Room 317

I'm not the kind of woman who ends up hiding behind hotel curtains, and I'll tell you that straightaway. I'm Irma Brinkley, I'm 28 years old, and I run an apple orchard that my dad left me, which means my big nights out usually involve a thermos of coffee and watching the frost forecast like it's a soap opera. So the fact that I spent last Thursday night pressed against a stranger's window with my heart banging like a corn chopper is still something I'm coming to terms with.

It started, like most disasters, with a lanyard.

I was at the Midwest Agribusiness Symposium at the Marigold Business Hotel in Springfield, first day, mostly because the extension office said there'd be a talk on integrated pest management and free sandwich wraps. The talks were as dull as you'd expect. Some guy with a laser pointer explaining soil aeration to a room of men in fleece vests, and me sitting in the back with my boots sticking out into the aisle, trying to stay awake.

That's where I met Rhys, actually, sort of. He was a sales rep for a farm supply outfit, sitting two rows up, and he kept turning around like he wanted to say something to me and then chickening out. Tall fella, mid thirties maybe, hair that looked like he'd fought it that morning and lost. He had that look of a man who apologizes to furniture. I noticed him, is all I'm saying. I notice men like that because I never know what to do about them.

Anyway, by evening I'd had two glasses of the hotel's terrible chardonnay at the mixer, and I went up to my room to call it a night. Room 316, that's what was on my key card sleeve, and I was tired enough that I read it as 317. I walked up to the third floor, found the door, swiped the key, and it clicked right open, and I remember thinking that was odd because I always have to swipe mine three times.

I stepped in, pulled the door shut behind me, and heard the little lock catch, and that's when I looked up and saw a man standing by the window in his socks.

He froze. I froze. The ice bucket in my hand, because I'd grabbed one out of habit even though I had no cups, sat there sweating between us.

"Did you just lock the door?" I asked, and caught myself in the dresser mirror behind him, a wide-eyed woman in a flannel shirt holding an ice bucket like a weapon.

"I think you did," he said, and his voice cracked on the word did. "I didn't. I want to be very clear that I didn't."

"Well, hell." I set the bucket down on the dresser real slow. "I'm in 316. Is this 316?"

"This is 317. I'm in 317. Or I was. I mean, I am. I'm Rhys." He stuck his hand out, then seemed to realize how stupid that was and turned it into a weird wave. "Rhys Shilling. I'm sorry, there was a mix-up with the keys at the desk, they gave me a stack of them in envelopes and I just took the one with my name."

"And I just took mine," I said. "So the desk mixed up our keys is what you're telling me."

"Looks like it." He was bright red by now, ears and all, and I'll admit that part was kind of charming. "I'll open the door for you, the lock's just a privacy thing, one flick and..."

And that's when the knocking started. Three hard raps, and then a voice like a man used to being the loudest thing in any room.

"Rhys! Come on, buddy, open up. I saw your light. Darrell Renard, regional, we met at the bar. Don't be antisocial!"

Rhys's whole face did something complicated. "Oh no," he said, quiet, like a prayer. "Oh no, no, no!"

"You know him?" I whispered.

"He's my boss's boss. Sort of. He's been buying me drinks all weekend and I can't tell if it's business or..." He didn't finish, and I didn't need him to, because Darrell started knocking again, harder, and Rhys panicked. I mean properly panicked, because instead of opening the door he grabbed my arm and hauled me across the room and shoved me behind the curtain.

"Are you serious right now?" I hissed through the fabric.

"Please, please just, two minutes, I'm begging you," he whispered back, and then the door opened, because thank God I hadn't thrown the deadbolt, and in came the voice.

"There he is! Rhys Shilling, hiding from me. I brought the good stuff, buddy, none of that well garbage."

I found a gap in the curtain about an inch wide, right at the seam, and I could see the whole room. Darrell Renard was a big man, 45 maybe, silver on the sides and a golf watch, carrying a bottle of whiskey like it was a trophy he'd won himself. He set it on the dresser and started looking around the room like he owned it, and I watched Rhys stand there in his socks with his hands in his pockets looking like a kid called to the principal's office.

"Nice room," Darrell said, dropping onto the bed like it was his. "Better than mine. So hey, listen. I've been thinking about our conversation at the bar."

"We talked about soybean aphids," Rhys said.

"We talked around soybean aphids, sure, sure. But here's the thing, kid." Darrell leaned back on his elbows on the bed, and even from behind the curtain I could see the man had never once doubted he'd get what he wanted. "These deals, they're about relationships. And the best way to seal a deal properly, in my experience, is face to face. No lawyers, no email chains. Just two people who understand each other."

"That's, I appreciate that, but I really should get to bed, I've got the eight a.m. session," Rhys said, and Darrell laughed like Rhys had said something funny on purpose.

"The eight a.m. session. God. That's what I like about you, you're not like these other suits. You're real." He patted the bed beside him. "Come sit down. Relax. Look, I'll be straight with you, because I'm always straight with people. I think you and me could do great things together, and I don't just mean business, if you catch my drift."

There was a silence you could've parked a combine in.

"Oh," Rhys said. "Oh. Well. That's. Wow!"

"You don't have to answer right now," Darrell said generously. "Have a drink first."

And that's when it happened. Darrell was unbuttoning his cuff like it was a moment of great intimacy, and Rhys, poor man, made the mistake of looking anywhere but at him, and his eyes went across the room to the dresser mirror. The mirror that shows the whole room, including the curtain, including the inch of gap, including a very clear reflection of one Irma Brinkley of Brinkley Orchard, pressed to the glass with one eye wide open.

His mouth fell open. His eyes went so big I could see it from behind the curtain, and Darrell, still talking about trust and partnership, had no idea anything in the world had changed.

I gave a tiny, guilty little wave with two fingers.

Rhys made a noise I could only describe as a kettle giving up, and Darrell caught the whole thing wrong. Of course he did. A man like that has never once read a room correctly in his life.

"You know what, forget it," Darrell said, standing up off the bed all in one motion, which for a man his size was impressive in a sad kind of way. He snatched his whiskey bottle back off the dresser and pointed at Rhys with the neck of it. "I come up here, I open my heart, I offer you a genuine opportunity, and you look at me like I've got two heads. That's a slap in the face, buddy. That's a slap in the face and I don't forget slaps."

"No, sir, it's not, I wasn't looking at, I," Rhys said, and honestly he was doing better than I would have, because I was biting the inside of my cheek so hard I nearly bled trying not to laugh.

"Save it." Darrell was at the door now, fumbling with the handle like it had personally wronged him. "I've had sales reps like you before. The quiet ones. The careful ones. You know what happens to the quiet ones? Nothing. Nothing ever happens to them, because nothing is ever going to happen for them. Enjoy your eight a.m. session." And he slammed the door so hard the curtain swayed and I had to grab the rod to keep from falling out into the middle of the room like the world's worst birthday surprise.

We both just stood there listening to his footsteps go down the hall, heavy and offended, and then there was the ding of the elevator and the rattle of the ice machine and he was gone.

Rhys turned around slowly, and I watched him look at the curtain, and I watched his shoulders drop about six inches, and then he said, calm as anything, "You can come out now. I won't tell."

So I came out, stepping over the phone cord and trying to fix my hair