You stepped out of the shower and pulled the hotel robe off the door hook because the air-conditioning was set too cold. The suite was on the 29th floor and the western windows had gone orange. Hiroshi had texted that the dinner was off. So now there was just you and the robe and the city below the railing. You ran your palm across your jaw and felt the morning's stubble starting back in. You stood at the door, open, and let the wet of your hair drip onto the carpet.
Your shoulder slipped out of the robe and you reached to fix it. The shoulder under your hand was wrong. Narrower. The collarbone above it pushed forward in a way yours had never done. You looked down at it. The sash was tied around a waist that had narrowed inward like an indrawn breath. The fabric across your chest was pushed forward from underneath by something filling it from inside, and the weight of that something settled and stayed.
You walked to the balcony rail to get away from the mirror behind you. The breeze caught your hair and it kept moving after the breeze stopped. Long now. Cyan. You hadn't done that to it. Your bare feet on the tile were smaller and they made no sound. The painted concrete still held the day's heat. You smelled the chlorine from the rooftop pool one floor up. The robe was thin enough that the breeze went through it.
The fabric was open to your sternum and the breasts there were heavy against the back of your hand when you laid it flat. Warmer than your hand. You took a step toward the railing. Your hip met the rail at a height it never had before. You laughed once. You hadn't meant to. The sound came out higher than your laugh. Goosebumps rose along the new line of your thigh where the slit of the robe had fallen open.
Below you the city had started to flick on its windows one by one. You let your weight settle against the rail. The sash slid loose at the small of your back and you didn't reach for it. Your hair moved against your bare shoulder and you understood, without choosing to, that someone in one of those windows was going to see you. You wanted them to. You hoped it would be soon.
The knock came at the suite door behind you. You left the sash untied and crossed the carpet. The robe trailed across the back of your thighs as you walked. The peephole showed a young man in a hotel jacket holding a folio.
You opened the door. He looked at your face. He looked at the rest of you. He didn't say anything for a moment.
"You're not Mr. Ito," he said.
"No."
"He checked out an hour ago. I came for the key card."
You held the door wider. He came inside. The latch clicked. The folio went on the entry table.
He took the back of your neck without asking. His palm was rough. He walked you backward through the suite and the carpet was cool against your bare soles. The balcony door was still open and the breeze still moving through the room. The robe slipped from one shoulder, then the other, and pooled at your feet beside the bed.
He put you down on the mattress. He took off the jacket. He took off the rest. The lights of the city were starting to climb the wall behind him.
He pressed into you and you made a sound you didn't recognize. You bit down on the inside of your lip and the sound came again anyway. His mouth was at your throat. His hand was around the curve of your hip. You wrapped a leg around him because your body did it without asking. The mattress moved under you and the breeze from the balcony moved across your stomach in the same rhythm.
You came with your face turned toward the open door. Afterward you lay on your side and watched the curtain breathe in and out against the rail, and the city below it kept lighting up, one window at a time.