By Lilly Rose Barshy
The line is longer than it was last time, you notice, as you elegantly avoid tripping over the corner leading into the long corridor that holds the indentation to a smaller one, where two toilets stalls sit past one another. A few people lean on either side of the narrow corridor like a zipper, waiting their turn.
In front of the corner that leads to the toilets, a man in an orange vest stands next to a chair. You don’t know his name, but you know he’d be a mortar if he had to choose a kitchen item to represent himself. You are a toaster, and your friend, the one you‘ve dragged along with you tonight like she’s an extension of you, is an onion cutter.
You know him now, from constantly standing in the bathroom line. It’s what beer will do to you.
You greet the guy in the orange safety vest, and he nods in acknowledgement because he remembers you too.
“The toaster and the onion cutter,” he says, grinning.
You salute him, and your friend, whose real name is Anne, laughs. There is an overhead light that reflects off the sequins of his vest, right into your eyes. You grimace and hold onto the wall as a wave of dizziness washes over you. Slowly, you step forward as the guy in front of you does, because the girl in front of him is taking her turn and disappearing into one of the toilet stalls.
The mortar waves her toward the now-vacant stall. He hands her one of the rolls of toilet paper he holds.
“Can you take that in with you?” he asks her.
She takes it, and he places the others back down beside him.
“It’s nice that they employed someone for toilet duty,” Anne smiles at him.
You grin down at your bag, your mind doing a kind of X-ray thinking, picturing the pieces of toilet paper you’ve been carrying around. Hours before, when you first went in, Anne had told you to stock up in case the toilet paper ran low.
Not knowing, back then, that you’d never need it.
“I’m not on toilet duty,” he says. “Why are you here, then?” you ask him.
“I was paid to keep an eye on that door.” He gestures toward the end of the small hallway.
You tilt your head, trying to get a better look at the door he means. And yes, there, at the end of the corridor, a red door comes into view. It has DO NOT ENTER written all over it in bold letters, and the lever stretches across almost the entire width, making it look deliberately difficult to open. You turn back to him. “Why?” Anne asks.
He shrugs his shoulders.
“What’s behind that door?” you ask, pointing toward it as if he might confuse it with any other. He answers with another shrug.
“You don’t know?” “I don’t know.”
You look at Anne, who looks back at you, then both of you turn to him again.
“That’s odd, isn’t it? They should’ve at least told you what’s behind the door.”
“I don’t think there is anything behind that door,” he says, utterly unbothered by the mystery.
“That makes very little sense,” you say. “I think it’s what happens here when the door is open.”
“That makes even less sense,” Anne says.
You step forward again as the guy in front of you heads into one of the two bathrooms. “I’m not satisfied with that,” you say, shaking your head. “I ought to know now.”
“Well, I can’t let you find out,” he says. You fold your arms, partly for balance, partly because something prickles beneath your skin. A need. A curiosity that feels sharper than it should.
It isn’t even about the bathroom line anymore. It’s the door. The closed thing. The forbidden thing.
You look at it again, that heavy red slab of wood, the warning letters glowing faintly under the flickering hallway light. You feel Anne watching you, probably already sensing that particular kind of stubbornness that comes over you whenever you’re told no.
“I really want to know now,” you say, more to yourself than to him. “Just because I can’t.”
The man in the orange vest lifts an eyebrow. “That’s exactly why you shouldn’t.”
You laugh, but only a little, because the truth of it lands somewhere low in your stomach. The door feels like a dare. Like something pressing against the inside of your ribs. You can almost hear it humming like a quiet, ugly thought you’ve had and tried to ignore.
“It’s stupid,” you say. “It’s just a door.”
“Sure,” he says. “Except it’s not the door that’s the problem.”
Anne nudges you with her elbow. “You’re getting that face again.”
“What face?”
“The one you get when you want the thing you’re not supposed to want.”
You want to deny it. You don’t.
Because she’s right. Because the wanting isn’t about what’s on the other side. It’s about the fact that someone decided you shouldn’t see it. And suddenly, that forbidden space feels like it’s mirroring something inside you, the part you keep shut, the part with big metal letters nailed across it, the part you pretend isn’t there.
You glance at the man in the orange vest again. He’s watching you with a strange, knowing look. Not threatening, more like he recognizes this impulse.
Maybe he has it too. Maybe everyone does.
“It’s the not-knowing,” you continue. “Or knowing I’m not supposed to know.”
He nods once.
“And that,” he says, “is exactly why the door stays closed.”
It seems to call to you. That need, a whisper, a sigh. But eventually it grows louder. You can feel it in your bones, on your skin.
As if it were tugging at the very fabric of your being, holding on to you like a thread that ties you invisibly, yet unmistakably.
The hardwood floor creaks beneath your shifting weight. You lean against the wall behind you, as if the wall had hands, trying to hold you back from what you already know is going to happen. But the door seems to know you’re trying to creep away. And just like that, it pulls you closer. Humming louder. Singing louder.
It seems to react to your breathing, the rise and fall of your chest. Pulling you tighter because it knows you’re weak. You are drunk and curious, two things that don’t mix well and always end in regret.
You feel like whatever is behind that door could grant you something. Something you lack. Something like knowing. And knowing, you think, is more important than wondering. Then you feel your feet move. They push off the ground and carry you toward it. You run.
He grabs your waist just as your hand reaches for the lever.
You laugh. “Just joking! I wouldn’t!” you say.
His hands hold you firmly, more like a guideline than a rule. You turn your head back at Anne, who watches you, curious herself.
“I promise I won’t open it. I just wanted to see how good you are at your job,” you say. “I’d like to keep my job,” he replies, half-smiling, half-aware of the risk you pose.
He lets go of you, and slowly you walk back to the well-lit corridor.
Just as his back turns, you spin around and reach out.
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