She paused.
“He grabbed me by the wrists. I’ll have bruises.”
“Just like Giselle,” I said.
“Yes. Just like the new and improved Mrs. Black. I tried to warn her. Giselle. But she didn’t listen. Too young to know any better.”
“He beats her too,” I said.
“Not anymore,” she replied. “He would have done worse to me, but he started to heave and pant. He let go of my wrists. Then he stumbled to the bed, kicked off his shoes and lay down, just like that.”
Her eyes darted to the pillow on the floor, then away. “Tell me,” she said. “Do you ever feel like the world is backward? Like the villains prosper and the good suffer?”
It was as though she were reading my deepest thoughts. My mind flitted through a short list of those who had taken from me unjustly and had caused me to suffer—Cheryl, Wilbur…and a man I’d never met, my own father.
“Yes,” I said. “I feel that way all the time.”
“Me too,” she replied. “In my experience, there are times when a good person must do something that’s not quite right, but it’s still the right thing to do.”
Yes, she was right.
“What if it were different this time?” she asked. “What if we took matters into our own hands and balanced the scales? What if you didn’t see me? What if I just walked out of the hotel and never looked back?”
“You’d be recognized, would you not?”
“If people actually read the newspapers delivered to their doors, but I doubt they do. I’m largely invisible. Just another gray-haired, middle-aged woman in loose-fitting clothes and sunglasses walking out the back door of the Regency Grand. Just another nobody.”
Invisible in plain sight, just like me.
“What did you touch?” I asked her.
“Excuse me?”
“When you entered the suite, what did you touch?”
“Oh…I touched the doorknob and probably the door itself. I think I laid a hand on the bureau by the door. I didn’t sit down. I couldn’t. He was chasing me around the room, yelling and spitting in my face. He grabbed my wrists, so I don’t think I ever actually touched him. I took that pillow off the bed and…That’s it, I believe.”
We were both silent for a moment, staring at the pillow on the floor. I thought again of Gran. I didn’t understand her back then, not entirely, but during that moment with Mrs. Black, I suddenly saw it clearly—how mercy takes unexpected forms.
I looked up at her, this virtual stranger who was so much like me.
“They’re not coming,” she said. “Whoever you called earlier.”
“No, they won’t. They don’t listen well. Not to me. I’ll have to call again.”
“Now?”
“No, not yet.”
I didn’t know what else to say. My feet turned to stone as they do when I’m nervous. “You best be going,” I eventually said. “Please don’t let me delay you.” I offered a slight curtsy.
“And what will you do? When I’m gone?”
“I’ll do what I always do. I’ll clean everything up. I’ll take away my water glass. I’ll wipe down the front doorknob and the bureau. I’ll polish the faucet in the bathroom. I’ll put that pillow on the floor in my laundry hamper. It will be cleaned in the basement and returned to another room in a state of perfection. No one will ever know it was here.”
“Just like me?”
“Yes,” I said. “And after I’ve returned those few areas of the suite to a state of perfection, I’ll call Reception again and reiterate my urgent request for help.”
“You never saw me,” she said.
“And you never saw me,” I replied.
She left then. She simply walked out of the bedroom and out the front door of the suite. I didn’t move until I heard the front door click behind her.
That was the last time I saw Mrs. Black, the first Mrs. Black. Or didn’t see her. So much depends on your point of view.
Once she was gone, I cleaned things up as I said I would. I put the pillow she left behind into the laundry hamper in my trolley. I called down to Reception, for the second time, once I fully regained consciousness, just like I said in court. And at long last, a few minutes later, help arrived.
* * *
—
I sleep well at night now, perhaps better than I ever have before because I lie beside Juan Manuel, my dearest friend in all the world. He’s a heavy sleeper, just like Gran was—he falls asleep before his head hits the pillow. We sleep together under Gran’s lone-star quilt because some things are better kept the same, whereas other things are better when they change a little. On the walls around us I’ve taken down Gran’s landscape paintings, replacing them with framed photos of Juan Manuel and me.