Hannah Pittard - Listen to Me

“Check,” said Mark.

“Wait,” said Maggie. “If the alarm isn’t on, does that mean the door isn’t locked?”

“We could bolt it,” Tina said. “But that’d be against fire code.”

Maggie didn’t say anything. If Mark was waiting for a reaction, she wasn’t going to give it to him.

Pete switched the aim of the floodlight. “Here’s the door to the first-floor rooms.” He held it open and the others filed past him. “Tina,” he said, his voice suddenly soft. “Let’s put them in 101.” To Maggie, he said, “First door on the left there. You’ll be nearby the exit. Good for the dog.”

“Problem,” said Tina, also now in a whisper.

Pete brushed by Maggie and Gerome; they were alone at the end of the hallway. Mark had his back to Maggie.

“What’s up?” said Pete.

“101 wasn’t closed,” Tina said.

Pete used the floodlight to push the door open a little wider; from the hallway, he shined the light into the room. “It’s empty,” he said.

“Let’s put them in another one anyway,” said Tina. “I don’t like that the door was open.”

Maggie nudged Mark from behind. “Give me one of those glow sticks,” she said. “I can’t see what’s going on.”

“Better wait,” said Tina. “They only last so long.”

“Right,” said Mark. “Good thinking.” He put the glow sticks back in his pocket.

Pete led them down the hall to the next room. Maggie followed, still behind the pack. “This one’s good,” he said.

“Check it out for them,” said Tina.

Pete opened the door and walked inside alone. After a few seconds he returned. “Clean,” he said. “Empty.”

“Go on in,” said Tina. “Get your bearings before we take the light away.”

Maggie and Gerome followed Mark in.

Pete shined the flashlight around the room. “Here’s your bed,” he said. “Here’s your second bed. Extra pillows here. Bathroom here.” He opened the bathroom door. “Your towels. The sink.” At each item, he shined the light briefly, then moved on.

Maggie watched the various corners of the room light up and then darken. The images were fast and still, more like photographs than real life.

She thought of that terrible movie about forests and witchcraft and children standing in corners. She thought of the coed.

She’d made a mistake insisting on staying.

This wasn’t a good idea at all.

“Pete,” said Tina from the hallway, still whispering. “Show them about the glow sticks.”

“Right,” said Pete. He motioned for Maggie to join him in the bathroom. “If you tie one here”—with the flashlight, he lit up a small side mirror protruding from the wall—“then you get pretty good light and you don’t need to waste more than one.”

“Thanks,” said Maggie. She was whispering too. “So there are other people on this floor?”

“There’s a family across the way and some of my buddies down at the end. But you won’t hear them.”

“Where do you two sleep?”

“We’re up in the office,” he said.

“Oh,” she said. “Right.”

She wished she could sleep in the office with them. In numbers, there was safety.

She followed him from the bathroom back into the bedroom. Mark had snapped two of the glow sticks and was inspecting the windows.

Pete and Tina walked into the hallway.

“Be sure to lock the door behind us,” said Tina.

Maggie nodded.

“You have to use the lever, though,” Pete said. “It won’t lock if you just close it.”

“It won’t?”

Tina took the floodlight and came back inside the room.

“See?” she said. She showed Maggie how the lever worked. “The regular locks are automated. Without power, they’re a no-go.”

“Oh,” Maggie said. What else had she failed to consider? It was one thing to sleep without a/c; it was something else entirely to sleep without a fully locked door.

“Get some rest,” Tina said. She walked into the hallway, and then she and Pete were gone.

Maggie stood in the darkness of the entryway. She closed the door and listened. There was the sound of Gerome’s panting, the sound of Tina’s and Pete’s ascending footsteps in the stairwell, the sound of her own breathing. But that was it.

Mark came up behind her. He reached around her to lock, unlock, and relock the door. “Old school,” he said. “I like it.”

Without turning toward him, she reached for the doorknob and pulled. The door opened three inches before the lock caught. “You like this?” she said. She wedged her hand through the narrow opening. Her knuckles scuffed against the edge of the door’s molding. “It still opens.”

“I’ll take my chances with the person who can slip through that crack,” he said.

He brought her hand in from the other side and shut the door.

“Maggie,” he said. He took her by the shoulders and rotated her so that she was facing him, though eye contact was impossible in the darkness. Gerome was still on his leash, still at their sides. He was whining.

“Maggie,” Mark said again. “It’s going to be all right.” He kissed her on her forehead. They both smelled of sweat. “Hold out your hand.”

She held out her hand. He took a glow stick from his pocket, snapped it, then tied it to her wrist. “See?” he said. “Now you’re bona fide.”

She looked down.

“Bona fide what?” she said.

“Bona fide country.”

“And then some,” she said.

All she needed to do was relax. Relax and let him be the man.

From the Sumerians, a 5,000-year-old society, we receive the word love as a compound verb. At the time and taken literally, this word — this love —meant the measuring of the earth or the demarcation of the land. Love, in other words, was a business, and its business meant marriage, and marriage meant the maintenance, the preservation, the endurance of society.

Mark bent down and unhooked Gerome, who stretched out and down on his forearms, then shook his whole body dramatically — a simple but instinctive display of freedom.

“That’s it,” said Mark. “Shake the human off.” He reached down and took Maggie’s hand, and the two of them stood like that — hand in hand, glow stick next to glow stick — listening as their dog moved from corner to corner of the room, sniffing, exploring, familiarizing himself with their temporary retreat.

It was twenty minutes before Gerome calmed down. He whined, panted, whined some more. Maggie kept letting him up on the bed, which Mark wouldn’t have minded if there hadn’t been another perfectly good bed for the dog to sleep on all by himself and if it hadn’t been ninety degrees inside, which it was.

While Maggie was babying Gerome, Mark worked on the windows. They were on the first floor and Maggie kept saying he shouldn’t open them, that it wouldn’t be safe; but he was suffocating from the heat. His skin — his palms, his fingers, his lower back, every inch of him — was clammy.

Finally he was able to jimmy open the window closest to the bed, and even Maggie, after biting her lip and wringing her hands, admitted that the breeze felt nice.

Gerome, of his own volition, jumped off their bed, drank some water, then jumped up on the other bed. Maggie stripped their mattress of everything but the sheets, and now — finally, blissfully, thankfully — they were both lying down.

The only light came from the glow sticks on Maggie’s side of the bed. But even that meager glimmer was weakening. Soon it would be pure shadow in their room. Soon they would be asleep.

For a while Mark lay on his back listening to the noises, his eyes closed. From down the hallway, he thought he heard the sound of a faucet running. Soon after, he thought he heard water in the pipes.