by Jenn Bennett
I know he just said a bunch of words, but all I heard was “your boyfriend.” Did Porter tell Pangborn we went out? Or has he noticed anything going on between us at work? I’m too chicken to ask, especially when Pangborn’s eyes crinkle up sweetly in the corners.
“I’ll get the flashlights,” I offer.
“I was hoping you’d say that,” he says. “I’m feeling more exhausted than usual tonight, and I’ve got to open in the morning, so I’m going to head home a few minutes early. Don’t want to nod off on the road.”
“Hey, not funny.” Now that I’m looking at him, he really does look tired. Like, insanely tired. For the first time since Grace told me, I suddenly remember the rumors about him being sick. They may not be true, who knows, but I know one thing for sure: He’s too old to be working this late. And Cavadini is an asshole to schedule him opening tomorrow morning.
“I’ll stay alert, don’t worry,” he assures me. “But your concern is much appreciated. I just need a good night’s rest. Daisy Dog and I need our beauty sleep. Tell Porter I’m locking the two of you in with the new master code. He’ll have to punch in the override to get out. He’ll know what I’m talking about.”
“Got it.” At least he has a dog to go home to. I tell him to be careful driving and when he’s gone, I head out to find Porter. It’s weird being alone in the museum. It’s dark and eerily quiet: Only the after-hours lights are on—just enough to illuminate the hallways and stop you from tripping over your own feet—and the background music that normally plays all the time is shut off.
I quickly organize the flashlights and check their batteries, and when I don’t hear Porter walking around, I stare at the phone sitting at the information desk. How many chances come along like this? I pick up the receiver, press the little red button next to the word ALL, and speak into the phone in a low voice. “Paging Porter Roth to the information desk,” I say formally, my voice crackling through the entire lobby and echoing down the corridors. Then I press the button again and add, “While you’re at it, check your shoes to make sure they’re a match, you bastard. By the way, I still haven’t quite forgiven you for humiliating me. It’s going to take a lot more than a kiss and a cookie to make me forget both that and the time you provoked me in the Hotbox.”
I’m only teasing, which I hope he knows. I feel a little drunk on all my megaphone power, so I page one more thing:
“PS—You look totally hot in those tight-fitting security guard pants tonight, and I plan to get very handsy with you at the movies, so we better sit in the back row.”
I hang up the phone and cover my mouth, silently laughing at myself. Two seconds later, Porter’s footfalls pound down Jay’s corridor—Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! He sounds like a T. rex running from Godzilla. He races into the lobby and slides in front of the information desk, grabbing onto the edge to stop himself, wild curls flying everywhere. His grin is enormous.
“Whadidya say ’bout where you want to be puttin’ your hands on me?” he asks breathlessly.
“I think you have me confused with someone else,” I tease.
His head sags against the desk. I push his hair away from one of his eyes. He looks up at me and asks, “You really still haven’t forgiven me?”
“Maybe if you put your hands on me, I might.”
“Don’t go getting my hopes up like that.”
“Oh, your hopes should be up. Way up.”
“Dear God, woman,” he murmurs. “And here I was, thinking you were a classy dame.”
“Pfft. You don’t know me at all.”
“I aim to find out. What are we still doing here? Let’s blow this place and get to the theater, fast.”
We race each other through the lobby and grab our stuff out of our lockers. When we get to the back door, Porter pauses by the security system panel and tilts his head quizzically.
“Oh,” I say, snapping my fingers. “Pangborn said to tell you that he was using the new master code to lock us in, and that you’ll have to punch in the override code to get out.”
Porter sort of shakes his head, mumbling to himself, and then appears to dismiss it. He unhooks his leather key fob thingy from his belt. I recognize his van keys on it, because there’s a tiny shark on the key ring. But when he swings it into his palm he pauses again.
“O-o-oh, s-h-h-i-i-i-t,” he drawls. His head drops. He’s silently swearing to the floor, eyes squeezed shut.
“What?” I say.
“Pangborn took my key earlier,” he says in a small voice. “Right before the tour. He left his at home during the break between the regular shift and the ghost tours, and he had to open the back door. I was about to start a tour, and I forgot to get it back from him. That son of a bitch.”
“But you can just use the master code to let us out, right?”
Porter snorts and throws up his hand toward the panel. “If he’d used the master code, yes. But he didn’t. See this here, this number? That code indicates that the system is on lockdown.”
“And that means . . . ?”
“It means,” Porter says, “that you and I are now locked up alone together inside the museum for the rest of the night.”
“All night long I’ve had the most terrible impulse to do something.”
—Audrey Hepburn, Sabrina (1954)
20
* * *
That can’t be true. I mean, not really. There’s always a way out of a place this big, right?
“Remember that day when I had to reinstall all the locks on the doors?” Porter asks.
I do.
“And you know I had to do that because we lost live off-site monitoring of our security system, and that instead of switching to one of a hundred other companies, management just decided to buy this cheap-ass system you see before you now?”
“Uh-huh?” I say, but I’m not totally following, and he’s getting really angry. Steam is practically pouring out of his nostrils.
He takes a deep breath and calms down. “What this means is that Pangborn vaped too much weed again, left his manual keys at home, took mine, punched in a code that locks all the doors for eight hours, and drove off.”
I stare at Porter.
He stares back.
“But you can deactivate this code, right?”
He shakes his head. “Pangborn is the lead security officer. I don’t have clearance for a lockdown code.” Oh, the irony. “He lives fifteen minutes from here. So we will have to wait until he gets home, and then—and this is where it gets really funny—we will try to call him.”
“Why is that funny?”
“He usually turns his home phone off at night. He doesn’t like to be woken up. ‘Bad news can wait until morning’ is his policy. And if we can’t get him on the phone . . . well, I’m not really sure what to do. I guess we could try to call one of the other guards at home, but it’s ten thirty on a Saturday night. And not only will they be pissed, but Pangborn could get fired for this. And pretty much everyone is looking for a reason for that to happen. In case you haven’t noticed, he’s kind of a mess.”
That makes my heart twist.
“Mr. Cavadini? One of the shift managers?” I suggest and immediately realize the fault in that plan. Pangborn could get fired, and maybe Porter, too, for letting him go home early.
We both shake our heads.
I sniffle and scratch my nose with the side of my hand. “So basically what you’re telling me is that unless we can get Pangborn on the phone, we’re stuck here?”
“Let’s take one thing at a time,” Porter says, but I can tell by his grim expression that he doesn’t have much hope. He leads me back to the security room, and I’m so panicked, I barely have time to register that I’m finally inside the inner sanctum: “Heaven.” It’s weird to be back here. Dozens of tiny black-and-white monitors cross two walls, all numbered, and an L-shaped desk with four computers, two of which appear to be a decade or more old.
We plop down at the desk in two rolling chairs. A swing-arm
lamp casts a light over an old phone, where Porter proceeds to speed dial Pangborn’s home number a zillion times. Of course the old man doesn’t have a cell. Or he used to, Porter says, but he never charged it, and it sat in the glove box of his car for several years; it may still be there.
“Porter?”
“Yeah,” he says, completely miserable, head in his hands.
“Is Pangborn sick?”
He doesn’t answer right away. “You’ve heard rumors?”
“Yeah.”
“He had colon cancer two years ago. He’s in remission. But he went to the doctor last week, and he won’t tell me what happened, and that worries me. He’s always bragging about his appointments, because he’s got a crush on his doctor. So I’m kind of thinking maybe it’s back and he’s going to have to go through chemo or something. I don’t know.”
“Oh, no.” Grace’s intel was right.
“Yeah, it sucks. And that’s why he can’t get fired, because the last thing he needs is to be screwing around with changing up his doctors and health benefits right now.”
My chest aches. Why do bad things happen to good people? And if he does have cancer, and he’s still showing up here for these stupid ghost tours, dressing up in his little suspenders and ghost socks, turning down tips from guests . . . it shatters my heart into a million pieces.
After half an hour of calling, we give up. It’s not happening.
Deep breath. Time to evaluate the situation: (1) A cancer-stricken, nice old man has accidently locked us inside the Cave overnight. It’s hard for me to get too mad at him about that. (2) It’s not like we’re going to run out of air or food or water. (3) We’re not going to freeze or die of heat stroke. (4) We’re not in danger of being eaten by bears or tigers. (5) This isn’t our fault.
“Look on the bright side,” Porter says, obviously having similar thoughts. “The lockdown will release at six thirty in the morning, so you’ll still be able to beat your dad home from San Francisco. And if I call my parents and explain what happened, they’ll totally understand. They both know Pangborn. And I spent the night on the couch here once before when we were resetting the security system last summer.”
I glance over at the beat-up couch in the corner and my heart speeds up. “But what about me? I mean, will you tell them I’m here too? My dad would freak the hell out if he knew we were locked in here together alone all night.”
The tension falls out of Porter’s face, and the corners of his mouth slowly curl upward.
Oh, boy.
“Well, well, well,” he says, leaning back in his chair in front of a bank of security monitors. He temples his fingers together over his chest. “This is an interesting situation, isn’t it? Here we were, ready to run off to some crowded theater, but now we have the entire museum to ourselves. For the whole night. A boy prays and prays and prays, and is on his very best behavior, but he never dreams that something like this will just fall into his lap—so to speak.”
“So to speak,” I say weakly.
“Lots of room to spread out in this big place.” The side of his knee bumps mine. A question.
All my earlier boldness has fled the building along with my courage. Now I just feel trapped. I withdraw both my legs and hide them under the desk. “What about all the cameras? I mean, won’t this show up on the video footage? If someone reviews it later, or whatever?”
He chuckles. “You think the Cave pays for data storage? Think again. If we want to record something, we have to do it manually. Nothing is automatically recorded.”
I glance up at the monitors and search for the Hotbox. There it is. It’s empty now, of course, and dark, so I can’t see much, but it’s surreal to imagine Porter watching me from here. I make a mental note not to wear gaping tops to work, because that is a primo cleavage camera angle.
“However,” Porter says, “if you’re still worried, I know all the spots that the cameras miss. You know, if that would make you more comfortable.”
I give him a dirty look. “Who says I want to get comfortable? We went on one date.”
“Whoa.” He holds up both hands in surrender. “Now you’re making me feel like some sort of criminal sex pervert. Jesus, Bailey. An hour ago, you were talking about putting your hands on me in the back of a theater. I was just teasing you.”
I blow out a hard breath. “I’m sorry. I’m just nervous and weirded out. I’ve just . . .”
“Just what?”
“I’ve just never . . . spent the night in a museum with anyone before.”
Porter’s brows lift. “Oh?”
I grimace. “Can you turn around or something? I can’t look at you and talk about this.”
“What?”
I make twisting movements with my hand. “Face the wall.”
He looks at me like I’m nuts, and then gives in and slowly swivels around in his chair, keeping his head facing me, squinting, until the last possible moment. When he’s facing the wall, I sigh and start talking to his back.
“Like I said before, we just went on one date.” I’m a coward, yes, but having this conversation is so much easier when I don’t have to look in his eyes. “And it was a great date. I mean, wow. I don’t have much to compare it to, but I think it had to be up there in the history books. And even though you gave me those hickeys and ruined my favorite skirt, I would do it all over again.”
“I’m still sorry about the hickeys, but for the record, I got grass stains on my clothes too. And every time I leave the house now, my mom teases me about going out for a roll in the hay and Pops has started calling me Grasshopper.”
“Oh, God,” I whisper.
“Totally worth it,” he says. “But please continue.”
“Anyway,” I say, trying to gather my thoughts. “We went from enemies to a first date to now having the possibility of spending the night together in a museum, and not that I haven’t thought about spending the night in a museum with you, because believe me, I’ve thought about that a lot.”
His head turns sideways, but he still doesn’t look at me. “A lot?”
“You have no idea.”
“O-oh, that’s where you’re very wrong, my friend.” His knee starts bouncing a nervous rhythm.
I smile to myself as a little thrill zips through me. “Well, what I’m saying is that I’m not opposed to such a thing. But I’m guessing you’ve spent many a night in many a museum, and you know, whatever. Good for you. But that intimidates me. And when it comes to this, I need you to let me give the green signal.”
“First,” he says, holding up a finger over his shoulder, “I want to say that I’m insulted that you’d think that I wouldn’t. So thanks for making me feel like a sex criminal, again.”
“Oh, God,” I mumble.
“Second”—another finger joins the first—“I’ve been with two girls, and one of those was a long-term girlfriend who, I might add, cheated on me with Davy, so it’s not like I spend all my weekends in museums, to use your terminology. So there’s no need for all the slut shaming.”
I’m glad he can’t see my face right now, because I’m pretty sure it’s the exact shade of a broiled lobster. Is he mad? I can’t tell by the tone of his voice. Ugh. Why did I make him face the wall? I scoot my chair closer and lay my cheek on his head, burrowing my face into his curls.
“I’m an idiot,” I mumble into the back of his neck. “I don’t know what I’m doing, and I’m so, so sorry.”
His hand reaches around the chair, grasping blindly, patting around until he grabs my shirt and hangs on. “I accept your apology, but only because I’m trapped in here with you all night, and it would be awkward if we spent the entire time fighting.”
“We’re not fighting.”
“We’re always fighting. That’s part of our charm,” he says.
“Porter?”
“Yes?”
“Is the girlfriend you were just mentioning . . . Is that the girl you were arguing about with Davy outside the vintage clothing sho
p? Chloe?”
“Yeah. Chloe Carter. Her dad makes custom surfboards. They were really close with my family. She’s friends with my sister, so the whole thing was kind of a big mess.”
“Were you in love with her?”
He pauses a little too long for my comfort. “No, but it still hurt when she cheated on me. We were friends for a long time before we started dating, so that should have meant something, you know?”
Plus, it was with Davy, someone who was supposed to be his best friend, so it was a double betrayal, but I don’t say this.
Several seconds tick by. I sigh.
“Porter?”
“Yes?”
“This sofa is kind of small, but we have to sleep somewhere. And I do like the idea of sleeping next to you.”
“Me too.”
After a long pause, I add, “In addition to sleeping, what if I do want to see some of the places in the museum that the cameras don’t go . . . just from a distance? Maybe. Possibly. Theoretically. I mean, does everything have to be all or nothing?”
Heavy sigh. “You’re driving me crazy, you know that, right?”
“I know.”
“Bailey, I spend most of my days looking at you through that tiny square screen up there. I’m just grateful to be in the same room. And the fact that you’ll even let me touch you at all is the freaking miracle of the century. So whatever you want or don’t want from me, all you have to do is ask. Okay?”
“Okay,” I whisper, mentally floating away on fluffy white clouds.
“Okay,” he repeats firmly, like that’s all decided, and pushes away from the wall. “Now let me call my folks.”
He makes the call on his cell, explaining everything to his mom, who, from the sound of things, is completely sympathetic about the situation. But then he waits for her to tell his dad, and suddenly he’s gesturing for me to duck under the desk because his dad is making him switch to a video call—like he doesn’t believe his story. I hear Mr. Roth’s sullen voice demanding that Porter repeat everything all over again, and Porter is showing him the computer screen, which clearly says LOCKDOWN and has a timer showing the remaining time left until the doors unlock and, thankfully, even shows the first few letters of Pangborn’s last name as being the person who initiated the command. By now, it’s eleven forty-five, and even grumpy-puss Mr. Roth admits that Porter’s options are few and getting Pangborn fired isn’t one of them.