The Retreat

by Elisabeth de Mariaffi

  Sadie nods slowly, like she’s really thinking about it. “Just—just don’t tell anyone. Okay?”

  Maeve blinks. Something doesn’t jibe; there’s a blankness to her, as if she’s only trying to read Maeve and respond, to feed Maeve the right line.

  “What were you filming?”

  Another long silence. Then: “I’ll put everything back the way it was. I know it’s terrible that I’m in here, I know—”

  “That night I saw you downstairs. In the spa.” Maeve comes in closer still. Something, some object cradled in Sadie’s arm that night. Something black. “In the hallway, you remember?”

  But Sadie’s face changes again. “Spare me the life lessons, okay? Tell Dan if you want. I don’t care. We’re doomed here, that’s obvious. Whatever. Do whatever you want.”

  Maeve looks around the room, destroyed by Sadie’s search efforts. What the hell could be on that camera?

  Sadie steps in close, her finger in Maeve’s face. “You’re not special, you know. Before you, it was Elisha, and before her, just someone else. So don’t think you’re more important than me.”

  Maeve stiffens. It’s a dig—and not even an elegant one—meant to provoke her, she knows that. And so what? He’s a player. Why should she care about that? She only wanted a one-night stand in the first place.

  Still. There’s a sting to it.

  “Anna did not have that camera last night. I watched her unpack.”

  Sadie nods again, but this time it’s curt, impatient. “And she never left the room again?”

  Maeve feels her neck tense. Why won’t she leave this alone?

  Sadie waves her own question away; she can see she’s gone too far. “I’m sorry—”

  But Maeve is tired of the show. She cuts her off: “We need to get out of here. I’ll walk you down.”

  She goes to the door and waits for Sadie to pass through before turning to shut it behind them.

  Downstairs, Sadie walks briskly to the office and shuts the door. Maeve stares after her, unsure which Sadie is the real one: the emotional young woman who wept over Anna’s body or this impulsive, ruthless version. Combing through a dead woman’s room for—for what, exactly? Approbation from Sim?

  Or just to save herself, destroy some footage that will no doubt reflect poorly on her, in the wake of Anna’s death.

  Justin emerges from the stairwell behind her, carrying a tote bag of minibar bottles that clink as he walks. His mood is unchanged: the first empty bottle, fist-size, already firmly in his grip. He heads straight for Dan, but Dan turns and moves off to the back door, taking up his shovel as he goes.

  The door swings shut. Justin spins to watch it happen, then tosses the bag of booze down on the big desk with a flourish.

  “You’re welcome,” he says to Maeve.

  Sim has disappeared, for the moment or for the day, into his gallery. Maeve and Justin the only two people left in the room.

  There’s a pause, and he downs the rest of the minibottle in his hand like it’s a shot.

  “Not filming this part, I notice,” Maeve says. It’s a feeler: she wants to know if the camera is really missing or if Sadie was lying about her reasons for going through Anna’s things.

  “We’ll want to skip this part of the promo.” But he glances quickly around the room, suddenly interested in the chairs by the fire, the couch. It’s clear he is looking for something. “I know it just seems like some dumb project, but—it was giving me something to focus on.” He pulls the rolling chair away from the front desk to peek underneath. “Sadie probably has the camera anyway.”

  Maeve would like to get her hands on that camera herself.

  Justin throws himself glumly into the desk chair. When he looks up, she notices that his lip has started bleeding again.

  “Your mouth—” she says.

  “I know, I know.” He dabs at the split lip with a tentative finger. “Dan—” He glances toward the back windows, lost in thought, then starts over.

  “Someday,” he says, “some man will run a thumb over this scar and ask me how I got so beautiful.” He lets the hand hover over his mouth, hiding the missing front tooth. “We only hurt the ones we love.” It comes out as a weird singsong.

  He shakes his head.

  There’s something Maeve recognizes in his posture, something wounded and wistful, but it takes her a moment to land on it.

  “Oh,” Maeve says. “Oh.”

  “Yeah.” He nods. “Yeah, I always think I can turn them around.”

  He sucks at the hurt place inside, where his tooth is missing. There’s a little silence, awkward, while Maeve thinks of what else to say.

  “That’s why he can’t apologize.” Justin thumbs at his lip. “For hitting me. Not in public. Not in any real way. He can’t apologize because he thinks we were a secret. Like no one knew.”

  Maeve nods slowly. She really didn’t know, still is not sure how much there might be to know, but she doesn’t say this. What exactly is he telling her? That he’s been sleeping with Dan? Or is it only a flirtation, a game on Dan’s part?

  The whole place a minefield of secrets.

  “Anna—” Maeve begins. “Anna had a . . . thing with him too. Did you know that?”

  “Did I know? We had a little contest going. Anna and me. Fuck, it’s terrible, I know. It was just for fun. Or that’s how it started. Anyway.” He leans over to his bag, cracks the seal on a second flask, tosses the cap onto the floor. “The funny part,” he says. “The funny part is I thought I’d won. Until she showed up again last month.” He takes a slug from the bottle and sniffs. “Sorry. It’s a shitty thing to talk about now. Today, I mean. It’s just—like I said, I always think I can turn them around.”

  Maeve nods again, as though she understands. In fact, she feels like she’s been run over by a train. She can’t bring herself to say what she’s thinking, what so many people said to her:

  But he hits you. He pushes you around. Why do you want him?

  She thinks back to Anna and Justin’s banter that first night. Their only good night—Anna mixing drinks and wondering aloud why Dan had suddenly pulled away, Justin’s little dig at her tactics. Even Anna’s dismissal of Justin, the way she’d cut him down. Fancies himself a hot little ticket.

  But it also lays bare some different version of that morning. Justin’s sudden defense of Anna’s body, the way he stepped in and pulled Dan off her, now smacks of a weird jealousy. He took a punch for his trouble. And even—

  Even the way he redirected the blame from Dan to Sim. The crippled door lock versus the repaired door lock. What do you point to?

  You point to whatever made Anna think she could go out into the night and get safely back inside.

  “I guess you could say I’ve won now,” Justin says. It’s maybe meant to be funny, but Maeve blanches, and a wash of regret crosses his face.

  Maeve looks up to see more snow coming down, her reflection just a ghostly outline in the glass. Was it only last night she used that same window as a mirror, still somehow dancing, still trying to salvage some piece of this place? Stupid to come to the mountains; stupid to want to be anywhere but home.

  She feels numb.

  “No one has eaten anything,” she says. It’s true: no one has eaten at all that morning, and they barely ate the night before. She moves off toward the kitchen by herself.

  Justin throws his feet up onto the desk next to the booze.

  Narcissist, she thinks.

  She’s glad to leave him there.

  In the kitchen, there’s not much fresh food left. A single loaf of bread, poorly sealed, in the bread bin. Some basic dry goods in the cupboards: sacks of flour, salt, sugar, raisins. The double-wide refrigerator with a sour smell when she opens the door. It’s cold, but not cold enough. She pulls out a foil-sealed brick of butter and closes the door again.

  But as it swings shut, she catches the reflection of something behind her—a shadow, almost, looming in the doorway. Her mind catches up a mo
ment too late: she’s already spinning around, defensive, and she lets out a yelp of surprise.

  Sim stands there, eyes wide.

  “Sorry,” she says reflexively. Although why should she be? “I must be jumpy.”

  He reaches for a roll of paper towels on the counter.

  “It’s understandable. Hell of a morning.” He pulls a sheet off the roll, wipes his face and hands, then squeezes the towel until it disappears in his fist.

  She nods in a vague way. It’s uncomfortable, the kitchen with its echo of silence, industrial. A space big enough to swallow sound. She’s still got the butter in one hand and she gestures with it inelegantly.

  “No one’s eaten anything,” she says. “I came in here—I’m not even sure there is anything to eat. The fridge is full of spoiled milk.”

  “Karo put most of what could be saved into the walk-in freezer.” He looks around for the garbage and lobs the balled-up paper towel toward the bin. “The first morning,” he says. “She was careful about it.”

  “Oh.” Maeve nods again. Her mouth is dry. “Oh, that makes sense.”

  Anna, blue-white with cold, when Dan brought her inside. Not just frost, but an ice filigree framing her lashes, her lips.

  Maeve would prefer not to go into the freezer.

  “I’ll do it,” Sim volunteers. “I’ll go in if you want. Or you can, and I’ll hold the door for you. So you don’t feel scared.”

  “It’s just weird,” she says. Then: “Christ, I wish you’d never fucked with that door.”

  He shakes his head. “Oh, now. You too, hey?” He moves in closer. “She would have gone out anyway, Maeve. Or someone would have. It was inevitable; anyone can see that.” He turns to glance behind himself as though making sure they’re alone. “Look at the control in this place,” he says. “Only Dan gets to tell us where to go. Only Karo is allowed to touch the radio. You noticed that last night, didn’t you? Try picking it up again. See what happens.”

  Maeve nods, uncomfortable to find herself agreeing with him. The thing with the radio had seemed weird, it’s true. She’d almost forgotten it. But he’s also echoing her own thought, that Dan likes to be the only one allowed outdoors. Likes to do the allowing. And Karo, of course, setting Sadie to spy on everyone else, keep them in line—

  Maeve catches herself. That’s only what she thought Sadie was doing, spying and reporting back. But it’s not true. How much has this colored what she thinks of Karolina?

  Now she’s not sure who Karo is at all.

  “It was an accident,” Sim says. “Everyone knew Anna liked to go for a smoke before bed. Everyone knew that. It was safer having one unlocked door. It’s crazy to have doors on auto-lock in a situation like this. Totally crazy.”

  She doesn’t answer. She doesn’t say: But the door did lock somehow. Whatever you did didn’t work. It didn’t work at all.

  “I’m sorry it happened,” he says.

  “Me too,” Maeve says. “Understatement of the year.” She glances over at the freezer. “I’ll hold the door for you.”

  “Okay,” he says, and he leaves it at that.

  “Okay.” She breaks away and moves to the deep freeze, but she’s relieved, or at least reassured. She wonders how much of her nervousness is just anxiety, her past life kicking in, not the situation. If he reached for her now, she realizes, she’d let him.

  She’s not sure whom to talk to or whom to trust. He reaches for the freezer door, but she stops him, her hand on his shoulder.

  “Did you—” she starts.

  He raises an eyebrow. She takes a breath and tries again. “What do you have Sadie working on?”

  “Sadie? Working?”

  “She says you gave her some kind of assignment, some film project related to your work in there.” She points toward the lobby and the gallery door.

  “Oh, that.” Sim turns his head like he’s already weary of the topic. “When I first got here, she was dogging around after me. It was annoying. So I gave her a little make-work thing to do to keep her out of my hair.” He rubs his forehead. “I wanted some film to cut up, something I could make abstract, for a projection. Something that can run on the floor, that visitors will literally walk on, but that feels secretive, like a whisper. Underfoot, you know? Lots of meaning there. She liked the idea of a camera and secrets, so I said great, go do that.”

  His tone, blasé, stands in stark contrast to Sadie’s burst of emotion at the same story. She seemed frantic, whereas the mention of Sadie makes him look, if anything, bored.

  “But why target Anna?”

  Sim looks down at her oddly. “Anna? What do you mean?”

  There’s no performance in the question; he seems genuinely confused. Maeve suddenly finds she wants to keep the story to herself. She shakes her head.

  “I think you should be more careful with her, that’s all. Sadie. She’s younger than she seems.”

  Sim shifts his weight.

  “I wasn’t going to tell you this.” He glances out at the empty lobby and back to Maeve. “But Sadie—she’s not that innocent. She’s had it in for you this whole time. Since you arrived.” He leans into the kitchen island and looks at her more directly. Eye to eye. “She used to dance. Did she tell you that? It was her dream when she was a kid, but her father wouldn’t let her. Didn’t want her onstage for everyone to see. So everything about you, literally everything—your career, your reputation, this new company you’re building—” He pauses for a second, and his voice drops. “Your connection to me,” he says. “She’s jealous. At one point, she told me she wanted to sneak into your studio and grease the floor so you’d have an accident. Break something.” He pulls back, his whole body registering the severity of this threat. Maeve frowns.

  It’s uncomfortable, a gut punch. The way she felt guilty, watching Sadie try to cope that morning. Then finding her rifling through Anna’s room—

  So you’d have an accident. All at once she thinks of the way Sadie keeps circling back to Elisha Goldman. She’s the only one who keeps bringing her up.

  Maeve shakes her head and reaches for the long handle on the freezer door. “Here—” She draws the bolt back, opens the door, and sets her body against the inside panel, like a brace.

  Sim walks into the freezer and roots through the stores. There’s a step-ladder, but most things—taped cardboard boxes, slabs of meat wrapped in freezer paper—are stacked at eye level or below. On the wall beside the door is the emergency release, and next to it, someone has hung a small ax. In case the release button doesn’t work, Maeve thinks. Or the power goes out, and you get trapped.

  On the back wall, there’s the white bedsheet hanging crisply over the edge of its low shelf. Maeve’s stomach turns, but she finds she cannot look away.

  Sim rises to his feet, having retrieved more bread and two large, foil-wrapped trays.

  “Joker’s wild,” he says, nodding at the trays. “At least whatever’s in here will already have been cooked.”

  “Breakfast surprise,” Maeve says. She shifts to let him by, but the door starts to close, and she has to put her arm out to catch it again. Sim moves past her, out of the walk-in, and wends his way back to the kitchen proper to set things down.

  Maeve stays where she is just a moment longer. The subtle movement of the door, that half swing before she caught it, pushed a little current of air through the freezer. Anna’s sheet flutters just at one edge. This is what catches Maeve’s eye. The corner of the sheet, lifting and falling, over the curved arch of Anna’s blue toes.

  Anna’s feet are bare.

  If she’d meant to go out for a smoke, even just for a moment, she would have put on her boots. Wouldn’t she? Or something. Sneakers. Slippers, even.

  Even if she were planning to step just outside the door. In the moment of crisis, with Anna’s legs curled up in her long nightgown, it’s not something anyone noticed. But now Maeve stares. She tries out a few rushed excuses: Anna was drunk and forgot, then didn’t want to climb all the s
tairs back to retrieve her boots. Or, as Dan suggested, Anna was sleepwalking.

  What comes back to her again is the sound she heard last night just as she turned out the light. Something she wishes she could forget. Half asleep with half a mug of whiskey in her, and then the heavy sleep that followed. A kind of bang, or a knock.

  Anna’s door?

  She recalls her own silly knock in response. How after that, there was no sound at all. She’d assumed Anna was already asleep. Anna only sleeping there in the first place to make Maeve more comfortable. She glances over to where Sim is waiting for her in the kitchen.

  Just an accident.

  No one would step out into the snow in bare feet. No one. Not in this weather. Not on purpose.

  She shuts the freezer door behind her.

  Karo is waiting for them in the lobby. She’s holding a long cardboard tube, and she draws out the roll of heavy paper housed inside. It’s the thing she was searching for—a proper survey, she says.

  “I wanted something better than a map.” She hands the roll to Sadie and watches as the younger woman lays it out on the desk, then leans over it to smooth the page flat. “We can’t wait here any longer. Someone needs to go down the mountain for help.”

  “Someone?” Maeve says. She can’t stop her mind cycling on Anna’s bare feet and tries to calm herself down. Sadie seems to have lost her earlier agitation and stands, stone-faced, on the other side of the desk. Her lip twitches as though she wants to bite it. Perhaps Karo has spoken to her; she seems corralled, brought in line.

  Justin gets up to take a closer look, leaning on the back of a chair. Dan already has his boots on.

  “We’re running out of time,” Karo says. “It doesn’t feel prudent to stay here anymore without at least trying.”