The Retreat

by Elisabeth de Mariaffi

  Karo blanches.

  “For God’s sake—” Maeve says.

  But Dan nods.

  “The walk-in,” he says.

  There’s a beat. He means the freezer, Maeve realizes. The walk-in deep freeze back in the kitchen. She turns, appealing to Karo rather than Dan.

  “No,” she says. “No. You cannot leave her to freeze again. You can’t. It’s inhuman.”

  “Where else are we going to put her?” Justin’s voice is growing louder. He’s almost shouting. “What if we’re here for three more days? You know what will happen—”

  “That won’t happen, someone is coming for us,” Maeve says, cutting him off, her own voice rising to meet his.

  “—she’ll rot.” Justin finishes, and there’s a hard silence. “She’ll rot anywhere it’s even a little bit warm. You think you can live with that?” he says. “I can’t.”

  Sadie’s eyes well up again and Maeve turns, helpless, searching for any other support. Sim looks over, but he doesn’t rush to intercede. He flips the knife in his hand, twice, then sets it down.

  Back to business.

  “Justin’s right,” Sim says. “Even with the power cut, it’s still cold enough in there. It’ll be subzero for days. And it’s safe.” Then, to Justin: “But you don’t have to be an asshole about it.”

  “Everyone was thinking it. Everyone was—”

  “All right,” Karo cuts in finally.

  A hand on Maeve’s arm. It’s Dan; the hand is meant to be a comfort. No—to quiet her. It’s too heavy, his grip too tight. She shakes him off and turns away.

  It is Sim and Dan who actually move her. Anna.

  Maeve corrects herself: Anna’s body. Karolina’s instruction is to lay her out on a low shelf in the freezer, where it will be coldest, not on the floor. She sends Sadie to fetch a bedsheet, clean and white, to cover the length of the body. For whatever kind of dignity might be possible. They wrap her up before lifting and carrying her away, and for a moment there’s only the muted shuffling of their feet. Their voices, a low murmur.

  Then they shut the door.

  “Now what?” Justin flicks his eyes briefly to Maeve before moving on to glare at Dan. He’s got a notebook in his lap but he’s not writing in it, just gripping the pen with a taut hand. Maeve sits, playing softly at Anna’s bear claw in her palm; she can’t seem to let it go or put it away. Not yet.

  At least he’s not filming anymore.

  The fire gives a loud pop—a damp spot, the bark bursting with heat. They’ve sat together in silence for almost an hour.

  Maeve holds out for someone else to answer him. She sees the same tamped-down energy frothing in Justin—anger, impatience, a long howl—that she’s working to control in herself. She needs a way to burn it off: to sob, or run, or beat her fists into something. Sadie curls rigidly at the other end of the couch, plucking at her own arm. Everyone fighting to stay contained.

  But neither Karo nor Dan volunteer a solution. Justin shakes his head, caustic.

  “Right. There’s nothing to drink.” He throws the notebook to one side so hard that it smacks off the wall. “I’m going upstairs. There’s a full minibar somewhere with my name on it.”

  “No.”

  It’s Dan who says it. He doesn’t move as he speaks, just stares straight ahead. Justin pauses, then turns to him.

  “Uh, I’m sorry, Dad? Did you say ‘No’?”

  This time Dan looks over, both dull and stern. “No. We all stay together.”

  Justin’s expression hardens. “My face hurts.”

  Dan turns away again. “I already apologized for that.”

  “My face hurts and I want some bourbon.”

  Sadie twists to glance at Maeve. Looking for help or hoping for a drink herself? Maeve just shakes her head, a signal to stay out of it, for whatever that’s worth. Instead, Sadie moves to the edge of her seat.

  Dan takes a breath. “I’m not going to say it again. We all stay together.”

  “Not going to say it again?” Justin is up on his feet now. “You’re like a goddamn broken record.”

  Dan looks to Karo, expecting something, but she just stretches and flexes her hand, as though she has a cramp. She’s got the radio in her lap, and she goes back to turning the dial, slowly. Trying to find a voice somewhere.

  He stands up to meet Justin. “Not broken enough,” Dan says. “If we’d all stayed in the same damn room like I said, this wouldn’t have happened. Anna would be alive now. So quit playing and sit the fuck down.”

  At this, Justin lets out a whoop. “Me? I’m playing? I’m not the fucking player here. I’m not the one playing around.” He turns to Karolina. “Karo—I thought you were in charge. Who’s in charge here?”

  Maeve looks from the two men to Karo and back again. She can see what’s coming next, recognizes Justin’s stance, his hands clenched into fists. He’s already winding up.

  Karo gives in and sets the radio aside, her face and neck tense with the drawn look of someone who’s been up all night, although in fact they all slept well—too well—and the day has barely begun.

  “Listen—” she begins, but it’s not fast or furious enough for Justin and he cuts her off, turning to face Dan head-on.

  “Nothing’s going to happen if I go upstairs for five minutes. Nothing!” He steps right up into Dan’s face, pushing for a fight. “We all know why Anna died. She died because this genius fucked with the door lock so she thought she was safe to go outside—” Justin spins to Sim. “Right, Picasso? Like, we all know that. She thought she was safe. Because of you.”

  Sim stops his whittling and looks up, not at Justin, but Dan. His hand paused, his hand with the knife in it. There’s a moment of silence. Then:

  “We’re not animals.”

  His voice is calm. Relaxed, even. Something ardent, but earnest, always in his look: his eyes are so blue. Some kind of James Dean thing. There’s a beat, all of them waiting for him to say something else, to keep on. But he just goes back to the work in his hands. Justin starts to laugh.

  It’s Dan who steps away, Dan who takes the bait.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Sim just shakes his head.

  “No, answer me,” Dan says. “He’s right—if you hadn’t messed with the lock, if you hadn’t fooled with it—”

  “We’re not animals,” Sim repeats. He sets the bone and the knife aside. “There’s no good reason to keep the doors locked all the time. Why? Why are they locked? To keep out the rescue team?”

  For the first time, Karo looks wary. Wired. Maeve can see that she’s bracing, ready to rise and put herself between the two men. But Sim is still on the ground, legs splayed out in front. Aggressively relaxed. He leans back on his hands.

  “You weren’t trying to keep danger out. You were trying to keep us in. Like a pen at the zoo. Why?” He looks around briefly, trying to draw the others in. “You know why? Because you’re scared, and locks make you feel safe. Except we’re not animals. See?” Sim rises slowly to his feet and it’s a reminder of how tall he is, how big his hands are, how long his reach. “You can’t keep people locked up,” he says. “It doesn’t make anyone safer—”

  Sadie cuts in from her place on the couch: “It just makes you a control freak.”

  Dan points at her. “Stay the fuck out of this.” He spins back to Sim, closing in on him now. “Everyone would have been safer. Anna would be alive.”

  “No, she wouldn’t, because Anna liked to smoke and she was a goddamn human being and she wanted to go outside.”

  “Great, she went outside! The last time I touched that goddamn door it couldn’t lock, you understand? Do you get me, Nielssen? I couldn’t fix it. So what happened? A fucking miracle?” Dan gives him a shove, just lightly, a tap on the shoulder, but Sim’s whole body hardens.

  “So you say.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “It means you say you couldn’t fix it—but clearly you did. You just d
idn’t tell anyone,” Sim looks around a second time, like he’s taking a poll. “Did you? You sure didn’t tell Anna. And now you’re the one making excuses. Way to blame the victim—she sleepwalked her way right out into the cold? Come on.”

  Maeve glances at Karo.

  “You know what I think?” Dan sputters, obviously taken aback. “I think you did it. I think you fucked the door up and then you fixed it and it’s you that didn’t tell anyone, and now you’re too much of a coward—”

  “Okay—” Karo stands up and moves between them, glaring at Justin for starting this.

  Maeve and Sadie suddenly the only ones left seated. Maeve is lost in a thought of her own: Anna often smoked out her open window. She’d said Karo caught her at it more than once. So why did she choose last night to go out by herself in the dark?

  Unless she wasn’t by herself. Unless she slipped out to meet someone, as she often did at night.

  She forces the question from her mind and gets up on her feet, pulls a chair between herself and the action. She knows how these things can go.

  But Sadie rises to stand behind Sim. “How did Elisha Goldman fall? We didn’t have a whole argument about it. Accidents happen.”

  She’s been so quiet that everyone turns to look at her. After a moment, Maeve remembers: Goldman was the painter Sadie told her about. The woman who stepped off the ledge. Paraplegic ever since.

  Justin starts laughing again.

  “Well, I guess if anyone knows what happened to Elisha, it would be Nielssen. Wouldn’t it?”

  Sadie looks flushed, almost ill. She steps toward Sim, unsteady, as though someone has pushed her.

  “You still talk to her?”

  Karo steps between them.

  “It doesn’t matter who did what.” She is furious, shaking. “Anna went outside. Okay? She went outside. Arguing about it now won’t help anyone, least of all Anna.”

  “Least of all us,” Justin says.

  Karo wheels around to face him. “Go.”

  “Sorry?”

  “I said go. You wanted to go upstairs so badly, right? That’s what you want? You want a drink? Go upstairs. We’re not arguing anymore. Now we’re making a plan. You can be part of it, or you can get drunk. I don’t care.”

  Justin hesitates, but only for a second. He flicks his gaze to Dan, then steps back and strides off toward the stairwell. The door shuts behind him with a slam.

  There’s a silence and for a minute no one moves or says anything. The question of the door lock is uncomfortable; it puts the blame on someone other than Anna. On Sim for touching it in the first place, on Dan for trying to fix it. As accidents go, it’s horrific. Almost unbelievable.

  As soon as she thinks that, Maeve gets a sharp twinge again. Almost?

  “Everyone take a moment—” Dan begins.

  “What happened to ‘everyone stay together’?” This is Sadie, reverting to her usual insolence.

  “Everyone take a moment,” Dan repeats, ignoring her. “So that we can think.”

  But almost immediately, he’s lacing up his boots, the moment to think extended to a group splintering. Dan, Maeve thinks, is always sure he is the only one who should be allowed outdoors. The Elisha Goldman story eats at her. Two bad accidents in a matter of months? If it’s not negligent, then it’s sinister. Those are the choices.

  She does not say this out loud.

  “I’ll take that moment,” she says instead to nobody in particular. “I need it.”

  Karo hesitates, chewing on her lip, before nodding curtly. She looks uncomfortable in her skin, as though something is making her itch; she picks up the radio from where she left it on the floor and hugs it to her hip. Sadie just seems restless, on her feet and pacing the rim of chairs near the fire, eager to get away.

  Sim gives Maeve a final glance and then turns and goes back to the gallery, his own locked door, and slips quietly inside.

  Maeve climbs slowly to the fourth floor, meaning to go back to her own room. But just as she swings the stairwell door open, something stops her—an echo of some kind. She pauses, hovering there. The sound of another door yawning open, from the other stairwell, at the opposite end of the hall. She hangs back. Footsteps; the jangling of a set of keys or a zippered jacket. A blunt noise, then a bang.

  Then nothing.

  Silence. She can feel her heart kicking hard against her ribs. She’s expecting Sim—it’s always Sim.

  But there are no more footsteps, and after a moment, no other sounds at all. Maeve leans out into the hall. For a second, she wonders if she imagined it. The corridor is empty and dark.

  No—no, that’s not quite true. A slim arc of light makes a dent in the shadows about halfway down. Someone’s door is open. Not someone’s: Maeve’s own door, she realizes. She takes a step farther, letting the stairwell door fall closed, gently and silently, behind her.

  She’s most of the way there before she realizes it’s not actually her door that’s open; it’s the one next to it. The adjoining room, where Anna slept the night before. She stops and looks behind her. There’s no one else in the hall. But a rustling and then that muted jangle again, this time from inside the room, the sound too dull and heavy to be just a zipper, or even a key ring. But what else would make that noise?

  A tool belt.

  Maeve feels a rush of loyalty and sadness come up into her throat. Dan. Doing what? She lunges forward and pushes the door wide, letting it bang against the inside wall.

  But it’s Sadie who spins to face her. Furious.

  Maeve steps back, surprised. She takes a quick glance around the room. The bedcovers have been pulled off and thrown to the floor, and the wardrobe is wide open. Anna’s unzipped knapsack is in Sadie’s hands.

  Maeve doesn’t say anything, just stares.

  “Justin’s camera is missing, his video camera,” Sadie says. She’s not surprised she got caught; she’s defiant. Her eyes red-rimmed from crying. “The whole thing—the carry bag, all the SD cards. The hard drive. It’s all gone.”

  “That doesn’t explain why you’re here.”

  “I was playing with it last night. Remember? But Anna took it from me when you were dancing.”

  Maeve nods slowly, still staring her down. She seems to remember that Sadie had the camera last. Didn’t she? She tries to picture the scene as they left the lobby, but she was so exhausted by everything last night.

  Maybe Anna came back for the camera later, while Maeve was dealing with Sim in the hall?

  “Did you look under your chair?” She’s recalling Sadie’s own reproach the day before, when it was Justin looking for the camera.

  “I know I shouldn’t be in here.” Sadie sinks back against the bed, a steady new resolve in her demeanor. “But Justin is already asking me for it. He’s going to kill me.”

  Maeve shakes her head. How can this be the priority today?

  Sadie starts again: “I use that camera a lot. So I had . . . footage on it. Stuff. Okay? Things I want to keep. Things I want to keep private.”

  “So why not ask about it downstairs? Why just come up here?” Or, better: Why not use your own damn camera? Maeve cannot figure this out; she doesn’t even want to.

  “Private, Maeve. You know what that means? And Justin—he doesn’t know yet. That I lost it.”

  “And you think this morning is the best time to break in—”

  “This morning went to hell pretty damn quickly, don’t you think?” Just like that, Sadie is on her feet again, coming at her like a bulldog. “And I told you, Anna must have taken it. She must have.”

  Maeve holds her ground. “I should get Karolina,” she says. “Or the others, Dan—”

  But the mention of Dan’s name seems to pull Sadie back. Her voice drops. “Look, Maeve—”

  Maeve feels her surprise turn to rage. “She’s dead! Anna died last night and you’re rooting through her stuff—”

  “I just really need that camera, okay? You don’t understand.” Sadie’s body buzzing
with tension, her voice rising to match. Maeve can practically see the adrenaline moving through her. “I’m—I’m working on something. Like a project. All right?”

  Maeve narrows her eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s hard to explain.”

  Sadie seems suddenly exhausted, like she can barely stand up. The mood swings here verge on performance. Maeve chides herself for the thought: that can’t be true. Maybe the girl is in shock? She was so emotional only an hour ago, weeping over Anna’s death.

  Unless that was some kind of act too.

  “Try me,” Maeve says.

  Sadie sucks on her lower lip.

  “It’s part of Sim’s installation,” she says finally. “I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone. He asked me to help him with something, and I’ve been using Justin’s camera.”

  Maeve feels herself pull in a little. “If this is for Sim, why didn’t he give you a camera himself?”

  “Because the stealth—”

  “You mean stealing.”

  “—it’s all part of it. It’s part of the conceit of the project, it’s important to it.” She looks desperate, like she might cry again at any moment. “It’s not just for him. This is good for me too, Maeve. I left Europe for this place. For—” She throws her hands out, indicating the empty room. “For—this. All I did in school was write essays about art, and all I do here is clean up after artists. I’ve never had the chance to do anything—to make anything myself. Please don’t ruin this. Sim says it’s like—like a mentorship. He’s going to bring me along when the installation tours. Being a part of this could really open doors for me.”

  Maeve presses her lips together, then runs a hand through her hair.

  “That’s what he told you?”

  “I can’t explain it, okay? It’s a secret.” Sadie crosses her arms, locking the secret inside. It’s like dealing with a teenager.

  “Sadie—” Maeve steps closer. She’s trying to remember how it feels to be so young and so ambitious. Tries to come up with something to say; what she wishes someone—anyone—had told her when she was twenty-three herself: “I know it can be really hard—at your age, I mean. I get it. I was there once too.” She softens her voice; downstairs, she’d told herself the girl needed kindness. Maybe it’s not too late? “Especially when men who are older—men who are accomplished—ask things of you. We’re kind of trained to say yes. We’re trained to feel like it’s a coup, somehow, a triumph to be the one who gets asked. Even if they’re really just using you.” Maeve takes a breath. “And they almost always are, Sadie.”