A Shrine to an Unknown God

WANDERING EYES

"HAVE YOU EVER used a washing machine before?"

Marisol asks me this as the four of us head down the hallway. I do not think she means a literal machine that launders your clothes for you. I understand it as her asking if I've ever washed my clothes before.

"Of course," I say.

When Ezra opens the door to the laundry room, I am expecting a pool of clean water, some smooth stones. Maybe some perfumes and oils. Women in tunics leaning over to scrub their clothes clean, spreading the town gossip. Their thighs exposed. My wandering eyes.

Instead, it is a small whitewashed room with tiled floors and four gray machines, two sets of two stacked one on top of the other. A man and a little girl stand in front of one of them. Marisol opens the other bottom machine.

My cheeks are still warm from my moment with the elevator. I calmly hand Marisol our bloody and bleach stained clothes. The man beside us looks over and his eyes widen. He tries to shield his little girl from us, covering her eyes.

Marisol grins wickedly at them. "Periods."

She slams the machine shut. Ezra grabs a small packet from a table against the wall and struggles to open it. Marisol rolls her eyes and takes it from him, only to struggle with opening it herself. Then she passes it to me.

"I don't need help, but... could you open this?"

I try. It doesn't open. Grunting, I rip my dagger from its sheath and use it to cut the top off of the packet. Inside a liquid sloshes around, electric blue and smelling like an early morning, somehow.

"Antigone!" Marisol hisses. "You can't just whip a knife out in public like that." She grins at the little girl and the man, who are staring at us again. "You know how us Americans are."

"I'm not American," I remind her.

"Shut up! Yes, you are!" she tells me. Then, to the two: "Whenever we travel, she likes to pretend to be a local."

She takes the packet from me and pours it into a small compartment hooked to the machine. Ezra presses some buttons. Then the machine starts to purr.

Marisol shows the man the half-empty packet. "Want some?"

***

MARISOL AND I go to our hotel room. Ezra and Dahlia head off to theirs. I'm expecting very little. Even kings and aristocrats on Apollonisi do not decorate or furnish their homes lavishly. A simple chair and table, a bed, and a handful of tapestries will do. To have a home decorated more beautifully than a temple is a direct insult to the gods.

Our hotel room is so beautiful it's blasphemous.

Plush rugs cover the floor, and the same shade of white as downstairs clings to the walls. A large bed rests in the center, draped in a fluffy white blanket and cobalt blue pillows. Over it hangs a painting, a smear of nonsensical colors. Other smaller paintings of the same nature dot the room. There is a wooden desk with a chair on wheels, a plush sea-green couch with a matching footrest, two asymmetrical nightstands, and a long granite counter holding several strange machines. On the far side of the wall is a large glass window with white cotton curtains falling in folds.

Immediately after I walk in, there are two doors on either side of me. The first one is a sliding door that I push open to reveal—not much. A small room, with a metal bar hanging near the ceiling, and extra linens on the floor.

"Marisol," I say. "What's this?"

"A closet. It's where we store, um, our clothes and sometimes other things, too." A grin. "It's where I belong."