Page 6 of Fang Fiction

“I was actually just on my way out, but I wouldn’t think of leaving without helping you.” Tess gave Mrs. Harriman her most understanding smile.

“Oh, if you have plans—I don’t mean to interrupt, it’s just that I was absolutely terrified.”

“Terrified?” Tess raised an eyebrow; she had never known Mrs. Harriman to be intimidated by any person or thing.

“Wouldn’t you be?” Mrs. Harriman shot back. “If you opened the door to your room and found a stranger on your bed?”

Tess exchanged a look with Mika. The fuck?

“I was just saying it was probably a member of our cleaning staff,” Mika filled Tess in.

“But they weren’t in a uniform!” Mrs. Harriman was indignant. “And are you honestly saying that this hotel allows cleaners to sleep on guest room beds?”

“Of course not, Mrs. Harriman,” Tess said smoothly. “What were they wearing? Did you get a look at their face?”

Mrs. Harriman shook her head, as if trying to remember.

“I couldn’t,” she said softly. “They moved too quickly.”

“We sent security up to the suite right away, but there was no sign of anyone having been there,” Mika muttered to Tess. “The bed was made. No one had been in it.”

“They weren’t in the bed, they were on the bed,” Mrs. Harriman insisted.

“Okay, Mrs. Harriman, here’s what we’re going to do—if you want to change rooms, of course we can give you a new one. We have our cabana suite available—that one opens right onto the pool! But if you’d rather stay in the penthouse, we can perform a full security sweep and issue you a brand-new key to ensure no one else can get in there. What would you prefer?”

Mrs. Harriman looked shrewdly at Tess. “If I go back to the penthouse, will you knock a night off my bill?”

Tess smiled thinly. “It would be my pleasure.”

After Willie the bellhop got Mrs. Harriman back onto the elevator and out of sight, Mika burst out laughing.

“What a fucking fraud!” Mika shook her head with grudging respect. “Staging a meltdown to get a free night. Like she even needs the discount!”

“No, she’s not a fraud. She’s just—I don’t know. An opportunist.” Tess couldn’t help laughing too. “How’s the day going otherwise?”

“You heard about the wedding with the bees, right?” Mika cocked her head and leaned in for gossip. “Joey the bee guy obviously wasn’t supposed to be here today to pollinate the flowers in the solarium, but he got the days mixed up, and the bees got loose, and apparently the groom’s nephew is allergic, so the bride lost her shit and swore she was getting hives, and the bride’s mother said it was just a panic attack and she’d freak out too if she was about to marry that guy, which set the groom’s mother off, so they’re screaming and yelling, the bride’s crying, the nephew is curled up in a corner hiding from the bees. Meanwhile, the best man has been plastered since breakfast, knocks over a giant floral arrangement, gets stung like sixteen times.”

Mika exhaled with satisfaction, and Tess grinned. “So you’re saying Taylor’s going to be in the lobby bar drinking herself into oblivion the second her shift is over?”

“Exactly,” Mika laughed. “Do you really have plans, or were you just trying to get away from Harriman?”

Tess suddenly felt a twist of nervous energy. “My old roommate’s birthday. Gotta get to her party in Morningside Heights and back by eleven.”

“That far uptown?” Mika looked skeptical. “Must have been a good roommate.”

“Yeah.” Tess forced a smile. “She was the best.”

—

Tess took the L west to Manhattan with some regularity, but transferring to the 2/3 at 14th Street and heading north felt more like time travel than riding the subway. After Tess unceremoniously moved out of their apartment while Joni was out of town, they didn’t speak for months. Joni was hurt, Tess was ashamed, and back then, Tess’s panic attacks were still so regular and so debilitating that she could barely make it through each day—an emotionally fraught conversation was out of the question. Eventually, Tess and Joni had intermittent text exchanges, but they were always awkward and stilted. Tess and Joni had never been able to get back the easy connection they shared when they were living together—closer to each other than Tess had ever been to another person.

Then Tess got a night job at The Georgia, which was great since Tess hadn’t been able to sleep at night since Rick’s party, but it didn’t make it easier to get together with Joni. Between their opposite schedules and living at least forty minutes apart, there was always an excuse to put off making plans, to cancel and reschedule, and now it had been more than three years since they’d seen each other. Tess was honestly a little surprised she was invited to Joni’s party; Tess hadn’t invited Joni to her last birthday. Not that she’d done anything big, just went to a chintzy bar with her friends from the hotel. She didn’t want to have to deal with the awkwardness of introducing Joni to everyone, of making flimsy excuses for why she’d left Columbia—a topic she’d barely addressed for herself, let alone with Joni. She’d worked hard to move past all that; she didn’t see the point in dredging it up again.

But Tess was doing better now. She slept a solid five hours during the day, sometimes six. She’d been promoted to night manager, which meant she could afford to live in a “junior one-bedroom” near the hotel—i.e., a cramped studio with a closet large enough to fit a double bed, which, it turned out, was extremely practical for someone who slept during the day. She could buy nicer clothes and take herself out to dinner before work. She’d downloaded one of those apps where you could text a therapist—which hadn’t been all that helpful, but she thought it showed pretty good progress that she’d installed it in the first place. And she liked the mindfulness meditations that came with the app, coaxing her in soothing tones to name five things she could see right now. Sometimes she listened to them as she wandered through Marsha P. Johnson Park, drinking cinnamon cortados and watching the churn of the river.

And now, her adviser had emailed her about a chance to come back to Columbia—and to Tess’s absolute shock, she was actually considering it. She wasn’t sure whether she wanted to go back, but she liked feeling strong enough to know that it could be a possibility. She was thinking of this party as a way to test the waters, dipping her toes back into the world she’d loved so much until she’d had to leave it so abruptly.

It was both familiar and bizarre to get off the train at Cathedral Parkway, to see the same tiles spelling out the words that used to mark the way home. There was the bodega where she and Joni would get chopped cheeses at two a.m. when they still had piles of papers to grade, the weird natural wine store where they pooled their meager spending money for a bottle of something effervescent, the diner where they ate mountains of scrambled eggs and crispy hash browns smothered in ketchup and Tapatío on mornings after gathering with other people from the program, arguing about Dostoyevsky and pounding bourbon.