by Max Barry
8
It was a hot June and a hotter July. On the final Thursday, Maddie’s air-conditioning unit, a SeaBreeze 2000 that dated from sometime when that moniker sounded futuristic, emitted a tired wheeze and quietly died. Maddie, sitting on the sofa in white shorts and a bra, her sociology books spread out around her, looked up. The unit’s green light was dark. Its fins were still. “Oh, come on,” she said.
She got up, peered at it, and gave the remote a few optimistic jabs. But the SeaBreeze 2000 did not respond. It had never been very effective, hence the shorts and bra, but she was going to miss it, she could tell. She went to the window and hauled it open. What came inside was traffic noise, a rich mix of gas and food smells, and heat like a solid object. She let the window fall shut.
This could have been avoided. The unit had been making odd noises for a while, grating noises, and she’d ignored them because the super was a pain and would, Maddie knew, stand in front of it for a minute before shrugging and saying, Sounds okay to me, making her feel like an entitled white girl complaining about an air-conditioning unit that worked fine. A month ago, she would have phoned him anyway, because Trent would have been beside her, to lend a shrug and a smirk that would banish what the super thought into meaninglessness. But Trent, like her air conditioner, was no more. She had come home from a shift at the coffee shop and set her bag on the table, and Trent, playing video games on the sofa, hadn’t looked up. At this moment, Maddie hadn’t been thinking of anything of substance—certainly not whether she still wanted to be in a relationship with Trent Haversham after twenty-two decreasingly fulfilling months—but a moment passed and then another and he still hadn’t glanced in her direction, and she said, “I think we should break up.” Out of nowhere, like a hiccup.
He turned. “What?”
She didn’t answer right away, she was so surprised. It was the kind of thing she might say in improv, where you had to speak without thinking. Because that was the point: to find truth through feeling, not thought.
“What?” Trent said again, louder. He was still holding the controller. A beer can balanced beside him on the arm of the sofa. That was a thing, actually. Maddie always asked him to use the coffee table, which was twelve inches away and a whole lot less likely to result in the loss of their security deposit, and Trent always gave a patronizing look, like: Me? Spill a beer?
To be fair, he had not yet spilled a beer.
“I think we should break up.” The second time wasn’t as good. Less spontaneous, less authentic, and she always felt you had to do something different with a repeated line, really change it up, or it would undermine the first one. But this wasn’t a scene. She wasn’t playing to anyone. It was just her and Trent. It was going to be stupid and messy and some of the lines would be bad.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” He didn’t look confused, though. He did know what the fuck she was talking about. “Why?”
A dangerous question. There was no right answer here. But silence was bad, too, apparently, because Trent pushed himself from the sofa like a spasm. His elbow brushed the beer can. She watched it fall, turning end over end, landing on the carpet, and discharging its contents: chug-chug-chug.
“Ah, fuck,” Trent said, then again, louder: “Fuck!” He grabbed the can and slammed it onto the coffee table. Then he sagged back into the sofa. She felt grateful for this incident, which had explained things better than she ever could.
“I’ll get a sponge,” she said.
* * *
—
Now, in the rising heat, sans Trent, she wondered how hot the apartment might get. Ninety? A hundred? On the topic of sponges: These old buildings soaked up heat like thirsty drunks in the day and leaked it at night. She had exactly one portable fan, which was the size of her hand.
Call the super. Who cares how he looks at you?
But no. She wasn’t going to do that. It was late. She was, at heart, a coward. Also, it was maybe genuinely not a great idea to invite a man she barely knew into her apartment. She would call him in the morning.
Her phone rang. She jumped a little. The super, she thought. Somehow he’d heard her unit had broken down. Hot night, he would say. Too hot for a girl like you to be sitting around in your bra and little pants.
She shook her head and picked up the phone. It was a number she didn’t recognize, ergo a robocall, or someone wanting to sell something, which she generally let go to voicemail, but she wanted to prove to herself that she wasn’t that timid. “Hello?”
“Is this Madison May?” A male voice. No one she recognized.
“Who’s calling?” A little trick she’d learned from her friend Jahzara. Admit nothing. Turn the question around. Did it make any difference? Probably not. But she had liked how Zar sounded when she did it.
“I’m with Emergency Services at NewYork–Presbyterian Brooklyn. I have some important information regarding your father’s health.”
She was silent. Her father had passed away five years before. She had been in class and suddenly glanced through the glass to see her mother standing in the hallway. Somehow, she had known immediately, the knowledge sinking into her like a knife. It was peaceful, her mother said. It was just his time.
It was an embolism, technically. Maddie had read the autopsy.
“Hello?” said the man on the phone.
“I’m here.”
“I can send a car to bring you to the hospital. Where are you?”
“What is this about?”
“Your father,” said the man, but a thin note of doubt had entered his voice, a timbre that said: Ah, shit, her father’s dead, isn’t he? “I can’t discuss it over the phone, but it’s important.”
“You want to talk to me about my father’s health?”
“The hospital may have made an error in his treatment,” the man said. A pretty smooth transition, she supposed, to a scenario that worked with a dead father, but still bullshit, because her father sure as hell hadn’t been taken to any hospital in Brooklyn. “You could be entitled to compensation.”
She felt a rush of anger. He sounded sincere, and they always did, of course—the scammers, the con men—but to try to get to her with a story about her father? “Go fuck yourself.”
A short, surprised silence. When the man spoke, his voice sounded different, his tone became urgent. “Maddie, we have to meet. You’re in danger. I want you to—”
She killed the call. Dropped the phone to the sofa.
Scam call, she thought. Clearly.
Had she heard those last words correctly? She was in danger? He wanted to meet?
She felt abruptly cold, as if the apartment weren’t ninety degrees.
She brought up her recent calls and blocked the number. Then she dropped the phone again, not wanting to touch it, in case the guy could travel down the line and ooze out into her apartment.
What was that?
She wasn’t good with random events. It was the actor inside her (she liked to think): There had to be motivation. Maddie, Trent said impatiently, when she fretted about why she didn’t get this role or that; why she was assigned a mentor with a stage background rather than screen; or even how Trent had come to a particular decision, such as disliking her friend Zar, who was—objectively—impossible to dislike. Sometimes there’s no reason. It just is.
There was always a reason, though. If she didn’t know it, she hadn’t studied the scene long enough.
What kind of scammer wanted to meet in person? That part was strange. Those people generally didn’t want you to know who they were. They stayed at the other end of a phone, safely anonymous, so that when the scam was exposed—when the son noticed his mother emptying out her life savings, or packing her bags to meet her online lover (Have you ever actually met this person?), they could blow away like smoke.
Bad people who want to meet you, Maddie thought. Thieves
. Rapists. Murderers.
Thieves? He hadn’t known where she lived. Not thieves.
Rapists. Murderers.
Her friend Zar lived in Cambria Heights, a thirty-minute, two-train transit, in a share house with three other girls. Maddie had been over twice and felt super-white the whole time, but also incredibly welcomed. She picked up her phone.
“Hey, Mads. What’s up?”
“Hey,” she said, the word coming out weird, like she’d been sitting on it.
“What’s the matter?”
She tried to laugh. “Um, this is silly, but my air went out and I’m baking. Is there any chance I could sleep at your place?”
“Sure you can. Get your butt on over here.”
She bit her lip. “Thank you.”
“Anytime,” said Zar, and then, because they took classes together and Zar knew what a bum performance from Maddie sounded like: “You sure you’re okay?”
“I got a weird call,” she confessed.
“What happened? You want me to come get you?”
“No,” she said, and felt stronger hearing it. She was rattled—she was very rattled by the strange man who wanted to know where she was and whether they could meet—but she was capable of skating her butt across town. Not on the train, though. She would take an Uber. Maybe even an honest-to-God cab.
“I’ll make you up the sofa. These bitches here need an early night anyway.” There was a background squeal of protest.
“Thank you,” Maddie said, clutching the phone.
“No problem. Just get here. Be safe.”
“I will,” she said.
* * *
—
She stepped out of the cab in Cambria Heights, leaving a tip she couldn’t afford. She swung her bag onto her back and approached the house, which was a detached two-story red brick and white clapboard, the roof two big happy angles with bold white gables up front and goofy overhangs at the side. A friendly house. You could see that, despite the broken front steps and the faded paint. Maddie had always enjoyed houses, had even occasionally wondered, in her weaker moments, whether she should pack away the acting thing—which, let’s face it, had a shockingly low probability of going anywhere—and get a real job, one that allowed her to take a cab ride without mentally crossing out future expenditures. Interior decoration, maybe. Or real estate. She would be good at selling houses, she thought. It would be a practical application of her acting classes.
She strode up the steps and rang the bell. The front door popped open, framing Jahzara in light. Zar was tall and slim, with shoulders like perfect gleaming rocks. Zar was also, Maddie had discovered, a better actor than she was. So whenever Maddie started to get down about her prospects of ever breaking in—when she had thoughts like It’s too hard or Maybe I should go into real estate—she tried to remind herself of Zar, who had talent, beauty, and determination, and never once made a thing out of how when they went to casting calls together, all the producers would be white, and the director, and the casting director, and some would ask if Zar had considered reading for this other part, the friend.
Part of the game, Zar said, when Maddie brought it up. Makes me work harder.
Zar ushered her inside, which was not actually a whole lot cooler. But, then, Maddie wasn’t really here for the air. She let Zar steer her into the living room, where three girls huddled in front of a laptop, pointing and talking over one another.
“This is Maddie from class. You remember Maddie?” There were Hi, Maddies. “Marieke, Jasmine, Nia,” Zar said, pointing, for which Maddie was grateful, because she’d been scratching around in her brain for those names. “Drink?”
“Sure.” Zar marched into the kitchen and came out with a bottle of red wine. A thought occurred to Maddie, popping into her brain from nowhere: They should buy a bottle of something expensive, and open it when one of them finally landed their first real part. “Trent?”
Maddie blinked. “What?”
“Was the phone call from him?”
She shook her head. “No one I know.”
Zar decapitated the bottle and set two plastic cups on the counter. “You sure? One of his friends?”
“I don’t think so.” She had lived with him for almost two years; this didn’t feel like a Trent thing.
Zar pushed the cup across to her, planted her elbows on the counter, and raised her own cup. Maddie dutifully knocked hers against it. “I dumped a dude once. Sweetest guy in the world. But when I gave him his marching orders, he’s leaving crusty socks on my front doorstep.”
“Crusty as in . . .”
“I assume so,” Zar said. “I didn’t inspect them up close.”
She squinted. “But why?”
Zar spread her arms dramatically. “They blame you for making them feel something. And instead of dealing like a normal human being, they want to make you feel something back. Scared, angry, doesn’t matter. It’s a power thing. They all do it. Even the nice ones. Especially the nice ones. Wouldn’t surprise me if Trent is dishing you some freaky night calls.”
On the sofa, the laptop gave a burst of sound. The girls cackled.
“Come away with me this weekend,” Zar said. “Me and Jorge are driving to his parents’ lake house in Carmel. Forty-eight hours of pure escape. Come with us.”
“Oh, I don’t want to get in the way of you and Jorge.”
“There’s nothing to get in the way of. I need an excuse to slow him down. Don’t answer yet,” Zar said, because Maddie was shaking her head. “This isn’t a third-wheel kind of situation. I’m asking another friend as well.”
She had to admit: After weeks of broiling in a one-bedroom apartment with the ghost of her ex-boyfriend, it sounded like heaven. “A lake house?”
“Honest-to-God lake house,” Zar said. “Jorge’s parents have that restaurant money. It’s tucked away in a forest like some fairy-tale house. You’d think you were the only people in the world. Can you imagine that? Not being surrounded by people every damn second?”
“We can hear you,” called one of the laptop girls.
“Not you, Marieke, I love you,” said Zar. “It’s Jasmine who’s driving me bananas.”
Jasmine raised a middle finger without turning around.
“I can’t buy any good conditioner with that girl around,” Zar said. “I swear she drinks it, she uses so much.”
“A lake house,” Maddie said, testing the words.
“Everything is organized. All you need to do is say yes.”
She smiled. “You’re a good friend.”
“Aw,” Zar said. “Got a swimsuit?”
She nodded. She had bought it months ago and not yet found an opportunity to wear it.
“Good.” Zar grinned. She raised her plastic wine cup and held it there until Maddie tapped it with her own. “Cheers.”
* * *
—
In the morning, Maddie returned to her apartment, aiming to put a solid dent in a sociology paper that was due the following Wednesday. But when she was alone, the place felt small and foreboding in a way it hadn’t before. Maddie was rehearsing a production of A Streetcar Named Desire, playing out of the 13th Street Repertory Theatre, and she was reminded of the words of the director, a tiny geriatric named Oren Hutchins, who was not yet satisfied with Maddie’s portrayal of the lead. Blanche isn’t scared by what she’s seeing, Oren had told her. She’s not reacting. It comes from inside. She carries the fear within her.
Maddie might have been carrying a little fear within.
If she believed Oren Hutchins, a weekend away at the lake would do her no good: She would bring the fear with her. Still. Screw you, Oren, she thought. And screw you, sociology. Five minutes later, she was riding the elevator to the ground floor, her bag across her shoulder. The doors opened. There was no strange man waiting for her. No furtive figure loitering o
n the sidewalk. She headed for the train station and felt lighter with every step.
* * *
—
She spent three hours in the city, moving between bookstores and coffee shops. When she passed the Roxy, her favorite theater, she stopped to see what was playing and noticed a family drama, By the River Blue. One of the characters was played by an actor Maddie had met while auditioning for an off-off-Broadway play. The girl, Aria Astwell, had beaten out Maddie for the part, and the play had gone on to have a wildly successful run, at least relative to anything Maddie had been in, and catapulted Aria into roles like this. Maddie had followed Aria’s career ever since, because it was half inspiring and half infuriating how this girl had been in the same place as Maddie but then crossed over a magical threshold into the enchanted fairy-tale kingdom.
She was about to move on when she noticed a reflection in the glass: a man behind her. Maddie couldn’t make out detail, but he seemed to be studying her. She resisted the urge to turn, and waited, pretending to study the cast list at the bottom of By the River Blue. Still the man didn’t move, so finally she hoisted her bag and began to walk, watching out for him in store reflections.
Half a block later, she caught a good view of the guy trailing her, big, like scary big, late thirties, bearded, rugged, arms popping out of a collared plaid shirt. When they reached the corner, she risked a direct look. He was gazing amiably across the street, like he didn’t even know she was there. It’s no one, she thought. Only Blanche, carrying her fear.
The light changed. She began to cross. On the far corner was the subway entrance and she angled toward it. Just before the first step, she stopped and turned. The bearded man passed without so much as a glance. She watched him trot all the way down the steps and disappear toward the barriers. She stayed another thirty seconds, to be sure. He didn’t come back.