The Wrong Room – Part 1

There was a man in her bathtub.

Not in it, exactly. Sitting on the edge of it, in a white hotel robe, eating a mango.

Hana Rahman stood in the doorway of room 2814 with her suitcase in one hand and her keycard in the other and stared at him. He stared back, mango halfway to his mouth.

“This is my room,” she said.

“I think,” said the man, slowly, in an accent she couldn’t place, “this is my room.”

He held up his keycard. 2814.

She held up hers. 2814.

Outside the huge window, the sky over Singapore cracked open with lightning, and the rain came down like someone had emptied the ocean on the city.

---

The front desk said they were very sorry. The front desk said it was a system error. The front desk said the hotel was completely full because of the Formula One race, and every other hotel in the city was full too, and they would have a room for her tomorrow at noon, and they were very, very sorry.

Hana put the phone down.

The man was still in his robe, standing by the window now, watching the storm. He was tall, with dark curly hair and a sunburned nose.

“Sebastian,” he said. “From Santiago. I’m an engineer. I’m here for the race. I’m very sorry about your room.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“No,” he agreed. “But I feel bad. Also, I ate the mango from the welcome basket. I think that was also yours.”

Hana laughed before she could stop herself.

“It’s a big room,” Sebastian said. “There is a sofa. I can take it. You take the bed. Very respectable. Like a film from 1950.”

She looked at the sofa. It was very small. He was very tall.

“Fine,” she said. “But you’re not allowed to eat anything else.”

---

They ordered room service, because neither of them wanted to go out into the storm. Noodles for her, a terrible club sandwich for him. They ate on the floor by the window with the lights off, watching the lightning hit the sea.

He was funny. She hadn’t expected funny. He told her about the race car he had helped build, and how it had broken down in practice that morning, and how the driver had sworn at him for ten minutes in Italian.

She told him about the building she was designing in Kuala Lumpur, a library made of glass and bamboo, and how no one believed it would stand up.

“Will it?” he asked.

“Yes,” Hana said. “Because I’m very stubborn.”

“I can tell,” he said, and smiled at her in the blue light of the storm.

Something warm went through her chest.

---

At midnight, the power went out.

The whole city went dark. Every tower, every light, every sign. Just the lightning now, white and enormous, showing the room in flashes.

“Hana?” Sebastian said in the dark.

“I’m here.”

He found her hand. She didn’t know who had reached first.

The next flash of lightning showed his face very close to hers.

“The sofa,” she said, “is very small.”

“It is,” he said. “I measured it. With my legs.”

“And you’re very tall.”

“I am.”

She held on to his hand in the dark. Her heart was going very fast.

“The bed,” Hana said, “is very big.”

There was a long silence, full of rain.

“Hana,” Sebastian said quietly. “Are you sure?”

She leaned forward in the dark and kissed him. That was her answer.

What happened next belonged only to them: to the storm and the dark city and the lightning flashing through the glass, to two strangers in the wrong room who had stopped caring whose room it was. It was quick and warm and full of laughter, and then it wasn’t quick at all.

---

At noon the next day, the front desk called.

“Miss Rahman, we are delighted to say your room is ready. Room 1607. We are very sorry again for the,”

“Thank you,” Hana said. “I’ll keep this one.”

She put the phone down.

Sebastian was sitting on the edge of the bathtub in his robe again, eating a mango he had absolutely ordered from room service with her credit card.

“You said I couldn’t eat anything else,” he said.

“I did.”

“I’m very sorry.”

“No,” Hana said, taking the mango from his hand, “you’re not.”

---

The End.

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