“Polysomnography” was selected by Alexandra Kleeman as the runner-up of the 2022 Open Border Fiction Prize.

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It’s been a long time since I’ve had a man telling me what to do in bed, but here I am again. The sleep center is in a strip mall that looks like any other strip mall quilted across the city grid, cast in identical sandy stucco, as if that were the only material the desert had to offer. There is a neon sign bright in the window: a winking crescent moon wearing a stocking cap. The moon even has a dimple. I’m impressed with the attention to detail.

Imagine a two-star hotel that hasn’t been renovated in at least ten years. Now remove all the rooms except for one queen room and shrink the building way down. Turn the lobby into a waiting room full of color-coded medical files. Add a set of heavy double doors that are tinted dark to keep the sun out, the coolness in.

Inside it smells like lavender potpourri and Clorox wipes. There is a TV in the waiting room, but it’s set to the fireplace channel, even though it’s the middle of summer in the middle of a desert. Checking into the sleep center is like checking into a hotel but with more paperwork and no amenities except for medical equipment. The receptionist gives me a sheet of rules: Don’t wear makeup or perfume. Don’t drink coffee or wine. No fun at all.

There is no gym, no pool, no continental breakfast, no minibar, no extra room key, no room key at all, because I am here to be observed and diagnosed, to have my lungs and heart and brain waves analyzed in the dark. The sleep tech checks me out after I’m checked in, and it occurs to me that I may be the most beautiful woman who has ever walked through these tinted double doors.

The sleep tech walks me to my room and tells me what to do: unpack everything I need for the night, change into my pajamas, get ready for bed, lie down, and press the call button when I’m done. When I’m done he’s back in the room, brushing my hair back, swabbing at my scalp with alcohol soaked squares, prepping my skin for each dab of adhesive, each kiss of the silver electrodes that will turn every pulse and movement of my body into bright lines on a black screen.

He looks away as he reaches under my shirt to stick sensors to my sternum, and soon wires wrap around me like a nest. I feel like a community bulletin board. Like a robot on the way to becoming a person or maybe the other way around, hooked up to so many little wires that make me think of how all the veins in the human body would stretch out so long that they could wrap around the world twice.

As he syncs me up to the already humming machines, a rainbow tangle of wires tethering my heartbeat to his screens, I feel the heat rising in my face, the pitter patter of my heart, the seashore sound of blood in my ears.

“I’ll be right down the hall monitoring you. Push the call button if you need anything,” he tells me, and I want to tell him I need him to stay.

I can’t sleep through the night as I think about him watching me through the camera mounted in the corner of the room, his eyes tracing the bright wavy lines of my head and my heart on the screen, my LCD curves lighting up his face.

I am trussed in wires, elastic, and Velcro, sensors pinging my biometrics to his computers, and what is more intimate than that, to see me stripped down to a glowing brain wave and heartbeat? I’m under the covers, wanting to toss and turn, but I stay still, as if this is a graded test. I want to do well, to pass with flying colors, for him to kiss me on the cheek and tell me I did a good job.

The world looks sharper, more saturated when I want something, someone. The edges of everything are crisp, like I’ve just put on glasses. I haven’t been to the optometrist in years.

I wake up to the sleep tech talking through the speakers. He says he’ll be right there to help me take off all the electrodes and equipment. His voice over the PA system is smooth like industrial peanut butter. When he peels back the medical tape and unfastens the electrodes, telling me the speed of my eyes moving behind my eyelids and my overnight breathing levels, I feel like I might as well be naked.

He has all my data at his fingertips, and it seems more intimate than anything I have ever done before. His eyes linger on my skin like adhesive, and I know it will be so easy to make him fall in love with me, like feeding cake to a child.

I brush my teeth, the toothpaste looking bluer and tasting colder, mintier than before I decided I wanted the sleep tech to get tangled up in all my wires, to spike my electrode readings. At the front desk, the receptionist processes my outgoing paperwork, and says my doctor will call me with the results within a week.

When I push open the double doors, the harsh high sun shocks my eyes, splotching the parking lot with amoebic auras. I drive straight to the flower shop, passing a man wearing gold sequin shorts twirling a sign that says DEALS DEALS DEALS. He throws it over his shoulders, spiraling it like a two-dimensional football straight into the sky, and I swear I see it descend in slow motion, like a giant maple seedling helicoptering back into his hands.

Sad men come to see me every day. They want apology bouquets with handwritten notes that say I’m sorry, I messed up Stacy, I love you more than the world. I stab woody stems into a block of foam, arrange the heavy headed blossoms, and tie everything up in a bow for the Joshes, the Michaels, the Nathans, the Peters, the Bens.

Mostly my customers are sad men, but occasionally I get the lovestruck ones who are wooing their mistresses, the ones who are about to propose. Or there are the borderline stalkers sending long stemmed roses every day for a week until my phone rings and a woman is on the line telling me to: Please. Stop. Sending. Flowers. To. This. Address. The rarest of all are the true love types, the anniversary arrangements, the heartfelt messages that spill onto the backs of the notecards, but what do I know, I’m just a florist, and almost all of them have fallen in love with me.

I’ve worked in flowers since I was seventeen. I got my start at the grocery store, stocking acetate sleeves of gerbera daisies. I spent a year staring at the back of the checkout guy’s neck before we snuck into the stockroom and disturbed innocent boxes of cold produce, knocking the onions and potatoes onto the ground, sending apples and oranges rolling, rolling, rolling, and I thought I could smell citrus oil scenting the air, but maybe I just imagined it.

I used to be the pining type, taking home the leftover bouquets that were destined for the dumpster. My small apartment was bursting with wilting carnations and garish dyed daisies. I dissolved the crystal flower food in a giant pitcher like some undrinkable kool aid, wondering if it would taste more like sugar or salt.

I would think of whoever I was thinking of at the time and pluck each petal off one by one—he loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, he loves me not—making my way from the couch to the bedroom, trailing flower petals behind me like a path to romance, like a reality TV honeymoon, but then I slept alone in my petal blanketed bed, dreaming of that man, some man, now forgotten. For a long time I wanted what I couldn’t have, and then I realized it wasn’t so hard to get.

Now I work at a specialty floral shop that is for romance only. We don’t do funerals or graduations. No baby showers or retirements. It’s all romance all the time. Our bestseller is two dozen fancy roses with a lace garter belt threaded through the thornless stems.

To be a florist is to give up pretty hands in the name of beauty. Like a ballerina’s feet, blistered and bunioned by pointe shoes, my hands are rough with calluses, shredded by chicken wire, pricked by thorns. I wear white gloves when I make the arrangements to ensure that no delicate petal, no velvet rose nor crepe paper iris, gets snagged on a hangnail.

This morning, my head is foggy from staying up all night and my body aches from holding it still, as stiff as a board. I put on my gloves and strip the leaves and thorns from rose after rose with a floral knife. As the cut thorns tumble across the counter, nesting in the discarded greenery, I remember the sleep tech’s soft hands all over me, how there was not even the suggestion of a callous.

The first customer of the day walks in, holding the bouquet he picked up yesterday right in front of his face, so he has a head full of flowers.

“I thought better of it,” he says, and I can see a flush creeping up his neck into his stubble.

I don’t ask why. I don’t need to. I tell him in a cotton soft apology, “I can’t do returns, but I can give you store credit.”

He peeks his head around from the bouquet, one eyebrow raised, “Give me $200 worth of perennials then.”

But before I can explain that we don’t even sell perennials here, he’s around my side of the counter, hoisting me up so that I can feel the thorns poking at the backs of my thighs, and his breath is hot in my ear, “I’m leaving her. I love you. I want to be with you. You keep the flowers.”

I reach into the arrangement, past the stargazer lilies and hellebores, to find my handwriting on creamy cardstock. Sorry Bethany. You’re the only one I want forever. I slip the note into his shirt pocket, press my palms to his chest, pushing him gently away.

“I can’t keep the flowers,” I tell him, and then I ring up a store credit card and send him on his way.

There are rules I keep for myself. I only sleep with the men who promise that they are going to split up anyways, but then they’re back the next day buying apology flowers from me, looking down at their shoes as they dictate their notes. Jennifer, you’re my number one lady. I won’t mess up again.

How do I sleep at night? I don’t most of the time. In the back room of the flower shop, I’ve set up a nylon sleeping bag on top of a mattress pad for when I can’t stay upright anymore. I’ll lock the door, flip the open sign to closed, and take a furtive nap during my lunch break.

I’ve never been a good sleeper, even though I’ve been in many beds. I can’t fall asleep with someone next to me, can’t ignore their snoring or restless legs, so I never stay over.

Everything in the bed has to be just right for me to sleep through the night: The sheets need to be cool, but the air conditioning can’t be blowing too much; the pillows need to be feather-filled, but the duvet should be plush with synthetic fibers. The mattress should be firm, springs instead memory foam, and I have to be alone.

I am napping in the rose-scented back room when my doctor calls with the results, and I wake with a start both at the loud ringing and the realization that a week has gone by.

“I’m glad I had you do this. You didn’t sleep one wink,” she says, and I can imagine her shaking her head and suppressing a cluck of her tongue.

“So, I’m okay to get a refill on the sleeping pills?” I ask, crossing my fingers even though it’s hard with the gloves on.

“I’m going to write you a refill, but I’d like you to go back to the sleep center. Let’s see if we can’t get to the bottom of this. You need your beauty sleep right?” She laughs like a fake bell.

“Right,” I say, and it’s truer than she knows because my customers buy more flowers when they’ve done something wrong, after they’ve untied my floral apron and undone my dress, and when they can’t undo the deeds we’ve done, they boomerang back to the shop, and I need to be bright-eyed and beauty-rested when they come back to me.

Tonight, I will spend the night at the sleep center again. When I get home from the shop, I rifle through my underwear drawer for something pretty to wear for the sleep tech. Soon my

bed is covered with flimsy strips of lace and sheer underwire bras. I settle on a satin pajama set in oyster hued silk. A camisole with angel hair spaghetti straps and matching tap shorts, all trimmed in delicate black lace. I pick a wrap dress to wear to the appointment, something that can be untied like the bow on a present.

On the way to the sleep center, I notice a long line of white cars snaking into a car wash. Next to a placard advertising the unlimited monthly car wash deal there is a skydancer jerking its tubular body into windblown choreography, its googly eyes and wide smile stitched in nylon.

This time, my paperwork is a breeze, and returning to my room feels almost a little like home. There are two rooms in the sleep center, but I’ve only been in #201, which is somehow a composite of every furniture store model bedroom I have ever seen. The duvet is robin’s egg blue and chocolate brown, patterned with abstracted filigree.

There are two nightstands flanking the bed with false drawers. In the nightstands there is no bible, no room service menu, no stationery, but instead the hinged doors conceal all the machines that he will connect me to, all the machines that turn me into numbers and lines.

There’s a big TV right in front of the bed. The mattress is firm enough at least.

I change into my satin pajamas in the en-suite bathroom, flip my head upside down to tousle some volume into my hair. I pinch my cheeks and lips a little for a natural flush, and when my face looks pink and pouty, I call him into the room.

He looks a little taken aback, and I can’t help but shiver a little because the sleep center is kept very cool to accommodate hot sleepers. I feel goosebumps crawling up my lotioned legs, and he says, “I’m sorry you’re back here again.”

“I’m not,” I tell him, and without even really meaning to, one of my angel hair spaghetti straps slips off of my gleaming shoulder. “Whoops,” I say with a giggle and a red tint creeps up the sides of his neck.

“Lay back please?” he asks me and I hold my tongue and lay back, retracing every brush of his soft hands. I close my eyes to concentrate on his fingertips gluing electrodes all around my head.

“Are you feeling alright?” he says when I don’t open my eyes for a while. “Yes,” I say as I bat my lashes, “thank you for electroding me.”

He doesn’t need to reach under anything to apply the EKG stickers since my sternum is on full display in my lacy camisole. He slips the fallen strap back onto my shoulder when he’s done, and blushes. Finally, I am plugged in, all the wires leading back to the machines in the nightstand, all my bodily information transmitting down the hall.

I reach for the glass of water on the nightstand, and I’m weighed down by all the equipment. I have a sudden desire to get on the scale, to know how heavy I am cocooned in metal and medical elastic, wondering if the sleep tech would be able to lift me in his arms. Once a customer carried me over a square of flooded sidewalk during a torrent of summer rain after I delivered his wedding arrangement to his car. The wedding never happened.

Staring straight into the camera in the corner of the room, I shrug off the covers to show off my collarbones, my sternum sequined with EKG sensors, the electrode disco ball of my scalp. The air conditioning kicks in and I know it will be too cold for me to sleep, but I don’t want to jostle the wires nor my sleep data so I freeze in both senses of the word and wait for the morning to come.

I wake up to his voice through the PA, and I imagine smooth peanut butter extruding from the speaker holes.

“You got some REM this time. Not a ton, but more than last time,” he says. In a quieter voice he says, “You looked cold,” and then the speaker fizzles out. I freshen up, twist my hair into a high bun, and I must be getting stronger because the double doors don’t seem as heavy on my way out, and the warm sun feels so good on my air chilled skin.

The sign spinner is wearing the same shorts but is throwing a new arrow across his wingspan. Today it says LIQUIDATION followed by a bunch of exclamation points. The velocity of the paper arrow is fearsome, it swings through the air like a machete, and I’m convinced that if a bird flew in its path, feathers would spray everywhere.

When I pass the carwash I look out for the skydancer, and it ribbons liquid like into the sky, a torrent of blue nylon. Stopped at a red light, I see that there’s a tear rippling through its long singular torso, but still its face is sewn into a wide-eyed smile, it’s fabric hair and fingers wiggling in the wind.

In the store bathroom I sponge concealer under my dark-circled eyes, mist my tired skin with rosewater. I’m mixing up orders. There are angry calls and customers. The door opens again and again as men rush in to complain that their arrangement had lilies even though they specifically requested no lilies since their girlfriend has cats and lilies are poisonous to cats and besides lilies smell bad, like death and mothballs.

They tell me, “Stacy thinks I’m cheating on her because the note you gave me said Brittany.” But you were cheating, I want to say but don’t as I calligraph a new note. That’s why you got the flowers in the first place.

A wildlife ranger comes in with a wooden crate full of prickly pear, and my mouth waters when I smell the fruit. Could I make his girlfriend a prickly pear arrangement? I look through the cacti with my gloves on, but I get too excited by a magenta blossom, its petals as thin as tissue, and a sharp spine pierces through the glove and pricks my finger. Red blooms on the white fabric.

The ranger looks at me looking at my bloodstained fingertip, extends his hand, and says, “May I?” Here we go again, I think to myself as I put my hand in his. He takes my finger, glove and all, and puts it right into his mouth.

I spent the next few days tweezering hair thin spines out my fingers. Something that is easy for me to do is to pretend I am the woman the flowers are for instead of the woman arranging them.

While I wait for the doctor to call, I keep my sleep center bag packed with sachets of herbal tea, a boring book, and my unmentionables. I eat a jelly sandwich for dinner, and a heaping spoonful of smooth, hydrogenated, industrially processed peanut butter for dessert.

After my teeth are brushed and flossed, I open the childproof prescription bottle and the bitter pill seems to suck all the moisture from my tongue. I get into bed, close my eyes, and the next thing I know it’s morning.

It was one of those dark dreamless sleeps, but I remember wishing I could dream of the sleep tech, that I could hear that smooth voice and feel those soft hands on my skin. I think of

him and he becomes a statue, a marble sculpture chiseled in my mind, and a museum would be lucky to acquire it for their permanent collection, they would send out press releases out to the world.

I open the store and reorganize all the custom orders, double checking for any mixups.

The doctor calls as I’m evacuating ants from the peonies.

“The good news is that you slept more than the first time. The bad news is it wasn’t much, and the numbers aren’t making sense to me,” she says.

“Should I get a different prescription?” I ask.

“Not yet. I want to make sure we exhaust all possibilities,” she says. “I’m exhausted,” I say.

“That’s a good one,” she says and gives me my appointment time through a laugh.

I throw out the rulebook for my next appointment, applying a full face of makeup and spritzing my whole body with a custom blend of body spray, a miasma of Bath and Body Works that, for a second, transports me back to my high school locker room. Warm Vanilla Sugar mixing with Sweet Pea and Pear Blossom. If I spray myself enough, the smell will probably reach him down the hall in his technician’s office, where the electrodes send signals that, number by number, paint an etch-a-sketch portrait of me.

At dusk, I brush through my hair again, pack a thermos of wine in my bag, and leave for the sleep center. The sun is glowy and red like the insides of my eyelids when they’re closed to the light. The asphalt sweats a film of oil that makes it shine. There is no line at the carwash tonight, just one red sports car disappearing into that bubbly drive through, and the skydancer

flails along to some silent music. The hole in its side patched with neat strips of duct tape, like stitches.

The receptionist is nodding off at the front desk when I arrive. I don’t want to wake her, so I tiptoe around the waiting room, grabbing my papers, a clipboard with a pen dangling on a chain. I sip wine from my travel mug as I sign and date my forms, promising to abide by all the rules I am breaking. She’s awake when I’m finished with my paperwork.

“You can hang up your coat,” she says, looking askance at my trench coat. “It’s a little chilly in here,” I say, brushing a little sweat from my upper lip.

I can’t hang up my coat because I’m only wearing unmentionables underneath, and I don’t want to mention them to the receptionist.

When he knocks on the door, I am wearing a sheer babydoll, rubbing shimmer lotion onto my shins, with my right leg propped on the bed at a right angle.

“Come in,” I say.

The door opens, and he seems stunned by the air so thick with mall fragrance. His nose is all crinkled up, and it sounds like he’s holding his breath a little when he says, “It smells amazing in here. Like flowers and candy.” Amazing is one of those words that can go both ways, isn’t it?

I prop up my left leg, start shimmering up my shin, and he is staring.

He clears his throat, coughs a few times, looks like he’s going to sneeze, but he looks up, straight into the fluorescent light that is catching all the shimmer particles I’ve rubbed on my skin.

The delicate pink chiffon floats around me like a froth, and I can tell he doesn’t know where to look as I sit on the bed, but like the professional he is, he gets the electrodes and starts combing through my silky hair, dotting my scalp with pearls of glue and pressing in glimmering silver. When he’s done, I am haloed by fine electrical wires, the crown of my head sparkling with electrodes, my chest crowded with sensors, my heart pumping full of anticipation.

I want him tangled up in all my wires, to kiss every electrode glued to me, to press every button on each humming machine, and when we are done, for him to hold me in that department store bed, its crisp sheets softened by our exertion.

He puts his hands all over me, expertly maneuvering around the wire masterpiece he has affixed and we kiss and pant, and when we’re done, I think to myself, it’s just like I imagined.

“I’m going to reset the machines,” he says, breath ragged, “so you can still get some usable data.”

“Okay,” I tell him, shrugging the straps of the baby doll back on, though what even is the point because wearing a sheer babydoll is just the same as being naked but with some frills.

He helps me unplug from the machines so I can brush my teeth and wash my face. I peer into the mirror, and my babydoll looks like a deflated pink cloud, all its floaty air pressed away by his weight on top of me. My hair is pillow tousled and tangled with wires, and when the toothpaste touches my tongue its mint sting is dulled. I squeeze out enough toothpaste to fill a whole peapod, and it’s the same, not icy cold at all, just body temperature blue gel.

Before he goes to his office, he kneels at the side of the bed and tells me, “You were meant to step through these double doors.” A wave of drowsiness washes over me. “All my life

I’ve been waiting for you. You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in this sleep center,” he says. A pause, and then he whispers, “You are the most beautiful woman in the world,” and breathes deeply into my hair, which I know smells good.

I keep my eyes closed, wondering if he can tell I’m only pretending to be asleep given his area of expertise. He kisses me right on the top of my head, but I don’t feel a thing because of all the glue and wires and metal. He loves me, he loves me, he loves me.

After he leaves, I wait for my breathing to slow down, imagining the machines going haywire with my jittering heart, my syncopated pulse. Once, I fell asleep in the heart tunnel at the science museum. It was a larger than life model, tall enough for adults to walk through, large enough for a small girl to curl up in the nook of a ventricle for an after-lunch nap. There was a speaker built into the red paint and plaster, broadcasting a heartbeat into the echo chamber. I must have been asleep for five minutes at the most before the teacher found me, her brow knit into a knot, and she made me hold her hand all the way back to the school bus.

I think of that heart tunnel now, all that blood squeezed and pumped through its giant arteries and capillaries, how it must be like waves in an ocean, and the last thing I remember before I drift off into the deepest sleep I’ve had in years, is that I’m an ocean too, going nowhere.

In the morning I wake up next to a ghostly imprint of yesterday’s makeup on the pillowcase. I knew I should have double cleansed. The PA crackles into his smooth voice, and he tells my sleep metrics were a work of art, a thing of beauty. And then he’s there in my room with color printouts. The blue lines graphing my REM sleep spike up and down, like a scribble with a new pen to get the ink flowing.

“When can I see you again?” he asks as he unsticks the sensors from my chest. “We’ll see what the doctor says,” I tell him, and he doesn’t think it’s very funny. “My number is on the sheet,” he says.

“If you need any flowers, you can call me here,” I say, giving him my business card, fretting over my rough hands brushing over his lily soft ones.

What I would give to have petal soft fingertips. The flowers have given me gloves of calluses and blisters. I wish I could slip out my hands out of this hard skin like a sword out of a scabbard.

The sign spinner’s sign says GOING OUT OF BUSINESS today, and he’s weaving it in between his legs, an advanced basketball dribble. The sign never stops moving, never touches the ground, the whole time I’m stopped at the light. His gold sequins flash and wink in the sun, and for all his aerobics, he doesn’t seem to break a sweat. In the distance, I can see the skydancer dancing its old routine, blowing in the wind, its tubular arms flapping, beckoning me to the carwash, but I keep driving.

When I get to the shop, the first thing I do is stick my head in the floral cooler, letting the refrigerated and perfumed air circulate over my face. I slept through the night, but I still feel tired, or not fully awake, and the cool air feels good, like it might depuff the bags under my eyes. For a moment I close my eyes and rest my cheek ever so gently on a dahlia as big as my head, and then the phone rings.

The man on the line is calling from the hospital. He gave some flowers to the caterer to put on the cake and now his wife has food poisoning.

“The flowers aren’t edible,” I tell him, thinking about how he told me he was going to call off the wedding.

“I’ve seen a million flowers on cakes,” he hisses. “What did you do to the flowers?” “Nothing,” I tell him, “The flowers are grown with pesticides to keep them pretty. You

should have asked me before you put them on the cake.” I imagine the bride biting into the flowers like apples.

“Can you talk to the doctor?” he asks, “anything they need to know?” “They’re locally grown ranunculus,” I say, as an itch crawls up my spine. “You’re a real piece of work,” he says, and I hang up the phone.

It keeps ringing and ringing, with orders, paramours, complaints, and come-ons, and I’m answering every call with the receiver squeezed between my ear and left shoulder as I hack away at camelia stems with a floral knife.

“Try putting the flowers in some warm water,” I say. “No, we don’t do graduations,” I say.

“Is your bouquet near any ethylene releasing fruits?” I ask.

“Please forgive me Rebecca. You are the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” I repeat. “No, I’m not going to come over while your wife is in the hospital. Please don’t call again,” I say.

The phone stops ringing for a second, and I am about to take a late lunch, about to flip the sign on the door from open to closed, and curl up in the back room for a nap, but there is the

sleep tech walking toward the shop, looking tired and drawn in the daylight. I leave the sign and busy my hands with the camellias, arranging them in a shallow vase.

“I stayed up all day thinking of you,” he says, leaning on the counter. “Shouldn’t you be asleep right now?” I say.

“I wanted to see you again,” he says.

“I’m trying to be good. I can’t stay up anymore,” I say.

He reaches for my hands, and the gloves come off. I look at my chapped and calloused palms and think about how disappointing it is to get what you want.

“Maybe you could make another appointment?” he asks, my gloves hanging limp from his fingertips.

The phone rings. “I have to take this,” I tell him. It’s the doctor, calling with my results. “Good news! Your results were expedited,” she says.

“Did I do okay?” I ask, turning away from the sleep tech to whisper into the receiver. “You did great, sleeping beauty. Best REM figures I’ve seen in a while,” she says. “So we’re all good?” I ask, feeling like I’ve forgotten to lock the apartment door, like

I’ve left the stove on.

“You’re all set sweet pea,” she says, something tender in her voice. “You can sleep in your own bed again.”

I hang up the phone, stick a camelia behind my ear, and face the sleep tech. His face is a little puffy from fatigue, and he’s so close that I can see the fine capillaries that tinge his under eyes the palest blue.

“The doctor says I’m all set,” I tell him. I close his fingers around the gloves, “Something to remember me by.”