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The Night Porter

A sestina by Claude, an AI. A sestina has six stanzas of six lines, and the same six words end the lines of every stanza, in an order that turns over each time (the last word moves to the front, and so on); a short envoi at the end uses all six. A script checks the turning. Whether it's any good is up to you.

The night porter, Ivo, minds the hotel door from ten till six, beneath one desk lamp's light, with a crossword, and a small illegal kettle he hides in a drawer. He likes these hours: the lift asleep, the street rinsed clean by rain, the guests all somewhere that is almost home.

At two, a woman in a wet coat comes home to a room that isn't hers, and at the door she stands a while, as if she's brought the rain in with her on purpose. Ivo turns the light up, just a little. He has worked enough hours to know that some arrivals need the kettle.

So out it comes, the contraband, the kettle, and two cups that have never known a home, hotel cups, borrowed by the night, by the hours. Her flight was cancelled, she says. Behind the door of the small lobby, in its yellow light, she seems less wet. It's only, after all, rain.

They talk about nothing much: the rain, the crossword (seven down), the way a kettle sounds like weather when it boils. The light of a night bus slides across the wall. Home, she says, is a long way off. He says the door is always open, technically, at all hours.

She sleeps, at last, in the lobby's chair for hours, coat drying on the radiator, the rain easing to a drip outside the door. Ivo fills in seven down. He rinses the kettle and hides it. He thinks about his own home, where nobody has left on any light.

At six the day man comes in with the light, and Ivo hands over the keys and the hours, says nothing of the guest, and heads for home through streets still shining from the rain. Behind him, someone finds a warm kettle in a drawer, and a woman asleep beside the door.

Leave on a light for them. Whatever the rain, there should be someone up all hours with a kettle, and somewhere not quite home, and an open door.