The Retreat

by Elisabeth de Mariaffi

  “They’re fine,” her mother says flatly. “Maeve, you’re the only one who still thinks about him. You’re the one who can’t get past it.” Her voice sharpens. “If you can’t stop worrying about Iain, then come home. Otherwise, you’re just fucking around.”

  “Are they in the room?”

  “Maeve.”

  “Are they in the room right now? Are Rudy and Talia there, listening to you talk to me like that?”

  “Of course not.”

  Four-count. Breathe in, breathe out.

  Maeve wedges the photo strip back into the mirror frame and turns to the window. In the dark, it’s hard to see just how much snow is coming down, but the wind sounds stronger than ever. Below, there’s the light from the rear door and the path, half buried where it crosses through the pines. No one out walking. She leans close for a better look, then catches herself, suddenly aware who she is looking for.

  Sim Nielssen.

  But he’s not out there looking in. No one is.

  That’s a good thing, Maeve, she reminds herself. You don’t want that. You don’t want a guy that follows you around.

  There’s a pause on the other end of the line before her mother begins to breathe noisily. Maeve turns from the window to deal with the problem at hand. “It’s just—it’s been a long time since I had this kind of space to give to myself, Mom. What I’m trying to do is not small, it’s not a small thing. It won’t all get done in two weeks. This is just a start. I’m trying to kick-start myself, creatively.”

  “So start kicking. Go to work.”

  “I know Iain’s gone. But I’m trying to remember to trust myself—”

  “Just don’t waste your time—”

  “—it would be nice if I could trust you too.”

  There’s a silence. Then:

  “He’s dead, Maeve.”

  Maeve wants to throw the phone through the window. Her voice shakes: “Put Talia on, will you?”

  “Not gone! Dead. Dead! Say it, Maeve. He’s dead.”

  But Maeve doesn’t. Her face tightens. She won’t respond.

  The dining room is dark when Maeve arrives. She wavers at the entrance, checks her phone. It seems odd. Maybe she got the time wrong?

  “Hello?” She takes a few cautious steps over the threshold, her voice lost in the big room. To her left, there’s a scratching noise—she turns, and the place lights up.

  She’s not alone after all. Maeve pulls up short. He’s got his back to her, checking some kind of lighting panel. She knows it’s him because of his size—easily six foot four. That, and he’s wearing the orange tuque.

  He turns and sees her and removes the hat.

  “Sorry about that.” He points to the lights, then strides forward, almost too eagerly. Maeve finds herself backing up. “Daniel Darling.” He says it proudly—his real name!—reaching out a hand and taking hers to shake, confident but also warm. “Anything you need, anything at all, just ask. I’m the only one here who’s actually from here, you know?”

  “You’re from High Water?”

  “Born less than two hours away. Spot called Hope Lake.” There’s a pause before he lets go of her hand. “You can just call me Dan.”

  “Dan,” she repeats, then realizes that she hasn’t introduced herself. “I’m Mae—”

  He cuts her off. “Maeve. I know. I saw you last night, coming out of the dance studio. I was—” He glances over her shoulder, just long enough that Maeve checks to see if anyone is behind her. But there’s no one. “I had some work to do on one of the cabins,” he says, refocusing. He’d almost said hello, he says, only he didn’t want to startle her.

  His brow furrows. “And then Nielssen came along.”

  Maeve nods, trying to catch up. He didn’t want to startle her? He’s too big, really, to sneak up on anyone. He keeps on, though, ducking his head as he speaks, almost shy.

  “I’ve got a whole storage room downstairs full of equipment. Whatever you like: skis, snowshoes, you name it. You’ve only got to ask.”

  She tries to match his smile.

  “Probably won’t risk the skis,” she says. “Hard to dance on a broken ankle, right?” But this draws his attention down the length of her body and she hurries to think of something else to say. “Do you—make any art yourself?” It’s the only polite question she can muster.

  He just looks at her, confused, then shakes his head.

  There’s a hoot, and behind him the kitchen door swings open: Justin, a bottle of wine in each hand.

  “Maevy,” he says, stopping short. “Maevelicious. You’re early—”

  But by the time she’s registering his surprise, there are already new voices behind her. Anna and Karo appearing from the lobby, deep in conversation. Dan turns back to the panel he was working on, pulls a screwdriver from his pocket, and screws the door shut.

  Sim and Sadie arrive last, Sadie trailing him slightly. Maeve can’t quite tell if they were together beforehand or just happened to cross the lobby at the same moment. Karo shoots Sadie a look and the girl reluctantly leaves Sim’s side and goes to work opening the buffet, pulling lids from the chafing dishes. There must be a cook somewhere. Part of the skeleton staff, Sadie filling in the gaps. It can’t be what she was promised as a doctoral candidate making the rounds at the Biennale.

  But she’s watching, interested, as Karo takes Maeve by the hand.

  “I can finally introduce you,” she says. “Sim Nielssen, our artist in residence for the year—”

  Maeve freezes, unsure of what to do. It will seem odd, now, that she didn’t mention meeting him in the forest the night before.

  Sim looks at her expectantly. Amused. In the light, she can see how blue his eyes are, that Nordic blue, clear and bright.

  “And this is Maeve Martin, you remember I told you—”

  “I remember.” Sim takes her hand in his, a formal shake, compensating for her paralysis. “I’ve heard so much about you, Maeve.” The trace of a smile still hovering at the corner of his mouth, and she has to break his gaze, look at Karo as she responds. Breath catching in her throat.

  “Thanks, of course, yes.”

  She turns away, relieved—only to find Dan quietly watching them from the corner.

  There’s the pop of a cork, and then another—Justin cracking into the wine.

  “Help me with these, mademoiselle?” Anna holds out a tray of wineglasses, and Maeve moves down the table at her side, setting them in place. When they’re done, she takes Maeve’s arm and they peruse the buffet selection: stuffed potatoes, grilled chicken, the usual something-with-beans.

  They eat staggered down the length of one long table, Karo at the head, and Dan far away at the other end. He never says a word—but Maeve catches him looking over at her again and again. When she meets his eye, he breaks into a smile like he just can’t help himself.

  Kind of a country boy. Hope Lake. She wonders if he’s getting his hopes up.

  “Can I take that?” Sadie leans over Maeve’s shoulder, gesturing lightly at her plate.

  “I see you get all the glamorous jobs,” Maeve says, but the joke falls flat. Sadie stands there, one sullen hand on her hip. “Never mind.” Maeve rises to her feet, plate in hand. “I’m still working on it.”

  She makes her way over to the bar, where Anna has begun prepping a tray of cocktails to ferry down to the spa. With fewer than twenty people on-site, deliveries come only once a week; no mint for mojitos, Anna says, but all the rum and Coke you can swallow. She sets up a row of glasses and drops ice into each one.

  Maeve says she can’t risk a hangover. Only twelve days left.

  “But this is what it’s like here.” Anna adds a slice of lime to each drink and leans across the bar. “You work and you work and you work all day and it’s never enough and at night you don’t want to be alone with it.”

  “If I’m hungover, there’ll be no work at all.”

  “It must be terrible to have to rely on your body.” Anna flicks her eyes
across the room and Maeve realizes she’s watching Dan. He’s crouched low, checking the burners under the buffet one by one. “Why is he ignoring me, do you think?”

  The question throws Maeve off balance. It takes a moment, but then relief floods in: if Anna and Dan have something going on, she’s off the hook. She’s just been overreacting. Not unusual for her; not since Iain, anyway.

  A kind of vacation fling, Anna says. Not terribly unique at this kind of retreat. But it started in the spring.

  “Half the reason I came back. Don’t tell Karo—she thinks I’m here for the atmosphere.”

  Maeve would never have guessed. Anna and Dan haven’t talked or touched once since dinner began. What does Anna get out of it?

  Anna twists at the wedding ring on her finger as she talks. There’s a man back home in New Orleans—a man who calls without fail every night and every morning, sometimes more, she says. Anna holding the phone to her ear and smoking a cigarette out the open window of her room.

  “Three, four calls a day to check up on me. Just checking up. I need someone who’s interested in my body. Who makes me feel nervous in that good way, you know?”

  Maeve doesn’t. But she thinks back to what Sadie said about Dan on the trail: He’s got that cop thing, some women really go for that. Only she didn’t mean some women. She meant Anna.

  “Besides, he was fucking with some waitress last year—my husband was. Thought I didn’t know. So I guess my business is my own.” Anna gives Dan a last look and shakes her head at Maeve. “But why is he ignoring me now?”

  “Maybe he’s playing with you.” Justin slides in next to Maeve and hooks a finger around one of the drinks. “I mean, all’s fair in love and war. Wouldn’t you say, Anna?” The question seems harmless, an innocuous bit of teasing, but Anna’s face changes, hardens.

  Justin lifts the glass.

  “Bottoms up.”

  There’s a sarcasm, an edge to the two of them together that Maeve can’t figure out. But she’s the newcomer here; maybe it’s no surprise that she doesn’t get the inside jokes. She shrugs, and then they’re interrupted by Karo, anyway. Ready—Maeve assumes—to usher them down to the spa.

  Instead, she speaks only to Maeve.

  “Sadie says you were out on the trail by yourself.”

  Maeve glances around for Sadie but finds her standing back, watching from a few feet away. Karo’s tone is oddly stern.

  “I was in sight of the center the whole time. Do I need to be worried?”

  “No, of course not. Not at all. But in the past, we’ve had residents who were a bit too complacent.”

  Dan’s voice cuts across the room. “It’s not the city here, Maeve. Not even close.”

  Maeve turns back to Karo, troubled. “I’m—” she begins, but then stumbles. What to say? I’m sorry?

  It was still daylight. She’s an athlete. Unlikely to fall off the trail.

  Sim hands his dirty plate to Sadie, then catches Karo’s arm.

  “What are we waiting for?” Glancing to Maeve as he says it. He raises an eyebrow and then a subtle shoulder—more a signal than a shrug, a This place is crazy look. He hooks his arm around Karo’s elbow. “Come on, Karo. Let’s get these people in hot water.”

  Maeve feels something at her shoulder and realizes that Dan has come to stand beside her. She steps back to give herself some space, but Justin is already lunging over the bar, a bottle of wine in one hand and two in the other. “Wait up there!” Then, looking coquettishly over his shoulder: “Hey, Dan—my hands are full. Why don’t you slip that corkscrew in my back pocket?”

  But Dan is still watching Sim as he steers Karo away from Maeve and out the door.

  The baths, according to a plaque on the wall, used to be an enclave for men only. When the center was first built.

  Now, of course, there’s no place women can’t go. Deep underground, the spa is more of a hall than a room, and the steam from the baths makes it feel like some kind of luxe grotto. Maeve sinks a little deeper, the water naturally dark with iodine. There are three pools at three different temperatures. Those art deco details again: each pool is edged in smooth, carved stone.

  At the entrance, Justin drops his robe, preening, before slipping in hip-deep. Sadie peels her clothes off, folds them neatly into a pile. Consciously unselfconscious as she moves.

  Maeve knows that no one is thinking more about Sadie’s body than Sadie herself. Twenty-three, and with everything to prove; there must be someone here she’s trying to impress. She finds herself watching the girl. The fallout from that walk in the woods surprised her.

  It surprises her that Karo more or less has a spy.

  It’s a wide enough pool, with its nooks and corners, that Maeve’s own space seems oddly private. She closes her eyes and when she opens them again, Anna is there, crouched beside a stone lion, water pouring from its mouth, her face obscured by a camera. The lens makes her look one-eyed, a Cyclops. Maeve stares into it, first startled, then steady. It’s only after a moment that she thinks to wrap an arm around herself to cover her breasts in her thin lace bra. Her bathing suit forgotten back at home.

  “Tell me again what kind of work you do?”

  Anna laughs.

  “You’re deep enough, don’t worry.” She lowers the camera to her side. “Most people, that’s their first instinct—cover up! It took you a moment to even worry about it. I like that.”

  Maeve lets one shoulder rise and fall. “Dancer, you know. We don’t have any privacy. The body is everything. But it’s also just a thing. Right? You get used to that idea. This thing to form and reform, push around.” Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Dan on the far deck, examining some piece of jutting tile. Karo, her pants cuffed neatly to the knee, sits checking her phone on a bench.

  “That’s me too.” Anna holds up her cracked fingers. “Like you say, form and reform.”

  “Is that from the chemicals?”

  “Nah, just paint, and then paint remover. I’m using a technique called rotoscope, where I draw right on top of the film. Right onto the humans, really, as they move.” She zips the camera into its waterproof case and sets it down. “Man, I wish you were staying longer! I’d love to do some work with a dancer.”

  She strips down to her underclothes and slides into the next pool over but turns back to keep talking across the divide. Maeve is grateful; it’s easy to feel alone when you’re new. She hasn’t had close girlfriends, not since her days in the corps. Her star rose too quickly at Nouvelle Vague, and then of course Iain wanted her to himself.

  Anna brings an easy intimacy to everything she does. Insta-pal. She leans her elbows over the pool’s edge: “You had the dream yet?”

  “Dream?”

  “The bear dream. That’s the project I’m working on.” She scooches up a little higher. “Nature turns to chaos. In New Orleans we have a werewolf, the rougarou. But up here, people see a bear in their sleep—”

  Maeve shivers. She had so many dreams the night she arrived. She’d almost forgotten—the animal smell, the rush of something coming into her room. She looks to Anna, nodding.

  “The first night—” she says. Now that she’s talking about it, the dream seems so intimate, so close. Almost sexual. It embarrasses her.

  “See? I knew it! Damn, I’ve been here twice, and nothing! You know, when I was here in the spring, there was one night where everyone had it. Everyone! Except me, goddamn it.”

  “Maybe it’s just part of being an artist,” Maeve tries. “Wild dreams. Your brain on overdrive, kinda.”

  Anna looks skeptical. “The problem is you can’t control it,” she says. “Go ahead and tell me it’s about art when you’re crying in your bed.” She winks, then slips away to the far side of her own pool, wading along with her camera case in hand.

  Maeve turns away herself and stretches out with both arms, heart lifting. There’s the murmur of conversation on the deck and high laughter, Anna or Justin putting on a show for Dan; she can hear him laugh
ing too. She pushes up toward the pool’s edge, legs trailing—alarmed when her toe brushes something behind her. She sets her feet down in a hurry and spins.

  But it’s only Sim—and an almost respectable distance away. The raw line of his shoulder rising out of the water. Steam or sweat in beads at his brow.

  “Better put those things away,” he says, nodding to where her legs are hidden down in the cloudy water. “I don’t want to get clobbered. Even by accident.”

  She crosses her arms over her chest. “Always sneaking up behind me, aren’t you?”

  He holds a hand up like a shield. “Just trying to avoid injury. Lot of power in a dancer’s legs, I’ll bet.”

  She plays at the water with her fingers, the color rising in her cheeks.

  “I should really head back,” she says. “I feel like every moment out here is a moment wasted. Lazy, you know? Swimming instead of dancing.”

  “Ah,” he says. “A worker bee.”

  “I’m only here for a short time.”

  “Don’t be so proscriptive.” When she doesn’t respond, he steps a little closer. “Trust your instincts. You came here, didn’t you? It was a choice. You have to honor that.”

  His body, the line of his collarbone, distracting her.

  On the other side of the pool, Dan takes a few steps toward them. Maeve watches him, then she moves closer to Sim. She’s not sure why she does it; it’s a little coy.

  She dips down lower and smiles up at Sim as though he’s just said something marvelous.

  “I got in trouble,” she says. “For going on a walk by myself.”

  “Verboten, don’t you know.” He leans a bit closer again. “I got in trouble last week for sneaking up to the chairlift. Karo was very upset. That’s only allowed in summer.”

  “Why summer?”

  “It’s not for skiing. It’s for tourists, like a bird’s-eye view. They call it the SkyLift—” He gives her a professorial look. It’s meant to be charming, and it is. “A way to take it all in without causing habitat destruction.”

  “But now people will come higher into the mountains,” she says slowly. “Won’t they? To get on the lift?”