Page 8 of A Friend in the Glass

“I told you I want to talk to one of your guests,” Sam said. “Did you not understand something?”

Rufus grabbed Sam by the chin and met his eyes. “Try offering her name.”

Bro had squared his shoulders and puffed his chest out as he watched the two. He fixed his collar—made it poppier, somehow—and gave Sam an expectant “you dumb shit” kind of look.

“Shareed Baker.” Sam bared his teeth. “Now.”

“How about a ‘please’—”

“Don’t push your luck,” Rufus said over Bro.

Jutting his jaw and making a scoffing sound like he’d been told to pick up his dirty socks, Bro walked back to the counter, pausing a few times to make sure they followed, and then tip-tapped at the keyboard for a moment. Sam was slow making his way back to the desk; he wanted to see the phone, which was on the clerk’s side of the divider. Bro found the information, dialed an extension, and brought the receiver to his ear.

“I bet you wear cargo shorts in summer, right?” Rufus asked Bro as he sidled up to the desk. “Brown belt?”

“Dude, shut up.”

“Backward baseball hat,” Rufus added. “Because it makes you lookcool.”

Bro rolled his eyes and said after a few more seconds, “No one’s picking up.”

“She’s probably taking a nap,” Sam said. “I’ll just go knock on her door. Which pod is she in?”

Bro put the receiver down on the cradle. “Guy.” He said it on purpose, Sam knew. “You can’t go upstairs. You’re not a guest, and she’s not answering the phone. If you don’t leave, I’m calling the cops.”

“Fine,” Sam said and headed for the door.

He waited outside for Rufus to catch up.

“You know,” Rufus said casually, letting the door fall shut before joining Sam on the sidewalk. “I think you could take him. You might even win.”

Sam snorted. “He was wearing a Brooks Brothers polo, which means he belongs to that special group of incompetent fuckups who are protected by the Geneva Convention. How do we get back inside?”

Rufus looked like he was trying really, really hard not to laugh. “Let’s try a side entrance or something. Maybe we can catch an employee taking out trash or accepting a delivery.”

“Tell me if I miss it,” Sam said, “in case in Manhattan a service entrance is actually a manhole or a rusty fire escape or a Slip ’N Slide that takes you straight to hell.”

They headed down the block and turned at the intersection. Several plain steel fire doors studded this side of the building, and as Rufus had predicted, one of them was propped open with an overturned plastic crate. Sam slowed his pace, trying to look like this was all routine, and pulled open the door. The hallway on the other side was unremarkable—tan walls, fluorescent lights, a bulletin board with health and safety notices. It led in the general direction of the lobby and Bro-clerk. A narrow staircase, probably not up to code, climbed to Sam’s right.

“Third floor,” Sam said over his shoulder as he started up the steps.

Following close behind, Rufus asked, “How do you know?”

“Because he pressed Transfer and then 90308. And unless she’s on the 90th floor, I’m guessing she’s in 308.”

“When you’re sneaky, but also kinda crabby, I’ll be honest, I get a chub from it.”

“I know,” Sam said and took the rest of the stairs two at a time.

When they exited the stairwell, they were in a section of the hotel obviously intended for guests. The high-traffic carpet was brightly patterned. LED bulbs gave a warmer, softer light than the fluorescents downstairs. The walls had some sort of pink-and-silver-flecked paper that was apparently approved by the Andy Warhol Commission-on-the-Future-and-wait-this-is-a-hotel. Plastic plaques mounted by each door indicated the number.

It wasn’t like the clickbait images Sam had seen online, pictures from Tokyo or who knew where, of people climbing into coffin-sized openings stacked on top of each other. Pods—in the US, anyway—apparently meant very, very, small hotel rooms. They passed an open door; the sound of movement came from within, and Sam could see the bunkbeds and the sliding door to a bathroom with approximately the same dimensions as a matchbook. In front of the open door stood a housekeeping cart stacked with dime-sized soaps and shampoo and conditioner capsules, everything portioned so small it wouldn’t have been enough to wash a cat. A key card propped against a stack of business cards that saidYour room was cleaned byand then a line where someone had scribbled what Sam thought might sayKorby.Toilet paper. Plastic-wrapped foam cups. Towels.

“Your washcloths are bigger than those,” Sam whispered.

Rufus was too busy shoving shampoo capsules in his pocket to respond, and Sam kept going before he had to decide whether hotel theft was worth intervening in.

308 stood halfway down the hall. The door was closed and, when Sam touched the handle, locked. He considered the door for a moment, considered knocking. Then, instead, he moved back down the hallway to the open door and the housekeeping cart. Whoever was straightening up—presumably Korby—washumming something with a fantastic amount of camp. Sam took the keycard and went back to 308.

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