The Fifth Room

by A J Rushby

  I’m forced to look up again when he reaches the table, telling myself it would be strange not to. Our eyes lock, then slide away as we both know they must. Before Marcus can even introduce him, he’s introducing himself, shaking hands and exchanging names with Lauren. With Andrew. It’s so … him. So self-assured. Even now, in this situation, he’s confident. Himself. It’s why I fell for him in the first place. He was always everything I wasn’t.

  Finally it’s my turn.

  ‘Miri,’ I say, as he takes my hand.

  When his palm connects with my sweaty one, it’s all I can do not to gasp. How can they not know? They must know. The Society doesn’t miss things like this. Overlook things.

  ‘Steen,’ he says, his eyes meeting mine coldly, belying his friendly tone.

  If I wanted an answer as to whether he was still angry with me, I just got it.

  He sits down next to Marcus as the waiter places a plate in front of him.

  ‘Ah, the famous Sachertorte.’ Marcus nods at the waiter. ‘Thank you. Sachertorte is their specialty,’ he tells us.

  Steen digs in as we all look on. ‘Vienna, huh?’ he says, after finishing his first bite. ‘Look at us.’

  His eyes meet mine once more on the word ‘us’ and I blink. I’d spent the past four months telling myself there was no more ‘us’. Running away to the other side of the world to a different country. Crying myself to sleep night after night. It had taken everything within me to force myself to stop. To move on. But all my hard work has been for nothing. Because, with that one word, I know it.

  As much as I don’t want to, I still love him.

  I don’t look at Steen again, keeping my eye on the red marble of the café tabletop. I try to count the veins in the marble—to concentrate on something, anything, that will stop me from giving our previous relationship away.

  ‘Right, that’s everyone, then,’ Marcus says.

  Now I look up. ‘But there are only four of us,’ I say, the words spilling out of my mouth before I can think twice.

  ‘Yes. As it happens, there’s been no fifth person selected this round.’

  The four of us glance at each other around the table, all thinking the same thing—our applications had said there would be five of us.

  ‘As you know, the standard is always very high,’ Marcus continues.

  There are nods from the other students. But I keep still. I’m not sure why, but I don’t believe him. What’s really going on? Did someone drop out? Change their mind? I look over at Steen, wondering what he’s thinking, but he doesn’t meet my gaze. He takes another bite of cake and taps his cake fork against his plate.

  ‘You’ve got the right idea.’ Marcus nods at Steen, happy someone’s eating. ‘Now, in a few moments I’ll take you to your hotel. We’ve booked a boardroom there where we’ll have time to go over the finer details. Until then, eat up. You’ll need your energy.’

  I think he’s joking, but after a moment or two he gestures towards our plates again and I see he’s serious. ‘Steen,’ he says. ‘Another piece of Sachertorte?’

  Steen shrugs. ‘I wouldn’t say no.’

  ‘Let’s go crazy.’ Marcus signals for the waiter. ‘A second piece of Sachertorte it is.’

  And me? Well, I pick up my cake fork and spear my intertwined lovers in two.

  After we’ve eaten, Marcus pays the bill and grabs two taxis. We’re transported to a hotel where our suitcases are taken from us. We’re given room cards and then led to a boardroom with a long oval table.

  When we’re all seated, Marcus stands at the head of the table. ‘It’s almost midday. We have a booking for dinner upstairs tonight at eight, but before then, we’ve got a lot to cover.’

  Work. Work is good. The cake is sitting like a lump in my stomach and I feel like I could happily never eat again. The last thing I want to think about is dinner. Or socialising. I stare at the wooden table and try not to think about either. If I look at any of the others, I might just be sick. I’ve worked myself into such a state. Research. Think only about the research.

  Marcus spends some time taking us through things we already know, but most likely have to be spelled out once more for protocol’s sake. That we are all members of the Society. That we are welcome at any stage of our careers to put in an application to self-experiment, or choose not to self-experiment at all and simply facilitate others’ self-experimentation. That self-experimentation is funded by the Society. That candidates selected for self-experimentation will be taken to a secret location for two weeks in order to self-experiment. That there is a prize of $500,000 each year to be awarded for the best research within each research group of youth, mid-career and established, as decided upon by the Society. That if we are selected and decide to go ahead with our self-experimentation we will pay five per cent of our income over a certain threshold to the Society for the rest of our lives. And that we must be available to facilitate experimentation in our chosen specialty when called upon by the Society to do so.

  As Marcus speaks, I only half listen, my mind elsewhere, taken back to the last time I saw Steen, outside the mail centre.

  As I’d run from him that night, I’d prayed the Society hadn’t seen us. That there hadn’t been a security camera pointed in our direction. That no one had been watching. We couldn’t risk being found out, or seen, or anything like this ever happening again.

  Logically, I knew my running away didn’t completely make sense. But I didn’t care. For me, it was too close a scrape. The Society meant everything to me. Everything. My entire being was wrapped up in it. And now I was not an anonymous member, which was how things were meant to be. Running meant that I could be again.

  Steen had tried to track me down. He’d hassled Emily for weeks until he believed her when she said she didn’t know where I was. He’d called my father repeatedly, even turned up at the college where he taught. My dad had rung me. ‘He seems like a nice boy who cares about you a lot, so I’m guessing your leaving is to do with something else,’ he’d said, his words loaded with meaning. This was one of the biggest indicators I’d had that he knew about the Society, though exactly how much he knew I wasn’t sure.

  I look over at Steen, sitting across the table from me, and I’m suddenly hesitant. How can we both be here? The Society must know about our past.

  ‘That’s it, then. We’re ready to begin.’ I jolt as a large pile of paperwork is slapped down on the table in front of me. Reams of the stuff. I look up at Marcus, who’s placed it there. ‘You didn’t think this would be all fun and cake, did you?’ He chuckles, seeing my expression.

  I take a second look at him. He sounds jovial, but he’s sweating, beads of perspiration clinging to his brow. And yet it’s cold in here. My gut lurches, full of cake, and I swallow hard. What is he worried about? Us? We all seem relatively harmless.

  My gaze shifts to meet Lauren’s for a split second.

  Well, most of us.

  Marcus moves off around the table towards Lauren, giving her a pile of paperwork as well. As I watch him go, I can feel Steen’s eyes on me.

  I already have a headache and we haven’t even begun yet.

  My eyes flicker open in the dim light of a hotel room. I push myself up onto my elbows on top of the bed, confused. I don’t remember getting to my room, but I obviously must have somehow.

  I look around me, my head really throbbing now. My ultra-modern surroundings aren’t exactly soothing. Everything is a stark white, from the square chair in the corner to the curtains, the small desk, the walls, the art, the f loor. Everything. I wonder for a moment if something’s gone wrong and I’ve been institutionalised.

  The TV is on with the sound turned down low and to my left there’s a packet of Tylenol and a glass of water. Looking at them, I vaguely remember taking two pills and slinking into bed for a quick nap before dinner after those hours and hours of paperwork we’d all read through. All those hours and hours of paperwork we’d read through in that ever-shrinking room trying to
pretend Steen wasn’t breathing the same air as me.

  No wonder I ended up with a headache of epic proportions.

  I turn my head in the other direction and spy the clock radio. It’s just past seven o’clock. I knew it had taken a long time to go through all those forms, but I didn’t know it was this late. I wonder how long I slept for.

  I sit up properly with a groan and rub my temples. Despite the Tylenol my headache’s worse, not better. But I remember we’re supposed to meet upstairs in the bar at eight, so I get up, locate some Advil in my toiletry bag and gulp that down as well. Then I get in the white-tiled shower in the hope that might help my head along. I’ve just dried off with a towel (white—surprise!) and thrown on some all-black clothes to make a statement when the phone rings.

  ‘Hello?’ I say.

  ‘Ms Eastman, a letter is waiting for you at Reception,’ a man’s voice tells me.

  ‘Okay, thanks. I’ll be right down,’ I reply. It must be something from Marcus. I put the phone down, straighten my shoulders and take a deep breath, willing my headache away.

  It doesn’t work.

  With a sigh, I grab my room key, slip on some shoes and head for the door.

  The moment I begin to pull it open, someone pushes it hard from the other side.

  ‘What the …?’ I jump back as the person enters my room, closing the door again.

  It’s Steen.

  ‘You can’t be here.’ I’m already trying to open the door again so I can push him back out into the hallway. ‘Go! Now!’

  ‘No,’ he answers, his back pressed f lat against the door, keeping it closed. ‘I’m not going anywhere. And neither are you this time.’ His jaw is hard, his eyes fierce. I can’t remember ever seeing him so angry.

  I step back. I think I’m going to vomit as my head begins to throb even harder, but I take another deep breath, will the feeling away and stare him straight in the eye. ‘You need to go. We’ll be seen.’

  ‘And? We’re allowed to be seen together now. They just made us eat cake. Sat us around a boardroom table. Remember?’

  The weird thing is, I don’t really remember this. This headache is making everything seem like a blur. I try to focus. ‘The Society must know. They have to know about us. They don’t miss things like this.’

  ‘Maybe so, but it doesn’t look like they care.’

  ‘Which is a problem. Because you can bet Lauren would care if she knew. Andrew too.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Come on. We know each other. We were in a relationship.’

  ‘Were being the operative word.’

  I can see we’re not going to get anywhere with this. ‘I take it that it was you and there’s no letter downstairs,’ I finally say.

  He gives me a look.

  ‘What do you want, Steen?’

  He takes this as his cue, moving around me further into the room. ‘What do I want?’ he says, pivoting on the white polished concrete floor. ‘What do I want? For fandens da også!’ he swears in Danish, something he does when he’s at the edge, and I feel this little pang of remembrance. It used to make it so hard to keep arguing with him when he did that. It was just too funny. Especially after I knew what all the words meant. The Danish really aren’t the best at swearing—everything’s very clean. It’s all about the devil and hell.

  ‘What do you think?’ he continues. ‘I want some answers. That’s what I want. How could you just go like that? How could you leave without saying anything?’ He steps forward now, closer to me. ‘Why didn’t you talk to me before you left?’

  I shake my head. ‘Because if I had, you would have talked me out of leaving. You know you would have.’

  He doesn’t deny this.

  ‘I left because I was scared I’d implicate you. I didn’t want to take you down with me. It was my fault. All mine. I was late to pick up my mail. I shouldn’t have gone, but I did. I left for you.’

  Steen’s eyes stare me down. ‘No. Oh, no. You left for you.’

  ‘I left for us.’

  ‘That.’ He points a finger at my chest now and it shakes as it hovers above me. ‘Is the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever said. You know that, don’t you?’

  I try to keep my composure as I look up at his familiar features, but I can’t. My face crumples. ‘It had to be that way.’ The bile rises up my throat once more and I gulp. ‘I couldn’t take the risk. You know we couldn’t get as far without the Society.’

  He looks at me for a very long time before he answers. ‘I guess that all depends on where you want to be, doesn’t it?’ All the anger is gone out of his face now and he just looks … tired. He takes a few steps away from me and fixes his gaze on the strange scribbled art upon the hotel wall. After a while, he sighs. ‘You can’t beat her, Miri. Research isn’t a sprint. It’s a marathon.’

  We both know who he’s talking about, even though he hasn’t said her name—my mother. I bring my hands up to rub my temples again, remembering the first time we’d argued about this. It had been our first real argument. I’d obviously mentioned my mother’s work one too many times and Steen had called me on it. He’d told me I was obsessed with my mother’s memory and career and that if I wasn’t careful it would cloud my judgment and choices. He also pointed out that I rarely mentioned my father and that he thought I didn’t give him enough credit—the man who had raised me, schooled me, encouraged me. I’d fought back hard. This wasn’t and isn’t true. I love my dad. It’s only that we’re so different when it comes to ambition. I want everything yesterday, while he’s content to spend a day teaching and to then come home and continue planning his next fishing trip in meticulous detail. I’ll never be like that—able to wind down. Oh, but Dad had tried to make me slow down. He’d held me back whenever he was able. I could have entered pre-med at fifteen at any college I’d wanted, but he wouldn’t let me, saying I wasn’t mature enough—that I needed to develop other interests. Round myself out. Give myself time. Stay with people my own age.

  Steen’s and my eyes remain locked, saying everything that we can’t find the words for. ‘I—’ I eventually begin, but then it comes out of nowhere.

  I turn and run for the bathroom, vomiting into the sink.

  Steen follows me into the bathroom as I’m retching for a second time and I wave him away with one hand. Just go, I think. Leave me in peace with my doubts and my cake vomit.

  But I can’t say anything or wave him away as before because I’m heaving again, my hands gripping the cold edge of the long white sink.

  When I look up I see his hand just above my back, unwilling to touch me. It takes everything I have left in me not to start crying then.

  ‘I think it was that room,’ he says gruffly, as I clean myself up. ‘It was stuffy. And all that reading. I felt sick before as well.’

  ‘So you should have after two pieces of cake.’

  He shrugs. ‘I’m in Vienna. He offered. What was I supposed to do?’ He crosses his arms. He’s not going to let me lighten the mood.

  It’s this quick back and forth that hurts more than any look he’s given me today, or anything he’s said—any accusation. The problem is, as I stand up next to him, he’s beside me. Right beside me like he used to be—real and warm and … present. I want to reach out and pull him closer to me. To smooth out the creases in his shirt like I once did. To take his glasses off. To run my hand through his hair. He never cared if I messed it up. So I did. Often. But I can’t do any of these things. I lost that right when I turned and ran away from him at the mail centre.

  I never would have thought it was possible to feel lonely with Steen beside me. But now I see it’s more than possible.

  It’s my new reality.

  Steen leaves and I sit on my bed, my head in my hands. When I finally look up again, I spy my phone sitting on the bench under the TV.

  What I’d give to call Emily right now.

  I’d love nothing more than to call her and talk through all this. But of course I can’t. I can�
�t tell her why I’m here. Why Steen’s here. What we’re doing.

  Emily would know exactly what to say to talk me down from this ledge. She always does. We might be insanely different, but we’ve always had this uncanny understanding of what the other person needs at any given moment.

  We’d both been pretty surprised when we found out we’d been paired to share a room on campus. We seemed like polar opposites, but as it turned out, we had a lot more in common than I’d thought. Emily was almost as crazily driven as I was. She existed on four hours sleep per night and had done since she was a baby. Her father was an investigative reporter, her mother was a war correspondent, and Emily had been brought up mainly by her grandmother, a retired surgeon. She was the perfect storm of intelligence—both artistic and scientific. She was also like my dad in a lot of ways—she really believed that there was a lot more to life than work.

  ‘The problem with people like us,’ she told me within the first week of meeting me, ‘is that the temptation is always there to turn full freak. You know what I mean. We’re surrounded by them all the time.’ She’d come over to clutch at my arms then, as if she was truly frightened. ‘We’ve got to stay grounded. Promise me you’ll try.’

  ‘Full freak? What are you going on about?’ I couldn’t help but laugh at her as I’d gathered my laundry in our shared room. ‘What do you mean “we’re surrounded by them all the time”? You’re not going to start wearing a tinfoil hat, are you?’

  She’d batted my arm at the tinfoil hat comment. ‘You don’t see them? They’re all pasty white from being in the library twenty hours per day and squinty from thinking too hard about Worthy Scientific Things. They’re the ones that scuttle away if you try to actually have a conversation with them. And I’m sorry, but I’m not letting any roommate of mine turn full freak.’

  Emily had then attempted to prove her point to me by dragging me out of our room and into the corridor. When she saw a group of about five fellow students, she stopped short.

  ‘They all look so … serious,’ she’d whispered. ‘I swear it’s all those flashcards from birth their parents pushed on them. It ruins the brain. Here, I’ll prove it to you.’ She’d turned to me then, a wicked smile upon her face, ‘I bet you five bucks they all play the violin and piano.’