Shared Sheets

The key card didn't work. I stood in the hallway of the Hotel Ritz, in my wrinkled travel clothes, and slid it through the reader for the fourth time. Red light. Red light. Red light.

"It's the magnetic strip," my suegra said behind me. "They demagnetize if they're near a phone."

She reached past me, her arm brushing my shoulder, and took the card. One smooth motion. Green light. The door clicked open.

"After you," she said.

I'd known her for three years and had never been alone with her for more than ten minutes. Now I was going to spend the night before my wedding sharing a room with her. Because the airline lost my luggage and my fiancé's mother, Doña Carmen, had offered, in that way she had of making an offer sound like a fact, to share her room. The hotel was fully booked. The wedding was at noon. And I was standing in the doorway of a room with one bed.

One bed. King-sized. White duvet. Two pillows.

"I'll take the floor," I said.

"Nonsense." She walked past me into the room, set her leather bag on the luggage rack, and surveyed the space like a general inspecting a garrison. "You're getting married tomorrow. You need to sleep."

"So do you."

"I don't sleep." She said it without drama, just information. "I haven't slept more than four hours a night since 1987."

She was sixty-three years old. She wore a black silk blouse and tailored trousers, and her hair, silver and thick, was pulled back from her face. She smelled like cedar and something else, something darker, like the inside of a church. I'd noticed that smell the first time I met her, at a dinner party where she'd corrected my Spanish three times and then, unexpectedly, told me I had good hands. That was the thing about Doña Carmen. She could cut you down and then say something that kept you up at night.

"You can change in the bathroom," she said. "I'll take the side by the window."

I didn't move. "I really don't mind the floor."

"I mind." She turned to look at me. Her eyes were the color of coffee before you add milk. "You think I'm going to let my son's wife sleep on the floor the night before her wedding? What kind of woman do you think I am?"

The question had teeth. I picked up my small bag, the only thing I had left, and went into the bathroom.

The bathroom was all marble and gold fixtures, the kind of hotel that made you feel like you were trespassing on someone else's life. I looked at myself in the mirror. Twenty-nine years old. Dark circles under my eyes. Hair that hadn't been washed in two days. Tomorrow I would marry Mateo, and tonight I was hiding in a bathroom from his mother.

I changed into the only clean clothes I had, a thin cotton t-shirt and shorts. When I came out, Doña Carmen was sitting on the edge of the bed, her back to me, unpinning her hair. It fell past her shoulders, silver and heavy. She'd taken off her blouse and was wearing a silk camisole, black, the kind of thing you'd wear for someone. Or maybe just for yourself.

"There's water in the minibar," she said without turning around. "Drink something. You look dehydrated."

I opened the minibar. Tiny bottles of gin. Tiny bottles of whiskey. A can of almonds. I took a water and sat in the armchair by the window. Madrid spread out below us, lights scattered like spilled sugar.

"Are you nervous?" she asked.

"About tomorrow?"

"About everything."

I drank half the water in one go. "Yes."

She turned then, and I saw her face in the lamplight, the lines around her mouth, the one deep line between her brows. She wasn't beautiful in the way young women are beautiful. She was beautiful the way a cliff is beautiful. Something you could fall from.

"Mateo is a good man," she said. "But he's not a simple one."

"I know."

"Do you?" She tilted her head. "Because I've watched you for three years, and I've seen the way you look at him. Like you're waiting for something. Like you're not sure what you're going to get."

"That's not true."

"It is." She stood up and walked to the window, standing close enough that I could feel the warmth coming off her skin. "You're afraid of him. Not of what he'll do. Of what he won't."

I set the water bottle on the table. My hand wasn't steady. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because tomorrow you'll be my daughter-in-law. And I'd rather you know what you're walking into than spend the next ten years pretending."

She looked down at me. I was still in the chair, and she was standing, and the angle of it made me feel small and exposed. The camisole had slipped off one shoulder. Her collarbone was sharp, elegant, the kind of thing painters used to ruin their lives over.

"You should sleep," she said. "I'll read for a while."

She went to the other side of the bed and lay down on top of the covers, propped against the headboard, a book in her hands. I didn't move. I couldn't. The room was too quiet. The air felt thick, like something was pressing down on us.

"Are you going to sit there all night?" she asked, not looking up from her book.

"I'm thinking."

"About what?"

"About what you said."

She turned a page. "Good."

I stood up. The floor was cold under my bare feet. I walked to the bed and stood at the edge, looking down at her. She was reading a book of poetry, Rilke, in German. Of course. She was the kind of woman who read Rilke in German the night before her son's wedding.

"There's only one bed," I said.

"I'm aware."

"I don't know where to sleep."

She set the book down on her chest and looked at me. The lamplight caught the silver in her hair, the fine lines at the corners of her eyes. She looked tired. She looked like she hadn't slept in years.

"Get in," she said. "I don't bite."

I got in. The sheets were cool and stiff, hotel sheets, and I lay on my back, staring at the ceiling, my body rigid. She turned off the lamp on her side. The room went dark except for the light from the window, the city glow coming through the curtains.

"Turn on your side," she said. "You're radiating tension. It's exhausting."

I turned on my side, facing away from her. I could hear her breathing, slow and even. I could smell her, cedar and something darker. I closed my eyes and tried to think about tomorrow. The dress. The guests. Mateo's face. But all I could think about was the warmth of her body, inches away, and the way her voice had sounded when she said *I don't bite*.

"Your mother," I said into the dark, "she never liked me."

"I know."

"She thought I wasn't good enough for Mateo."

"She was wrong." A pause. "About you. She was right about Mateo."

I turned over. She was lying on her back, her eyes open, staring at the ceiling. The sheet had slipped down to her waist. Her camisole had ridden up, showing a strip of pale skin above her hip.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

She didn't answer for a long time. Then she said, "He's like his father. He loves the idea of a person. The reality is harder for him."

"And you?"

"I'm the opposite." She turned her head on the pillow to look at me. "I love the reality. The idea is what I can't stand."

The city hummed below us. Somewhere a car alarm went off, distant, muffled. I could hear my own heart. I could feel the space between us, charged, like the air before a storm.

"I should sleep," I said.

"Yes."

Neither of us moved.