Ahsan stared down at the ancient copy machine. The screen blinked green and gray. He was afraid to touch it.
“Using your telekinesis?” Ellen asked from the break room doorway. She had a stack of papers to copy. Ahsan glared at the little screen.
“Whoever used it last must have overloaded it or something. I pressed one button, and now I have the blinking screen of death.”
“Just tell Clark,” she said, waving her hand, “he’ll call Louisa.”
Ahsan’s lip curled. Louisa.
Louisa took care of odd jobs in the high-rise. She could diagnose a copy machine’s troubles by the scent of the toner levels alone.
“Clark will make me tell her what’s wrong,” he said, still staring at the blinking screen. The machine started making a hot, buzzing sound. “I have work to get done today.”
Ellen rolled her eyes. “Well, so do I, and you staring at it isn’t going to fix anything.”
Ahsan groaned and shuffled off to Clark’s office. Twenty minutes later, he led Louisa back to the break room as Ellen and a few others were sitting down for lunch.
Louisa wore blue coveralls that accentuated every sad nook and cranny of her unfortunate figure. Her faded red hair was knotted up in an approximation of a bun, and her ruddy face was bright red from the hike upstairs. She was huffing and puffing as they stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the copier.
“I never take the elevator,” she said through ragged breaths, “I got stuck in it once during a repair. I thought I was gonna die.” She squawked a laugh so loud that all the attention in the room shifted to them. “It’s fine now,” Louisa said, trying and failing to reassure him, “but I won’t risk it. I got too much to live for, you know?”
Ahsan nodded, “Mhm. So anyway, I came in here to make a few copies and I pressed—”
“Crazy you folks haven’t gone paperless yet. I mean, what on earth could you need copies for? A couple of the guys upstairs got rid of their printers. Just got rid of them. The times they are a-changin'. Well, I think they kept one, but you know what I mean.”
“Right,” Ahsan smiled. He pointed to the button he’d pressed. “I just pressed this button and then—”
“Daaamn!” Louisa gasped and jabbed her crooked finger at the watch on Ahsan’s wrist. “What’d that bad-boy cost you? That’s a nice little ticker right there.”
“Oh, uh...it was a gift actually,” Ahsan said, which was a lie. It was wildly out of his price range. He bought it with his first paycheck, and a portion was still on his credit card.
“Oooo,” Louisa said and nudged him hard in the ribcage with her sharp elbow, “pretty fancy gift. Was it from a girl?”
“No,” Ahsan said with a grimace, “so I pressed the button here and the screen started flashing. I don’t know what I did—”
“Not a girl?” she laughed, and her voice echoed off the bland, blank walls and tile floor of the break room. “Ah-ha-san!” she chortled, “don’t tell me you’re swinging for your own team.” She pantomimed throwing a baseball and hitting it with a bat. Ahsan breathed in slowly through his nose. From the corner of his eye, he saw Ellen watching them, wearing a small smirk.
“No--I. It isn't any of your business, Louisa," he snapped. “Can you just fix the copy machine?" Her cheeks turned this shade of red that made him think she might cry, but she just dropped her chin and stared intently at the copy machine.
“Yeah,” she said, pressing buttons at lightning speed, “yeah, I can do that.”
***
At five, Ellen knocked on the side of Ahsan’s cubicle. “Clark, Rosa, and I are gonna grab drinks, you in?”
"Yes, please," Ahsan said, cramming papers and cords into his laptop bag. Ellen looked over his head across the room where Louisa stood on a ladder changing one of the long fluorescent light bulbs by the elevator. She waved it around like a sword, pretending to bonk people on the head as they filtered out of the office. “Want to invite your girlfriend?” Ellen teased.
“Ha ha,” Ahsan said dryly. When they passed Louisa, she held the lightbulb like a bat. He and Ellen stepped into the elevator.
“Batter up, right Ahsan?” she said and swung it. It caught the corner of a cubicle, and the thin glass shattered into a shower of little white fragments. Louisa swore and dropped the half left in her hand. It hit the floor and turned into confetti as well.
Ellen covered her mouth, hiding her half-laugh. Ahsan looked at Louisa, then at the mess, then back at her.
“Have a nice weekend, Louisa,” he said as the elevator doors closed.
***
“And then it shattered,” Ellen said through laughter, “it just shattered everywhere.” Rosa and Clark joined her. Ahsan smiled, but couldn’t bring himself to laugh. He might have even offered to help clean it up if it were anyone but Louisa.
“Poor Louisa,” Rosa said. Her tone was genuinely apologetic. She didn’t just mean about the light bulb. “I feel bad for her, you know? It’s like...some people are so sad.”
“I think I could stand to be around her if she put in a little effort and kept her mouth shut sometimes,” Ellen said.
Clark choked on his drink. “Jeez El, tell us how you really feel.” They all laughed, but Ellen was serious.
“Come on, some people choose to be victims. They live their whole lives as the butt of the joke, but they never try to fix it.”
“She has pretty eyes,” Rosa said, “a little mascara, a little concealer...”
“Clothes that she didn’t steal off a garbage man,” Ahsan said. Clark and Ellen snickered.
Rosa frowned, putting her cheek in her hand, “I think she’s probably really lonely.” They all quieted in discomfort. “Maybe we should invite her out sometime.”
Ahsan cringed and was relieved to see Ellen with her nose turned up. “Look,” Ellen said sharply, “I use these little outings to relax.”
“Did you hear her conversation with Ahsan in the break room today?” Clark said, and they started laughing again.
Ahsan drank until his embarrassment from that afternoon ebbed. Before he knew it, the lights in the bar had a trail, and his limbs were heavy and warm.
“I think you’ve had enough, buddy,” Clark said, patting his shoulder. “I’m giving Rosa a ride home. Why don’t you come with us?”
Ahsan looked at Clark and Rosa, and then he looked at Ellen, still daintily sipping her martini. “I think I’ll hang back,” he said with what he hoped was a cool, close-lipped smile. Clark raised his sparse brows and looked between Ahsan and Ellen.
“Whatever, man,” he said, shaking his head. Rosa kissed Ellen on the cheek and squeezed Ahsan’s shoulder before following Clark out of the bar.
“She’ll have another one,” Ahsan said as soon as they were out of earshot, tapping the bar next to Ellen’s drink.
“No, no!” Ellen said through a little laugh, “I gotta go home.”
Ahsan scooched his seat a little closer, “I can get you home,” he said.
Ellen gave him a look that sent a sobering shot of shame from the top of his skull right through his breastbone. The flash of pity and disgust mingling on her beautiful face made his cheeks burn.
“You can’t even drive yourself,” Ellen said, looking away from him and taking another sip of her drink. Not exactly a denial.
“I’m fine,” he said in a register he knew was not very reassuring, “stay for one more.” He reached out to put a hand on her knee, but she turned away, twisting her body so her face was toward him, but her legs were away.
“Let me call you a car.”
“I don’t need a car, El,” Ahsan said with a little laugh, “I think you’re the one who needs a ride.”
Ellen laughed, but it wasn’t with him. She pushed back from the bar, putting her purse on her lap and digging through it. “We both need a ride,” she said, cutting him a sidelong look, “to our own homes. Come on.”
Ahsan thought if he tried swallowing his disappointment, it might eat through his stomach lining and devour him from the inside out, but three rejections were a loud enough signal. He faced forward. “Fine. Whatever. Thanks.”
Ellen’s car came first, and she didn’t have anything to say but a swift goodnight as she climbed in. He smiled tightly and waved her off.
A hideous, mustard-yellow SUV pulled up a few minutes later. Ahsan could barely remember the first couple of letters of the license plate Ellen told him to watch for. He climbed in without double-checking, figuring she would feel awful if he got kidnapped. He slumped into the back seat like a pouty child.
“Ahsan?” the driver said. He blinked the blurriness from his vision and met her eyes in the rearview mirror. There was no way.
“Louisa?”
She laughed, but it wasn’t the grating sound he was used to. It was kinda warm, almost pleasant. He sat up a little straighter to get a better look at her reflection in the mirror. She was wearing makeup. Her eyes were delicately outlined in black, shadowed in a shimmering, warm brown color that complemented her eyes, blue, he noticed for the first time.
“Little too much after-work fun?”
His head was swimming. “You’re my driver?”
She tapped the stickers on her dashboard. “Uber and Lyft. I’m a bit of a workaholic, I guess. Never hurts to pick up a little extra cash, maybe I’ll be able to afford one of those nice watches someday.”
Clark, Rosa, and Ellen were never going to believe this. Ellen. He couldn’t believe she blew him off. He felt a pit in his stomach a mile deep. Had she even noticed the name on his ride when she ordered it? He couldn’t help feeling like this was some strange prank.
“You look nice,” he said. Her hair was blown out. The lights of passing traffic revealed a shiny luster around the crown of her head like a halo. She tipped her chin to the side to check her blind spot, and he noticed the gentle slope of her jaw and a bit of lip gloss on her mouth. Was it possible her lips had always been that plump?
“Thanks,” she said, smiling at him in the rearview. It wasn't he lopsided grin he always thought she had, but a straight, pearly grin like something out of a dental pamphlet. “You look like you’ve been better.”
He groaned, “I hate leaving my car at the bar."
"Hey, better to get home safe, right?"
He slumped back again. "I could drive home. Ellen was just being a—” he sighed, “never mind.”
“You struck out?” she giggled, but for some reason, with no one there to witness it, he wasn’t even embarrassed.
“You look really beautiful tonight, Louisa,” he said again, mesmerized by her visage in the mirror. It wasn’t just the makeup, or the hair, or the fitted black shirt she was wearing. It was Louisa, but it wasn’t. “What time is it?”
“Just after midnight.”
“How late do you do this driving thing?”
She laughed. When did her laugh become so lovely? He blinked to make sure he wasn’t drunker than he thought he was. He felt more sober by the second.
“Why do you ask?” She raised her brows at him in the rearview as she pulled up to another stoplight.
He unbuckled and quickly jumped into the passenger seat, which sent her squealing with laughter. “Should we go to another bar?”
The light turned green, and she hit the gas, reaching over to cancel his ride. “One night off won’t hurt,” she said, patting him on the knee.
The next few hours passed in a blur of shots and beers. It was almost 2 a.m. when Ahsan checked his watch next. He was sitting in a dim dive, staring over the lip of his whiskey glass at a wall of wooden paneling. His vision came into sharp focus, and he found Louisa across from him, laughing at whatever he’d said. She held a martini glass loosely in her knobby, white fingers.
“We gotta get out of here,” Louisa said, throwing back the rest of her drink. Her painted eyelids were drooping, and she was wearing her usual lopsided grin. Most of her lip gloss was on the martini glass.
“Should we...” he stopped to get a deep breath in. His limbs were almost as heavy as his head. “Should we call a car?”
“Uber and Lyft, baby!” Louisa shouted, pounding on her chest. Ahsan’s eyes followed her fist and stayed there even when she dropped it. “Hey Ahsan, my eyes are—”
***
Ahsan awoke wrapped in white sheets. Strange because his sheets were the same steel blue ones he’d bought in college.
These weren’t his sheets.
Louisa was across the room in front of a tarnished mirror, tussling her hair. She was already dressed in the same clothes she’d worn the night before. Or maybe she’d never taken them off.
He sat up and looked around. The room was clean, if a little shabby. There weren’t any decorations save a painting of a sunflower in a striped vase. It was impossibly nondescript. To the right of the bed, a small corridor led to a white sink and what he’d guessed was a bathroom, judging by the sound of a fan buzzing.
“Oh good,” Louisa said, meeting his gaze in the mirror, “you’re up. Continental breakfast ends at 10.”
He was glad he hadn’t said anything about the room for the blurry moment he thought this was her house. “Where—”
“The Holiday Inn on Sand Street.”
Across town. He groaned and dropped his pounding head back on the pillow.
“Check out is 11, and I put the room on my card, so you better get moving.” She sounded oddly snippy. He’d never really heard Louisa sound anything but cheery or annoying, aside from the strange warmth he’d glimpsed last night. She turned to face him, and he lifted his head to look at her. In the cruel, watery light pouring in from the window, her rutty face was bright pink, makeup was smeared in the paper white creases under her eyes, and her black shirt was a little lumpier than he remembered.
“Don’t you look at me like that,” she said as though reading his mind. He felt a knot of beer, whiskey, and who knew what else tied up in his stomach. Woven in with it was an undeniable chord of shame. “Don’t you ever look at me like that again, Ahsan.”
He opened his mouth to apologize, but she stormed off, the heavy thud of the hotel door announcing her exit.
The night before was still a blur, and he wasn’t clear how much he was blurring for himself. He felt some relief realizing that while he was shirtless, he still wore his work pants. He found his shirt crumpled on the ground. Every piece of clothing he wasn’t wearing: suit jacket, shoes, socks, tie, was piled on the cushioned chair in the corner. He dressed and had everything, but his tie clip. More than likely, it was in a bar bathroom somewhere. He called it the price of an interesting evening and slipped out, all but running past the breakfast room.
Ahsan was a block down the street when the fresh air jump-started his brain, and he began to put together some pieces. He remembered Ellen’s rejection, Louisa’s face in the rearview of her tacky yellow SUV. He remembered standing next to the tallest guy he’d ever seen at a urinal. He remembered a smoky bar with wood paneling. He remembered getting Louisa’s phone number.
Ahsan stopped so fast his stomach lurched, and he did a quick check of his pockets. No phone. He groaned and looked up at the sky as though a hand might reach down and hand it to him. The sun in his eyes just made his head pound.
When Ahsan got back to the hotel, Louisa was out front smoking a cigarette and chatting up a woman with a toddler. When she spotted Ahsan, there was red in his gaze. Bloodshot, red-hot hatred.
“Forget something?” she said, and dug in her back pocket, producing his phone. He swallowed and ran a hand over the back of his head. The lady and her kid silently excused themselves.
“You wanna ride home?” Louisa asked, turning away from him to ash her cigarette.
“I’ll hike. I could use the fresh air,” he said, though he fully intended to call a car as soon as he made it to the end of the block. Standing in the sun had him sweating alcohol, and his head felt like a drum set being mercilessly and untalentedly pounded.
Louisa didn’t say anything to that. Ahsan muttered a vague thank you and headed back down the street. When he went to order a ride, the nearest driver appeared and, of course–
He swiftly canceled the ride and shoved his phone in his pocket. He would be hiking home after all.
***
On Monday, Louisa was in their office again. She’d cornered Ellen by the water cooler, the empty jug at her feet. Her blue coveralls had a huge, dark water stain down the front of them, and a few droplets shone on Ellen’s patent leather shoes.
When Ahsan saw the two of them, he considered getting back on the elevator and going home. No doubt, Louisa was telling Ellen all about their night together, whatever the night had been. She smiled at him, and it was the same, lopsided, goofy Louisa smile he’d always found slightly irritating. That hatred she’d worn on Saturday morning was nowhere to be seen.
“Happy Monday, Ahsan,” she said, “I was just telling Ellen I was the one who picked you up from the bar.”
“What are the odds?” Ellen said. She gave Ahsan a little look, like Louisa was a child who’d done something funny but didn’t know it. He couldn’t even bring himself to return the look.
“Oh, by the way,” Louisa said and reached into the pocket of her coveralls, “I think you left this in the back of my car.” She produced his watch. His stomach dropped to his feet. He was so worried about his phone and his stupid tie clip that he’d forgotten about the watch completely. “Such a nice little ticker,” Louisa said and winked, “I almost kept it.”
When he reached for it, she took it upon herself to slip it onto his wrist. The metal pinched a few hairs on his wrist as she slid it on and clipped it into place. For a moment, he met her eyes, and that look appeared. He wasn’t sure anyone had ever looked at him like that. He didn’t even think people in real life could muster a look of hatred like that. It was the extent of an emotion reserved for stage actors and cartoon characters alone. As soon as his watch was in place, the look vanished.
“Lucky I knew where to find you,” she chuckled, punching him on the arm playfully as she walked past him. He could have sworn his tie clip was between the pens in her breast pocket.
Ahsan swallowed as Louisa left him alone with Ellen. “El, I should apologize—”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said, her face flushed, and she kept her gaze away from his. Rosa walked by to fill up her teacup, and they shared that same condescending little look Ellen had tried extending to him moments earlier. “You had a lot to drink. Make it up to me by copying my slides for me, sound good?” she said, eager to change the subject.
If Ahsan had any pride left, he would have had to swallow it. “You got it.”
Not an hour later, Ahsan found himself before the copy machine. He pressed the copy button, the machine made a whirring sound, and the screen began flashing.