Listen to Me (15 page)

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.”

          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.