The rain stopped—Maggie was thankful for that at least—but the front windshield was starting to fog up, and so now Mark rolled down the driver’s-side window. They were going maybe twenty miles an hour.
“What are you doing?” said Maggie.
Gerome lifted his head, sniffed, then went back to sleep. He was too tired to bother with anything anymore. If only Maggie could feel fatigue like that, all her problems would be solved.
“I’m getting some fresh air. It’s too close in here.”
When Mark proposed, some eight years earlier, they’d been lying together on the couch in their first apartment in Georgetown. Mark had just finished his dissertation; Maggie would earn her DVM in the spring. It was winter and dark out. At midnight, when the snow started, they opened all the windows and climbed under a blanket in the living room. It was so cold they could see their breath, but they wanted to watch the snow fall and they wanted to inhale that crisp snowy air and the smells of the wood fires from the row houses down the way. Mark’s manner was twitchy and, after only a few minutes, he said it was too close where they were huddled together under the blanket. He’d gotten off the couch abruptly and disappeared into the bedroom. For a moment Maggie feared he’d lost interest in her. When he reappeared several minutes later, a small velvet box in his hands, she understood. Her fears disappeared completely. She wondered now if he ever thought about that night or if it was a memory she alone kept alive.
“Why does it matter that I’ve got a window down?” said Mark.
Maggie stared out the front windshield.
“Gerome isn’t bothered. So what’s your problem?”
“Never mind,” said Maggie. “I don’t even care.” She knew—really, truly she did—that it was silly to be scared of an open window. If they were vulnerable, they were vulnerable. And if they were safe, they were safe. One window up or down wouldn’t change anything.
“I know what it is,” said Mark. He was cranky, a sign of exhaustion. “Yep. I know what it is.” He knocked on the steering wheel with an open hand as though he’d come to some unforeseen and therefore grand realization. Maggie sighed.
“It’s nothing,” she said. “I’m tired. That’s all. It’s humid with the window down. But I don’t care. Really.”
“You know what your problem is?” Mark said.
To be asleep, to be blissfully lifted away from this moment, this night, that’s all Maggie wanted.
“Your problem is that you think the boogeyman is lurking,” he said.
She rubbed at her neck, at the place where that hideous bruise had been. She closed her eyes, and there was the coed, prostrate, her chin angled to that ill-fated degree, her wet hair pressed against the base of the toilet. Was it wet from the struggle? Or had she been showering when the man found her? At so many times of the day, we expose ourselves to chance.
“And do you know what your problem is?” she asked at last.
“My problem?” Mark snorted. “I’d love to know. Yes. Fire away. Let’s hear it.”
“You pretend it doesn’t exist.”
“That what doesn’t exist?”
“Evil.”
Mark snorted again, and Maggie felt suddenly sorry for him. This man, this husband of hers, was completely unaware of the complexities of the human brain. She felt sorry for all men, really—for all those penises just getting in the way of real insight. They lacked imagination; they believed only what they already knew.
Mark picked up his speed, though the road was no less narrow or unfamiliar than before. Maggie grabbed the inside handle of the passenger-side door. She did it for effect, but—if Mark even noticed—the gesture had an opposite outcome than the one she desired. He sped up.
“You’re going too fast,” she said. She gripped the door more tightly.
As they rounded the next turn, an inside corner that hugged the mountain’s increasing height, Mark drifted across the yellow line.
“You’re not paying attention,” she said.
“I’m fine.”
“Just slow down.”
“There’s no one else around.” He picked up his speed even more, and a branch overhead, thick with wet green leaves, fell onto the hood of the car, then whipped against the windshield. Their vision was momentarily obscured.
Maggie put a hand on the dashboard as if to steady the entire car.
Mark hit the brakes and the branch flew away.
He pressed the gas again, now clutching at the steering wheel and leaning more forward in his seat.
As they rounded an outside corner, Maggie looked out and down, one hand still on the dashboard, the other holding on to the door. To her right, the edge of the mountain seemed to plunge itself into a steep cosmic darkness. She closed her eyes.
At Foster Beach last winter, a woman—alone, late at night—had driven her sedan off the seawall, plunging ten feet before cracking the ice and sinking into the subzero water. In the car, when the divers, many hours later, were able to salvage what was left, they found the woman’s body of course. But in the trunk they also discovered two Mason jars, each filled with the fetus of a baby and a single plastic rose. Maggie had tried to imagine the life of the person, the woman, who might have placed her own babies in those Mason jars before driving off the seawall. What desperation that woman must have felt. What unmatched and severe loneliness and isolation.
“Please,” Maggie said. She touched Mark’s arm. “It’s not safe. Just slow down.”
“True fact,” he said. There was something diabolic to the way his right cheek was positioned on his face. “Did you know that when the weatherman says there’s a twenty percent chance of rain, he doesn’t mean there’s an eighty percent chance it won’t? He means twenty percent of a specified region will absolutely feel rainfall. Did you know that? There’s no chance to it at all except which area it will be.”
Maggie wanted to slap him. If he hadn’t been driving, it’s possible she might very well have done it. He opened his mouth to say more, but just as he did—just as he licked his lips, took a breath in, and opened his mouth—a bright light appeared suddenly behind them.
“Fuck,” Mark said. He flipped the rearview mirror so the light was out of his eyes. “Where the fuck did that come from?”
Maggie turned in her seat. Behind them—barreling toward them at great speed—was a large truck. There was a row of lights above the windshield, another on each of the side-view mirrors, and two more closer together just above the bumper. It looked like the face of a large black spider rapidly encroaching. Back on the highway, Maggie would have paid money for the camaraderie of another car. But here, where they were, for all intents and purposes essentially lost, the last thing she wanted was company.
“Who does that?” Maggie said. “Why are they so close to us?”
Mark looked into the rearview, then raised his hand to shield his eyes or maybe to get a better view. “Are those hunting lights?”
“Stunning deer,” she said. “It makes me sick.”
“Do they want to go around?” he said. “I can’t tell. I can’t just pull over.” He was still shielding his eyes from the light.
The truck swerved into the other lane, as if to pass, but then swerved back behind them.
“Are they drunk?” Mark asked.
“This doesn’t feel right,” she said. “Did you just speed up?” She turned forward in her seat and again clutched at the door.
They drove on, the truck no fewer than twenty feet behind them.
“I don’t like this,” she said.
“He’s not giving me a choice,” he said. “He’s right on my ass.”
There was no place to turn, no strip of grass to pull onto. There was simply the mountain wall to the left, the mountain edge to the right and, between, the meager two-lane blacktop.
The truck flashed its lights.
“If I slow down,” Mark said, “he’ll ram right into us.”
Maggie bit at her lips. What kind of people would be out on a night like this, at an hour like this, after a storm like the one they’d driven through? What kind of people—other than Mark and Maggie, who were stranded, displaced, without other options—would voluntarily be out on the road rather than home tucked in bed? There was only one answer to that question: people who were up to no good. Perhaps it was one of their bumper stickers—idiotic, liberal bumper stickers: PRO-CHOICE, NEUTER/SPAY, YES WE CAN. In a place like this, their car practically shouted, I am other. I am other. I am other. She could have kicked herself for applying those stickers to begin with. Why did a person need to advertise her views every single place she went?
“Oh god. Oh god,” she said.
From behind, another brighter beam now appeared, not from an additional car but from atop the row of lights above the truck’s windshield—a sort of high-intensity spotlight.
“Mark!” said Maggie. She covered her eyes. The light was blinding. “Can you see?”
“How much farther?” said Mark. “Do you think we’re close?”
Maggie hunched over in her seat in order to block as much of the glare as possible. There were black circles in her vision, as when a child she once ventured a forbidden glance at the sun during an eclipse. She cupped a hand over her phone and looked down. The screen was darker now. It wasn’t just her vision. The battery was dying.
“If we’re where I think we are, then it should be—” The screen darkened more; she could barely see the map. She sat up slightly and looked out the window. Like a gift, like a tiny little present forgotten during a Christmas celebration but remembered as the tree is being dismantled and the ornaments put away, there was a sign on Maggie’s side of the road. She had looked up and out at just the right moment, and the headlights of their car—or, who knows? Maybe it was the truck’s searchlight behind them—had shone brightly and squarely upon it.
“There!” Maggie said. She pointed and her finger hit the window. “I saw it,” she said. “I saw the sign. Holidays Inn. It’s just ahead.” She was dizzy with relief, giddy with excitement. She’d seen the sign. She’d seen it!
The truck behind them revved its engine. Maggie, her heartbeat racing, her eyes strained small and tight, turned in her seat to look, but the headlights veered suddenly to the right. She watched as the lights moved eastward and down, down, down into the woodland until its beams were too small to register or the trees too dense to reveal.
It was quiet and dark, and they were again alone.
Mark massaged his eyes. “Jesus,” he said. “I thought I’d go blind. Which way now?”
“Was there even a road back there?” said Maggie, still staring into the blackness behind them. “I didn’t see a road back there.”
“Who cares?” said Mark. “Just tell me where to go now.”
“Straight for half a mile,” she said. “That’s what the sign said.”
She turned forward in her seat, her hand mechanically covering her heart. She waited.
Sure enough, in less than half a mile, the tree cover broke, and they found themselves at last at a four-way intersection. The traffic light overhead was out, but it was a real-live intersection with a real-live traffic light.
Maggie let out a deep breath.
The sky overhead—mercifully without rain—was a deep shiny purple. To the left was a dark two-story building and a small parking lot. To the right was a series of smaller dark buildings. Straight ahead, the road appeared to dead end into a cul-de-sac. There were no lights anywhere, just the limited luminosity of the cloud-covered moon. They were on top of a mountain, one that had been shaved bald and poured with concrete.
“So where’s the hotel?” Mark said.
Maggie looked down at her phone. The screen flickered, then went black. “It’s dead,” she said.
“But the sign said half a mile? Straight ahead?”
“I’m sure of it,” said Maggie, and she was.
“Maybe it’s a little farther.”
“Maybe,” she said.
Mark drove slowly through the intersection. Rain puddles—pshhh pshhh pshhh—splashed gracefully under their tires. But what Maggie had guessed was right: it was just a large cul-de-sac on the other side.
“Is this a power plant?” Mark said. He parked the car halfway around the circle. The headlights shone onto a chain-link fence. Behind the fence was yet another building, this one low and long and also dark. “I think it’s some kind of power plant,” he said.
“Just keep going,” she said. “Go around the circle one more time. But go slowly so I can get a look at all these buildings.”
Mark put the car in gear and started to creep in the direction of the intersection.
“Oh my god,” she said.
“What?”
Maggie couldn’t believe it. It was so obvious.
“What?”
“That,” she said. She pointed at the two-story building. “That’s the hotel.”
Mark shook his head. “No,” he said. “It’s dark.”
“Exactly,” she said. How had it taken her so long to put it all together? “There’s no power.”
“But all the hotels have power.”
“All the other hotels have generators.”
“But Gwen made a reservation,” said Mark. “You said so.”
Poor Mark. He wasn’t catching on. But to Maggie, it made terrific and immediate sense. She nearly wanted to laugh. Gwen had made them a reservation online, at the only hotel with a vacancy. And it was the only hotel with a vacancy because the website wasn’t communicating with the hotel. Because the hotel didn’t have power. Of course. And when Gwen tried calling, no one had answered. The phone lines were probably down too. Of course, of course. Oh, what idiots they’d all been!
“Pull in,” said Maggie. “Let’s see what the deal is.”
“But we can’t stay here.”
“Just pull in and let me see.”
Mark inched the car into the parking lot. There were ten or so cars parked side by side. He pulled up to the entrance, which was lit up by a few paper bags with tea candles inside them. How had Maggie not noticed these when they’d driven by the first time?
She opened the passenger door. The air felt swampy. “Just wait here, okay?”
“But if they don’t have power, then they don’t have—”
She didn’t bother letting him finish. She was ready to be out of the car, ready to be stationary for a few hours. She needed to lie down and sleep safely behind a locked door. Her body demanded a break from the world. It was nearly four in the morning. Did it matter that there wasn’t power? Not for a minute.
Inside, the lobby was muggy, humid—close, thought Maggie—and the front desk was lined with more tea candles. The room had a homey glimmer about it, but there was no one actually manning the desk.
Maggie stepped closer; her armpits were damp. She was aware of a slight funk drifting up from her shirt. Somewhere behind the desk, in a back room, there was music playing, something soothing and familiar. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it. She stepped closer still and saw that, on the counter, there was a little silver bell on top of a small sliver of paper. Ring me, it said.
Hesitantly, Maggie held out her hand. She’d seen little bells like this before, but she’d never actually had to ring one. They’d never been on the road this late, and there’d never been a time when any lobby had been totally deserted.
She was nervous, but she was also determined. She believed she was mere moments away from lying in a bed, mere moments away from sleep.
She brushed the bell once with her ring finger.
“You don’t need to do that,” a woman’s voice said.
Maggie jumped a little.
“I’m right here,” the voice said.
Maggie looked around, but still she didn’t see anyone.
“I see you,” it said. “Just give me one second, please.”
The voice was coming, Maggie realized, from some place low behind the front desk. She leaned over to look.
There, sitting cross-legged on the floor, was a very small woman. Her arms, from wrist to elbow, were lit up with glowing plastic bracelets. Around her neck was a clunky glowing necklace. She appeared to be going through the open cabinet in front of her.
Maggie retreated to her own side of the counter. “Sure,” Maggie said. “Take your time.”
The song from the back room was an instrumental version of something that Maggie usually associated with lyrics. What was it? It was organ-heavy, maybe even a bit ritzy, out of place for a secluded hotel in West Virginia. Was it “Spanish Harlem”? Was she making that up? It sounded like “Spanish Harlem,” or at least a version she’d once heard at the Green Mill back in Chicago. She turned her head to the side and angled her ear toward the music. She listened.
It was another minute before the woman on the other side of the counter finally stood, during which time Maggie was able to see that the lobby—which she’d already gauged as quite large—was even larger than she’d first understood. And now, Maggie’s eyes adjusting, she began to make out little glow sticks, similar to the ones the woman was wearing, tied, for light, to various lamps and fixtures all around the room. In the planter at the entrance, she now saw, someone had stuck several dozen of them decoratively around a fern.
“You got to replace them every hour is the thing.”
Maggie jumped again, but only slightly.
Even standing, the woman was not much taller than the counter. She gestured toward the fern. “Pretty much I finish getting them lit up and they lose their light and I have to do it all over again. Passes the time, though.”
“The glow sticks?” asked Maggie.
“We been like this for three days.”
“Like this?”
“No power.”
“For three days?” said Maggie. They’d only heard about the storms that afternoon.
“Tornado number one took out the power lines and the phone lines. We were first in line for help, but then the real cities got hit by the second storm and, you know, they’re cities, so our dumb-fuck governor redirected the assistance. More people equals more need.” The woman held up a small neon bag. “You know how they work?”
Maggie shook her head.
The woman tore open the bag and pulled out three dim sticks. She handed one to Maggie. “Bend that till it clicks.”
Maggie looked down at the little piece of plastic in her hand. “Like this?” she asked.
“Yep, but keep going until—” The glow stick clicked and came instantly to life in Maggie’s hands. “And voilà,” said the woman. “You’re a natural.”
Maggie smiled.
“You here for a room?” the woman said.
Maggie explained that she was traveling with her husband and their dog, that her mother-in-law had made a reservation online, that the website had indicated a vacancy, and that they’d in fact already paid.
During Maggie’s short speech, the woman nodded, every once in a while glancing in the direction of the back room.
“So here’s the deal,” she said when Maggie was finished. “We got rooms. We got clean towels and clean sheets and cold running water. We got glow sticks. But that’s all we got. We do not have air-conditioning. We do not have hot water. Repeat: No air-conditioning. No hot water.”
Maggie started to speak, but the woman stopped her.
“And with regard to payment, you’ll have to let me take a carbon of your credit card. When we get our power back, we’ll weed through the online payments and the in-person payments. But I can’t give you a room without the carbon.”
Maggie knew the air-conditioning was going to be a problem for Mark, but she also knew he was too tired to keep driving. They both were. He wouldn’t like this business of the credit card—and practically he would have been right not to—but she could get it taken care of now, before he came in, and he’d never have to know about it.
“What about our dog?” said Maggie. “You’re okay with a dog?”
“The more the merrier,” said the woman.
“Then we have a deal,” said Maggie. “I’d like a room.”