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Karen Joy Fowler: Standing Room Only
First appeared in Asimovтs Science Fiction
August 1997. Nominated for Best Short
Story
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On Good Friday 1865, Washington, DC, was
crowded with tourists and revelers. Even
Willardтs, which claimed to be the largest
hotel in the country, with room for 1200
guests, had been booked to capacity. Its
lobbies and sitting rooms were hot with
bodies. Gaslight hissed from golden
chandeliers, spilled over the doormenтs
uniforms of black and maroon. Many of the
revelers were women. In 1865, women were
admired for their stoutness and went
anywhere they could fit their hoop skirts.
The women at Willardтs wore garishly
colored dresses with enormous skirts and
resembled great inverted tulips. The men
were in swallowtail coats.
Outside it was almost spring. The
forsythia bloomed, dusting the city with
yellow. Weeds leapt up in the public
parks; the roads melted to mud. Pigs
roamed like dogs about the city, and dead
cats by the dozens floated in the sewers
and perfumed the rooms of the White House
itself.
The Metropolitan Hotel contained an
especially rowdy group of celebrants from
Baltimore, who passed the night of April
13 toasting everything under the sun. They
resurrected on the morning of the 14th,
pale and spent, surrounded by broken glass
and sporting bruises they couldnтt
remember getting.
It was the last day of Lent. The war was
officially over, except for Joseph
Johnstonтs Confederate army and some
action out west. The citizens of
Washington, DC, still began each morning
