Lucky Night

Chapter Ten

Ten

Nick pulls Jenny inside the room, slams the door, locks it, boltsit.

Checks the lock. Checks the bolt.

Adrenaline is fizzing through him. He can’t catch his breath, can’t process what just—

Her face crumples, and she bursts into tears.

Oh honey! Come here.

She shakes her head, weeping, helpless, wordless.

You’re bleeding, he says. Your mouth.

She wipes her lips, looks at her hand, confused. Looks at him.

Is it his blood? he says. Jesus, you took a chunk out of him, didn’t you?

That makes her sob even harder. He reaches for her but she shies away, rubbing her mouth, spitting, trying to get the blood off.

Don’t touchme!

Jenny, please. He reaches out again, coming to her rather than pulling her to him. Arms around her shuddering shoulders, her seized and wrangled body.

Poor girl. Poor girl.

This fucking night.

She gives in now, letting go, letting her legs do what they want, which is to turn to water, apparently. She has to cling to him so she doesn’t slide to the floor. He holds her up, stroking her hair, murmuring into it. That feels nice.

Even though he’s been such a dick to her.

And she’s been so awful to him!

She starts sobbing all over again. He lets her blubber onto his shoulder for a while.

Then he sweeps her up. Just sweeps her right up into his arms.

He carries her to the bed and lays her down. She turns onto her side, away from him. She feels him hovering.

Do you want me to stay close, or should I give you some space?

Yes, she says.

He’s so fricking brilliant, let him figure out what she wants.

He hesitates, then lies down behind her. He puts an arm around her waist.

Good. That’s what she wanted.

And there’s his breath in her hair again. That’s good, too.

They’re quiet for a while. Breathing in unison.

She squeezes out a few more tears.

We should never have people over, he says. They kill the vibe.

Oh my God, Nick, don’t joke!

Sorry. His arm tightens around her. It’s a reflex. I was—that was scary.

Were you scared? she says. Poor guy!

She’s safe, after being manhandled and terrorized. She has earned the right to be truculent, to crab at him a little. Even though he saved her. Which is so frustrating! He’s the worst, he ruins everything, but no sooner does he reach the apex of jackassery—accusing her of playing games, breaking up with her?—than he does something right. Noble, even.

It’s infuriating, that contradiction, yet somehow, it’s very him. Very Nick.

Noble, though? Let’s not go crazy. Let’s not start handing out good-conduct certificates. He did what any baseline decent human would do. Preventing her abduction by a Finnish headcase: pretty much the bare minimum. Especially since he’s why she needed rescuing in the first place.

Edvin took my phone, didn’the?

I think so, yeah.

He wrenched my arm, too. And you weren’t exactly gentle.

I’m sorry, he says. I was trying to—I’m sorry.

He was trying to save her. He grabbed her and he didn’t letgo.

I wasn’t playing games, she says. Earlier. I felt awful that you thought you were losing me, soI—

Never mind. He strokes her hair. Just hush now.

Oh no! She sits up, twisting around to glare down at him. Don’t tell me to hush!

Whoa, sorry, I just—

I just, I just! She mimics him in a high-pitched voice. I don’t care what you just! And no more with the whoas. Don’t tell me to hush, or whoa, ever again.

I won’t, he says. I’m sorry. Please lie down. That’s a request, obviously.

She lies down, relaxing into the pillows. Completely drained. He’s close, but not too close. There’s his good strong arm around her waist. His breath in her hair.

After a while, he gets up. She hears the bathroom door slide on its track.

Jesus, he mutters. The fan drowns out any further commentary on the state of the toilet.

How could Edvin turn on them like that? She can still feel his hand, his implacable grip. She was lost, she was basically gone, and like in a nightmare she couldn’t make a sound.

Her shoulder aches. She must have bruises. She could check. But she doesn’t want to see them right now.

She hears Nick come out of the bathroom. He enters her line of sight, peering out the window. He returns to the bed and takes a seat.

Can I do anything for you? he asks.

Yes. You can go check the stairwells.

What? No way!

She sits up. There was no smoke in the hallway just now. Maybe the stairs have cleared. What’s the harm in checking?

He leans over, resting his elbows on his knees and pinching the bridge of his nose. It just seems incredibly foolish tome.

Then I’llgo.

No chance. I’ll go. He sighs. If you absolutely insist.

Circle the whole floor, to make sure you hit every stairwell.

So that’s a yes, he says. That’s a, yes Nick, I am absolutely insisting yougo.

With a great show of resignation, he rises and finds his shoes.

Take one of the wet towels, she says. Do you want a bottle of water?

I’m not crossing the Serengeti, Jenny. I’ll be right back.

He heads for the door, where he picks up a towel, then turns to give her one last martyred glance.

Well, he says, it’s been real.

Thank you, Nick.

He gives her a little salute. Then he opens the door, and he’s gone.

But he’ll be back. She saw him pick up his keycard. Does he think she won’t let him in? Does he mistrust her that much?

Retrieving his phone from the foyer, where she must have dropped it during the struggle with Edvin, she sits on the end of the bed, unmutes the television and scrolls for updates. The conditions downstairs look more or less unchanged. Juliana, the pretty NY1 reporter, keeps referring to the situation as a significant blaze, but it’s unclear whether that’s official terminology or infotainment hype. Juliana is currently explaining how smoke filtered to lower floors of the building via electrical conduits, creating initial confusion about where the fire was. Smoke also spread upward when fleeing guests opened stairwell doors.

The two anchors in the studio, whose names are Ron and Cheryl, listen and nod and look concerned.

The fire has made the New York Times home page: FDNY Battling Blaze in Midtown High-Rise .

Firefighters are now going room by room on the affected floor, making sure all flames have been extinguished and beginning smoke mitigation efforts.

Poor Juliana’s nose is red. They’d be freezing too, if they’d left. No, they’d be in another room by now. In another bed. Asleep. Or fucking. Or watching the news, astonished, saying, that’s insane. Can you believeit?

We were just there.

Shouldn’t Nick be back by now? Chill, it’s been like four minutes. She misses him. Has she ever been alone in a hotel room without him? I get lonely after I come. She understands now. The simple comfort of a body, near at hand.

She hadn’t meant to upset him—she was trying to make him feel better! She’d listened to his explanation for why he’d insisted on a whole night, his heartfelt confession, and she’d felt awful. So she blurted out the one thing she had, her own confession, which she hoped would reassure him, but which, upon reflection, she can see might not be so reassuring. Of course he’d be confounded by what she’d done—what kind of psycho fakes faking an orgasm? Plus her reason, her ridiculous wedding ring misunderstanding…how can she explain that to him without sounding like a complete cuckoo?

She logs into Twitter on his phone. @firechieftim is describing the building’s numerous safety features. It has advanced sensors, high-tech sprinklers and a buildingwide command-and-control system monitored by AI. Okay, but if the building is that spectacular, why was it so hard to find the fire in the first place? Answer me that, @firechieftim, you who seem to know so much.

I laid my heart bare for you. Okay, but…really? He shared a concern about their relationship, not some soul-crushing secret. Is he so fragile that a little vulnerability can knock him sideways—make him feel so bad that he needs to get rid of her, erase this awful stain on his sense of imperviousness? Is he really so defended, so…what? Allergic to consequences. No wonder he didn’t take the fire seriously at first. How could something like a fire possibly affect him? He’s invincible.

Or so he thought.

And persuaded her to think, too.

She hears two quick beeps, and the door opens. He takes two, three, four steps in, and by the time the door falls closed he’s sitting beside her, taking her hands in his.

I have a proposal, he says. No more lies. We wipe the slate clean, and commit to total honesty from here on out. How does that sound?

Okay, but—

I’m saying this so that you believe what I’m about to tell you, which is that we are better off, significantly better off, staying put. I did a full circuit of the floor. The elevators are still shut down—the freight elevator, too. I checked all three stairwells. Our old favorite, A, is almost black with smoke. Impassable. The other two weren’t as bad, but bad enough.

Black with smoke? she says, shrinking away a little.

But no fire, Jenny. Smoke rises, right? The stairs are probably clear farther down. Still, we won’t make it through right now.

He presses her hands between his. Looks into her eyes.

I did as you asked. I’m reporting back. Do you believeme?

She nods. Did you see Edvin?

I didn’t see anyone. He glances at the television. Any news?

Not much. The fire department is going room by room on the twenty-first floor.

Good. Nick looks around. He really did a number on this place, huh?

Together, they erase all traces of Edvin. He straightens up around the desk and returns the throw pillows to the sofa. She hangs the robes in the closet.

You expect Northern Europeans to be more orderly, don’t you? he says. They’ve got such clean cities. All that minimalist architecture.

She folds the duvet and places it along the bottom of the bed. He retrieves a bottle of wine that had rolled under the coffee table and checks it against the minibar menu.

Unbelievable! They’re charging two hundred bucks for pinot noir.

It’s minibar robbery, she says.

Right? He reaches for the corkscrew. Obviously we’re drinkingit.

She returns to the end of the bed and bumps up the volume on the television.

Hotel management is working to determine how many guests remain in the building, but they believe the number could be more than a hundred.

Over a hundred of them. It’s unreal. There’s no smell of smoke in the room. No flames visible out the window, or rippling black clouds. Just whirling snow. Juliana could be posing in front of a building in Moscow right now, or Minneapolis. Instead she’s a few hundred feet below them, and they’re a few hundred feet above a significant blaze, watching it unfold on television.

He brings two glasses of wine over and takes a seat beside her.

What if Edvin comes back?

We don’t let himin.

But—

Jenny. We do not let himin.

Let’s call him, she says.

Why the hell would we call him?

To find out if he made it. If there’s a clear path down.

Yeah, but…he pauses. That’s not a bad idea, actually.

Shocker, right? I’m not a total idiot.

He looks startled. Who said you were?

She wakes his phone. What’s your passcode?

5455, he says. It spells Jill.

She unlocks the phone and dials her own number. She taps Speakerphone and sets it between them. It starts to ring.

Norman? she says.

What?

She points at the screen. Your phone says it’s calling Norman.

That’s how I stored your number in my contacts, he says. What’s wrong with Norman?

The phone is still ringing.

I don’t know, she says. I think of Norm from Cheers . A big, sweaty alcoholic.

You want me to use a sexier pseudonym? he says. Hot Mama? Killer Lay?

No,I—

Aphrodite of the Golden Distaff? Sexual Partner, Comma, Best I Ever Had? Kind of defeats the purpose of an alias, but—

Hi, you’ve reached Jenny. I’m not available to take your call,so—

She ends the call.

It hasn’t been that long, he says. We’ll try again later.

They shouldn’t have called. Now she’s going to worry about Edvin, of all people. She shouldn’t. But she will.

The hotel opened less than a week ago. Its owners, a French hospitality conglomerate, claim that it’s the most luxurious five-star hotel in Manhattan, offering a multifloor wellness spa, an aromatherapy lounge, three restaurants and a full-floor private club with panoramic views of the city.

Aromatherapy! he says. Do I bring you to the high-class joints or what? Let’s take a break from the news. They’re just talking to keep people from changing channels at this point.

He mutes the television and heads back to the minibar. Strolls to it. He’s not nervous. He returned from his expedition full of brisk energy. But is he telling her the truth about what it’s like out there?

Are you telling me the truth about what it’s like out there? she asks.

Yes. He’s poking around among the snacks. Because no more lies, remember?

We’ll see how long he can stick to that little edict. But he does seem as calm now as when he left. Still confident in their rescue.

But when? When?

Whenwhenwhenwhenwhenwhenwhen—

I guess it doesn’t matter how you stored my number, she says. You’ll be deleting it soon. Since we’re done.

He doesn’t respond.

Since this thing of ours has run its course, she adds. Quote-unquote.

She can tell he’s watching her, but she doesn’t look up from his phone.

Hey Jenny.

What?

Shutup.

She puts his phone down. We should talk about our fight.

He’s studying the nutrition facts on a can of nuts. No we shouldn’t.

You don’t want me to explain the orgasm thing? You don’t want me to apologize?

I’m good, he says. Clean slate, remember?

What if I want an apology from you?

I’m sorry, he says automatically.

Nick. We should clear the air. What else are we going todo?

He sets the nuts down and comes back to the bed.

He sits beside her. Puts a hand on her knee.

Smiles.

She stares at him. Are you kiddingme?

What? It would relax us! Not to mention pass the time.

She laughs in disbelief. There’s no way!

Why are you so outraged? This is what we do. It’s what we’re goodat.

Right, she says. It’s all I’m good for.

What? No, that’s—what the hell, Jenny? That’s not what I meant.

She reaches for the remote and unmutes the news.

—and by the time backup units arrived, the wind was blowing in a northerly direction.

The camera is trained on the lobby doors. Still no Edvin, she says.

They sip their wine and watch firefighters amble in and out of the building.

Reports further indicate that after firefighters collapsed the hotel’s revolving doors to facilitate the entry of men and equipment, a gust pushed into the building, which disrupted—

How big do you think Edvin’s dick is?

She tears her eyes away from the television to gape at him.

Gargantuan, right? As a matter of sheer proportion?

What is wrong with you? she demands.

So much, he says. Though at the moment I’m just trying to distract you.

By proposing we discuss a stranger’s dick? A possibly dead stranger’s dick?

You’re right, he says. That’s totally inappropriate. Let’s discuss mine instead.

At which point she bends over, setting her wineglass on the floor.

She stays like that, covering her face with her hands.

She’s trying desperately not to laugh.

She shouldn’t be laughing right now! But she doesn’t just want to laugh—she also wants to weep and scream and run out the door and beat him to death with the remote. She needs him, she wants him, she hates his fucking face. Because here she is, marinating in a slew of awful feelings, a witch’s brew, she was just physically assaulted, they’re in a predicament terrible enough to be the focus of the evening news, not to mention earning one of those dire red Breaking subheads from the New York fricking Times… and he wants to talk about dicks!

Witch’s brew. That’s what Ben calls a soup Tom makes, with tomatoes and beans. The first time he tasted it he hid under the kitchen table and cried. Natey joined him in solidarity.

Oh, Ben. Oh, Natey. Her little weirdos, her menaces. She sits up and opens her photos on her phone, so she can see their sweet faces.

But all she finds are pictures of Jill and a bunch of documents.

Right. Not her phone.

Her phone is gone.

This is all bad, so very bad. She doesn’t want to think about it. So she reaches for her glass and drainsit.

Not that big, she says.

Beg pardon?

Edvin’s dick. I saw it. His robe fell open while we were standing up at the television.

And you looked! he says . You hussy!

I couldn’t help it! It was right there.

She has shocked him, which pleases her. He gets the wine and refreshes their glasses.

I need every detail, he says. Start at the root, proceed to the tip. Or go the other direction. Up to you.

She shrugs.Eh.

Eh? he repeats. You’re a novelist, woman! Use your formidable powers of description.

I don’t know what to tell you. It was a basic pinkish schlong. The hair around it was copper-colored. There was a lot ofit.

Insulation for those Arctic winters, no doubt. But sizewise, you weren’t impressed?

It was normal. Small, even.

Fascinating. Still, imagine when he gets hard. It must smack the ceiling. He must need a special hoist to position it, like in a shipyard.

I can’t believe we’re talking about this, she says. We’re awful.

Ve’re the vorst, he agrees.

—and the force of that wind pushed through the elevator shafts and stairwells of the building, causing smoke to mass on the upper floors.

See? he says. The smoke is rising. The fire is still far belowus.

She picks up his phone and checks her go-to sites. The fire, once nowhere, is now everywhere. People are posting photos and videos on social media, the news sites are buzzing.

I wish he hadn’t left, she says.

He mutes the television. Edvin? He couldn’t helpit.

Why, because there’s no such thing as free will?

I was thinking it was because he’d completely lost his mind, he says, but sure. Also because there’s no such thing as free will.

You just muted the television, she says. You went to law school, years ago. You got married, had a child. Put on a blue shirt this morning. You’re saying all those decisions were completely out of your control?

Yes, because they were each the result of earlier decisions, which were themselves the result of even earlier decisions—as well as the product of my upbringing, my genetics, prior experiences, environment. There’s a chain of prior causes, stretching way, way back, through our lives, through time, through the history of the world, and they form the sum total of the conditions we find ourselves in at any moment. Everything we do is the direct result of things that already happened—things we had absolutely no control over.

Fine, earlier decisions and circumstances led me here, she says, but why does that mean the next decision I make isn’t free? It feels like it is. It feels like I spend half my life agonizing over my choices, wondering whether I’m doing the right thing.

That’s an illusion, he says. You were always going to do the thing you end up doing. You just didn’t knowit.

There’s something wrong with his logic. She just doesn’t know how to articulate it.

She glances at the television. Still no Edvin.

So when I thought I was deciding whether to go with Edvin, I wasn’t? That choice had already been made?

Well, it wasn’t even a choice, he says. It was an outcome, already determined, based on who you are, how you think and behave—everything that’s ever happened to you led you both to vacillate about staying, and ultimately to stay.

Why did you persuade me so hard to stay, if you knew the outcome was already whatever—fixed in place?

Because I had no choice either, he says. That was my predetermined course of action.

Okay, there’s definitely something wrong with his logic.

It’s like your argument about women being brainwashed, he adds. In fact, if we circle back to that discussion—

You’re actually bringing this back to blow jobs, she says. Incredible.

As we say in the courtroom, you opened the door, sweetheart. So. Imagine we have a woman. And this woman happens to find herself in the presence of a tasty-looking dick.

Ha! she says. Now we’re truly in the land of illusion.

Be that as it may. We have a woman, we have a dick. Said woman perceives said dick. Thinks, hey, that looks good! So she wraps her lips around it, and proceeds to—

Thank you, she says. I get the idea.

Great. Now if—as you yourself insisted—she made that choice because she’s been trained to do it, persuaded by forces beyond her control, then how is her choice in any way free?

Because, she says, well, because…she still chooses. Sure, she’s influenced by her environment, but that doesn’t mean she’s completely…I mean, it doesn’t strip her of all…shoot, what’s the word?

Agency, he says. And I think it does. There’s no such thing as partial freedom.

Dammit! She doesn’t know how to circumvent his reasonableness, how to articulate what she feels in the deepest pit of herself to be true—that her choices are hers. She elects, she’s responsible, all blessings and faults her own. His big words and irritating logic don’t matter.

Oh, but they do. They do matter, because she’s a frozen duck!

She glances at the television. The anchors are discussing construction delays at LaGuardia. The fire is getting boring—that’s a positive development. Though it also means she can’t see whether a big man in a tiny robe has emerged through the lobby doors.

She tries calling her number again.

It rings and rings.

Norman’s not picking up, she says.

Isn’t that a good sign? I mean, it’s awful for him, but it shows we were right not togo.

She feels Edvin’s hand on her again, pulling her. Just thinking about it…she stands and moves to the window. She’s getting worked up again. Riled by these four walls, this unbelievable situation. She wants to fling herself around the room and shriek. Tear the stuffing out of the pillows, throw herself on the floor and pound on it with her fists.

Instead, she looks out at the snow and takes deep calming breaths. Inhale, one, two…

Why, though? Why hide her rage, her fear, her burbles of hysteria? She hides them and hides them, all night she’s been hiding them. Or trying to, and failing miserably.

Why hide anything? It never really works. Maybe it shouldn’t.

She turns from the window.

A man, Nick. A man who was just here with us is almost certainly dead. Maybe a lot of other people are, too. That’s not a good sign, of anything.

We don’t know if he actually tried to leave, he points out. He could have found a room down the hall where a nice, nonadulterous couple is roosting. Maybe they’re all holed up in there right now, drinking overpriced wine and discussing the blessings of compulsory monogamy.

Goddammit! she cries. Stop fucking joking!

Sorry. He rises and comes to her. I’m sorry. It’s a bad habit. When things get stressful, I tend to make jokes, rather than—

What, have feelings? Be genuine?

Hey. He takes her hands. Let’s not attack each other again, okay? It’s important to stay united. We’ve never faced a situation like this before.

A crisis, she says.

Okay, a crisis. And I think that’s why it’s been rocky. We needed some time to adjust to how we each deal with this sort of thing. Now, we need to be a team.

A team? We barely know each other.

What? We’ve known each other for years.

Really, Nick? What’s my middle name?

She watches him struggle. He can’t admit that he doesn’t know.

It’s Grace, she says. Where was I born? What’s my favorite movie?

Those are random facts, Jenny, they’re not important,or—

Racine, Wisconsin, she says. And Moonstruck. But we’ve never talked about the important stuff, either. Not much. Which is fine, we spend our time doing other things. But it means we don’t really know each other. Do you even know why I started sleeping with you?

Because of my ferocious cock and my magnetic sorry sorry sorry! He grabs at her hands as she pulls away. I told you, it’s a reflex. But what is it you want? Opening up, sharing our secrets—that hasn’t gone so well for us tonight.

Why are you so against talking about real things? she demands. Why are you so typically, tiredly male about not sharing your feelings?

Jesus, Jenny,I—

It’s so boring, she says. Aren’t you bored?

The room phone rings.