This Is My Hotel (Patreon)

"I tell you, I am owner of dis hotel!" the woman almost hissed, leaning over the desk again and pressing her palm against the cold marble in irritation. "Chuck Bykle Friend. My surname is on de documents, on company, on... everyting, kurwa! You just call my assistant, he know me twenty years!"

The receptionist silently looked first at her face, then at the palm spread across the desk, and only then raised her eyes again, keeping that same flawless, polite expression Chuck himself had demanded of his staff for years when dealing with especially unpleasant guests.

"Ma'am, please tell me who you mean," the receptionist said, stumbling for a second as if trying to find a simpler way to put it. "What is your assistant's name?"

"I not remember! I... I remember his face, remember de office, remember how he bring coffee and all time say 'Mister Friend,' but name..." She cut herself off, drawing in an angry breath, and straightened up only to lean over the desk again at once. The narrow skirt pulled unpleasantly tight across her hips, the belt dug into her waist, and her heavy tits beneath the thin knit top swayed with the movement, making Chuck instinctively grip the edge of the desk with both hands, as if the problem really were his balance. "You know Mister Friend? Owner of dis hotel, de whole chain! Big man, little gray, expensive suit. You see him every day. Dat is me!"

The receptionist frowned slightly and, for the first time in the whole conversation, stopped pretending to smile politely.

"Ma'am, this hotel has no owner named Chuck Friend. And as far as I know, it never did."

For several seconds Chuck just stared at her, still leaning over the desk, and only slowly straightened when he felt his stiff back answer with an unfamiliar pull in his lower spine, while the skirt clung tightly around his hips again as he moved.

"Don't talk nonsense," he said more quietly now, which only made him sound angrier. "I build first hotel twenty two years ago. I buy land, I fight with bank, I fire director here tree years ago because he idiot." Chuck pointed at the desk. "Dis marble I choose myself. Dis one. Because old one too dark."

The receptionist's eyes involuntarily dropped to the marble, then she looked at the woman in front of her again, now plainly unsure what the next step in her instructions was supposed to be.

"Wait," she said cautiously. "I think I remember you."

For the first time since waking up in that cheap dump on the outskirts of town, after rushing to get dressed and somehow putting on these humiliating but, for some reason, perfectly 'suitable' clothes as if her body itself knew the routine better than he did, Chuck relaxed a little.

"That's it!" he breathed out, even managing a brief smile, without noticing how differently it sat on his new face. "Finally. You see me before. Vere?"

The receptionist watched him for a few more seconds, then nodded carefully.

"Yes. You're with housekeeping." She picked up the phone and, looking at Chuck, added, "I'll call Mr. Smith, your supervisor. He'll sort this out."

The smile vanished from Chuck's face so quickly it was as if it had never been there. He slowly lowered his eyes to his own clothes, to the light, tight top, to the two mounds thrusting out of it, absurdly high and impossible to miss, then to the narrow waist pulled in by a belt, and farther down to the skirt, beneath which his own hips still seemed like some kind of optical illusion. He snorted irritably and ran his palms over the skirt's folds, then immediately pulled his hands away and scolded himself inwardly for the movement.

"Vat supervisor, kurwa?..." Chuck said quietly, raising his eyes to the receptionist again. "I not work housekeeping. I own housekeeping. Own hotel. Own you."

"Yes, Mr. Smith, I think your employee is here," the receptionist said, turning slightly toward the phone but continuing to watch Chuck from the corner of her eye. "She says that she..." Then she finished, "Perhaps you should come over yourself," and hung up.

"He come here?" Chuck asked, almost offended disbelief in his voice. "Good. Very good. Let him come. I explain to him who is whose supervisor here."

He straightened even more, instinctively trying to strike the pose that usually made branch managers start speaking more briefly and carefully, but the new body turned the gesture into something altogether different: the shoulders stayed narrow, her breasts rose visibly beneath the top, and the skirt fitted even more tightly around her hips. Chuck felt it at once and jerked his chin irritably, as if he could cancel everything else with one look.

Everything happening was already nothing like a dream, but the idea that a drunken wish Chuck had made the night before, about how tired he was of responsibility, of the idiots around him and of people who smiled at him only because he signed their paychecks, could somehow have come true so literally still seemed too ridiculous, even for what was going on around him.

After a while a short man in his fifties appeared from the service corridor, a tablet tucked under his arm. He looked at Chuck from a distance, slowed down, then frowned.

"Agnieszka?" he asked. "Why aren't you on the floor?"

Chuck froze so abruptly that the belt dug unpleasantly into his waist again. For some reason the name struck something inside him, not as something completely unfamiliar but as something he knew by habit, as if the body had heard it hundreds of times already. He frowned and looked at the man more carefully, trying to drag anything at all out of his memory, but instead only noticed how naturally he looked down at him, without the slightest recognition, without the caution people usually showed when talking to the owner of the chain. "I am not Agnieszka," Chuck said slowly. "I am Chuck Friend. And if you are Mr. Smith, den you listen to me very carefully."

...

A week later

...

Adjusting the work bag strap that had slipped off her shoulder, Agnieszka pushed the cart farther down the corridor and, with a now familiar movement, held the linen closet door open with her hip so it would not swing shut again. In a week Chuck had come to hate that gesture almost as much as his own reflection in the elevator mirrors: the body did everything too confidently, without his permission, as if years of cleaning hotel rooms had not vanished just because the person inside was now someone who had once never even noticed the names of women pushing carts like this.

"Agnieszka, do room four hundred and twelve later, suite first," Mr. Smith tossed over his shoulder as he passed without even stopping. "And faster today, we've got an early check in."

Chuck slowly turned his head after him, feeling the tight uniform blouse pull across his breasts with the movement of his shoulders, while the cheap skirt clung unpleasantly to his legs after several hours of work. Just a week ago, that tone alone would have been enough to get a man fired, if only on principle; now all Chuck did was grip the cart handle harder.

"Yes, Mr. Smith," Chuck responded almost automatically before he could decide what he was going to say at all.

He turned away.

"Kurwa," he added quietly, this time on his own.

The cart's wheels squeaked faintly as he pushed it forward again. At the turn he had to hold the stack of towels with one hand and the handle with the other, and Chuck noticed irritably that the paintings he had ordered hung a month ago were finally in their proper places. Somehow that only made him angrier now: nobody knew that he had chosen those damn frames, argued with the designer over the distance between them and demanded the lighting be redone. To the maid walking toward him, he was just Agnieszka, running late with the suite again today.

"And tie your hair back, please," came from behind him, pulling him back to reality. "Guests complained yesterday that you go into the rooms with it loose."

Chuck stopped, slowly closed his eyes, then gathered his long dark hair with both hands and, as usual, far too naturally, tied it back at the nape of his neck.

"Of course, Mr. Smith," he answered through clenched teeth, then after a short pause added under his breath, "My hotel. My kurwa hotel."

which she, out of principle, had already refused to change for another one for three days, even though its underwires dug into her beneath her breasts every time she had to bend for the bucket or reach up to the top shelf. Chuck told himself it was temporary, that buying a 'normal' bra for a body that was not supposed to be his at all would mean admitting what was happening, at least in part; so now he paid for his stubbornness with every step, feeling the weight of her tits, the tight pressure of the fabric, and the thin straps leaving red marks on her shoulders by the middle of her shift.