Park tries to interrupt the man. “Sir,” he says. “Goddammit, sir. Listen. Your kids. Look.” Park points. “They’re fighting.”
The man doesn’t stop speaking and he doesn’t turn around. His voice has risen to the level of a yell. The man starts moving toward Park, advancing, making bodily contact, screaming out profanity inches from his face, and Park is trying to fend him off while calling for the woman, the mother, to intervene. Calling on anyone. Park can see a crowd gathering, but no one moves to help. He glances over his shoulder to look for Rina but she’s gone.
Behind the man, the fight is intensifying; the boys lock up into a clinch, grappling, trying to wrestle each other to the ground. As Park watches, they begin to use their nails. Their teeth. Going for the throat, but taking whatever falls within range. Ripping at each other. Their movements are frenzied enough that the blood is shedding from them in droplets, all directions, like when a wet animal shakes. Before Park can push the man aside and run to separate them, the man stops yelling and lunges at him, full force.
The man’s momentum sends Park crashing backward into the front desk. Pinning him up against the edge of the counter. The man uses his body weight, controlling him. Their faces are close enough to nearly touch.
Maintaining eye contact, leaning heavily into Park, the man inexplicably pushes out his own tongue and bites down hard. The front teeth cut in deeply. Recoiling, Park quickly jerks a knee into the man’s midsection, then hooks him with a right cross to the temple. The man goes down face-first and twitches a few times.
Without looking back, Park runs. Tearing across the lobby toward the bank of elevators. Pushing past onlookers. Their passive expressions. Utterly unconcerned.
Park decides mid-run that he can’t wait for the elevator; he bolts to the stairwell. Climbing feverishly. Pulling himself up, hand over hand, using the banister.
When he opens the door to the suite, Lee is lying on her stomach, watching TV. Twenty-four hour weather channel. An animated graphic of a storm swirling over the Pacific. She doesn’t even pause to look up at him.
He slams the door closed and engages every lock.
“We need to go,” he says, breathing hard. “Lee.” He is watching the hallway through the fish-eye lens. “Are you hearing me? We need to go.”
She doesn’t respond. Staring blankly at the flat-screen.
“Lee,” he says sharply.
When she doesn’t acknowledge him, he goes to the bedside, picks up the remote and clicks the power button. The television goes black.
“I’m talking to you,” he says, snapping his fingers in front of her a few times. “Hey.”
Still silent, she simply closes her eyes, shutting him out. Her lips are pressed together tightly. He can tell that she’s been drinking from the small bottles in the mini bar.
He watches her.
“Lee,” he says. He softens his tone. “I think we need to go.”
She opens her eyes, but she still stares forward.
“I agree with you,” she says.
He exhales. He kneels at the bedside, putting a hand gently on her arm. “Good. Okay. Good.”
She looks at him. “I already tried,” she says. “I tried calling to change the flight, but there’s no cell service.”
“Do it online.”
“I tried,” she says.
“And?”
“The site isn’t taking reservation changes. It just times out.”
He gets to his feet and walks over to the landline phone on the night stand and picks up the handset. There’s no signal. He clicks the button on the cradle halfheartedly a few times before hanging up.
They lie in bed and recount everything they’ve experienced over the course of the past forty-eight hours. Debating the meaning of it all, if there is one. They try to determine whether this series of events is just a result of temporary bad fortune—an anomaly—or whether it’s a sign of a truly bad thing coming, something catastrophic. As is often the case, they find themselves arguing opposite sides: he says it’s going to be okay, and she says it’s not, that nothing will ever be the same again. They defend their positions for a while and then they switch.
No closer to making a decision, they try going to sleep. Park switches off the bedside lamp, and they lie together on their backs in the dark, making no contact. He hears the sound of hurried footfalls in the hall outside their suite door—someone running hard, passing by. Pounding the carpet. The sound reminds him of pursuit, a hunt, but it’s impossible to tell whether the person he hears is the hunter or the hunted.
Park can hear his wife’s breathing, choppy and shallow.
“What do you want to do,” he asks quietly.
There is a long silence.
“Lee.”
“I heard you,” she says. “I don’t know.”
He rubs his face with both hands. “You don’t know,” he says. He finds himself getting angry without really understanding the reason. “You think I know?”
“What do you want from me, Park.”
“Commit,” he says. “Stay or go. I’m not going to make the decision alone. We share the outcome—the consequences. I’m not going to hear you blaming me for anything later.”
“What the hell are you even talking about?”
He props himself up on an elbow and looks at her, what he can see of her in the dark.
“We agree to stay, or we agree to go,” he says. He makes his voice calm.
“Go where? Where can we go?”
“Away from here,” he says.
“Where? You saw what those animals did,” she says. “You want to go out there and what. Camp?” She almost laughs as she says it. “Live off the goddamned land?”
Park doesn’t respond to that. After a pause, he lies back on the mattress and covers his eyes with the backs of his hands. They are silent for a while.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “Look. We should stay here. Indoors.” Her voice is gentle. She rolls over so that she’s facing him. “Like you said before: maybe all of this is like watching the news. You only see terrible things—that’s all they show—so you think everything in the world is that way all the time, but it really isn’t.” She puts a hand on his face. “We’ve seen a few terrible things, that’s all.”
chapter three
A knock on the door wakes Park the next morning. Eight thirtyish. He rolls over and glances at Lee and her eyes are open, as though she’s been awake for a while, as though she may not have slept at all.
“No thanks,” he says loudly toward the ceiling.
The Do Not Disturb sign is up on the goddamn knob, but hell—when you’re staying at a hotel where wild animals eat the guests, what can you expect?
A voice responds from the hallway. “Sir? I apologize.” It’s a woman’s voice. The accent is Mirasai.
Lord, have mercy. Park whips off the sheet and stands up. He goes and opens the door without bothering to put on a shirt.
“Good morning, sir.” It’s Rina. She looks even more worn-out than yesterday.
“Hi.”
“We’re working out an issue with the phones. I would have called.”
“I’m noticing a lot of issues around here, Rina.”
She nods. Her smile looks forced. “The incident yesterday—”
“Which incident would that be, Rina?” he asks. “I’ve had a few. Exactly which incident are you waking me up to discuss?”
“Honey?” Lee says. She’s talking to him from the bed. When she says honey like that—sharply, as though it’s an urgent question—it really means Calm Yourself Down, Park.
He pauses, exhaling.
“Okay,” Park says to Rina. “Go ahead. What’s up.”
“The conflict in the lobby,” Rina says. “The guest who was involved has been asked to leave the hotel. He was escorted out last night.”
Park nods. “Okay,” he says. “What about the kids?”
“They as well.”
“No. I mean are they all r
ight.”
Rina shakes her head. She’s looking down at the floor.
“I don’t know,” she says.
Park brews coffee with the in-room maker, but it can only output one cup at a time, so he makes hers first, then his. He uses white ceramic mugs with the hotel’s logo, a green tortoise. Lee accepts the cup and says thank you, but then she immediately sets it down, goes into the bathroom and slides the door closed. He hears the shower start to run.
While Lee is in the bathroom, Park sits and pages through a thick magazine, the kind that hotels like to leave on a glass-topped table by a window. Mostly just glossy ads. Jewelry and celebrity-endorsed watches and luxury cruise lines. He’s not looking for heavy reading material, so the ads don’t bother him. In fact, for some reason, nothing really does at the moment. Nothing at all. He sits and sips coffee and browses products he’ll never be able to afford, and he feels oddly content about the entire thing. Where he is right now, the things he’s witnessed here. Everything is going to be okay.
After they’re both showered and dressed, Park suggests going to the cooking class, for the hell of it. Why not? Think of it as a broadening activity, he says. Trust me. It’s fun. She hesitates, staring at him strangely, but eventually she agrees.
He packs a tablet computer in his satchel in case the class is boring, and when it’s time to leave, they go through the exit ritual. A checklist of questions about topics such as the whereabouts of the room key, how much money they should leave as a tip for Housekeeping, whether any valuables need to go into the in-room safe embedded in a wall inside the closet, and if so, what four-digit code will be programmed into the lock. When these questions have been answered, they stand together in the entranceway to the suite with the door open, looking back into the room, and ask the last question on the list:
Do we have everything?
Putting the Makoa behind them, walking across the grounds toward the Recreation Annex, they notice an unusual number of people out milling around. Not doing anything in particular. Just sitting or walking slowly. Most of the people who are bothering to move don’t look like they’re going anywhere specific. No destinations in mind. Milling is the right word for what they’re doing. Words—the ones you choose—are important. That’s something Lee likes to tell him all the time.
She seems to be taking everything pretty well at the moment, his wife. As they walk side by side, Park glances at her, and she looks a little bit anxious, but not as much as he would expect, given recent events. She holds his hand tightly, and her head is swiveling back and forth as she scans the grounds.
The kitchen classroom is situated in its own building next to the Annex, near a large grove of tamarind. When they enter the room, they find it empty. Brightly lit. Sweltering. The heat is absolutely oppressive. There must be a dozen ovens in the room, and each one of them is turned on.
The space looks like a TV studio where cooking competitions are held. Clusters of high-powered light bulbs mounted on overhead gantries. Hardwood flooring. Mixers on the granite counters. Everything is divided into individual workstations, and there is a black apron with the Lavelha logo folded next to each sink.
As they look around, a man enters from a back room. A white man—he looks like another hotel guest. The man is wearing one of the black aprons. Wiping his hands with a red dish rag.
“Smell that,” says the man. “Really let it get in there.” He’s sweating heavily. Breathing hard, as though he ran here. “Nice, right?”
Now that the man has mentioned it, yes, Park can smell that. And yes, it does smell nice. It’s the smell of meat braising. Low and slow, isn’t that something people say?
“Smells good,” Park says.
“Thanks,” says the man.
There is a long silence after that, and it feels awkward, at least to Park. Lee stays silent, gripping his hand tightly.
“Is this the class?” Park asks.
The man finishes wiping his hands and tosses the dish rag onto a countertop. The rag falls heavily, slopping down as though soaked through.
“Sure is,” the man says.
At that point, Park feels Lee let go of his hand.
“Where’s the teacher?” she asks.
“You’re looking at him.”
She stares at the man.
“So you’re an expert in Mirasai cooking,” she says.
The man nods. “I cook Mirasai better than anyone ever has,” he says.
There’s something off about the man, but Park can’t quite put a finger on it. Maybe it’s how pale he is, or maybe it’s his wide eyes. Hard to say. The feeling is similar to when you pass someone who looks familiar, but you can’t place their face, can’t pull their name from memory. It’s like that. For some reason, the entire thing seems slightly amusing all of the sudden—this man in his little apron—and Park almost laughs but stops himself. It feels as though there might be something off about him as well, something wrong with his own mind, but he can’t quite put a finger on that either.
Park notices that Lee has separated from him. She seems to be touring the kitchen, surveying everything. The utensils, the sinks. She glances at the man periodically, as though verifying that he hasn’t moved.
“So, when do we start?” Park asks.
The man shrugs. “I’ve already started the demo,” he says. “The recipes are at each workstation. Just jump right in.” The man points to a workstation, and Park notices that the man’s hand is stained red.
“We can go at our own pace?” Park asks. The idea is exciting to him; he’s not sure why.
The man looks pleased. “I think you’re going to be great,” he says.
Park smiles at that. He wanders to a workstation and begins unfolding a black apron.
“Park.”
It’s his wife’s voice. She’s saying his name sharply, which is never a good thing.
Park looks, and he sees Lee standing next to an oven. The interior light is on. She looks terrified.
“We should go,” she says.
Seeing her expression—her terror—brings him back. Giving him focus. Yes. Of course we should go. We need to. In fact, the moment we saw this man, we should have turned around and walked out the door. We should already be gone.
Park drops the apron, letting it fall, but before he can make another move, he sees the man reach into a front pocket of his apron, pulling out a stainless-steel kitchen mallet, the kind with a grid of metal points, used for meat tenderizing. The man lowers it to his side.
Park immediately runs—he runs to Lee, and together they bolt out the door. Throwing themselves into open space. Behind them, Park can hear the man in pursuit.
They plunge into the trees. No plan, no design. As they scramble through the foliage, Park can hear the man calling out to them. He is trying to hail them, for God’s sake. Trying to flag them down, as though they’d mistakenly left an article behind in class and he’d run across it, the single item that would make them whole again. I can help you, the man keeps saying. I can fix this. Let me help you. His voice sounds completely sincere, as though he really does want to help them with something, as though he genuinely believes that he is holding the correct tool for the job.
Together Park and Lee run until they can’t hear the man, and then they keep running—maybe twenty straight minutes of running. Half of that time was probably spent going in circles; everything in the woods looks almost the same. Eventually Lee slows them down—she is the leader, the guide, for their escape—and they walk, pausing periodically to listen. They don’t hear anything save the sound of the ocean rolling in.
Lee stops and crouches behind a clump of sprawling hawkweed, staring back the way they came. Park stands next to her, fully exposed, until she grabs his wrist and pulls him down with her.
While Lee scans the woods, Park stares absentmindedly at her face. She is breathing hard, and there is sweat clinging to her brow. After a minute or two, he lets his eyes wander, and he sees a metal culvert, dug into a nearb
y mound of earth like a small cave.
chapter four
Out in the woods, he hears footfalls on approach through the heavy groundcover and he reaches for her, fumbling in the dark of the culvert where they lie together. He finds her wrist. The fitful bones of it. He closes down tightly, and she understands right away how to read the physical contact, the pressure. She goes silent.
It’s too dark to be certain, but right now his wife’s eyes are probably wide and defocused, and her lips are almost definitely parted, but it’s hard to be sure. You have to learn to rely on probability after a while—the best odds you can figure in a given moment—because it’s so difficult to be truly certain of anything here. There is the blear of the sky before dawn and there is the artificial blackness of this rattletrap shelter and there is the physical distance separating them. Her arm is cold, rigid and motionless under his hand.
The sounds are rising. The crush of dry leaf litter and the wet snap of sapling shoots giving way. A shallow, arrhythmic breathing. He feels her worming her wrist out of his grip and he lets her go. They each lie flat against the dirt and they hone in desperately on the ambient. Listening as though the next sound they hear is sure to be the catalytic one. The impetus. As though they’re only waiting for the right moment, waiting for the other to be the first to stand up, to be the one who does the only logical thing.
But no one does. And in a way he’s known all along that when this moment arrived, neither of them would. You learn a lot about each other out here, in the wild of things. You learn a lot about your most abandoned self. The inertia that works to keep you terrified and buried exactly where you are in the corner of your confined space, and the way that your most precious decisions often make themselves, usually because you made the mistake of waiting for too damn long. And so the two of them hunker down. Burrow in. There is no right moment. There is only someone or something mid-sized crashing headlong, heedless, through the tangled wilderness about fifty yards afield of you.
the mortis Page 3