The Glass Hotel: A novel

The air outside rumbles as planes lift into the sky, while inside garbled announcements blare over the loudspeaker. Somewhere behind me, an older woman speaks in sharp, staccato Italian. But I don’t look away from the curb, my eyes trained on the crowded sidewalk outside the terminal, searching for her, anchoring my belief—and my entire future—on t

She existed. She had not existed, and then she had, summoned out of whatever matter her consciousness had been made, and had stuck her small bare foot in his door. It was disastrous. There was a pain in his heart, as if it had acquired a new chamber to contain her, and so all his life he’d be carting her about.

Clingstone’s gaze turned inward, and more gently she said, “It never occurs to people that maybe I’d like to be the reckless one. The disrupter! As the years have passed, I have discovered in myself this . . . energy. Is it anger? A touch of spite? I’m not sure.” She looked back toward the restaurant. The beans on their strings were rippling on a b