Twenty-Third Floor, Last Night

The skyline doesn't blink. That's what she keeps coming back to — forty floors of lit windows stacked against the winter dark, and not one of them looking away. She knows they can't see her. The physics of glass and distance and twenty-three floors of altitude make her invisible. She knows this. She has repeated it to herself three times since she let the curtains fall open and stepped back to stand in the amber wash of the city's reflected light, the hotel robe hanging from her shoulders like something she forgot to close.

The conference ends tomorrow. She has given two presentations and shaken forty hands and said the phrase moving forward so many times it has stopped meaning anything. She is tired in a specific way — the tiredness of performing competence all day, of being watched and measured and found acceptable. And now the city is watching, or she is letting herself believe it is, and the difference between those two things feels less important than she expected.

She sits on the edge of the bed. The robe's terrycloth is thick and slightly stiff against the backs of her thighs — industrial laundering does something to fabric, takes the softness out and leaves a texture that registers as pressure more than comfort. She is aware of it. The two panels hang open between her knees, and she has not closed them, and the city light falls in a long pale stripe across the carpet and up across her lap.

The wand is on the bed beside her right hand. She bought it three cities ago and carries it in the inner pocket of her rolling bag, nested in a wool sock, which is a practical solution she is slightly embarrassed by when she thinks about it too directly. She has not turned it on yet. Her left hand is flat against the mattress, fingers spread, holding her weight. Her right hand is close to the wand without touching it — close enough that she can feel the faint cool of its plastic casing against her palm without making contact.

The skyline holds its forty floors of light.

She exhales — not the breath she planned, but a shorter one, something that left before she finished deciding to let it go. The backs of her thighs press into the mattress edge. The robe's open panels rest against her outer legs, the belt trailing across the duvet, and between the panels there is a space she has not addressed yet. She is aware of the space. She has been aware of it since she walked to the window and stood there in the city glow and thought: no one can see you, and felt something in her chest that was not quite disappointment and not quite relief.

Her right hand settles over the wand. The plastic is cool. The button is under her thumb.

The towers hold still, pretending.