BAD REVIEWS

Because my mother was usually in a grief-stricken stupor, devastated since her hamster of twenty years had died, I tended to avoid the house. Working late at the hotel’s front desk, taking the bus throughout the island until it no longer ran, anything to escape a misery I found foreign and unwarranted. Instead, I found her in the kitchen, nursing her sorrows by nursing a beer. Cigarette butts from her ashtray spilled onto the table.

No one understands, she said.

I slipped out of my coat, hung it over my arm, and told her people lost pets all the time.

This is worse than that. Alberto was more than a pet. He was family.

Do you know they eat hamsters in some countries? I asked, suddenly trying to get a rise out of her. But all my mother said was that people were savages. That people no longer surprised her.

Besides, she said, I think you mean guinea pigs. No one’s eating hamsters.

I emptied out my lungs and thumped upstairs. In bed, tossing and turning, I reached for my phone. Pulled up a map of local businesses and focused on the corner between Locust Ave and Gnat Street, where Hardy’s Laundromat and Miss K’s Luncheonette stood. With my fake profile, I wrote more of my reviews.

My laundry always smells like piss afterwards. Truly abysmal washers and dryers.

Found hair in my food. Short and curly. You know what that means…

I felt slightly better afterwards, the way I always did. Still, sleep would do what it always did and remain beyond reach. That and my mother’s grief seemed to be the only reliable facets to my life on the island.

***

I wasn’t myself for a while, but I’m better now.

The stranger checking into his room gave me something deeply unfamiliar then: a look of encouragement. I didn’t usually overshare, especially with strangers, but something about him made me feel warm and safe. His tiny, soft hands. His tiny, soft eyes. Everything about him made me want to continue, tell him my whole life story. Sorry, I said. I haven’t been sleeping much.

He gnawed his lip before saying, I knew a man once who stopped sleeping.

Completely?

Completely.

Is he okay? I asked, continuing to take the stranger in. The curls that framed his pale face, the beard that hid his thick neck. The stranger said the man was doing splendidly, and he tapped his credit card against the counter’s wood. A flicker of a grin, his gaze on me never once letting up. It was an unusual feeling. To feel so wanted, when, for so long, I’d convinced myself no one ever could.

Now: my belly flipped with desire. When the stranger handed over his card, I grazed my finger against his. Left it there until his grin returned, larger than before.

***

The affair began shortly after. After the morning of the bus incident, when the stranger found me crying at the front desk. He asked what was wrong and I told him about the man on the bus, the one who had gone around punching people in the face. The stranger touched my chin, lifting the shiner I bore up to the light.

Odd, I said, I feel fine. I don’t even feel shaken.

You’re crying.

I mopped my cheeks coated with moisture, coughed out a laugh, and said, That’s just my body reacting. But up here—I pointed at my head—I feel fine.

Once my shift was over, the stranger led me to the hotel bar, where he ordered two dirty martinis. His irises were encased by scarlet webs; he was an alcoholic. Thanks to my long-gone father, I could spot the tell-all signs from a mile away. The shaky hands. The desperate want that could not be concealed, turning twofold after the first drain of a drink. Lips plumped with hunger.

He told me his name was Audrey. That’s usually a girl’s name, right? I asked, using my front teeth to release an olive from its toothpick. The stranger sucked down his glass until it was half-empty. He asked if it even mattered nowadays, to have a name like his.

When you were growing up, though, it did? I asked, wanting to open some kind of hatch into his past life. What was he like as a child? Had he always been so impenetrable?

Had he always had such tiny, soft hands and tiny, soft eyes?

Everything matters when you’re growing up, he said, his words careful and his voice low. I felt soothed by it. Felt myself float on my stool as if on a boat. The alcohol made everything turn a little sideways—I rarely drank, which didn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it. This was heaven.

The stranger held my arm and asked if I was okay.

My cheeks flushed with color. I’m fine, I said.

When I asked what he was doing here, in our all but abandoned fishing village, he said he wanted to see the sights. You’ve seen them by now though, haven’t you? I said. Takes but a ride around the island to have seen it all.

I needed to get away, he said, turning to his reflection from the mirror behind the bar. Released from his stare, the longing only revved. I felt my chest tighten. I wanted him back.

It sounds like you’re on the run, I said.

He took me to his room after. After he’d trapped me once more with his eyes. Though I’d never slept with a guest before, I had no shame in doing so. Didn’t feel the need to hide this from anyone. The bartender. The housekeeper. They’d all done it before. Perhaps done even worse.

He was rough in a way I enjoyed, so I wasn’t quiet when he made me cum. Didn’t mind the marks on my neck to match the mark on my eye. It would heal. Everything would.

In the morning, Audrey had to shake me awake. I’d slept a full, deep sleep. A first.

I returned to the front desk wearing the same outfit from the day before, wearing the slight odor of Audrey’s sweat, mine too.

***

Because of the suffering that plunged my mother into some unknowable oblivion, she had no idea I hadn’t come home the night before. When I walked in, she briefly flipped her head in my direction before returning to the television. I began my shuffle upstairs when she spoke: Alberto was more than a pet. He was family.

She said this so often I only sometimes felt the pang of what the words actually meant. That he was more family to her than I ever was. I had grown accustomed to not responding, but something about my night with Audrey had left a charge running through me.

I’m family, I said, and rubbed at the sharp tip of my coat’s broken zipper until blood showed.

Sometimes, she said, sucking from her amber bottle, I felt he cared for me more than you ever could. I don’t say that to be malicious. Don’t you think there’s a little bit of truth there?

I stood at the doorway. Blood beads sprouted from my thumb. There was truth to what she said. But that truth only became manifest once I’d realized how much more she paid attention to her hamster than she did me. All the recitals she missed to stay home with Alberto, fearing that he’d caught a cold, which always put her on edge, so much so she refused to leave his side. Birthdays that slid from her mind, her mind filled with worries over Alberto. My graduation. Probably this was a projection she’d created over my father and his illness. So worried that the same would happen to her hamster. Death. And now it had happened, despite all her fretting. I was glad he was dead. I was only disappointed that she had yet to turn her affection towards me.

I’m tired, I said.

Go to sleep.

I might have a cold, I said, lingering at the doorway, waiting for her to say something about my black eye.

Better reason to go to sleep, she said with a mix of disinterest and finality.

In bed with my phone, I narrowed in on Mr. Lock’s on Flea Drive.

The locksmith kept a copy of a key. I’m certain he comes into my family home when I’m not there.

I fear for the safety of my family. My daughter is all that matters to me.

***

Because I’d been working at the hotel for so long, I knew who the call girls were. They came in with moneyed men from the mainland looking for the privacy the island afforded. There was one in particular I’d grown accustomed to. She usually came in hours before her client. Flopped herself into a couch in the lobby, eyes flitting up from her phone from time to time. Her pink heels and tight pencil skirt. A coat that covered whatever revealing top she wore beneath. Now, as her client finally came, and they made their way to the bar, she turned her neck back, a smile aimed in my direction.

Audrey wandered towards my desk after my shift was over. He began to do this every evening. Sometimes we went straight to his room, sometimes the bar. On days I had off, we took walks along the coast. On one of these walks, I admitted to Audrey that, in my spare time, I enjoyed writing bad reviews of local businesses. Competing hotels. Restaurants. The massage parlor down the block.

Audrey gave me one of his encouraging, if somewhat inscrutable, stares and asked, Aren’t you worried about people getting fired?

It’s a cruel world. I’ve been misled plenty myself.

We’d walked to the end of the headland. Between getting spritzed by the rocky sea, a cool gust of wind blew at Audrey’s curls, revealing the even paler skin of his temples.

You want to slump to their level? he asked.

I dropped to the ground and scooped up dusty seashells that filled the rock pockets. Closed my fist and felt the weakest ones break apart into tiny pieces. Some sharper than others, those dug into my flesh. The pricking heat felt nice, I thought, almost revelatory.

Then I opened my palms and let everything fall to the ground. I do it because it makes me feel good, I said. There’s no justice in the world. You’ve got to take it into your own hands. At this, I raised my arms and made a strangling motion, choking the air between us until it grew still. Lifeless.

I don’t think you’re a bad person, Audrey said. He’d placed his palm to my side, to steady me. A precaution.

I think you are, I said.

Then what are we doing here? he said.

I turned to face the sea. Endless. Not a boat or person in sight. And for a moment, I felt helplessly alone. Swallowed by the magnitude of what stood before me.

We’re all bad people, I said, still staring at the infinity.

***

Because the island was so small, I saw the stranger who had punched me everywhere. In the grocery store eyeing an eggplant. In the laundromat folding his laundry. In the waiting line at the pharmacy. He looked normal. Boring even. Not like someone who went around punching people.

When I saw him at the pub, I dove in his direction and asked why he’d done it.

I wasn’t myself, he said, looking me in the eye. He didn’t seem startled, and I wondered if he expected this. By now, the bruising had gone down some, but I imagined he was able to see what he’d done, even under the pub’s dim lighting.

I didn’t ask for more. I could relate to what he’d said. Being outside yourself.

From the curb, I pulled up my phone and left the pub a bad review.

The beer is warm and tastes like ass.

***

The call girl was back. Instead of flumping into her usual spot on the couch, she waltzed towards the front desk, crushing her breasts against the counter. Hi, she said. Immense eyes wrapped in mascara. Cheeks reddened with blush. A beam of light over her nose from highlighter. She smelled sweet, of desserts and pink champagne. I gave her a smile before swinging my eyes back to the computer screen.

I think you have it in you, she said, her hands laid flat on the counter. She spread her fingers out, two starfish sucking on my desk’s counter.

What do I have in me? I asked, mildly confused.
She gave me a sly smile. There’s a part of you that’s interested in it, isn’t there? What I do, I mean.

My head turned sideways at her scent, overpowering. It was too much. I took a step back and told her I wasn’t, that I was perfectly happy working at the hotel.

She snorted. You’re happy? she asked. Here? Doing this? She flapped her arms around, gesturing at the vacant lobby.

I know my station in life, I said. Maybe you should know yours.

That’s so depressing.

Will you be a call girl your whole life? Or, will you marry one of these men?

I have ambitions, she said, and when the door opened, revealing the man, she gave me another one of her mischievous smiles and flocked in his direction, locking her small arm around his massive one. There was so much flesh to that man, I couldn’t imagine their encounters. His weight over hers. How did she do it?

***

At home, I found my mother on the couch watching a show about unsolved murders, cigarette smoke dancing up in curls. At least Alberto wasn’t murdered, I said.

Wasn’t he though? she asked. By God.

Have you become a believer? Is that all it took?

I believe that something precious has been taken from me and I need to find who was responsible, she said, sucking down her cigarette to the filter. She wore what she always wore, a ratty, over-sized sweatshirt and sweatpants, the same slippers as always tossed to the side of the couch.

Hamsters die, I said. We all die. It’s His plan, right?

Then God better watch His back. He’s got some explaining to do.

Why don’t you just get a new hamster?

The same reason I didn’t get a new husband, she said, lighting up a new cigarette. In a few months, she’d become a chain smoker. The living room always laden with the stench. I shoved a window open, releasing the sinky, stale air. And what’s that? I asked.

There’s no one to replace him.

Didn’t you get Alberto to replace Dad? I asked.

Your father was a corpse long before he died.

Then: Maybe you’ll make me a grandmother soon. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Her attention was still pinned to the screen. I left without saying a thing. From my bedroom upstairs, I heard the window slam shut.

I retreated into my phone. The appliances at Kiwi’s Superstore are cheap as shit and always fall apart. The microwave burst into fire and nearly killed my mother.

***

Despite what had happened, I continued to ride the bus. Perhaps a part of me felt some small thrill in doing so. Putting myself in danger once more. I wasn’t used to such thrills. What was occurring with Audrey, too. I’d never had an affair like this. Had only slept with one other person. An experiment, I told myself. Needed to do it once. Try it out. I didn’t ever think I’d do it again, and so easily. What was it about Audrey that made him take me so easy?

From the bus, I rode across our island, watching all the familiar faces. The mailman. The town doctor. And: the stranger. The one who had punched me.

He was back on the bus. He was thumping towards the woman beside me. He was giving her an unfocused stare, then he punched her.

He gave me the same stare before he punched me too.

He wasn’t himself again, this much was obvious.

***

When Audrey saw me that night, a new welt forming at my cheekbone, he showed me his gun. Show me the man, he said. I’d never seen him upset in this way, the twitch to his open, frothing mouth.

There’s no point in killing him, I said, falling into his bed.

Audrey stayed standing, pacing by the window, gun glued to his hand. His forehead was damp with sour sweat that he dabbed at it with his free palm. Isn’t there?

Have you killed before?

Audrey stopped pacing, and when he held me in his gaze, I told him never mind, I didn’t want to know.

Still, I refused to tell him any more about the man. I wondered, in my refusal, if he’d begin his own investigation. Asking any woman he saw on the street with a banged up face about the man. What he looked like, what stop he got on, and did they know him personally? His name, where he worked, where he lived. The island was so small that this information would be readily available. All it’d take was one woman sick of his antics to spill.

***

Several walks along the coast later and Audrey confessed that he made his money by scamming young people over the phone. An empty promise to erase their student loan debt. I didn’t understand the mechanics of his scheme, but it seemed to be going well enough if he could afford an indefinite stay at the hotel.

I asked once again if he wasn’t on the run. Why else did he have a gun?

I’m not a man who keeps secrets.

That’s exactly who you are.

And you?

I have no secrets because my life has been empty until now, I said, staring at the ground. I dug my heel into the sand before kicking at a mound of seashells with my other foot.

I have nothing to tell.

***

Strolling into the house after work, I heard my mother call out for me from the couch. Her feet were in the air, the callouses that once were large and rough now softened by her immobility. She never wore real shoes nowadays, never really left the house, and if she did it was to the grocery store in slippers.

I’ve seen so little of you lately, she said.

Picked up some extra shifts here and there, I said.

Have you met a boy? she asked, narrowing her eyes. I couldn’t tell if she was less drunk than usual—that is, if she had been drinking (because of my father, she drank carefully, and not so often)—meaning more conscious and aware, or if she was more drunk than usual, meaning she’d reached a certain plateau of enlightenment that she’d plunge past and towards a dark abyss any second.

Has someone said something?

I’m just asking. I’m saying it.

There’s nothing for you to worry about, I said.

So you have, she said, and she coughed out a startling cackle. My eyes turned to the window, momentarily worried the glass would break from the high-pitched sound.

Do you know something? she asked.

What? I said, finally kicking off my shoes and sagging into the loveseat beside her.

I’m proud of you, she said. I don’t say it often—actually I never say it—but I am. I hope you know that. Did you know that?

I’m not making you a grandmother, I said. I hope you know that.

St. Mary’s Elderly Care. Abuse of patients comes as no surprise.

***

What my mother had said had the opposite effect—it left my head spinning. And it was in this disordered state that I found the call girl waiting for me at work. She rushed up to the desk and said she had a proposition for me.

What kind of proposition?

She took a breath. Tapped her short heels against the marble before she spoke. I have this client, she said, who wants someone to watch. A third person, I mean, to watch us.

You don’t have any hooker friends? I asked.

A part of me thought you’d be interested. Aren’t you? When she said this, I cut my attention to her, this woman whose name I still didn’t know.

I’m Katya, she said, as if she’d read my mind.

Is that your real name?

Before answering, she picked at her nails. Clearing imaginary detritus from one nail with the other nail. Muted pink polish, gels. It’s what I’ve chosen for myself, she said softly. So, in some sense, it’s the realest name I’ve got.

I thought about her proposition, and the longer I thought of it, the less ridiculous it seemed. Curiosity brewed within me. Along with that sense of danger I’d suddenly grown accustomed to. Perhaps even hungry for. The thrill of new experience.

Katya could sense this, my serious consideration to her offer. You know the room number, she said, pointing her pink gel at my computer screen. Come at nine. Don’t knock. Just let yourself in. You can do that, right?

I’m no spectator, I said.

Aren’t you though? Isn’t that what you’ve been all your life? Now’s the time to act, don’t you see?

The shift passed, the hours slipping by as the clock clicked closer towards nine. Audrey hadn’t come for me yet. Katya’s proposition stirred my mind, it was all I could think about, even as I found myself in the elevator riding up, suddenly slapping my master keycard to the door and slipping inside, where I heard a man’s grunts and Katya’s propulsive whines, and I stood at the doorway into the bedroom, half-hidden in the shadows, barely making myself visible, my hand gripping at the frame, and she was there, belly-down, the man’s largeness hiding Katya’s teeny frame, the sharp angles I imagined beneath the fat folds, and she turned up, and she smiled, and she moaned, and the man’s eyes flitted, red with pure ecstasy, and then he drove himself further inside her, and the two continued, their energy escalating, enthusiasm soaring, and I stayed where I was, taking it in, wondering if Audrey and I fucked with such abandon. I hoped we did. I thought we did. I was certain we did. And the moment the man came, and the moment Katya howled, I felt my own small share of their pleasure, and before he could collapse to her side, I receded further into the shadows, back to my post, where Audrey waited for me.

***

After that: Audrey, our love so hungry and borderless, leaving him panting afterwards, saying woah woah woah, his slippy, sweat-coated body over mine, then another one of my deep sleeps.

If anything, I was grateful for Audrey because of this. The gift of uninterrupted sleep. I’d become a person that had found peace. I didn’t know before I’d met Audrey I had been living my life sideways. I hadn’t been at peace. I’d been in a disturbance, askance.

When I awoke, the sunlight filtering through the blinds, Audrey was gone. Without his shaking me awake, I’d overslept.

Downstairs, back at my station, the housekeeper drew me close. She had something to tell me. She brushed her mouth against my hair, I’d never been so close to her before, to any of my coworkers, to anyone besides Audrey. She told me that the man who went around punching people had been found dead in his flat. He’d been shot.

***

I waited for Audrey in his room that evening. Once the hours began to slip past, I feared the worst. That he’d done it. That’d he’d fled. Abandoned me for good. I paced back and forth across his room, taking glugs of the tiny liquor bottles stacked within the mini-fridge.

In the bathroom, my face flushed, my eyes pink from the threat of tears, a pounding in my chest, I wondered if this is what my mother had felt like. First with my father, then with Alberto.

I fell to the bedroom floor, stretched out, belly-down, the scratchy carpet burning my arms. I couldn’t feel myself making the sounds I knew were coming from me, from some deep, unknown recess. I was sobbing when the door flung open and Audrey was there, in the room with me. He dropped to his knees, gathering me in his arms, and he settled me over the bed, wrapping me in the covers, smothering me with soft kisses all along my face. Though I felt a sense of relief that he was back, I still wasn’t myself, not while he was saying things to me, things I couldn’t fully understand. It took many repetitions, and many apologies, for what he said to land. He was leaving.

Everyone will know it was you, I said, trying to sit up from my spot in bed before he pushed me back down, told me it was better I rest.

I’m not afraid of that, he said. I’m afraid you’ll come to realize I’m a monster too.

That doesn’t scare me, I said.

He stayed caressing my face before sinking to my side. We didn’t make love that night—it would have felt wrong—but he held me close, pressing my face against his chest. Both of us remained clothed.

In the morning, he was gone.

In the morning, I didn’t return to my station at work, but wandered the coast. Cold wind blew, the water lapping the rocky shore. Grey clouds smeared the sky. I texted work that I was sick, and in the evening, tucked deep within my sheets, with nothing to do but grieve, I reached for my phone. Ready to write another bad review, I found a new one instead. One of the hotel.

The person had written about how horrible the service was.

Especially the front desk attendant, they’d said.

Especially her.

I pressed my phone to my chest, felt the heat of a smile form in my face. Especially me. I laughed, something hard and long, and kept going, harder and longer, until my mother stumbled into my room and asked what was wrong. Nothing, I said. I understand now.

Understand what? she asked, an expression of fear and alarm in her face.

How you felt, I said. All this time. It’s awful, isn’t it?

Are these happy tears? she asked, reaching for my face. What’s wrong?

Of course not! Can’t you tell I’m miserable? Finally, we have something in common.