At the Villa Meran the night shift starts at ten, and by eleven the last guest has taken his key upstairs and the lobby belongs to me. I am Mara, twenty-nine, and I like this hour: the switchboard silent, one candle on the desk because the manager thinks it looks welcoming, the long corridors holding their breath.
Room 12 comes down at twelve past midnight. He always does. He wears a dark jumper, no watch, and he leans on the counter as if he has nowhere else to be, which I suppose is true. Tonight he has extended again. A second week. I have the form in front of me and no reason written on it.
“You don't sleep either,” he says.
“I'm paid not to.”
“That's not what I asked.” He smiles in a way that reaches only one corner of his mouth. Then he asks the question no one asks at a front desk: “What do you do at four, when there's nothing left to do?”
I should say I read. I should say I count the keys. Instead I hear myself tell him about the bench at the end of the third-floor corridor, where you can see the whole valley if the lights on the road go off. He listens the way people rarely listen, without waiting for his turn.
When he straightens to go, he says, “Good night, Mara.” I have never told him my name. My badge is in the drawer, where it always is. He is already on the stairs before I can ask, and the candle bends in the draught he leaves behind.
