The dentist had asked Andrea not to talk until the numbness wore off.

 At 2:53 p.m., she opened the locker and checked her phone.

 Her husband had sent four messages. The preschool had called twice.

 Melissa needed the correct number for slide twelve.

 Priya had twenty-four flower arrangements at the wrong hotel. 

Her sister needed the plumber’s number. And her husband still wanted to know whether dinosaur pajamas counted as pajamas. 

Andrea smiled. This was a fairly ordinary forty-seven minutes in Andrea’s life. 

She sat in her car and began replying. Yes, he could handle preschool pickup. The number was in the email Andrea had sent Melissa that morning.

 The flowers belonged at the hotel on Madison, not the one on Monroe. The plumber was saved under MARTIN PLUMBER DO NOT LOSE. 

And dinosaur pajamas obviously counted. By 3:09, everything was moving again. 

Andrea liked this part. She liked knowing.

 She liked being useful. She liked that the people she loved trusted her with the small machinery of their lives. 

Then she checked the time. 

Preschool pickup was at 3:40. For the next thirty-one minutes, nobody needed Andrea. She opened her email.

 Nothing urgent. She opened her calendar. 

Nothing missing> She opened her messages again. 

Everything had been answered.

 Andrea looked at the empty passenger seat. Then she played a song she liked. 

She listened all the way through without checking anything else. 

Then she played it again. At 3:32, Andrea started the car and drove to preschool. She was happy to go.

 She had also liked the thirty-one minutes before it.

Andrea had spent the morning making the afternoon possible.

Her husband would handle pickup. A colleague had taken her 12:30 call. Lunch was labeled in the refrigerator.

She moved two meetings, sent the documents ahead and crossed town with seven minutes to spare.

At 11:07, the meeting was canceled.

Nobody expected her until one.

Andrea opened her laptop at a café. Forty-one emails offered themselves.

She answered one and closed the laptop.

Andrea ordered lunch. Not to go, on a plate.

Afterward, she wandered through a bookstore and sat on a bench beside a man sleeping with a very small shopping bag.

At 12:46, Andrea checked the time.

Only fourteen minutes remained.

Nothing useful had been completed.

The two hours had been excellent.

The dry cleaning went into her calendar as thirty minutes. It took eight.

She left early for school pickup, although the school had not moved.

After buying groceries, she stayed in the driveway until the end of a song.

On Thursday, her husband found her sitting in the parked car with the engine off.

“Everything okay?”

“Everything’s excellent.”

He looked at the dashboard clock.

“Take Saturday,” he said. “I’ll handle things here.”

Andrea looked at him.

“The whole day?”

“The whole day.”

She smiled before she could think of anything that needed doing.

Andrea’s free Saturday began with laundry.

By 8:30, the first load was running.

By nine, she had cleared the kitchen counter and ordered the birthday present they had been discussing for three weeks.

At 9:14, Andrea realized she was spending her day off making Sunday easier for everybody else.

She left the wet laundry in the machine and walked out.

There was no plan.

She bought a pastry she did not have to divide.

She entered a bookstore and read fourteen pages of a novel without checking the time.

At lunch, the hostess asked, “Just one?”

“Yes,” Andrea said.

It sounded less dramatic than she had expected.

While she waited, sunlight caught the stack of rings on her hand.

Andrea turned one ring half a circle and admired how the pieces sat together.

She could not remember the last time she had looked at them without also carrying, typing or handing someone something.

After lunch, she passed a movie theater. The next film began in eleven minutes.

Andrea had never heard of it.

She bought a ticket.

The film was strange, occasionally beautiful and at least twenty minutes too long.

She loved it.

When Andrea came home, her husband asked what she had done all day.

She thought about the pastry, the fourteen pages, the lunch and the peculiar film.

“Nothing, really,” she said.

Then she smiled.

“A lot, actually.”

A month had passed since Andrea’s free Saturday.

Life had returned to its usual shape. School pickups, meetings, family dinners and several requests beginning with “Since you’re already…”

But Andrea kept thinking about the pastry, the peculiar film and the pleasure of not knowing what came next.

The Saturday had been exciting.

Now she wanted to know what two days might feel like.

Andrea opened a hotel website.

The booking page had automatically selected two guests.

She changed it to one.

The hotel suggested a romantic package.

She declined.

Then it asked if she wanted a king-sized bed.

Andrea considered how much of it she could occupy diagonally and clicked yes.

As she moved through the booking, her rings tapped lightly against the laptop.

It was the same stack she had noticed over lunch that Saturday. She turned one ring half a circle, then continued.

At the final page, the website displayed the details once more.

ONE ROOM

ONE GUEST

TWO NIGHTS

Andrea paused.

Not because she wanted someone else’s name beside hers.

She simply liked seeing the space left open.

She clicked BOOK.

The confirmation arrived immediately.

Traveler: Andrea.