Stay by Nicola Griffith

was too hot and too bright, the air swollen with rain evaporating from wet passengers, bulky with coats and hats and umbrellas. I couldn’t breathe. I shut my eyes. Grass, trees, pigs rooting by the remains of a fallen tulip tree. Fish finning idly in the dark, deep water near the bank. The bus jerked again, and I heard “Which airline” delivered in exactly the same tone, as though the driver were a machine, except the designers of such a thing would have made it pretty and white and young, with an insanely cheerful smile and large breasts.
    The bus stopped again. “United,” the voice announced, and I stood up with a couple who studiously ignored each other, even though their matching rings said they were married. The driver didn’t seem to care that I was getting out at the wrong stop.
    The terminal was a madhouse of flashing blue-and-white screens, security personnel in red-piped uniforms waving people through lines, green exit signs, arrows pointing this way and that at eye height and overhead, labels on bathroom doors, logos on storefronts, and flashing Bureau de Change icons, and it roared with voices and trundling luggage wheels, childish screams and the beeps of video games and cellular phones. I walked into the nearest rest room, into a stall, and shut the door. Grass, trees, pigs rooting by the remains of a fallen tulip tree. Grass, trees, pigs. Breathe. The place stank of disinfectant and dirty water. My heart rate slowed.
    I changed from my wet traveling clothes into an Eileen Fisher tunic and trousers, swapped my boots for shoes, added earrings, and left the stall. The sinks were slimed with violently green liquid soap, scummy with old lather, and dripping with dirty water. I reached for the paper towel dispenser and stopped. The mirror showed a face with wild eyes and skinned-back lips, the face of a fox gone mad. I closed my eyes and rubbed my cheeks and forehead with the heels of my hands, stretched the muscles wide then pulled them tight, pulled and relaxed, until they let go. I practiced until my expression was bland, then went to find a cab.
    I said, “Midtown, the Hilton. Fifty-third and Sixth.”
    The cab was hot and reeked of air freshener. My window wouldn’t work. Halfway through the Holland Tunnel my knuckles began to ache; I wanted to punch the glass from the doors and escape.
    The city sucked the cab north with terrifying ease, as though we were falling downhill, as if the whole island had tilted north. I closed my eyes against the momentary vertigo. When I opened them again, I kept my gaze focused forwards. Even at ten-thirty, traffic blared, lights flashed, and pedestrians gesticulated as they walked swiftly. Radio City Music Hall was already advertising the annual Christmas Rockettes show; there must have been some special event at MoMA because women in elegant dresses and men in casually expensive clothes streamed onto the wet sidewalk, whose slick black surface sizzled with reflected electric blue and neon pink. A sea of people, all distinct, all with dreams and fears, bank accounts and health problems, family and enemies. Too many, far too many.
    The cab pulled into the semicircular driveway in front of the hotel. Big and busy and anonymous. A uniformed doorman opened my door and took my bag, another waved the cab forward to join the line waiting to take some of the perfume- and cologne-drenched passengers queuing behind a red velvet rope. I followed my bag through the lobby to the registration desk. The woman spoke, and my answers must have made sense because I handed her my credit card and she handed me a pen, and then a key card, but it was like watching a silent film. Then I was following the bellman and his gilded bag trolley to the elevators.
    The elevators stood near the bar, which was full of burly-voiced conventioneers, several of whom decided at that moment to return to their rooms. When a door tinged and opened, they bulled forward, and although the bellman gestured that he