Friday, 2 October. The key worked on the second try, and the window was already letting the last of the light into the room.
The room was plain. A bed with a rumpled cover, a wooden headboard, and heavy curtains that did not quite meet in the middle. Through the gap I could see a balcony rail and a pale building across the way. I left the gap as it was. The light came through the cloth in long bars and landed on the floor, warm, and on the foot of the bed. A radiator sat under the glass. I put the key on the sill, the tag turned down, so I would see it before I went out again.
I sat on the edge of the bed and took my shoes off. The cover was already creased. I do not know if that was from the person before me or from the way the bed had been left. I did not straighten it. Straightening would have made the hour look arranged. The light moved while I sat there. It started on the floorboards, climbed a little onto the hem of the curtain, and then thinned. When I stood, the room was dimmer, and the building outside was only a shape.
I wrote nothing that evening except the time I came in. The key stayed on the sill. The window stayed as I found it. A room like that can stay unnamed. It held a bed, a curtain that would not close, and the end of the day on the floor. I slept with the gap still open. The morning was ordinary, which was enough.