by Andrew Hart
I forced an unsteady smile and told my inner voice to shut up for once.
“It’s good to see you,” I said, meaning it.
Simon had taken my luggage.
“I can manage,” I protested, but he waved me off.
“I’ve got it,” he said. “Come on. I’ll show you your room.”
“Don’t be long,” said Melissa, more to him than me. “I’m adding the ice to the drinks. Gretchen and Marcus are parched!”
I opened my mouth to say something but couldn’t find the words. As she bustled off, turning that beatific smile of hers on me like a lighthouse scanning the horizon for whoever needed it most, I lowered my gaze to the tiled floor and followed Simon.
The foyer was cool and dim, with a hanging tapestry and a little central table, upon which sat an ancient black rotary telephone with a braided, cloth-wrapped cord.
“Our one link to civilization,” said Simon, grinning.
This was one of the older parts of the house, I assumed, and the stairway in the tower—a tight stone spiral—seemed to come from the same era. It felt cool and massive. When I saw stonework on Charlotte houses, it was always obviously a shell tacked up around the house for old-timey decoration. This, by contrast, was structural and genuinely, unpretentiously ancient. On the next floor up, however, everything changed, opening up, most of the house’s antiquity vanishing, the angles getting crisper, more precise, the space airier and glowing with large modern windows. The next flight of stairs was polished pine in a black-steel frame that rang with each step.
“Just one more floor,” said Simon, wheezing slightly. “What do you have in here, the kitchen sink?”
“Sorry,” I said. “Never been a very good packer.”
“It’s fine,” he said, turning down a hallway with a lush blue carpet runner down the center. “Melissa and I are in the east wing. Master suite. Here you go. All yours.”
He unlatched the door with the heavy, old-fashioned key that had been left in the lock and pushed the door open, stepping aside so I got the full effect as I strode in.
It was a beautiful, simple room. There was a sink with a mirror in an alcove and a great rustic bed heaped with a cloudlike white duvet, a single wardrobe, and a bedside cabinet of polished close-grained wood, warm to the touch. Otherwise, it was just white plaster walls save for the one opposite the door, which was the raw amber stone I had seen outside, and a great arched window that dominated the chamber and white linen drapes. It looked out over the grounds, over treetops, and down the coast to the bright sea and the open sky.
“Wow,” I said.
I really had to stop saying that. It made me sound like a teenager.
“Right?” said Simon. “Thought you’d like it. Bathroom’s down the hall. That door there. You need to rest or something, or can we expect you downstairs for fog cutters?”
He gave me an imploring smile and looked, for a moment, so genuinely happy to see me that I forgot all my previous anxiety.
“Give me ten minutes to change,” I said.
Actually it was going to be more like fifteen. I checked my phone, even though Simon had said I wouldn’t get a signal, and saw he was right. But I had told Chad that I would text him when we arrived, so I sat on the end of the bed and tapped my way through the phone’s settings menu and hunted for a Wi-Fi signal, but there was nothing.
Will have to wait till you’re back in civilization, I told myself. No biggie.
As much as I loved the simplicity of the room, built as it was around its ancient view, I found myself a little disappointed that I was sharing a bathroom, something I had been hoping to get a break from. I barely saw Becky, my roommate in Charlotte, because we kept such different hours, but it was a mark of my relative poverty that I had to deal with someone else’s smear of toothpaste on the sink and her pubes on the toilet seat, like I was trapped in an endless adolescence that I couldn’t afford to escape. A trip overseas, I had thought, meant a hotel room to myself. Total privacy. And a bathroom I could call my own.
Some people like to imagine the other guests who have been in the hotel room they are staying in before—their histories, the things that brought them there, and what they were up to before checking out. Not me. I liked to pretend a hotel room has just been built, that I was the first person ever to sleep in its crisp linens and shower in its spotless bathroom. I don’t like sharing my space, even with people I know. Especially, in fact. So when I checked on the bathroom and found it clean and dry, as if it hadn’t been used for weeks, I took the opportunity to grab a much-needed shower and was able to sustain the illusion that no one else had used it yet.
It had to be quick, and not just because I had drinks waiting. The water, which began so piping hot that I was instantly pink across my breasts and shoulders, cooled fast. I got out before it was stone cold, but I couldn’t help wondering how we were going to manage with seven of us using the same supply.
Maybe there are separate cisterns, I hoped, or some sort of heater that hasn’t been switched on yet.
I remembered Simon’s throwaway remark about the lack of cell phone service and wondered what other comforts I might have to do without.
But if I was honest, the shower had been a stalling tactic. Marcus was downstairs. So was “Gretchen,” probably slopping fog cutters from a fistful of beer steins while singing selections from Cabaret. I needed a moment to prepare myself.
Marcus and I dated for a little over three years and had known each other for eight. We’d both been at college in Chapel Hill, where I was edging cautiously through a biology premed with a side order of English while he was doing history and secondary education. We’d met at a party, introduced by a theater major who knew us both a little and could have been sexually interested in either one of us. I think it was the weirdness of that encounter that drove us together. Marcus had been wearing a bizarre orange sweater and a pair of heavy-rimmed glasses, both of which I had teased him for, and he had responded by mocking my taste in music (I was going through a hair-metal phase, which I don’t talk about anymore). Marcus said he had an off-campus girlfriend at the time, and I was semi-interested in a guitarist who played in a jazz band, so we weren’t looking for anything other than someone to share the pretty miserable experience of a house party where the only people we knew either hadn’t showed up or were more interested in their other friends.
I should say that I’d also never been involved with a black guy before, and while I wasn’t against the idea, I’m sure it made me cautious. Him too, probably. Race used to make me wary, careful about the signals I sent out and the ones I thought I was getting, terrified of making assumptions or saying the wrong thing based on . . . God, I don’t know: Movies? Social media? Dumb stuff. Anyway, we spent half the night talking and both had way too many tequila shots, so much so, in fact, that if there had been a moment we might have gone home together, we had drunk right past it and wound up staggering off separately. In hindsight this had seemed like a godsend. We saw each other from time to time, but nothing happened between us till half a decade later, when we were, we decided, older, wiser, and free. If we’d gotten together that first night, we said sagely, things would have gotten messed up, and we would never have had a real relationship.
But then we’d messed that up too. It had just taken longer.
The breakup had come six months after our trip to Crete when we had fallen in with Melissa and Simon, Kristen and Brad. I sometimes wondered if the cracks had already been there then but we had chosen to ignore them. How else do you explain a young couple on a romantic vacation on a Greek island spending all their time with complete strangers? The trip was certainly a factor, even if I couldn’t put my finger on how.
And now they were all downstairs, fog cutters at the ready, waiting for me, along with a mysterious spare called Gretchen. For a second I looked at myself in the steamed-up bathroom window and wondered again why I had come.
But I had, and now that I was here, I was not just going to
endure it—I was going to enjoy myself. I turned from the bathroom mirror, put my glasses on, wrapped a towel around myself, and tripped barefoot back to my room, confident that the view through the great arched window would lift my spirits.
I didn’t get that far. I was unlocking my bedroom door when I heard footsteps on the stairs behind me and turned to find Marcus looking at me, frozen with indecision. He was wearing khakis and a white open-necked shirt, the sleeves rolled up, showing slim brown forearms. I’d always liked his arms. His hair was cut short, trimmed at the edges to a razor-sharp line. He had new slightly odd-looking glasses with ironically purple frames, and his feet were bare so that he looked quite unlike himself, or the version of him I had seen last. A bit hipper, maybe. The cool teacher. He had been waiting for me to go inside, hoping I wouldn’t see him. I felt it in his stillness, and the impression was confirmed as he tried to blunder his way out of it.
“Hey, stranger!” he said, a thoroughly un-Marcus thing to say. “I was just going to . . . is the bathroom free?”
“Hi, Marcus,” I said, clutching at my towel, terrified that it might shift. “Yes. It’s right there.”
“Right,” he said. “Cool. OK, then. What a great place, huh?”
“Yes,” I said, wishing I was somewhere—anywhere—else.
“Gonna be fun. Us all together again.”
“Yes.”
There was a fractional beat, just a breath longer than was comfortable.
“OK,” said Marcus. “Well, we’ll do the reunion thing when you’re dressed, yeah? Hugs and such.”
“Sure.”
“OK, then. I’ll see you in a few . . .”
I opened my door and slipped inside without looking back, closing it behind me and leaning against the wood, my heart racing.
The reunion thing.
Jesus. I didn’t know which of us had been more mortified. It was the suddenness of the thing. And the towel. Jesus, yes, the towel.
I mean, Marcus had seen me naked in the past, but . . .
And he might be remembering that now . . .
God. It was a mess. And what if he thought I had deliberately bumped into him like that, like it was supposed to be seductive?
I sat heavily onto the bed. It was soft, layered with the thick, fluffy duvet, and suddenly I wanted to slip out of the towel, burrow under the covers, and not come out till morning.
What a fool you are, I said to myself. You came back for him, and in thirty seconds it’s already clear that he’s embarrassed to see you, that he secretly hoped you wouldn’t show, and now he sees you’re here and trolling the hallways in a fucking towel for Christ’s sake, trying to lure him into your bed like some desperate divorcée who stakes out college bars . . .
Shut up.
Why? You know it’s true.
It wasn’t like that. None of it. I didn’t come here for him. I wasn’t trying to lure him anywhere. I was just taking a fucking shower . . .
He won’t believe that. That’s the one thing you know for sure. He doesn’t believe a word you say.
I got under the duvet and pulled it over my head.
Chapter Seven
I stare into the darkness, focusing my gaze on the shape between the cupboard and the door, but I am not even sure it is there or, if it is, that it was not there before. I feel like a child in bed, fixating on the shadow of a shirt on a hanger, trying to decide if it’s a monster.
“Hello?” I say. It takes me two attempts. The inside of my mouth is dry and my tongue sticks. I swallow, suddenly realizing how thirsty I am, and say it again, clearly this time. “Is there anyone there?”
It should be funny, I think, that movie cliché, but I don’t laugh. I listen hard, but there is no response. I think I can see the shape still, but it’s a mere craggy blackness against the fractional pallor of the wall. If it is a wall. What I think is a cupboard may not be. The door may not be a door. I can’t tell. It’s just too dark. The only thing I know for sure is that I’m chained to a ring in the wall beside a bed that is really just a mattress on a concrete block.
But I feel it. Something, nestled, squatting there like the nightmare demon in a painting, though this is not squatting. It is sitting in a chair, slumped forward. Unmoving. I’m almost sure.
And I’m also almost sure it wasn’t there before. My skin creeps, my heart races, and my eyes strain wide, afraid to blink and miss . . . what? The thing rising? Looming over me?
The sob breaks from me and I fight to stifle it.
“What do you want?” I gasp to the thing that might not be there.
Still no response, but now I’m sure I did not feel like this before. I was scared before. Confused and frightened by the chain and the darkness. But something has changed. I must have slept, and now things are different. Now I feel . . .
Watched.
I can’t see them, but there are eyes in the darkness. Perhaps. I can’t be sure, and the uncertainty is killing me. I want to get up and lean across, to touch, just to be sure. Because knowing would be better than this dreadful uncertainty. I can’t, of course, and not only because the chain won’t let me reach that far. I can’t move. My muscles have shut down, paralyzed by fear.
I have to know, I think again. Whatever is there is less frightening than not knowing.
And as the idea of this takes hold, I hear something that proves me wrong.
A breath. In and out. Almost a sigh. Coming from the corner by the door.
I stop breathing. I feel my heart tighten in my chest, as if, for a second, every cell in my body just ceases whatever it usually does. I am lifeless. Iron, like the ring in the wall against which my wrist chafes, or ice.
I am fear, and no other thought, feeling, or sensation registers.
I had thought that not being sure was the worst thing I could feel here in the dark, but someone is there, and knowing that is far, far worse.
Chapter Eight
“Oh my God! Did you fall asleep?” said Melissa.
“Sorry,” I said. I had slept for an hour and a half and now felt sluggish and stupid. I had dressed reluctantly and tiptoed down, half hoping everyone would be gone and I could let my humiliation leech out of my system slowly and alone.
“You missed the drinkies,” said Melissa.
At the foot of the stairs I had ducked away from the sound of raucous talking and laughter in what I took to be the living room and found her in a rustic but well-appointed kitchen next door, loading glassware into the dishwasher.
“Not to worry,” she said, giving me a sympathetic look. “There’ll be plenty more. Poor lamb, you must be exhausted.”
“I am, kind of,” I said.
“Tell you what,” said Melissa, taking charge. “Get your bikini on and we’ll spend the afternoon at the beach. Nice and easy. Then drinks and dinner, and you can get an early night.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Mel,” I said. “I’m pretty beat.”
“Nonsense. You’ve come all this way, and if you go back to bed now, you’ll never get your body on schedule. Gotta tough it out till sundown, and then you’ll be set for the rest of the week. Only way. Oh!” she exclaimed suddenly. “You haven’t met Gretchen! You’re gonna love her. Right this way, missy.”
She took my hand and led me in the direction of the voices. For a split second I considered pulling back, just tensing the muscles of my arm enough to send the message and stop her in her tracks so she’d know I didn’t want to go in. But then again I didn’t really want her to know. To tell you the truth, it was almost impossible not to want to please Melissa. She was the sun.
So I walked, and we went in and there they were, Simon in his short sleeves as before, a half-empty cocktail glass in his hand; Marcus smiling faintly from him to me, his eyes evasive, both hands clasped around a beer glass as if afraid he might drop it; and a girl. A woman, I should say, but she looked young, waifish, if pretty, a less confident version of Melissa. She was wearing a summer dress and chunky jewelry that made her look like
a college student, and her face was tanned, as if she had been out in the sun for several days already. I glanced at Marcus again but couldn’t read his attitude toward her.
“Gretchen, this is Jan,” said Melissa. “She used to be with Marcus, ages back, when we first met them. Now they’re just friends.”
I gaped at Melissa, who gave me a blank look as Gretchen awkwardly got to her feet and offered me a slender white hand.
“Hi,” she said. “I’m a friend of Mel and Simon.”
“Hi,” I said. Marcus was looking at Melissa with the same disbelief I was sure was painted all over my face.
“What?” asked Melissa, apparently genuinely confused.
“Nothing,” I said hurriedly, trying to move past it.
“There is,” said Melissa, taking in Marcus’s expression. “Oh, I’m sorry, was that a secret? Did I . . . ?”
“No,” Marcus and I said at once.
“Of course not,” Marcus added.
“I thought it was, you know,” said Melissa, “common knowledge or whatever.”
“It is!” I said, beaming manically.
“And you are still friends, right?” Melissa persisted.
“Absolutely!” said Marcus. “Great friends.”
“Always,” I agreed.
“We just don’t . . . ,” Marcus began, then looked panicky. “Not anymore. We’re just . . .”
“Friends,” I said, staring at him, horrified, wishing the floor would open and the earth would swallow us up. Gretchen gaped at us, eyes wide, smile fixed tight.
“OK,” said Melissa, shrugging the moment off as if it hadn’t happened and going right back to where she had been before. “So, beach, yeah? A little dip before dinner.”
“Won’t it be cold?” asked Gretchen, glad of the chance to change the subject.
“Apparently not,” said Simon, brandishing a guidebook and reading from it theatrically. “‘While the air cools in the fall, the sea retains most of its summer heat into November.’ Apparently we should expect the water to still be in the midseventies.”
