matchbook

he breakfast shift rolls in on a smog of cigarettes and suburban dew that turns the hotel parking lot into a dry ice stage. She sets out the continental spread, turning miniature preserve jars in her palm like baoding balls, and shines the spoons with vinegar. In the pre-dawn pauses, she watches the chef’s upper arms quiver over scrambling eggs. Pretends not to see the dish-boy watching her in turn, waiting for his first pan.

She is not hungover today, but the smell of rendering bacon still crawls up the inside of her throat. Everything in this place adds a fine coating of nausea to her skin. The industrial tubs of mayonnaise. The static of her tunic rubbing against her thighs. The wax-topped tables that remain sticky no matter how many times she wipes them. The manager who shadows her shoulder as he issues a slow-blink warning for yawning on duty. The creak of his smile as he suggests she stay in one of the vacant rooms to make sure she’s at work on time. The sour-smell look when she says no. 

She escapes the heat death of the kitchen to lean against the shelves in the walk-in cooler where the air is stale and still. She makes her breath imperceptible. Cuts the strings holding up her face muscles. Matches her pulse to the whirr of the evaporator. She watches condensation form on the chocolate chevrons and coulis flourishes of the frozen desserts waiting patiently to be consumed by ambivalent conference attendees and temporarily thrown-out husbands. 

This place has stolen more than just her hunger, but she has always coveted the perfect triangle slices, delivered in individual portions like so much of the unfathomable waste that passes through the hotel. The maids squeeze into laundry cupboards and stuff themselves with pillow chocolates. The bartenders shotgun handfuls of complimentary nuts. The silver-service wait staff sit on the grass bank behind the recycling bins to eat leftover wedding cake. The breakfast shift has nothing but overcooked eggs and dry ice. 

She slides desserts off the wire shelving one by one. Slides down to her knees on the concrete floor. Slides wedge to wedge until the triangles merge into a circle of sugar and cream and fresh berry glaze. She works counter-clockwise, a handful at a time. It tastes of nothing but cold at first—like the still, stale air; like inertia—but that’s irrelevant, so long as she can keep her jaw working, keep choking it down, until the physics inside of her demands an equal, opposite reaction. 

She barely notices the airlock door steam open, or the dish-boy crouching beside her, watching motionless until there’s nothing but abstract smears on porcelain. He reaches past to gouge a finger of cheesecake and perhaps he hadn’t meant it for her but she puts her mouth on it anyway, leans into his stare until he breaks it, until he breaks the circle, clatters the plates into a pile and takes them to wash up.