She turned. “If I tell you… everything, will you promise you’ll never ask about it again? Promise that we’ll never have to talk about it.”
“Okay,” Remy said. “I’ll try.”
She stood and walked to the window, opened the curtain and looked out on the dark street. He could see the glow from the streetlights on her pale skin like a halo.
“We talked all that weekend and we went to dinner that Monday night,” she said to the window, “and I let him spend the night… and he even went to work Tuesday in the same clothes. He thought that was so funny… and it felt so natural, like before he left. I kissed him goodbye at the door of our apartment. And I think that’s the first time I really allowed myself to realize how much I missed him, and to think that we might be back where we were.” She turned back to face Remy and it reminded him of the way she’d kept paddling the kayak, her shoulders straining with the effort. “It was after Derek walked out the door that I saw his cell phone on the bookshelf, with the message light blinking. So I listened-”
“The woman from his office,” Remy said.
“March.” She spit the name as if it had been caught in her throat, her voice cracking. April turned away again and seemed to realize for the first time that she was naked above the waist. She pulled a towel off the floor and wrapped it around her shoulders. “March was the woman he-”
“Ah Jesus,” Remy said.
April smiled sickly. “I had talked to her on Monday… and I told her that Derek was coming over… that we were thinking of reconciling. She was so quiet. And I thought-” She laughed bitterly. “I thought she was just worried about me, worried that I would get hurt. So I told her not to worry about it, that Derek was a different man. And that I knew what I was doing.”
April seemed unaware that tears were streaking her cheeks. “She and Derek had always had this… flirtation. I always thought it was aimed at me… you know, the way sisters try to make each other feel off balance? Jealous? But as soon as I heard her voice on his phone I knew. I knew. I wanted to throw the phone across the room. I wanted to hang up. But I couldn’t. I just listened.”
Remy asked what the message had said.
“She was rambling, freaking out. She wanted to know if it was true that Derek was thinking of getting back together with me… she said that he’d lied to her. And she felt awful. She never would have slept with him if she’d known he still had feelings for me. She said she’d been vulnerable because of her breakup with the married guy and Derek had taken advantage of that, and I don’t know-” April laughed again. “She said that if Derek hurt me, she would kill him. If he hurt me… do you believe that? Goddamn her.”
“What did you do?”
“I called her at work. I yelled at her.”
“That morning?” It was as if the ground gave way beneath Remy’s feet. “You called her? That morning?”
– March taking the phone call, crying at her desk-
“I told her she was a whore and that she wasn’t my sister and I never wanted to talk to her again. I told her that I was going to tell Dad she was a whore.” April shook her head. “March said I had it wrong, that it only happened once, that they were drunk, whatever… She kept trying to whisper, I guess because she was at work.” April slumped back into her chair. “And that pissed me off, that she could still be thinking about what people thought of her. I hung up the phone… listened to the message again and then I called her desk. But she was gone. So I called Derek’s office and…” April twitched. “…March was there. In his office. That was the worst part: that she was there with him. I was all alone in my apartment and they were twenty blocks away, in another room. Together. Forever, as it turned out.”
“Was Derek’s office on the same floor?” Remy asked quietly.
“No. Four floors above.”
– March, agitated, hanging up the phone, running to the elevator -
“I knew she was there. He was talking, telling me to settle down, but there was… nothing. I just felt totally empty. Like I’d been hollowed out.”
She stared past him for a long time and then laughed bitterly. “So… I hung up. I wanted to say something clever. Or mean. But I just took the phone off the hook and went back to bed. I didn’t go to work. And it was an hour later… I heard people screaming in my building and… I turned on the TV and saw-” April began to buckle but caught herself. “I think of them… up there at the end… together… and I hate them most of all for that… that at the end, they had each other.”
She was right, Remy thought.
They could’ve just lived in this hotel room forever.
Everything a person needed was in a hotel room.
It was the peak of civilization, a culmination of fire and the wheel and digital cable radio. It was all here.
If he’d just never mentioned Derek they could’ve just kept at this for years, making love and buying new clothes, eating in restaurants and kayaking around the bay, changing their names every few days.
“I’m sorry,” Remy whispered.
She covered her face with her hands and the towel fell away and she shook with sobs again. Remy stood up, brought her back to bed and curled up around her tiny back until the shuddering stopped and she was breathing easily.
“Do you know…” She caught her breath. “What I kept thinking?” She looked back over her shoulder and met his eyes. She smiled. “For months afterward, I kept thinking: Wouldn’t this make a fucking great portrait in grief?”
“HOUSEKEEPING.”
Remy started. He looked back at the door of the hotel room and then at the clock on the nightstand. It was seven-thirty and April was sleeping more heavily than he’d ever seen. He kissed her lightly on the crown of her head, rose and got dressed, and walked to the door.
Markham’s smooth smiling face filled the doorway. “Hi, Brian.”
Remy edged out and closed the door behind him.
“You ready to go?” Markham was wearing a sportcoat and blue oxford shirt and carrying his thin brown briefcase. He did an exaggerated double take on Remy’s new shoes.
“Wow! Look at the kicks!” Markham said. “Are those new? They have to be new. Look at you, Mr. Hipster. You know, I can’t wear sweet kicks like that, those big square-toe clunkers. And I’m a shoe guy. But my feet are so long I’d look like Frankenstein in those.” Markham took on his standup comic voice. “In fact, I’d look like a gay Frankenstein, like Frankenstein on his way to get a pedicure and meet his boyfriend the Wolfman for a caramel half-caff at Starbucks. Metrostein or something. Right, right?”
Remy felt beaten. “How’d you find me?”
“Housekeeping,” Markham said again. “‘Chure, I comb back.’ Hey, I’m sorry about the cell phone. You were right to pitch it and lose me for a few days. I could’ve blown your cover. I get impatient. It was stupid of me. Especially with us being so close.”
Remy looked back at the door to the hotel room.
“So… did the change of scenery work? You get anything new?”
“Look, I don’t want to do this anymore,” Remy said. “Whatever… this is – I’m done. I’m just going to go back into this hotel room and…”
“Oh, I know what you mean. I’ve been jet-lagging since we got here.” He leaned in closer. “Have you taken a dump? Because I haven’t. Goddamn airplane food. Like eating paste.”
“Look,” Remy said. “For what it’s worth, I don’t even think March is alive.”
Markham nodded. “Yeah… the whole March thing looks like a dead end. Excuse the pun. But no, you were right all along. March probably is dead. Unless old Bishir is a tougher cut of steak than he looks.”
Remy couldn’t help his curiosity. “You found Bishir?”
“Well… yeah. What do you think we’ve been doing here? Sightseeing?”