Anne-Marie Kinney - Radio Iris

He’s hit with a wave of fatigue, and lies down on the bed. He grabs the end of the bedspread and drapes it over himself, rolling up like a caterpillar. In the darkness, he breathes in its smell. He saw an exposé on TV late one night, where they passed blacklights over the bedding at several top hotel chains, revealing every variety of bodily fluid in harsh neon splatters. They found dust mites in the pillowcases, bed bugs teeming under the mattresses. The host wore rubber gloves.

He sits up quickly and checks his watch, then pulls the event schedule out of his folder. He has fifteen minutes before the “Sales Strategy Symposium.” He’ll be expected to talk at this one, so he needs time to get into the right mode. He goes over to the mirror above the dresser and looks at himself. He smiles, then tones it down to a half-smile.

“Hi,” he mouths. “Good, good,” “Good to see you,” “Is that right?”

He raises his eyebrows and tilts his head. “Huh,” he mouths, “that’s something.” “Me?” “Oh, good, good.”

He clears his throat then and leans back a little, folding his arms. Out loud, he says, “Well I’ve always believed that the key to success is to sell the buyer’s ideas back to him.”

He shifts his stance. “That’s very true,” he says to the mirror, “but how do we sustain the buyer’s enthusiasm once we’ve built it to the desired level?”

He closes his eyes and rolls his neck back and forth. He looks back to his reflection. He stands up straight, puffing out his chest a little, then smiles again, mentally complimenting himself on the whiteness of his teeth. He locks his focus onto the reflection of his pupils with some vague idea of fishing himself out. When his own gaze starts to feel too hard, he closes his eyes and visualizes his body filling up with bubbles, light as air. With each breath, he visualizes the bubbles rising up toward the top of his head. He smoothes his hair, pops a breath mint, and makes for the door.

Neil has stayed in hundreds of hotels, and the bedding always feels fresh and blank, and smells like the package it came in. There’s not a thing wrong with it. Why, he wonders, is everyone always on the lookout for something to be wrong?

Summer has barely begun, and already, the air is growing thick. Iris lies by the rooftop pool of Mallory’s apartment complex. This is a ritual they have carried over from their college days, only nobody had a pool then, so they would sneak into hotels posing as guests. But there was no sneaking or posing necessary. No one ever questioned them. No one ever said a word, and why should they— to a couple of girls at the pool? Now they lie on their backs, virtually synchronized in their cigarette drags and iced coffee sips. Up here, the sun feels closer, the air more molten. They are the only ones here, ten stories above the afternoon bustle.

“Oh hey,” Mallory says, “did you ever go out with that guy? The one from my party?” She sits up and twists her wet hair into an intricate knot, then lets it fall forward over one shoulder.

“Who?” Iris asks, half listening. Her eyes are closed, and she concentrates on the orange wash behind her eyelids.

“You know…” Mallory says, easing back down into her chair.

“Oh. Yeah.”

“You sound enthusiastic. What was the matter with him? Didn’t like the sound of his footsteps? Thought his teeth were too straight?” Mallory cackles and takes a drag.

“I don’t know. I got sort of drunk and I don’t remember what I said to him. I think I might have been a little mean.”

“He said you were ‘cryptic’.”

“So you already knew. You weren’t even asking a question.” Iris opens her eyes and squints into the light.

“Sorry, I just thought that was a funny thing for him to say. Did you like him at all?”

Iris shrugs and tosses her cigarette butt into her emptied cup, the ice hushing its spark. “I don’t remember.”

Mallory laughs. “That’s what I’m gonna start doing,” she says. “Any time someone asks me a question. Feign amnesia to shut people up.” She smiles and slips down further into the chair.

“I’m not feigning,” Iris laughs, “I couldn’t name one thing we talked about.”

Mallory sighs and rolls over onto her side, facing away from Iris. “That’s some talent,” she yawns. “You must work at it.” A minute later, she begins to snore softly, a low whispered growl.

Iris closes her eyes and flirts with the idea of sleep, the sun pushing its way under her skin and massaging her bones. Her every joint bursts with dozy warmth. She feels the sun’s rays as one solid mass that pushes her untanned flesh further into the deck chair, causing her body to sink and spread, liquid contained only by a black bikini. She takes off her sunglasses and gets up out of the chair, and the sun turns its attention elsewhere.

She steps into the pool, heated so there is hardly any difference between air and water. It is just a change in texture, a hazy barrier between dry and slick. When she is all the way in, she drifts toward the center where the water is deepest, and leans her head back, letting her legs float to the surface. Then she turns over and pushes her way down to the bottom. She stays down there, stroking her fingers against the soft concrete, bobbing up an inch, then pushing down again. She listens to the underwater echo of nothing— nothing out nothing in. When she can’t hold her breath any longer, she floats up and emerges with a subdued splash. She pushes her hair back, and watches as an elderly woman enters the pool area with two small boys trailing behind her. They are engaged in water gunplay, babbling threats in their tiny animal voices. The woman, in a floral, skirted swimsuit, spreads a towel out on one of the deck chairs and lies down, placing a giant straw hat over her face. Iris wonders then if the boys are with her at all, as they drop their weapons and hop into the shallow end. She climbs out the other side and drips her way over to the edge of the roof. She leans against the concrete enclosure and wrings her hair out over the edge, hoping to see the water hit the sidewalk, but it gets lost somewhere along the way, caught in the air. She parts her lips slightly and takes a deep breath, but she doesn’t feel like she’s taken anything in.

Just then, she hears a yelp, and turns to see Mallory sitting up in her chair. She goes over and finds her frantically picking up her purse, flip flops, cup, keys, as though looking for something underneath them.

“Fuck,” Mallory says. “How long was I asleep? What time is it?”

Across the pool, one of the boys lets out a scream that collapses into a hysterical laugh.

“I don’t know,” Iris says, “let’s go now.”

Iris’s alarm goes off at a quarter to six. She tries to shower quickly, but her daydreams are persistent. She is on a Ferris wheel overlooking the Grand Canyon when suddenly the wheel comes off its hinges and hurdles forward into the dusty maw. Everyone is screaming, their hands gripping the sides of their candy-colored compartments. But the screaming stops as, one by one, they all notice that they have been hovering over the canyon for some time, the air acting as a cushion on which the Ferris wheel rests. She comes to with shampoo dripping down her face. She leans her head back into the spray to rinse it all out, lets the water run down over her skin before shutting it off and spitting into the drain. She dresses simply, in a black cotton sleeveless dress, and is in the car at six-thirty, leaving the windows open to air dry her hair.

Once at the office, she starts up the day’s machinery, pressing buttons with a decisive index finger, one by one.