The Color of Rain

-What am I? the girl asks aloud of herself, or of no one especially, as she picks amidst the gathering debris of cellophane and cigarette packages, which, no longer being of any use or measure, rest in semi-permanence on her bedside table. Her window frames a chalky sky and slanting beaded snakes of rain that seem almost as obscuring as the quiet silver light of the midmorning, distinguishing and at the same time softening every inch of the unlit hotel room.
-What’s that? unmindfully from behind the unlatched powderroom door.
She does not answer. Nor does she remove herself from the littered tabletop until, through casual yet determined appraisal, her slender white fingers produce an equally slender white cigarette between her lips. Lighting this, she gathers up the tawny cotton sheets about her waist, and, sliding back against the headboard, relaxes into the pillows until her otherwise flat stomach becomes shapely with folds of bare skin. As she exhales into the graded light, her hushed turquoise eyes trace the ionic molding around the window and around the top of the wall, until they fall upon the powderroom door, which cuts a thin fluorescence across the floor, drawing the carpet into sharp actuality. The girl inhales.
Presently the door is pulled open and his body appears, depthless and silhouetted before a backdrop of too-white porcelain and sterling fixtures, as he fixes a knot in his tie.
-Did you say something?
Bringing her cigaretted hand forwards to shield away the hard light, she squints like a child looking into the sun and searches for the eyes in his dark, featureless face. The frail smell of aftershave and the thick of dime cologne move with him as he trails across the floor.
-No. It was nothing. I was just talking. Would you turn out that light? motioning with her free hand.
Ignoring her, he works his collar down while checking a wrist watch, with the swiftness and precision of a man accustomed to late entries and early exits. He pauses for a moment before the running window, hands on his hips and scrutiny on his face, regarding the morning.
-Goddamn ugly day it’s turned out.
She can see his eyes now, severely brown and deeply set into the creases of his city weathered features, pulled into the mask of a constant deliberative scowl. His body, too, seemed as though submitting itself gradually to some unbending burden; age, perhaps.
-The light. she sighs impatiently.
-What’s the matter now?
-That light. indicating with a flash of her eyes the starkness of the powderroom. Turn it off.
As he retrieves a grey four-and-four check jacket from the mahogany chair back, the only such piece of furniture in the room, sitting solitary and open towards the quiet window, he pauses for a moment, arms crossed about the shoulders of the coat. Unfolding them, he twists the jacket over his sloping shoulders, in a capelike flurry of fabric which sends his cologne wafting about, and he shuttles his arms through. The scent settles upon the bed and the girl like a pollen.
-The light? Right. And I’m sure you’d rather sit here all day in this dark fucking room and wait for the sun to go down. he snaps very dryly, adding with a presumptuous half smile half sneer, bearing only his left teeth. I have to run, the meeting’s almost over.
With the aired noncommittence of which one might regard a pet, or disregard a young child, he makes his way towards the main door, smoothing his hair back as he goes, and calls back to her over his shoulder.
-Stay good while I’m gone.
She waits until he reaches the door to reply.
-Wednesday morning is no good for me. she offers with mellow aloofness, splaying her legs out under the smooth cool sheets and taking a deep drag. Smoke curls across her upper lip and twists through her jagged hazel bangs.
The man turns back and, knitting his brow, looks down upon the girl with a puzzling look.
-And why is that?
-It’s personal really. releasing a colorless swell. I don’t see that it’s any of your concern. She narrows her eyes through the smoke and watches as he reappears. For a moment nothing is said, and the sudden silence is slowly filled with the light drumming of rain against the window, and the small mechanical whir of the powderroom fan.
Presently the man loosens his bushy black eyebrows, arching them to meet the contented and unconcerned wrinkles building across his forehead.
-If you think so. he needles, opening the door. I wish you wouldn’t smoke. It sours you, and your mouth.
The door bangs shut behind him, its resonance dying quickly amidst the quiet of the room. The girl inhales again to feel the rise and fall of her chest, and for a time she searches unsuccessfully to measure the cadence of her heart. She sits this way until the cigarette in her hand trails down to the filter, and the long column of ash falls snowlike, under its own weight, across her lap, leaving a mark on the tawny cottons sheets not unlike the color of the chalky morning sky. Very soon she brushes the ash away, into a smudge, places the cigarette butt upon her bedside table, and rises naked towards the mahogany chair. There she finds, upon the satiny cushion, a fold of bills, bathed in silver light and aftershave. She does not count them. Without mind, she moves silently towards the powderroom door, relinquishes the electric light, and returns to her chair before the window. She does not sit down. Instead, the girl stands with her hands pressed against the cold glass, hoping to feel the rhythm of the cloudbursts, and searches the streets below, until her breath turns to fog, and her eyes are the color of rain.