The Frangipani Hotel: Fiction Read Online Free

her, and then I slosh back in and turn off the faucet. The bathroom has become a lake that rivals Hoan Kiem; I wouldn’t be surprised to look down and find the giant turtle swimming around my ankles. I’m dead, really dead. Mr. Henry is going to flay me, tan my hide, and then mount it in the lobby as a wall decoration.
    I sprint out to the cleaning closet at the end of the hall and get a mop and bucket. When I return to the room, the girl has propped herself up slightly on one elbow and pulled the curtain aside to look out the window.
    “Where is the tree?” she asks without turning to look at me.
    “What?”
    She swivels her head to look at me over her shoulder. “You know. The tree. The name. Frangipani.” She rolls the English word around on her tongue before returning to Vietnamese.
“Cây hoa sú,”
she says and sighs. “You could have reached out and plucked the flowers from this very room.”
    There are a number of things I want to ask this girl, but all I say, stupidly, is “There is no tree.” The line between her eyebrows deepens.
    “Oh?” she eventually says after a long moment, then falls silent again and turns back toward the window. When it becomes clear that she has nothing left to say to me, I begin mopping furiously.
    “There may be a surcharge,” I call out from the bathroom after a while. “For the damages.”
    “Damages?” There is a note of amusement in her voice. “Of course. Everything will be repaid.” It’s a strange way to phrase things, but it reassures me. When I have more or less finished cleaning up, I return to the main room. She hasn’t moved from her spot on the bed by the window. How do you address a beautiful, potentially unbalanced hotel guest who has flooded your bathroom?
    “Miss?”
    “Mmm?”
    “Miss, I couldn’t help noticing that, well, you don’t appear to have any luggage with you—no toiletries or bags or anything. Now, I’m not sure how long you’ve been here, or how long you’ll be staying, because I can’t remember checking you in, but—”
    “It was your uncle who let me in,” she interrupts.
    Odd that he didn’t mention it—we rarely get female Vietnamese guests traveling by themselves.
    “Mr. Henry checked you in?”
    “What a strange name. Is your name strange, too?”
    “Phi. My name is Phi.”
    “Phi. Would you do me a favor, Phi, and not mention my accident to anybody? I’m rather embarrassed by it. No one saw, and no one really needs to know, do they?”
    I stammer out some sort of agreement and she turns and beams at me. Her eyes as they look at me are so dark they appear pupil-less.
    “That is so good of you. So very good. But I’m afraid I’m feeling thirsty again. Would you do me another favor and bring me a glass of water from the bathroom?” She slowly lies back in the bed and lets her long black hair fan around her.
    “Of course. But let me get you bottled water from downstairs—you shouldn’t drink the tap water here; it’ll probably kill you.”
    “Are you sure it won’t make me live forever?”
    I can’t tell if she’s making a joke or not, so I smile uncomfortably and shuffle out of the room. I decide to hang the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the doorknob outside; I don’t want Auntie Linh or Auntie Mai coming in to clean later and seeing the aftermath of the flood. I also don’t want them talking to the girl I found in the tub. The idea of it bothers me for some reason.
    When I return to the lobby, I discover that Thang has foisted reception duty on Loi, who is in a panic, trying to give directions in his pidgin English to the elderly Swiss couplefrom the third floor. As I swoop in to sort things out, my head finally feels clear again. Whatever happened in room 205 seems like a dream.
    I pour out a glass of water from the clean jug on the desk, but I don’t bring it upstairs. I avoid looking at it for the rest of the day.
    The hours pass productively: I get my bookkeeping done, I make small talk with