Listen to Me (12 page)

He checked his front pocket. The keys to the car were still there. Next he reached for his phone but—
fuck
—he'd left it in the car. He put his hands on his head; he was about to start thinking all the worst thoughts. He was about to take a page from Maggie's book and let his imagination run wild, but just then a car across the lot turned its headlights on. Mark put a hand to his eyes. The car's brights flashed—on then off then on again.

It was their car.

It was Maggie.

He trotted across the lot, still using his hand to shield his eyes from the high beams.

She was in the driver's seat, laughing.

“What the fuck, Maggie?” he said. “Jesus Christ. I thought—I don't know what I thought.”

She rolled down the window and looked up at him, completely unconcerned. “I used the spare,” she said. “Thank god I remembered it. Gerome nearly had a stroke.”

Mark looked in the back at Gerome who, though lying down, was awake and alert to—if not completely interested in—the action around him.

“The GPS is broken,” said Maggie. She knocked on the screen at the center of the dash. “Or not working. Or something.” She knocked a few more times. “Worthless.”

“What were you thinking?” said Mark. He was still standing at the driver's-side window, still looking in at his wife. “Were you trying to be funny? Moving the car?” He could feel himself getting angry. Or, rather, he felt the right to be angry, to get angry, if necessary.

“The question is what were
you
thinking?” she said. “You left us in a parking lot in the middle of nowhere.”

“We're not in the middle of nowhere.”

“With the doors unlocked.”

“With the doors un—” Mark stopped himself. He couldn't believe it. After everything he'd been trying to do for her. While she was comfortably asleep. After the six hotels and the imbecilic desk clerks, after all that, she wasn't even a little bit thankful? She wasn't grateful? Why was he surprised? She was exactly as she'd been for the past three weeks: scared. And scared, he was realizing now, perhaps for the very first time, of
everything.
That was it. He was finally starting to see. It wasn't just nighttime; it wasn't just the man in the alley and the man in the college girl's apartment. She hadn't simply turned scared of the dark. She'd turned scared of life.

“But Gerome is here,” he said at last. “You were completely safe, Maggie. You must see that?” He felt on the brink of despair; felt very close to losing respect for his wife forever.
Please,
he thought.
Please don't be as nuts as I think you might actually be.
He was lonely in an adolescent way, like he was the last one on the playground, his mother not yet arrived and even the janitor gone for the night. He felt helpless and, god, he felt utterly alone.

Maggie stuck her arm out the window and took his hand. Was she reading his mind?

“Yes,” she said. “I do see that. I do, which is why I thought I'd have a bit of fun. Come here.” She pulled at his hand, and he bent down to the window. “Kiss me.”

He kissed her—nothing dramatic or drawn out, but a real kiss, lip against lip. They both smelled of salt and sweat.

“At first,” she said, while he was still bent low, still close to her face. “At first I was mad. Then I was scared. Then I was embarrassed for being scared. Then I remembered the key. Then I realized that all of it—my moodiness—was because I was so bloody hot, and then Gerome and I thought it would be funny to move the car—he peed, by the way—and then we called your mom.”

Mark stood up. Gerome peed? He looked around the lot. But that would mean that Maggie had walked him. Alone. In the dark. In the middle, as she'd said herself, of nowhere. He had a strong desire to congratulate her, to thank her for being so normal, but he worried that to acknowledge it, to point directly at the thing he was so happy for, might make it retreat, might send it scurrying—a newly frightened kitten—under the belly of the car for good.

“You called Gwen?”

“We woke her up.”

He looked at his watch. One a.m. exactly. “I would think so,” he said. “Yes.”

Overhead, there was a large crack of thunder. Mark ducked, then straightened and appraised the night sky. A waning crescent was very briefly visible but a wind was moving fast and soon, while he stood there watching in fact, the moon was lost to cloud cover. He held his hand out, palm up. No rain. Not yet.

“Get in the car,” said Maggie. “I'll tell you all about it.”

“I'll drive,” he said. He opened Maggie's door and held out his hand; she took it. Gerome watched as Mark patted her on the butt and pushed her around to the passenger's side.

When they were both in the car, Maggie hit the lock button. “Just for fun,” she said, poking Mark's knee. “But look.” She held up her phone. “I can't get Internet, but I can access the map from the last time it loaded and we can see just enough of the county to get us where we're going.”

Now there was lightning over the hotel—a majestic tree branch illuminating the building and its upper packed parking lot.

“It's not done after all,” Maggie said.

“What are you talking about?”

“The storm,” she said. “There are about four different systems that Gwen says we'll be darting in and out of.”

And now there was thunder and lightning together, and the interior of the car was lit up momentarily. Mark's hands glowed purple and ghostly on the steering wheel.

Maggie turned to the backseat. Gerome hadn't moved. “He's being so good,” she said. “Because you're back now.”

“But what were you talking about before?” said Mark. “Where are we going? What do you mean?”

“Gwen got online and found a place.”

“With rooms?”

“She booked it and everything.”

Mark was confused. All this time he'd been inside that dump trying, and halfway succeeding, to find them a refuge, and meanwhile Maggie—the woman he'd been so quick to call a loser, the woman he'd thought had forgotten how to function on her own—had been outside making it happen. Yes, sure, with the help of his mother, but still. He put his hands on Maggie's face.

“Woman,” he said. He wanted to press into her skin until she could feel his relief in her cheekbones.

Only three days ago Elizabeth had ended her e-mail with a question: “So what is she, the love of your life?” It was the first time the circumstance of his marriage had ever been mentioned in writing, and he'd deleted it without writing back, troubled that he'd allowed his wife to become fodder for a younger woman's flirtation. He'd been frightened by the question, frightened by his own hesitancy. And yet, just now, his hands on either side of Maggie's face, Mark felt confident that it was within his grasp to give up this minor obsession. Elizabeth was nothing. He'd always known. But now he felt supremely and safely sure.

“Man,” Maggie said.

She seemed not to mind that he was pressing so hard. He pressed harder still.

“
My
woman,” he said.

“My
man,
” she said, and now she smiled, and—
god!
—that smile, that wonderful gap between her teeth. It gave him the same high happiness he'd felt early on in their courtship when a grin or a giggle from Maggie could turn him kingly and strong.

“I don't know if it's dog-friendly,” she said, shaking her face free of his hands finally. “But I doubt they'll be too particular. Gwen tried calling. No one's answering but that's hardly a surprise. Still, that they have Internet and that we could book must be a good sign. They'll have a generator at the very least.”

Mark kissed her on the forehead and turned up the a/c. He gestured toward the map on the phone. “You'll be my guide?”

And now the rain did start, the slightest sweetest bit of water hitting the windshield and trickling slowly down the glass in Tourettic lines.

“Seat belt,” Maggie said. She pinched his shirt where it covered a nipple.

He did as instructed. He liked that she could still be bossy, even in a cute, unimposing way, even about such a frivolous thing. It reminded him of Elizabeth, which was something he'd have to stop letting himself do: be reminded so easily of Elizabeth.

“You'll never guess what the place is called,” she said. “Never in a million years. Gwen and I had quite a laugh.”

Mark put the car in gear and—only after Maggie had indicated the way—steered them toward the exit.

“Holidays Inn?” Mark said. “With an
s
?”

Maggie slapped her knee. “Yes!”

“Like lots of holidays?” he said.

“How did you know?”

“You wouldn't believe me,” said Mark.

Now Maggie pointed at the entrance to the interstate. “Take a right here. We get back on, but only for twenty or so miles. Then it's all boonies and backwoods for this car.”

Mark took the turn.

“I just about died when Gwen told me the name,” Maggie said, and for the first time all day—for the first time maybe all year and certainly in the past three weeks—Mark felt that the two of them were in exactly the same place, at exactly the same moment, experiencing everything in exactly the same way.

          And now a pause. A breath. A moment away. Leave the car. Just open the door and step out. Stretch if you must. Stand on the tips of your toes, bend your knees, jump skyward, toward the moon—the little that's illuminated. Don't worry about your skin. You have no skin here. This is only the imagination—its senses—that's taking this flight. Move higher, higher, until you have attained the perfect perspective, the better perspective. Move higher still and look. Look down. Can you see it? Can you see the automobile? Follow the spray of light. It's moving eastward, through the mountains. It moves swiftly, quietly.

From above, to an eye overhead watching—your eye, our eye—the automobile cuts deftly through the night and through the storm. From above, from up here, there is no panting dog, there are no slapping windshield wipers, no quickened human heartbeats. There is only the hazy yellow light moving forward through the clouds and steam and water, and the solo auto—just a flashlight advancing, a flashlight following its light, following its high beams east along an otherwise blackened highway—looks almost peaceful. There are no towns lit up in the distance, no headlights from oncoming traffic, no streetlamps delineating the thin road's turns and dips.

But the sky? Where we are? So far up, the sky is a port-wine stain of brooding purple, punctuated by flame-like lightning, train-sized thunder. Several thousand feet higher, a place even higher than where we are now, a place from where we couldn't see the car, where we couldn't see anything, not even the rippling purple currents—several thousand feet higher, there are sheets of ice falling fast and loud, planks of snow like wood being battered and bullied by the atmosphere: a cacophony of ripping and tearing, a punching and hollering of ice pushing back against the steamy earth air, which shoots up fast and hot. Where the ice meets the heat, the sheets turn warm; they thin and loosen first like glass breaking and then like glass melting until the ice is water and the water is landing in waves—landing on the countryside, on the highway, on the roof of the isolated automobile so far beneath us.

But back to the car, the perspective is closer, tighter. The air-conditioning inches in humid and funky, a loamy mixture of wet soil and soft asphalt. The car—a tiny capsule of dryness—pushes forward awkwardly, hesitantly, with none of the finesse and speed suggested from above. There are no sounds from the radio, and perhaps no sounds either of any particular heartbeat, but the rain lands hard on the roof and the windshield wipers hit their marks with a troubling rhythm and the dog sits wide-eyed and panting, an uninterrupted string of drool extending from his gum to his shoulder. From the car, there is no sense of the bruise-y purple majesty battling in the ether overhead. From the car—the headlights its only guide—there are just the few dozen radiant feet of constantly moving rain and fog and road. Nothing more.

          “What does that mean?” Maggie was leaning forward in the passenger seat. She was peering up at a road sign passing overhead.

“What?”

“That sign.” Maggie pointed.

“Which sign?”

She pointed again.

“Are you pointing?” said Mark. “If you're pointing, I can't see what you're pointing at. I can't take my eyes off the road.”

The windshield wipers were once again on full speed.

“You're right,” said Maggie. “You're right. I'm sorry.” She turned in her seat as they passed beneath the sign, as if turning might bring it back into view. But all she could see through the rear window was a glassy blackness. She wished Mark had been the one to notice the sign.

“Be specific,” said Mark. “It's fine. Just tell me what it said.”

“It doesn't matter,” said Maggie. But it did matter. Of course it mattered.

Mark pressed the brakes and the car slowed even more. They were going—max—twenty-five miles an hour now, but even this felt too fast.

“What did it say, Maggie? Please.”

“It's just—” Maggie looked down at the map on her phone.

“Is this our exit or isn't it?” Mark said.

She wanted to use her forefinger and thumb to zoom in on the tiny graphic, but she was afraid she'd lose the original image.

Mark said her name again. “Is it or isn't it? Do I turn or not?” His voice was quick, which left her flustered.

“It's just—” Maggie slapped at her forehead twice, like a child jockeying forth the words. It was a gesture she knew Mark hated, but she couldn't help herself just then. “Yes.” She spat out the word, slapping herself one more time. “This is our exit, or it should be, but what does it mean that there's no reentry? What does it mean that it's a northbound exit with no reentry?”