The chandeliers in the lobby of the Four Points by Sheraton Lahore dripped with cold, manufactured light, each crystal a frozen tear. It was a place of transitory souls—businessmen with weary eyes scrolling through emails, expatriates nursing single malts while gazing at nothing, and conference attendees still adorned with plastic name tags.
In a plush armchair tucked away from the main thoroughfare, Alina waited. She wasn’t waiting for anyone in particular; waiting was her state of being. To the untrained eye, she was just another well-dressed guest, perhaps anticipating a late companion. She wore a tailored emerald green dress that spoke of money, not noise. Her phone sat face-down on the table beside a half-finished cup of mint tea, its surface pristine, reflecting the inverted, shimmering world above.
This was her stage. The hotel was not just a location; it was an ecosystem, and she was one of its most specialized predators, and sometimes, its most compassionate confidante.
A man approached. Mid-fifties, a well-cut suit that couldn’t quite hide the slump of his shoulders, a wedding band that caught the light as he nervously adjusted his watch. He had the air of someone trying to remember a lines he never learned.
“Are you…?” he began, his voice a low murmur meant to get lost in the ambient hum of the air conditioning.
Alina offered a smile that was both warm and distant, a professional courtesy. “It depends on who you’re looking for,” she said, her voice a calm, melodic counterpoint to his anxiety. “But please, have a seat.”
This was the dance. The initial awkwardness, the unspoken negotiation veiled in pleasantries. He ordered a scotch, neat. She sipped her tea. He talked about the traffic, the inefficiency of the airport, the pressures of his textiles export business. She listened, her head tilted in a perfect pantomime of empathy. She wasn’t just selling her time; she was selling a fantasy of understanding.
He was not looking for just a body. Men like him rarely were. They were looking for an escape hatch from their own lives—from the weight of expectations, from the silent chill of a marital bed, from the relentless pressure of being the provider. They sought a beautiful, silent vault for their insecurities, one that would never judge them.
Alina provided that service. In the elevator ride up to a room on the twelfth floor, she was the perfect, poised companion. In the room, with its standardized luxury and view of the buzzing Gulberg lights, she was whoever he needed her to be. A listener. A fantasy. A temporary relief from the immense loneliness that can only truly be felt in a crowd, or in a foreign hotel.
Later, as he slept, the stress momentarily erased from his face, Alina stood by the window. The city pulsed with a life that felt both intimately close and infinitely far away. She watched the tiny headlights stream like particles through the veins of Lahore. In these quiet moments, she felt a strange duality. She was both the most powerful and the most powerless person in the room. She held the currency of illusion, yet her own reality was a series of room numbers and temporary encounters.
She wasn’t defined by the transactions. She was defined by the spaces in between. The skilled application of lipstick in a spotless bathroom mirror, a small act of reclaiming herself. The efficient counting of cash, tucked neatly into an expensive clutch—not just payment, but a measure of control. The silent elevator descent back to the lobby, where she would once again become just another woman in a green dress, leaving no trace behind but rumpled sheets and a forgotten story.
Back in the lobby armchair, her phone lit up with a new message. Another soul, adrift in the neutral, perfumed air of the Four Points, seeking a moment of connection in the most disconnected of ways. Alina smoothed her dress, took a breath, and prepared to once again step onto her stage. She was a master of short-term resolutions, a silent witness to the quiet desperation that hums beneath the surface of any five-star hotel, a temporary guest in the endless, lonely journey of others.
