Hannah Pittard - Listen to Me

But then, just three weeks ago — out of nowhere and with no warning whatsoever — the police appeared. They showed up at the front door of the apartment with pictures of a body, a coed who lived just down the street. They presented them to Maggie. Why had they let her see them? She hadn’t understood then and still didn’t now. They also presented photos of a man, the one responsible for the coed. Was it the same man? they wanted to know. Was it the man who’d struck Maggie with the butt of a gun and left her for dead not two blocks from where she lived?

For several hours, they pored over the photographs together and sifted through the evidence. What they discovered was that it was not the same man. Maggie had been as disappointed and relieved as the police by this revelation. But the coed was someone she knew. Not as a friend, of course. Not even by name — at least not before the news coverage. But she’d known the girl’s dog, a Chihuahua mix called Ginger. She’d said hello countless times as they crossed paths on the sidewalk — Maggie heading toward the dog park, Ginger and the coed coming from.

By the time Mark got home from work on the night of the cops’ visit, the damage was done. The photos had already been taken out of the manila envelope, already placed one by one on the kitchen table in front of Maggie, who was sitting — when Mark walked in — across from the detectives, her hand to her mouth, unable and unwilling to look away.

The next day, Maggie indefinitely suspended sessions with her therapist. She cut back on hours at the veterinary clinic, giving many of her regular and favorite pets to her colleagues. It was her clinic, she reasoned, and she could do as she pleased. Mark had been trying so hard — those kisses, those hand squeezes — to be patient. But Maggie, freshly fanatic and disturbed beyond language at the pictures of the coed, dedicated herself anew to her sadness, to the Internet, to any story that might confirm her suspicions of the world, of the turbulent state of humanity.

Consequently, for the past three weeks, when Mark came home from work and found Maggie sitting at the kitchen table — the overhead lights turned off, the white hue of the computer screen illuminating her face — instead of taking her hand and shutting the laptop, he turned away and walked into any other room in the apartment than the one she was in.

What Mark didn’t understand — what the Enneagram did, however, and what her therapist might have if Maggie had been as forthcoming as expected — was that even if the Internet had been taken away, she’d still have had her imagination. Just then, for instance, looking at the champagne that the two of them had opened with such relish in honor of their anniversary, she couldn’t help also thinking of the homeless man taking off his gloves, going through the recycling, and discovering the bottle that would have broken upon impact — if she were to let Mark take it to the back, where he would dump the bin without any further consideration — into shards.

“I can do it,” said Maggie. “I can empty the bin by myself.”

“Fine.”

Mark started toward the front door.

“What are you doing?” she said.

“Going inside. Eating breakfast.”

“What about Gerome?”

Mark widened his eyes like he had no clue what she was talking about.

“He has to do something,” Maggie said. “Or we’ll be stopping in Gary.”

Mark threw up his hands, unintentionally yanking Gerome’s neck. “Why would it be Gary ?” he said. Gerome grunted. “Why wouldn’t it be Hyde Park? Or Indianapolis?”

“Give me his leash,” she said. “You’re hurting him.”

“If he doesn’t go now, then we’ll die in Gary? Is that what you’re imagining?”

In fact, that was what she was imagining. But she hated the way he made it sound. He made it sound so ridiculous, like it was a complete impossibility. And, yes, obviously it was incredibly unlikely that Gerome would suddenly have to go just as they were passing Gary and even more unlikely that they’d pull off at some abandoned exit. But if it did happen that way — if it did, which it technically could, because it wasn’t like they were talking about actually unfeasible things here (like time travel or pigs flying) — if it did happen, then Maggie would definitely be the one to walk him since Mark would be sulking and because Gerome never went to the bathroom with Mark when he was sulking because he, Gerome, could sense frustration and it made him nervous. So it would be Maggie walking the dog on some street lined with tenements, and there would be no witnesses, and it would, quite matter-of-factly, be the ideal set of circumstances if, for instance, there were a carjacker lurking or a murderer or a rapist or one of those misfits in a ski mask. And, yes, obviously all this sounded crazy — especially the way Mark had suggested it — but it’s not like it wasn’t possible. It’s not like there weren’t carjackers and murderers and rapists and masked nut jobs lurking at all those quiet exits off the tollway. Maggie had been reading the articles. Four women last month. The month before, five. And just three weeks ago, the coed, practically a neighbor. It was an epidemic. That’s what troubled her. There wasn’t simply one man out there. There were hundreds. Thousands. And they were waiting, just waiting for the right opportunity. All she had to do was open her laptop and there was another story.

“Here,” Mark said. “Fine.” He held out his hand. She juggled the recycling and took the leash.

Gerome looked back and forth between them.

“Will you at least put the bags in the trunk?” Maggie said. “I’ll arrange them. You don’t need to arrange them. Just put them in the trunk.”

She started toward the back of the building, where the dumpsters were. But then she stopped. Goose bumps traveled the length of both arms. She turned back. Mark was standing there, as she knew he would be, watching her with a blank expression. If only he would smile; give a wink or a shrug even, as if to say, “We’re okay. This is a blip. A dwarf-sized blip. Just another branch, another piece of the lattice ever strengthening our shelter.” But he didn’t.

Who was he thinking about? Was it one of his students? Was it a colleague? Maggie couldn’t be sure, but recently — only very recently — she’d begun to suspect he might be thinking of someone else.

“So you know,” she said. “I want him to go now so we don’t have to stop until we need gas or lunch. I don’t want to lose any more time than we already have.”

Mark shook his head.

Their apartment — perfect apartment! — was above a coffee shop, which meant there were four people watching them at that exact moment. There were always at least four people sitting at the counter, drinking their drinks, staring out at the world, watching.

“I don’t care, Maggie.” His tone was unfamiliar, and she disliked the way he’d said her name — as if she were a child who’d forgotten something important, as if she were clueless and ought, therefore, to be pitied.

“It’s not that big a deal,” he said. Then he turned around and walked inside.

Things hadn’t always been this way between Mark and Maggie. A decade ago, when they were still in DC, still finishing up with grad school, they’d been the envy of their friends. They were never anything so drab as picture-perfect: there were fights — certainly, certainly — and disappointments. But they’d found in each other a wave, a vibe, a shared view of their interconnection with the universe.

It was early autumn when they met, at a party hosted by Georgetown’s History Department and held — of all places — on a Potomac riverboat cruise. Mark had only agreed to attend because he knew the boat would remain docked. He could leave whenever he wanted. Six years into his graduate program, he was listless. In the company of other academics, he found himself bored by their inanities and the way they tended to speak more than listen. His plan that night had been to stay only for a beer or two, maybe a shake of hands with the incoming grad students — enough to show he wasn’t aloof — then head off to the Tabard Inn, where he would have a late dinner and continue a recent flirtation with a bartender from Poland. She couldn’t mix a drink, but she could pour gin over ice and she spoke with an accent that had caused Mark more than once to clutch his chest in sweet agony and say, “Hand to god. Your voice hurts me to my heart.”