Hannah Pittard - Listen to Me

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.”

Mark flipped off the headlights, rolled down the windows, and killed the engine. It was hot out, but the fresh air felt good in his nostrils. He left the key in the ignition so he could listen to the radio. There was a feeling in his gut not of childhood, but of that beautiful purgatory between childhood and adulthood. Yes, with the windows rolled down and with the sudden solitude — sharp solitude there in that car on the top of a tiny mountain town miles and miles from anywhere legit — and with the magenta darkness all around him, he remembered keenly what he’d felt so long ago first as a teenager and then as a young man just starting out in the world. He remembered the feeling of life, how big it was, how conquerable the world seemed then. Behind him: boyhood antics. In front of him: glory, love, sex, fame, ambition, life, anything he wanted. Yes, just now, just at this very moment, he remembered it all so vividly. What he needed was a Springsteen song. Something gritty. Something as full of vim and vigor as he’d been so long ago.

He kept the volume low as he flipped through the stations. The first three were nothing but static. The fourth was talk radio. He knew it was evangelical from the extra vibrato in the man’s voice. It was only a minute before he grew restless with its content. If man came from apes, then how come apes still exist? etc., etc. — to which Mark would have retorted, applying their slant logic: If Eve came from Adam, why do men still exist? But it wasn’t as entertaining without Maggie there listening too, which obviously said something awfully small and petty about him — that he couldn’t enjoy it without Maggie there not enjoying it. He knew it. And he was sorry. He really was. But he also knew it meant something loving and solid about the two of them. She drove him crazy, but that’s how he knew he still cared. They really were like a country song, which he would have settled for if he couldn’t find Springsteen — Johnny, Waylon, Merle, maybe a little Willie.

The thing was Mark needed her around, no matter how batty she got. She was still Maggie, his Maggie. Christ, he needed to lay off her every once in a while. He needed to temper his expectations because — Yes! Expectations! Wasn’t that absolutely part of the problem? Wasn’t he always expecting just a little too much from everyone, but from Maggie especially? He was. He was.

The only other channel was news. It came in staticky, but Mark didn’t mind. He leaned back in his seat, shut his eyes, and listened. The weather had top billing. There were outages from Indiana straight through to western Virginia. His parents had been right. Just a few hours earlier, the president had declared federal emergencies in four states. Congress was in a brand-new uproar. Money was on everyone’s minds.

The next story up was out of California. A university had issued a statement: it was mere weeks away from unveiling its development of full artificial intelligence. After the statement, the anchor read aloud from an old interview with Stephen Hawking. “… could spell the end of the human race.” Mark reclined his seat as far as it would go. The end of the human race… The idea itself — the end of humanity — didn’t trouble him necessarily, but that humans would be responsible bothered him to no end. He remembered when Hawking had given that interview a couple years back, and he remembered the jeering that had gone on in the department in the days following. Most of his colleagues resisted the idea of an intelligence that could surpass their own. Of course, most of his colleagues were narcissists. They resisted the notion that artificial intelligence would ever be able to redesign itself of its own volition, and so obviously they rejected the possibility that it would eventually supersede humanity. Perhaps they were only a few weeks from finding out.

In the backseat, Gerome yawned. Mark turned onto his side and scratched the dog’s head.

“It’s been a long day, hasn’t it?” he said.

Gerome stood and stretched.

“You want a walk?”

The dog nosed forward and licked at Mark’s ear.

“How about a walk, then?”

Mark patted the front seat, and Gerome climbed over the center console and took Maggie’s spot. He sat bolt upright, like he expected to be buckled into place. Maggie hated it when Mark let the dog in front, but she loved it when Mark was tender.

“A fair trade,” Mark said. “Good boy.”

He started the car and pulled it into a proper parking spot, then he hooked Gerome’s leash to his collar and the two got out on the driver’s side together.

They were standing in the middle of what he guessed was maybe ten acres of cleared mountaintop development. There was the hotel and there was the plant across the street and there was some sort of office park across from that. But nothing more.

The forest resumed behind and down from the hotel. Mark couldn’t see well enough to explore that far, and he didn’t want to walk in what he imagined was thick wet grass and mud, so he opted to pace the perimeter of the parking lot, which was lined by a narrow strip of grass. Gerome peed instantly.

Tree frogs were chirping in the distance. It would be morning in only a few hours. Mark’s head was killing him and his eyes were sore. If he hadn’t had those beers, then he probably would’ve been good to drive straight through. As it was, he needed shut-eye. At the very least, he needed to lie supine for a while. Maggie was taking forever, which he assumed was a good sign. She was getting them a room, and any minute she’d come out and retrieve the two of them.

But she didn’t come out, not immediately anyway. So after Gerome had peed a second time, the two of them went in.

Tropical was how he’d describe the air if anyone asked, which no one did, so he kept the word to himself. Maggie was standing at the hotel’s front desk; she was blousing her shirt for air. There was a couple standing opposite her, a very small woman and a very large man. Maggie was laughing.

Mark approached.

“What’s the deal?” he said. He didn’t address the couple.

“We have a room,” Maggie said. “And glow sticks.” She held up two plastic baggies.