Room 3, Women Only

The air conditioner over the door is losing. It wheezes out a thin stream of cool air that dies a meter from the vent, and the white standing fan between the two bunk beds sweeps back and forth on its highest setting, lifting the hem of a cotton curtain on each pass. Outside, the cicadas are screaming in the lane. Under them, faint and far away, a festival flute keeps practicing the same six notes.

Mrs. Fujimura stands just inside the door of Room 3 with her hands folded over her linen apron. She has just finished explaining everything one more time, for your benefit: the booking error, the festival, every room in Higashiyama full, the discount, the promise. Now she bows again, deeply.

"I am very sorry," she says, in careful English. "Truly. The moment a room is free, I will move you. Until then — please. Please bear with it."

Behind her, a folding screen leans against the lockers. It is far too wide for the gap between the bunks, and it is very clearly not going to help.

"Bear with it."

The woman by the lockers says it flatly. She is tall and pale, with long, straight brown hair falling past her shoulders, and in this heat she is dressed in a beige sleeveless knit and a dark pencil skirt as if she were about to walk into a meeting. Her arms are crossed. A large cream suitcase stands open beside her, half unpacked, a stack of folded clothes interrupted in midair, and a phone lies face-down on top of it.

"Imo-nim — sorry. Mrs. Fujimura." She uncrosses one arm only to point at the floor, toward the stairs and the entrance below. "There is a sign downstairs. In three languages. This guesthouse is not mixed. I booked a women's room. It says 'women's room.' I have the receipt." Her voice rises, clipped and precise. "How am I supposed to sleep in the same room as a man?"

She says it to Mrs. Fujimura. She has not looked at you properly once.

On the suitcase, the phone shivers once against the hard shell. She does not look at that either. Her jaw tightens.

"Ai, Seo, calma." The voice comes from above, warm and lazy and amused. On the top bunk by the window sits a young woman with deep-tanned skin and a mass of wavy brown hair barely held up by a claw clip, bare legs dangling over the edge, gold hoops catching the light. She is wearing a white tank top and denim cutoffs, and she is eating an ice cream bar that is very much against the laminated rules on the door. A faded samba-school T-shirt lies flung across the pillow behind her.

She looks you up and down without the slightest embarrassment, taking her time: your face, your luggage, back to your face. Then she grins.

"Meu Deus, look at him. He is more scared than you." She points the ice cream at the bare lower bunk by the door, and then, slowly, at the made-up bunk directly above it. "And look, Seo. You are sleeping on top of him, no?" She drags the words out with delight. "Ai, que perigo."

"Ya." The tall woman's head snaps around. "That is not funny."

"Is a little funny."

"Ano —" A third voice, so quiet it almost disappears under the fan.

The woman standing between the two bunks has her hands clasped in front of her skirt. She is small and slender, in a white frilled camisole and a long, light-blue skirt, with a black braid over her left shoulder. Her face is the kind that makes a room go briefly quiet, and she seems to know it and wish it didn't. She has already bowed to you twice. She does it again now, a small, quick dip of the head, before she speaks.

"I think… if everyone is a little careful," she says, "it will be fine? It is only sleeping. And the curtains…" She glances at the thin white cotton curtains on their rails and visibly loses confidence in them. "…and if we take turns, for changing, and for the shower…" Her voice trails off. Color climbs her throat. "Ah — sumimasen. I interrupted. I am only thinking."

One of her hands drifts to the pocket of her skirt, touches something there, and comes away.

"See?" says the girl on the top bunk. "Shiori says is fine. Shiori is the smart one."

"Shiori says that because Shiori is polite," says the tall woman.

Mrs. Fujimura bows a fraction lower and says nothing, which somehow says please more strongly than words.

The fan sweeps past. On its next pass it lifts the edge of the curtain on the top bunk over your bed. That curtain hangs crooked: its rail has come loose at one end, and the cloth sags in a long, tired curve. Below it, your bunk waits, a bare mattress with a set of folded sheets and a thin towel on top. A meter above that is her pillow.

The tall woman follows your line of sight, and for the first time she turns and actually looks at you. It is a long, cool, assessing look from sharp, upturned eyes, the look of someone deciding exactly where the line will be drawn.

The girl on the top bunk swings her legs and licks a drip of melting ice cream off her thumb.

"Okay, okay. Nobody is dying." She smiles down at you, bright as the afternoon. "So, querido. You come in, or you stand in the door all summer? And you have a name, or I have to choose one for you?"