Page 4 of Our Last Resort
A buzz breaks the silence. My gaze falls on Gabriel’s phone, vibrating on his own nightstand.
Shit.
Where is he? At this hour, there’s nothing to do at the Ara but sleep. We’re a thirty-minute drive from the nearest town. Even if Gabriel had a reason to head there in the middle of the night, we don’t have a car. A driver picked us up from the airport in one of the hotel’s gleaming vans, an air-conditioned capsule around which the desert materialized like another planet.
“Gabriel?”
I check the patio. Empty. He must have left while I was still outside.
Stay calm.You’re not the person you were fifteen years ago.A girl with a life like a blank page, everything to figure out from scratch. Delivered to a world that allowed her to be safe only with a man at her side.
The door handle rattles.
There’s a sliding sound, the mechanism unlocking at the touch of a key card on the other side.
Gabriel starts when he sees me.
“There you are,” he says.
“I— What?”
“Where did you go?”
Without waiting for my answer, Gabriel shuts the door behind him. He squints at the ceiling light.
“Mind if I switch this off?”
I tell him to go ahead.
Even in shadows, I can make out his silhouette. Here, his bare arms, there, the white words on his T-shirt:Tiberius & Domitian & Nero & Caligula.(Four Roman emperors, four brands of insanity. I learned about them when I picked the names three Christmases ago, before mailing Gabriel the T-shirt as apresent. Those four, in order: tyrannical; paranoid; burned people alive; demanded to be worshipped as a god.)
“Iwas looking foryou,” I say. “Just now.”
Gabriel disappears inside the bathroom. There’s the trickle of water, the sluicing sound of soap lathering against skin.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” he says from the other side of the door. “I woke up and you weren’t here.”
He walks back into the room, wiping his hands on his sweatpants. There is a brief ray of moonlight, then the bathroom door shuts, and we’re in the dark again.
“Where did you disappear to?” he asks.
“I was…outside. Smoking.”
I can’t make out his face, but I think he’s shaking his head.
“If you get us kicked out before the end of the stay, remember you’re the one on the hook for the bill.”
His voice is light, teasing. I try to laugh, but all I can produce is a small cough.
A whoosh of sheets and blankets. Gabriel folding himself into his bed. I don’t need to see him to know his legs are slightly bent. The curse of the tall man: always compressing his body, hunching his way through doors and train cars.
“Are you going to try to sleep,” he asks, “or…?”
“I saw something.”
It comes out as a whisper.
“What?” he asks. “What did you see?”
