Infinity Hotel

“Keep talking,” I say to her, as I round the corner into our bedroom.

She says my name. Relief. She’s on the bed. I know this without seeing it. I know this house.

But I’ve been collecting dark disappointments lately. That’s how it seems. Like this has been going on much longer than I realize.

It’s not only that the bedroom’s empty. It’s the blank space on the bed where I was expecting her. The blankets are smooth and squared as a military cot, which feels intentional. Like some invisible hole she fell into.

She says my name again, and this feeling keeps gnawing at my stomach like a rat trapped in a cardboard box. Now she’s in the master bathroom. Just around the corner.

She keeps talking because that’s what I asked her to do. She listens. I have trouble listening. “Because of you, I know myself,” better than I once did. Too eager for my turn to speak. And I’m also always trying to steer the conversation back to myself.

“Stop moving,” I beg. “Just sit down.”

“I have been sitting,” she says. No sting to her words. “Please.”

None of the frustration my stomach’s come to anticipate.

She starts reciting the alphabet, and I know she’s scared. The way she can cry but keep it completely out of her voice. Her words can get so colorless they toll in the deepest pit of my guts. Like the morning of our three-year anniversary, when she took the ring I gave her off and smashed it to stardust on the bathroom vanity.

She’s not in the bathroom, and this is not my house. It has its shapes, smells, and shadows but only partly. Terror moves through my body like three different fevers. Gripping me like a hand from under the bed. Or a man stirring at his own wake, just to flash a smile like snake’s teeth at the one little boy who keeps his eyes open during prayer.

No one will believe you.

Am I asleep? Is this miasma the stuff of all dreaming when we’re inside them?

“...W, X, Y, and Z.”

These rooms, so alike those in my own house, do not sum up to my home. And then a door at the far end of the master bathroom that I know – I know! – was never there. I move towards it. Because she’s talking from the other side.

“Keep going, baby. I’m almost there.”

“Please.” I hear the fear in her voice that no one else can.

We started couple’s counseling three months after I proposed.

“Tell me about what first drew you to one another,” our counselor said.

I’m in the hallway between our guest bedroom and my office. That’s where a door in the bathroom would’ve put me. If it’d ever been there. The hallway’s all but impenetrable with the dark. Like panes of outer space hung while no one was watching.

There is no door.

She says my name hopefully, because this time she really is just around the corner. I step purposefully. If I had reached out, I would already be feeling the warmth of her skin. Finally–

An unincorporated face sneering at me. I leap back and flip the hall light on. Nothing there. Probably never was.

“It rained on our first date,” I told our couple’s counselor. “We were on a walk through the park and the heavens just opened up. We had to run across the street and take shelter on the stoop of someone’s house. An old house like you can only find downtown. Occupied but falling apart.”

“Keep going,” I say to her.

“I don’t know what else to say.”

“Then sing something.”

She starts singing Sabrina Carpenter. She’s in her office.

There’s wisdom even in nightmares. Like the way you’ll dream of a break-up months or even years before it actually happens.

But what if it isn’t a dream? How long have I been following her voice? Like I’ve been drugged. Like someone’s drilled a hole in the side of my head and carefully spooned acid inside.

I can talk to her until I’m blue in the face. During yet another argument, I talk, and talk, and then I ask, “Do you understand?” even though I’ve always known the answer.

“No. I don’t. Do you listen to yourself? Do you even know what you’re going to say before you open your mouth?”

What if this is death? The terror finds me again like the final hours on death row. Like the salt-bloat and conflicting flavors of my last meal. What if this is forever?

She’s not in her office. She stopped singing at the first chorus.

Every schoolkid can get their arms around the concept of forever. Yet infinity does all sorts of things that don’t make logical sense. Like the one about the hotel with infinite rooms, and every room is occupied. But if another customer checks in, the hotel will now have a room for them.

“Please,” she says to me. Softly. “Please.”

What I wouldn’t give to hold her. Just have her in my arms one last time.

On the stoop of the decrepit downtown house, I leaned down and kissed her for the first time. Soaked to the bone. The cold rain dripping off my nose, and earlobes, and both of our lips like tears. I like to tell people, “We fell in love at a stranger’s place.”

Where does love go? What hole in the universe gobbles it up so that it’s always there, but out of reach when you need it most?

I quit her office.

“Keep talking, baby,” I tell her. “Say anything. Anything!”

She says my name, and I’m sure she’s downstairs now. In the TV room. I know this house. She’s sitting on the couch.

We don’t have stairs in our house.