Hotel Lobby

When their eyes locked, all thoughts flew right out of Paul’s head. Not because she was beautiful. She wasn’t breathtaking--not by a long shot, if he was being perfectly honest. She was completely and utterly normal. No eyes-the-color-of-sapphires, or hair-that-danced-around-her-like-a-flame. She was pale, but not strikingly so. She didn’t have a lip ring, or a nose ring, or even have her ears pierced, as far as he could see. Totally unremarkable in every way. She also wore the drabbest grey hoodie with a faded smiley face on the chest, the drawstring pulled tight around her face as if she, too, were aware of how average she looked.

Alas, Paul Kang had a thing about eye-contact. An stupid, existential thing where he made eye-contact with every stranger he saw. He figured it was something about the acknowledgment of another perspective he couldn’t control? He’d taken a course on Jean-Paul Sartre a year ago, and since then had suffered under a curse of perpetual acknowledgement of uncontrollable perspectives. He couldn’t begin to imagine exactly what this girl was seeing when she saw him, what thoughts were running through her mind as she looked and looked and looked. 

That was the one thing about her that was different, the way she held his gaze. Most people barely spared him a glance. Often, Paul himself couldn’t bear holding eye-contact for more than a couple seconds. It felt too intimate, introducing a foreign existence to his own. Yet, here he was. 

They were only brown, her eyes. A muddy, unremarkable brown. They didn’t even have any flecks of green like they did in the movies, but they looked at the world around them with frightening comprehension. They were un-blind. 

It was off-putting.

As he stared back, he tried to take comfort in the fact that, even though he had no idea what she thought of him, she couldn’t possibly know how off-putting he found her. She’d probably never know. His first impressions, his true opinions, were locked away in a little cabinet he kept in his mind, forever sealed by his blessed and unyielding discretion, along with a billion other first impressions he’d collected over the long and arduous sixteen years he’d been alive. He pulled one out, for fun. The first time he’d made eye contact with the old man across the street.

Ugly, tired, the physical manifestation of the words ‘old geezer’. A sun-dried lemon, come to life. I can’t tell if he’s scowling or if the lines of his face just happened to harden sourly. Or maybe he only looks at me that way. I should watch his face when other people walk by. If his face is nicer to other people, it’s probably safe to assume there’s some racism at play.

Intense. 

Suddenly a thought occurred to him. The thought that maybe he was only afraid of other peoples’ opinions, because he thought those same people should be afraid of his. 

Huh. 

He’d never thought of that before--

Oh, Jesus. He’d seriously never considered any of this before. Yet, just five seconds into this staredown with some random girl in a gross hoodie, all this crap had started running through his mind and he’d scarcely been able to stop himself. Who was this girl? Some Greek goddess of inner-monologues, descended from the heavens to bring down fiery bouts of self-discovery and improvement on her unwitting victims? 

If that’s what she is, then how dare she, Paul thought to himself. Raining down hellfires of self-discovery on people who have no interest in discovering themselves? That’s my mother’s job. 

Speaking of his mother, what was taking her so long?

The girl was perched on one of the maroon swirl-printed couches of the hotel lobby, directly across Paul’s chosen armchair. Judging by her luggage and her hair and the bleary look in her eyes, her family was checking in after a long day of travel. Probably eager to grab her bags and head up to her room. Probably in for some slight disappointment in the quality of the room, because this was not exactly a five-star hotel. Paul would know, because he himself was waiting for his mother to check them out of the hotel. His own steel-gray suitcase sat at his knee like a docile plastic cat. 

He was leaving. She had just arrived. 

Two ships, passing in the night.

The line flitted through his mind in a single moment of havoc. 

He snorted before he could stop himself. 

The girl blinked at him, the corners of her unremarkable mouth sinking a little. Paul’s gut twisted. His heart skipped a beat. He was immediately horrified with his own lack of self-control. Seven seconds into a staring contest with this random girl, and he snorts at her? How rude could he get? This was literally the worst possible scenario of all the eye-contact-related scenarios he could ever have imagined. This was his social nightmare come to life.   

What should he do? Should he explain? Should he apologize? His mind was racing now, though a small little corner of his brain knew this was ridiculous, that he was overreacting. But he could feel the girl’s eyes, those brown-brown eyes, seeing him, seeing through him, scanning his brain, reading his thoughts. He imagined she was curious, and maybe a little offended. He opened his mouth. He closed his mouth.

Then, the girl spoke, shattering all rules of existential eye-contact. 

“What?” she demanded. 

“What?” asked Paul.

“What are you thinking?” 

First I was thinking that you’re not very pretty. Then, I was thinking that you’re very good at staring. Then, I was thinking--

“Nothing,” Paul lied. 

The girl’s average eyes stared him down and he could practically hear them. You are lying, said her eyes. You are a stranger, and you are a liar.

“I don’t know you,” said the girl. This was true. This also struck Paul as a strange thing to say, because strangers did not often acknowledge their strangeness with each other. 

  He managed a single word. “Yes.”

Then the girl jumped to her feet, grabbed her luggage, and headed toward the elevator where her family was waiting. 

And Paul sat alone in the hotel lobby.