Security

by Gina Wohlsdorf

  Brian’s mouth works. He laughs, helpless. He takes a step toward her.

  “Stay right there,” says Tessa, quiet and deadly, pointing at him.

  Brian freezes.

  “I get it,” she says, her pointer finger accenting “I” and then the pair “get it.” “I do. But it’s still eleven years. It’s eleven”—she points—“goddamn”—she points, and points again—“years.”

  “I know,” Brian says. He tries to inject huge, incontrovertible sentiment into these two words, but—

  “Do you?” Tessa’s eyes are round and shining. “Because this isn’t fucking automatic. Okay? This isn’t an auto-­forgive.”

  “Tess?” He takes one step. “I know.”

  Tessa looks ready to run, but she’s not sure which direction. “Great, then you’re going to be really specific, right now—what you’re saying, exactly, about what you want and what you feel and all that girly stuff, or I am out. I’m done. I can’t do it again. If all you’re doing is wondering what I’m like in bed—”

  “You’re not with anybody?”

  “Did you hear anything else I said, Bri? I can repeat it.”

  Brian smiles, not all at once. It’s like a sun rising. Outside, the sun has set completely; its final hints of light are gone. The ocean is almost black. Inside Manderley, while the light was fading:

  Camera 4

  Delores got the fifty-­foot ladder out of maintenance storage and cleaned the chandelier in the foyer.

  Camera X

  The Killer received a text and took the secret elevator to the first floor; he watched Delores from Franklin’s office.

  Camera 33

  Jules and Justin fixed place settings. They had a tiff about the only dish cart being near Justin. Jules moved closer.

  Now:

  Camera 12

  Delores is riding the main elevator past the eighteenth floor. Her feet shift; she hums. She’s anxious to get back to cleaning the ballroom’s windows. She finds childish delight in using her long-­handled squeegee. The ballroom fills her view right as Justin picks up the vase and throws it with all his strength straight at Jules’s head. Delores closes her eyes and plugs her ears and sings “My Country ’Tis of Thee” twice before she looks again, listens again, breathing through her nose to will herself calm.

  Camera 5

  The Killer is in Franklin’s office. He swivels on the office chair, enjoying the break from his duties as well as the three-­thousand-­dollar “seating experience” Franklin insisted upon to counteract an acute case of sciatica. He opens desk drawers idly, hoots when he finds the scotch, pours a glass, and toasts the security camera to provoke the Thinker’s envy, but the Thinker’s occupied with his cards. The Killer stands and takes his drink into the secret elevator. Vivica’s eyes are milky and opaque.

  Camera 33

  Jules drops a salad plate. She yowls, “Cock-­sucking slut-­fuck retard—” et cetera at Justin, seeming, in that second, to truly believe the broken dish is his fault. Justin takes this for about twenty seconds; then he picks up a Swarovski vase centerpiece, slings his arm back, and throws it with all his strength straight at Jules’s head. She ducks. The vase shatters onto the table behind her. The petals and bits of crystal look like purposeful décor. Jules and Justin stare at each other, their jaws agape.

  Brian walks toward Tessa.

  Tessa says, “Did I stutter? I said get specific, right now.”

  “I am.” He hasn’t stopped walking.

  “Brian—”

  “Don’t be afraid of me. Don’t think I’m going to hurt you. I’m not. Not ever again.” He reaches her, but he doesn’t reach for her. “I’m going to take care of you.”

  Tessa tries to back up. She hits the latticework. The jasmine reports that she is trembling. “Define ‘take care of,’ ” she says. “Define it specifically.”

  Define “take care of.” To watch over. To concern oneself with. To worry about, even when the object of one’s care isn’t interested in one’s care. Tessa wants freedom, independence. No woman truly wants independence. She wants the freedom to choose her own master. This is also what men want. The origin of all human conflict is, possibly, disagreement about who ought and ought not to be one’s master. The origin of all human happiness is, maybe, mutual agreement on the subject.

  Brian reaches for her—for her waist, a hand on either side. “Take me somewhere I can show you.”

  Tessa’s hands, on his either arm. “Show me here.”

  He looks smarmily at Camera 64. “Plus,” he says, and winces, “stone floor?”

  Tessa explodes into laughter, and so does he. She takes his hand and pulls it toward the door. Brian looks back at her boots. He smiles, boyishly. It is an encouraging sign that Tessa feels she will not need her boots where they are going. They are going over the dunes. Their mouths don’t move; they’re not talking. They’ve had enough talking. They are entering Manderley, crossing the foyer. Tessa is pressing the “Up” button on the elevator, and then they are waiting.

  Camera 33

  Delores is sitting at the table where the vase landed. She’s alone in near-perfect quiet, her eyes roaming shattered dishes and pebbles of expensive glass like they’re terribly familiar. She begins to pick up the pieces, but then she laughs a cruel, disturbingly sexy laugh and puts her earbuds in. She takes a pack of Marlboros and a lighter from her apron pocket. She lights up, puffs, and looks out the north-facing windows. No doubt finding streaks. As she stubs her cigarette into a cracked water glass, she begins humming along to “Enter Sandman.” En route to her squeegee, she steps on a shard of the salad plate Jules dropped—it’s the size of a small pie slice. She puts it in her apron pocket, with her gun.

  Camera 34

  The Killer arrives on the nineteenth floor via the secret elevator. He’s in the walk-in refrigerator, behind the juice concentrate. He hits the controller button; the shelves slide. He moves to exit the walk-in refrigerator. Stops. He surveys the shelves’ contents. Opens drawers, poking choice cuts of meat with his knife, not finding what he’s looking for. He exits the walk-in refrigerator and enters the kitchen, passing shining steel surfaces. The pantry door is ajar. He sticks his head in and emerges with a box of Cheez-Its. He opens the box, cuts the inner bag with his knife, and feeds the savory orange squares under the chin of his mask. Eventually he ambles to the ballroom door and looks in, at Delores.

  Camera 12

  Jules and Justin are in the main elevator. They said nothing to Delores; she passed them with a wide berth. Jules and Justin say nothing to each other. Jules reaches for her Xanax automatically, stops herself, and scratches her nose. Then she holds her nose, cupping it, glad it’s still there. She’s aware that the prettiest crystal is the most breakable, that its destruction is the most complete, that splinters of it could have torn her skin like a razor on a ripe plum. Justin blinks every five seconds, as if he’s focusing on blinking at a set interval of time, as if focusing on how many seconds have passed were a marvelous alternative to thinking about how he could have disfigured his wife not two minutes ago.

  Camera 4

  Brian and Tessa are still holding hands. Their hands are twining. Their hands are fairly writhing. His thumb digs at her palm. Her palm shakes. Tessa’s other hand touches her own lips. She touches her own right breast, above the nipple, and flutters her blouse. I look at the security counter. At the override system: a sixteen-inch screen with no keypad or other obvious access. The screen is dark now, lifeless. But if one were to input the correct authorization codes, everything in Manderley, including the elevator, would suddenly be under the complete control of one man and his dexterous finger. There’s a pencil. It’s ten inches from my face, on the counter. I could almost scream; I almost do. I would, except—

  The Thinker has tired of solitaire. He is standing at the wall that faces east. The walls on the twentieth floor are all glass, but tinted glass, and the eastward view includes the hedge maze, crescent-­shaped driveway, a
road, desert, mountains, river, and sky. Now, in the dark, these things are dim outlines. The Thinker stands with his hands behind his back. He is not tall, but neither is he short. Not fat, not thin, not muscular, but not skinny. He is average, whereas his accomplice is very large. He is the brains, whereas his accomplice is the brawn.

  It is rare for a man to have both. It is not necessarily vain for a man to consider himself rare, if it is the truth.

  Jules and Justin disembark on the eighteenth floor. He unlocks Room 1801, the regular penthouse. They enter, the door shuts behind them, and Jules sucks in a breath to say something.

  “Don’t,” Justin says. “Let’s—don’t.”

  Jules trails him to the spacious living room, where Justin plucks the remote from a cherrywood end table and points it at the television. Jules steals it from him.

  “We have to. We need to talk about it,” she says, sounding meek.

  Justin walks to the stairs. Under the stairs is a bookshelf, and behind the bookshelf is the hollow maw of the secret elevator. Jules catches Justin’s arm. He shakes her off, but he stays there, one hand on the railing. “Not tonight.”

  “When?” says Jules.

  “Tomorrow.”

  Justin walks upstairs to their nondeluxe bedroom. Jules lets her hand fall and holds the railing where he held it, feeling the warmth of him and thinking—it’s a legitimate assumption—about tomorrow. Justin will wake before her; he always does. Jules will meet him at whatever stunning experimental breakfast Henri prepares. She and Justin will ooh and ahh, relieved there isn’t time for solitude and reprieved from the pressure to talk about it; they will be afraid because there’s plenty of space—there’s so much space in the world—and the two of them and their struggles and their failings are so small, and the end of their marriage will make not a ripple in the greater ocean of human events.

  Jules puts the remote control back on the end table. She squares it to a perfect right angle before sitting on the sofa, pressing the “Power” button. The flat screen blinks on, already set to her desired channel. Jules curls up, pops a pill, and watches E! News.

  Brian has been watching Tessa’s free hand. Tessa’s free hand has hit the “Up” button four times, and each time, her free hand returns to a spot above her left nipple, which she touches like it’s simply something to touch. Brian’s shifting where he stands, as if the fit of his pants is becoming uncomfortable. He looks around the foyer. “So, is there a ton of video surveillance in the hotel?”

  “Some,” says Tessa. “Not in the rooms, not in the elevator.”

  The best security is invisible security.

  Brian repeats, “Not in the elevator,” and massages her nonfree hand.

  Tessa presses the “Up” button. Twice.

  Delores doesn’t hear the Killer letting the kitchen door swing closed behind him, the rap-­rap rap-­rap it makes when it flaps against its rubberized frame. He doesn’t make a sound coming closer to her—

  “I’m scared,” Brian says, “that it’s going to be weird.”

  Tessa nods. “Me, too.”

  “We’ve never even kissed.” The pointed bottom of the diamond-­shaped elevator appears. He squeezes Tessa’s hand.

  “I know,” Tessa says. “What do we do if it’s weird?”

  “I don’t know.” The elevator dings open. He and Tessa get on. Tessa swipes her card key in a special slot. “What’s that for?” Brian says.

  “The elevator won’t stop at the penthouse level unless the guest swipes their key,” she says. She says it breathlessly. “It’s a security measure.” She’s turned toward Brian.

  He turns toward her. He still has her hand. He puts it where his pulse beats visibly in his neck. “If this is weird, I say we just—”

  “Keep going,” Tessa finishes for him, and laughs.

  He laughs. “Yeah, exactly. Don’t be a quitter.”

  “Never,” Tessa says, and strokes down his front, to his chest. He shivers. “I’m like the rabbit who wanted to cross the road.”

  “Staples. That’s determination, Tess.”

  She crooks her finger: C’mere.

  He leans.

  But Delores cleans a mean window. The Killer makes a reflection, approaching behind her back. So Delores turns with her oversized squeegee right when he’s in range of its length and smacks him with the wet end across his mask. The Killer gurgles a syllable—Gluh!”—and catches his mask and straightens it before it falls off. In doing this, he drops his knife.

  Delores catches him again on the reverse. The Killer sputters. Delores is saying, “Franklin, I told you if you kept messing with me, I’d make you real sorry,” but this slap of the squeegee makes the Killer’s mask fly all the way off, to his right. He chases after it as Delores says, “Hey, who’re you?”

  CAMERA 12, 56, 62, 63

  The drawbacks of video surveillance are two-fold: one, even if a fabulously wealthy properties owner claims to be dedicated to security, the budget for actual cameras will be finite and, therefore, the number of angles available to team members will be limited, which means that if, for example, a remorseless psycho killer is briefly unmasked, it will be a matter of luck if his face is clearly discernible; two, though the preening, spoiled properties owner requests all security feed be backed up for six months on an online storage site before the images are disposed of, he is ignorant of how vulnerable online storage sites are to external penetration, meaning the head of security might decide instead to erase the feed at six thirty a.m. and six thirty p.m. every day, choosing these times because shifts change at six a.m. and six p.m. and at those hours, when the shifts cross, team members discuss scenarios, breaches, so on, which the feed helps to illustrate.

  Brian’s lips meet Tessa’s very softly. Both Brian and Tessa remain very still. Only their facial expressions betray change, betray a sense of surprise. Very positive, pleasant surprise. It’s Tessa who moves first, but by nanoseconds. It’s hard to guess, unless one really watches. Unless one can’t look away—not even to such arresting images as Jules in a lacy white negligee, climbing into bed beside Justin, not even to Delores dropping her squeegee and ripping into her apron pocket for the gun—from Tessa’s arms wending around Brian’s neck so he’ll come closer, and their lips becoming not less soft, but less scared. “Not weird.” Tessa groans it, and Brian says, “Hmm-­mm” with a downward vocal timbre that means he meant, No, not at all. He takes advantage of Tessa’s speaking mouth being open, and he presses it wider with his kiss. And Tessa makes fists in his motorcycle jacket. And her eyebrows rise, and her hips rise, and Brian’s hands find her hips like his hands are heat-­seeking and her hips are hot.

  The Killer picks up Delores’s dropped squeegee right as she takes out her revolver. He hits her wrist with the squeegee’s handle. Her shot sails far wide, to the window wall behind the bandstand. Cracks cobweb out from the bullet hole in the glass.

  Brian sets Tessa’s ass on the railing. He touches all along the sides of her body like he wants to take it slow. Their mouths are not taking it slow. Tessa’s body isn’t, either. Tessa’s bare feet are pulling Brian tighter to her. He stops kissing her, with an evident struggle on his part, and his parts, and he says, in the second and a half he succeeds, “I love you. I—,” but Tessa says, “I know, shut up,” and renders him silent, or silent of recognizable linguistic phonemes, as Brian has dared now to put a hand under Tessa’s skirt, and his kiss-­muffled ululations at this are almost as shameless as hers.

  Delores drops her gun, and the Killer runs at her. Delores bends with astonishing speed for a hausfrau. She picks up the squeegee and jabs. The Killer grabs his stomach.

  Tessa’s hand moves to Brian’s jeans. Brian’s hand moves to the front of his fly, where Tessa’s unzipping it. He puts both her hands back around his neck. She grins and says, “What’re we waiting for, exactly?”

  Brian kisses her. “A bed.”

  “Why?”

  He nibbles at her neck, moving her shirt’s
collar aside for better access. “I don’t know, shut up.”

  Delores goes for the gun. The Killer catches her in a tackle as she grabs it. It skids across the ballroom, hops onto the dance floor, and spins to a stop at the base of the bandstand’s stairs. The Killer drags Delores by the hair, toward where he dropped his knife. Delores shrieks, reaches in her apron pocket, pulls out the shard of broken salad plate, and stabs it into the Killer’s hand. The Killer howls through his mask and drops Delores’s hair. Delores is up and running for the gun. The Killer is running after Delores.

  The main elevator is passing the eighth floor. Brian is unbuttoning Tessa’s blouse. She is saying, “Slowest damn elevator in the world,” and Brian is smiling, minutely, before he sees a lacy white bra supporting a small breast. He turns serious, palming it. He nods and, all at once, lifts her off the railing so her bare feet are on the floor, pulls her black underwear around her bare ankles, and ducks under her skirt, the actions so quick, Tessa doesn’t have time to react, until she reacts by hollering at the glass ceiling and trying to make fists in the glass walls.

  Camera 33

  The Killer tackles Delores. She hits her head on the dance floor. She moans, facedown. She’s inches short of the gun. The Killer thrashes up Delores’s body, seizes the revolver, and flips its chamber open. He sprinkles the bullets and tosses the gun; it bounces once before landing in the storage room. The Killer pulls Delores’s scalp backward to beat her skull into the floor. But Delores rears like a bucking mare and throws an elbow into the side of the Killer’s head. The Killer rolls off her. Delores stands and runs for the kitchen, dizzy, her limp more pronounced.

  Camera 12

  The elevator is on the ninth floor. Tessa balances on one foot, ass on the railing. Her other foot has stepped from her underwear and hangs over Brian’s shoulder. Brian’s neck and head are cloaked in her skirt. Tessa says his name. His name rises in pitch. It’s as if Tessa is birthing him. One might prefer to think of the tableau as something ludicrous—like Tessa birthing Brian—rather than to admit the two of them are birthing something noble and lovely and sacred. Something that will last, so long as the two of them are not hacked to pieces tonight.