Monarch

19. Atlas

19

ATLAS

E lena’s so excited that she only spares a couple nervous glances as we reenter the hotel together. She doesn’t have to worry—the author’s still sleeping off his hangover, and Amy will tell me the moment he leaves his room. But I don’t mention that to Elena because she’s already forgotten Lorne Ronson as I lead her down the back hallway by the kitchen and through a hidden doorway to the basement stairs.

She’s practically as intrigued by the hidden door as she is by the prospect of a darkroom.

“You have secret passageways? This place is so fucking cool! Where’s your room?” The question pops out of her, but then she seems to second-guess herself, biting her lip like she can bite back the words.

I would love to take Elena to my suite. In fact, it’s one of the top three goals on my priority list, but the timing’s not quite right.

I learned my lesson last night, rushing in, acting a fool. I have to be more strategic.

I want Elena. I can admit that to myself. And I don’t think Lorne should have her—because he doesn’t deserve her and because I don’t trust him to treat her right.

But she’s not going to leave him if she’s more afraid of something else…whatever that something else might be.

I don’t know if it’s the visa issue or some bogeyman back in Ukraine or just her guilt at breaking off an engagement, but whatever the problem is, Elena’s not ready to tell me.

So, I’ve got to work this from the opposite angle.

First, I have to win Elena’s trust. She’s not going to tell me a damn thing when she thinks we’re strangers, so I have to show her what a good friend I can be.

The next bit’s trickier. I’ve got to demonstrate that her fiancé isn’t just an asshole, he’s dangerous. Lorne Ronson has secrets, and I’m digging them up one by one. The hard part will be exposing him without looking like I’ve got an ulterior motive. Because I do have an ulterior motive, and Elena knows it.

Step three: when Elena is safe and happy and far away from her ex-fiancé, that’s when I’ll give her the full private tour.

For now, we’re still on step one. Which means getting to know her on a deeper level so I can show her that I’m the one who will protect and promote what matters to her most.

So I say, with ultimate casualness, “I’ll show you where I live. But I think you’re a little more interested in this…”

We’ve come to a plain metal door that unlocks with the smallest key on my ring. This room was used for document storage long before computers. It’s fireproofed, the windowless walls lined with lead, but well ventilated. I’ve already stocked the space with all the necessary chemicals and supplies. Some were difficult to find, and all had to be disguised so they looked less obviously new.

Elena is still suspicious.

“You just happened to have this down here?” She arches a strawberry-blond eyebrow. “A whole entire darkroom?”

“Isn’t that convenient?” I smile right back at her. I don’t give a damn if she knows.

Elena blushes deeply. “Well…thank you. It’s wonderful. And ten times the size of my old darkroom. I can’t wait to work in here.”

But when I move to close the door behind us, she stiffens.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

It doesn’t look like nothing. Her whole body has tightened up, and she’s darting glances at the door like she’s terrified to be shut in here with me.

“Do you…want me to leave?”

“No.” Elena shakes her head with short, jerky motions, her voice tight. “It isn’t—it’s not you. It’s…ugh, vot chuma , sorry.”

She’s pacing now, glancing at the doorway, staring at the floor, running her hands through her hair and tugging at the roots.

I put it together at last: her nervousness to step into the elevator, how she always takes the stairs down from the sixth floor, her reaction when I trapped her by the dumbwaiter, and now her anxiety at being shut up inside the exact workspace she most wants to possess.

“Are you claustrophobic, Elena?”

“I—ah—” Her chest rises and falls with shallow breaths. Her eyes dart between the door and my face, faster and faster. At last, she whispers miserably, “I didn’t used to be.”

“Come sit down.” I put my arm around her shoulders, drawing her over to a pair of mismatched armchairs, one of which used to sit in my father’s library, the other from my grandpa’s old office.

Elena sinks down into Pop Pop’s chair, hands cradling her skull, elbows braced on her knees.

“Deep breaths,” I say. “Nice and slow.”

I rub circles on her back, my palm like a giant heating pad slowly moving around. I feel her muscles loosening, her breath softening.

How long we sit there, I have no idea. I’m waiting for Elena to feel calm again. For her to know that she’s safe.

At last, she raises her head and looks at me. “Thanks, Atlas.”

I love how my name sounds on her lips. It’s like a whistle, the way it makes all the hairs stand up on my arms. It’s a birdcall that only she knows, and I fly right into her cage.

She captured me, and she doesn’t even realize it. Because Elena thinks that she belongs to someone else.

But I’m the one who will battle her demons. Even the ones in her head.

“What are you afraid of?” I ask. “If I close that door?”

She stares at the doorway, a hole like a missing tooth in the smooth, featureless wall.

“It’s not the small space, exactly…” Her voice is slightly strangled. “It’s whether I can get out.”

Her lips are paler than usual, and when I put my hand on her back once more, her shirt is slightly damp.

“You can unlock the door from the inside. You don’t need the key.”

“I know,” she says, her breath coming faster again. “And I know you wouldn’t lock me in here.”

“Is it the lack of windows? I could move this to another room…a higher floor…”

“No.” She shakes her head. “I trust you. It’s not rational, what happens to me, but I can’t seem to control it.”

She’s shaking now, waves of tremors rolling down from her shoulders to her toes. I put my arm around her again and tuck her against my side and hold her there.

“Sorry,” Elena says again. “Fuck, I’m sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?”

“It’s embarrassing.” She pulls away from me, sitting upright again, lifting the hem of her shirt to wipe her face. “I’m a mess.”

“Elena,” I say. “Look at me. Look at me.”

Finally, she does. Hesitantly. With fear and shame.

“You’re not embarrassing. You’ve done nothing wrong. I’m sitting here savoring every second I have with you. So please don’t waste a moment of it apologizing.”

Color returns to her face, blood flowing under the skin. Her eyes go liquid bright, and she blinks rapidly.

I say, “I don’t care if you’re scared of small spaces, or being stuck in them, or even just how they feel on a Tuesday. I don’t care if it’s rational or irrational, sane or crazy. I fucking hate snails, I hate ‘em. Something about the mucous texture, the little prongy antennae…” I shiver just saying the words. Elena gives a ghost of a smile. “Fear isn’t always rational, but it can still hurt us or hold us back.”

“Or make us run in the exact wrong direction,” Elena says softly.

There’s weight in her words. And a sick, sinking feeling in my gut.

She regrets being with Lorne; I know it. But she thinks she’s already trapped with him. How can I show her the door’s still open?

“It’s getting worse and worse,” Elena says. “The nightmares…”

“What nightmares?” I cradle her head with my hand, pulling her back against my shoulder. “Tell me everything.”

She leans against me, clinging to my arm, her head on my shoulder. Her voice comes out low and distant.

“We were in a car accident…me and my parents. We used to go to the movies every Wednesday. Dad said we needed something to look forward to in the middle of the week. He said, ‘ Mondays are too bleak; it’s too far to the weekend…’ And he was right. It did make the week easy…”

Elena trails off like it’s hard to even remember a time when a week felt easy.

All my weeks feel easy when I have the hotel running like a well-oiled machine. But they also feel somewhat empty.

The weeks since Elena arrived have been unprecedently vivid. It all started with that first glimpse of her in the hotel lobby. The light came down from the windows like we were in the cathedral of a church, and she stood by that golden cage as if she’d sprout wings like an angel.

It was a moment of the sublime. Such perfect harmony that I felt at one with the universe.

I didn’t know it yet, but in that moment, I became a believer in things I never believed in before. Because some things can’t be denied once you’ve felt them.

There’s a connection between Elena and me, invisible but powerful as gravity. I feel it every time we’re in the same room.

Her emotions infect me. Her words paint pictures in my head. And every time I come near her, I can see that I have just as much effect on her.

I know how to comfort her. I can feel it when she relaxes under my hands. I know how to rub her back, her shoulders. How to stroke her hair and soothe her with my gentlest voice.

I wrap my arm all the way around her and rest her head against my chest. From the shelter of my arms, Elena whispers, “It was snowing. A truck slipped on the ice and tipped over. All the lumber it was carrying crashed down on our car. I was sleeping in the back seat, lying down. The front windshield smashed in, and the whole car compacted like a tin can. I woke up with this weight and pressure crushing me, squeezing everywhere… I could still breathe, just barely, but I couldn’t move, not an inch. And something started dripping down on my face. All these little droplets, like warm rain. It fell in my eyes, and I blinked and it smeared red…and I realized my parents had been…they were…it was their blood running down the boards. Dripping on my face. And I couldn’t move. I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t wipe it away…”

I feel it all with my arms wrapped around her—the constriction, the panic, the horror, and the terror of a girl all alone, realizing what so much blood must mean. I hold Elena, and I feel it with her, all the awfulness of that night. Forever linked to the sensation of captivity.

“That was when it started,” Elena says. “The claustrophobia.”

“Understandable.”

She lets out a soft snort, almost a laugh. “Yeah, well, my uncle wasn’t a fan of how many months it took me to get used to sleeping in a bunk bed. I used to wake up and see the slats overhead and start screaming. But I got used to it eventually. Ukrainians are big believers in exposure therapy.”

“There is some neurological evidence that avoidance only strengthens fears.”

Elena lifts her head to look at me. “I keep forgetting that you’re a doctor.”

“Well, you were asleep when I treated you.”

“Pardon me, sir?”

“I was completely professional.”

“Oh yes…” That strawberry-red eyebrow is the naughtiest part of her face. “Like how professional you were at dinner last night.”

“I take my Hippocratic oath much more seriously than my food-handling license.”

Elena snorts. My arm is still around her shoulders. I have no intention of taking it away.

Softly, she says, “It got better for a while. But then there was another…incident…more recently. I was trapped in an elevator at work. And it brought it all back worse than ever. The claustrophobia and…new dreams.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, you know, classic stuff…locked in a box, forced down a tiny pipe, drowning in a car as water pours in the windows…”

“All the hits.”

Elena sighs. “It got so bad I couldn’t even use the darkroom at home.”

“The broom cupboard?”

“Yes.” She smiles weakly. “The broom cupboard. I stopped taking as many pictures because it started to feel pointless. But that was even worse because I need it. It’s my way of looking at things, of understanding them. It’s what I love.”

I can understand that. I’m not an artist, but I have my own lens through which I examine the world, and that’s my hotel. The Monarch is the petri dish where I observe humanity. Most of what I’ve learned in life was within these walls. The Monarch is where I feel the most myself and the most connected to everything around me.

We all feel the pull of our purpose. To be cut off from what we’re compelled to do is just as bad as being cut off from the other necessities of life.

“I want you to have a darkroom,” I say to Elena. “One way or another. How can we make it work?”

Her eyes sweep the room, fixing on the doorway nervously. Her shoulders tense, but her voice comes out firm. “I want to work in here. I want to be able to close the door.”

“Would it help if I stay with you?”

She lifts her head, studying me, our faces only inches apart.

“Yes. That would help a lot, actually.”

“So you don’t feel alone?”

She laughs softly. “So I know that at least one of us could break down the door.”

“It’s the main benefit of being built like a rhinoceros.”

“What’s the downside?”

“The bad jokes. People can’t help themselves. It’s the literal elephant in the room.”

Elena stands and so do I. She tilts her head, stepping back a little to compare our relative sizes. She’s about the height of the average man and only slightly shorter than her fiancé. But still a hell of a lot smaller than me.

To me, she’s just the right size—not as disturbingly tiny as some of the women I’ve dated. There were a couple I was afraid I might crush if I rolled over in the middle of the night.

It would be nice to date someone a little heartier. Someone who wouldn’t need a step stool to steal a kiss.

Elena says, “Before I met you, I’d never stood next to anyone who made me feel delicate.”

“You are delicate, though.” I’m looking at her skin, so smooth and clear it’s almost luminescent. Her cheek’s more delicate than any silken fabric.

Color flushes through it like watercolor as Elena blushes. It’s like watching a painting being made, each expression, each emotion forming and dissolving on her face.

“Atlas,” she says in a warning tone.

“That’s just a fact. It’s not flirting.”

Her teeth gleam like pearls in the half-light as she ducks her head, hiding her smile. “Behave yourself.”

Never.

“Come on, then, show me how it works,” I say. “I’ve never actually seen film developed.”

She hesitates. She knows just as well as I do that every moment we spend together is dangerous. We’re all alone in this quiet, dark space. No one can hear us, above or below.

“I’ll behave,” I promise.

And I will. If that’s what she wants.

But I don’t think that’s what she wants. Not really. Not deep down.

Elena switches on the red bulb and turns off the soft golden light. We’re plunged into devilish gloom. Our features sharpen and darken. We’re closer than ever, and more alone relative to the rest of the hotel.

We’re stripped-down versions of ourselves, red and black, almost two-dimensional. When I look at Elena, it’s like I can see all the way beneath her skin to the soul within—naked, bare, without pretension. Her fear is clear to me. So is her determination.

“Are you okay?” I ask her, my hand on the door.

She nods.

I close us in the darkroom, deep in the heart of the hotel.

Elena takes several slow breaths. A pulse jumps in the hollow of her throat.

“What do we do first?” I ask to distract her.

For a moment she doesn’t answer, still frozen in place with her eyes fixed on the closed door. Then she forces herself into action, preparing the chemicals and the developing tank.

“All fresh and full to the brim,” she says of the supplies. “How lucky for me.”

“All right, I had Amy set it all up for you,” I admit. “It was just a storage room before.”

Elena laughs. “I know, Atlas. Nobody has a darkroom anymore.”

Her movements are becoming more confident, more assured, as she slips into the routine she knows so well.

“What are you doing now?”

“Checking the temperature. Sixty-eight degrees is best for black-and-white film.”

“And then what?”

“I’ll show you. Well, I’ll sort of show you. This part we have to do in complete darkness.”

She switches off even the red safety light, plunging us into solid black. I become all the more aware of her closeness, of the heat coming off her body.

“Here.” Elena slips her hands into mine. “We’ve got to put the film on the reel.”

She moves my hands in the darkness, placing the film canister in one, a plastic tool in the other.

“First you pop the lid…”

Elena guides me in opening the canister, unspooling the film, and threading it onto the reel. She moves with calm assurance, having done this blindly many times before.

The darkness is like the deepest mineshaft, not a shred of light leaking into the windowless room. My other senses expand to fill the gap. The little shuffles of our feet on the floor, my heartbeat, and the sound of Elena’s breathing become as clear and obvious as someone speaking aloud. The scent of her skin is as distinct as the photography chemicals, honey sweet against the bitter acid.

I’ve never felt anything so intimate, all alone in the dark, cut off from any other sensation. All I feel are her fingers and mine, our hands moving together.

She takes me through each step of the process, the prewash, the developer, the stop bath, the fixer…eventually we can use the red light again, but the intimacy of complete darkness remains. It’s as if we’re still in that borderless state where our bodies seem to vanish and there’s no barrier between us. Our hands move together, bathing the images, fixing them on paper.

Elena takes the rinsed photographs and hangs them up with clothespins like shirts on a line.

The last photo is the one she snapped of me earlier today next to the fountain. She bathes it in chemicals, and the image darkens, my own features swimming into being.

She took that picture when I was looking at her. And what I feel is written all over my face…

Longing. Hopeless longing.

Elena looks at me, and I look at her. Neither of us speaks; it’s unnecessary.

Because there it is, in black and white, captured forever on film…how desperately I want her.