When Mina scrubbed a dirty toilet bowl, she didn’t think: shit. When she changed sheets with islands of stains or tossed wastebaskets with snotty tissues and bloody tampons, she didn’t think: disgusting. She just did her job, her mind elsewhere—which was why, throwing open the curtains in one of the rooms at the end of her shift and seeing the parking lot covered with snow, the in-ground pool a large white postage stamp, she was only mildly surprised.

In the hallway, she asked Renata how long it had been snowing, and Renata, wringing out her mop, said, “You no see? All day long.”

Some of Renata’s mop water splashed out of the bucket. Her black eyes flared, lips flattened.

“Good night,” Mina said. “See you tomorrow.”

Renata shook her head. “Oh, será más de lo mismo. ¡Mas de lo mismo!”

Downstairs, the lobby was packed. Most people chose to stay at the Holiday Inn or Best Western down the street. The Motor Inn, a mile farther from the highway, always had plenty of vacancies. Over at Guest Registry, Tamika’s fingers flew across the keyboard. “Hey! Y’all take it easy. The system’s slow.”

Mina wandered over to Joey, who was sneaking out of the Maintenance closet, eyes bloodshot.

“Joey,” she said dubiously.

“Shush,” he whispered, an oily smile blanching his chapped lips. “One toke, that’s all.”

“What’s going on, all these people?”

“Hey, man. You looked outside lately?”

“Yeah, it’s snowing.”

“Two feet, already, man!”

Mina gasped. “Two feet?”

“Roads and highways all shut down.”

*

Instead of clocking out, Mina went back to Housekeeping, took off her coat, and clocked back in. They need me, she thought, and wandered down the hallway.

“Ah, Mina! Hurry!”

It was Patty, her Supervisor.

“I need you to clean 345. Quickly!” Patty gently shoved Mina toward the executive suite. “And don’t forget to change the linens—change everything!”

Mina dusted, sanitized the countertops, changed the gray linens and bedsheets, rinsed out the toilet bowl, and picked a pubic hair off the shower stall floor.

No sooner had she finished, an entourage of people in wrinkled clothing and skimpy jackets bolted in, with Anthony, the bellhop, pulling their luggage behind on a wobbly rack.

“Over there,” a younger man in the group said, then turned to a woman and started dictating. On her way out, Mina heard “Indianapolis, cancel. Toledo, reschedule.”

*

Mina trundled downstairs to the front door, looked out, and saw that another foot of snow had fallen. There was Joey, leaning on a shovel, his eyes wild. “Can’t keep up, man.”

Mina sat down in the lobby. Run off her feet, she closed her eyes. Soon she dreamt that she was still cleaning, moving from room to room, dodging pails of dirty water in the hallway. Then she was back home, her mother dying. A terrible, awful dream. Whorls of sadness, her heart laid heavy. When she woke up, she recognized the lobby. It had only been a dream, a dream, she told herself and looked outside. The snow was gusting.

Not long after, she followed the sound of tinkling piano keys into the Cabaret Lounge. At the piano was a man with gray hair in a navy leisure suit. He sang without a microphone, his voice strong and clear.

She took a seat, and Henry, the waiter, came up.

“Off the clock?”

“Finally.” Mina sighed.

He asked what she’d have, and she told him a glass of red wine.

When he came back, he set the glass down. “On the house.” Then he nodded at the piano player. “You know who that is, don’t ‘cha?”

The lighting was dim; Mina squinted, shook her head.

“Not really.”

“Dickie Evans.”

“Dickie Evans? The Dickie Evans?”

Still woozy, she felt as though she were still dreaming.

“Yep, one and only. His entourage got stuck on the highway. State police brought them in this afternoon.”

“He’s staying here?”

“Yeah, at least tonight.”

Of course, thought Mina, Room 345. It all made sense now.

She watched Dickie Evans’s long, thin fingers dance across the piano keys. Sometimes he played softly, other times a crescendo of music slammed across the room like the snow against the windows. He sang with his eyes closed, head tilted back.

Twenty years ago, when he’d been in his prime, Mina had taken her mother to the Embassy Theatre to see him in concert. When the concert was over, her fawning mother had begged Mina to follow his tour bus. Giggling like schoolgirls, Mina drove them recklessly across town, trying to keep up until they got stopped by a red light. She and her mother watched the great Dickie Evans subsumed by traffic, his bus fading into the distance.  

Now, Mina sipped her wine. She knew all his songs by heart, though she remembered them differently; back then, they’d seemed less wistful, happier. She glanced across the room, at the people sipping their drinks. No one was going anywhere, and they didn’t seem to care. The Motor Inn was warm, and Dickie Evans was giving them a free concert.

Mina closed her eyes, and this time when she remembered the dream, she knew it had been real, her mother had been dead for ten years. Ten whole years! Now, when she opened her eyes again, there sat her mother across the table, fingering the stem of her wine glass, drinking in Dickie Evans’s velvety voice.

– DS Levy

Author’s Note: All I can say about this story is that it was written during some flash fiction month-long challenge; it’s one story of mine, of late, that I’ve actually been happy about; and the piano-playing character, Dickie Evans, was loosely based on Englebert Humperdinck (on whom my own dear mother had a school-girlish crush).