The Hotel for Unmade Decisions

How it begins

Room Nine wanted to stay another night.

Arthur checked the register.

Room Nine had never been occupied.

He checked the key board.

The brass key was gone.

This was inconvenient but not unprecedented. Guests lost keys. Staff misplaced paperwork. Buildings older than their managers developed habits that resisted explanation.

He took the spare key upstairs.

A woman opened the door before he knocked.

"You're late."

"I'm the porter."

"I know."

Behind her, the room looked lived in rather than visited. A cardigan over a chair. Two books beside the bed. A photograph on the windowsill.

Arthur in the photograph.

Younger.

Smiling in a way he found almost embarrassing.

"Where did you get that?"

She followed his gaze.

"Our kitchen."

"I've never seen that kitchen."

"No. You chose differently."

Arthur held the spare key so tightly that its teeth pressed into his palm.

At fifty-four, he had become comfortable with the idea that life narrowed. A job kept. A journey postponed. A telephone call not returned until returning it became impossible.

He had not expected the discarded parts to book accommodation.

The woman moved aside.

"Come in. The corridor makes this sound more dramatic than it is."

"Isn't it dramatic?"

"Only from your side."

He entered.

On the table stood two cups of tea.

One had exactly the amount of milk he preferred.

"What is your name?"

"Mina."

He remembered the name.

A woman he had met at a train station thirty years earlier. They had talked until his connection arrived. She had asked whether he wanted to miss it.

He had laughed.

Then he had caught the train.

Mina watched understanding reach him.

"Don't look so pleased," she said. "You were difficult in this life too."

Arthur sat down.

For the first time, the photograph seemed less like a promise.

More like evidence.

"And why are you here?"

"Because," she said, "I'm tired of being your might-have-been."