves with me, a centimeter higher.

The fabric is so light I can feel the air temperature change against the newly exposed skin, and I hold very still after, watching the three mirrors hold the image of what I just did. My right hand registers the warmth of my own thigh before I've consciously directed it there. The fabric between my palm and my skin is thin enough that I can feel myself through it — the heat I've been carrying since the elevator, the heat that's been waiting for me to acknowledge it. I watch the center mirror.

I take a breath, and the exhale comes out longer than I put in — unfolding into the warm lit room like something I didn't know I'd been holding. My knees are still together.