Page 27 of The Vacancy In Room 10

“Someone locked me in,” I say, blinking back tears that are partly relief but still terror and confusion.

“No, nobody would do that—the wind was really going there for a while. I’m sure it just...”

“I saw someone do it,” I say firmly.

He doesn’t seem to know how to respond. He runs his hands through his hair and gestures to the door. “Well, gosh. Let’s get you out of here,” he says, and I don’t know if I should trust him. Is he a psychopath who is going to strangle me and stuff my body in a plastic storage bin if I get close? I feel like a trapped animal. I keep looking at the triangle of light from the door behind him and wonder if I should try to make a run for it. What has this place done to me? Maybe he’s just getting his whatever from his storage unit, and I’ve lost it.

“I have to get my phone...and I need to bring these boxes up to my apartment,” I say, hoping he moves away from the door.

“Oh, gosh, let me help you,” he says, and then he goes right to Henry’s unit. There is a flood of relief that he’s moved from the doorframe and his defenses are down and I could run out and lock him in if I had to. A question pops into my mind: How does he know which unit is Henry’s? Why would he?

I stand outside the door and gulp in the fresh air. I should tell him he doesn’t have to help, but I’m not going back in there if I don’t have to, and now that I’m out and safe, I let him. He tells me we’ll have to clip the wire door open in order to reach in and get the key, but that’ll take some tools. My impatience boils as I wait for him to call Cass about some sort of industrial clippers or whatever he’s talking about...

“No answer,” he says, “but she won’t mind if we break it open. You need your keys. The thing’s on its last leg anyway.” He goes to his unit where a dozen swords hang on display in a very off-putting way. He plucks one of the curved swords with an emerald green handle from its place on a shelf and swipes at the rusty square that the lock attaches to on the unit door; it easily comes loose from the screw and falls to the floor.

All the while I’m watching this from outside the main door, still shaky and ready to run if he suddenly decides to try to dismember me with one of his swords, which I haven’t ruled out as a possibility quite yet. But then he smiles, and does some weird court jester bow with a hand flourish as if he’s mastered a great feat, leans his sword against a wooden beam, and begins helping me pull out boxes.

“Thank you,” I say as he hoists a couple of boxes up on his shoulder. He hands me my phone as he passes me, then continues on to bring them up to my apartment door. Although I finally feel like I’m safe from being murdered, I don’t offer to help. Maybe I am overreacting, and someone did just close the door so the room didn’t flood and ruin people’s things—they didn’t hear me because the thundering rain was so loud. That’s possible. And Barry is probably actually just trying to help. Occam’s razor, I can hear my dad saying, is the philosophy that the simplest explanation is usually correct, or something like that. Still...

I rush up to my apartment and pull the boxes inside as Barry sets them down on my doormat, keeping my distance. I look at my phone, but there’s just a text from my mother checking in and two missed calls from my friend Monica. Nothing from Callum telling me he got my message and will be careful.

I watch Barry labor up the stairs with a heavy box of books, and I’m grateful, but I also can’t shake the feeling that there’s something off about him. He’s an attractive guy, and if you just saw him, you’d lump him in as a popular guy in school and someone with a few special lady friends who works in a cubicle and plays golf on the weekend, but when he talks he’s... I don’t know. Almost childlike. Too eager to help, missing that chip most people have that should tell him when he’s talking too close or overstaying his welcome. He’s just oddly clueless, I guess, is the best way to describe it. Maybe harmless. Maybe not.

When he’s brought up the last box, I offer to pay him for his time because I have to offer him something, and I’m not inviting him in.

“Oh, gosh, no way. I’m so sorry for what you went through. I’m just here to help.”

Before I can respond, I hear a voice say, “Girl!” and Barry and I both turn and look down to see a woman with white capri pants and heels with a silk blouse and a single string of pearls around a very delicate neck. It’s Monica. She’s shielding her eyes from the sun with one hand and the other is on her hip.

“I’ve been calling for ages. I was going to Paradiso’s for brunch and wanted you to come. You don’t answer your phone anymore?” she asks as she navigates the wet pool deck in heels and makes her way to the staircase to come up.

Barry pats my arm and tells me to call if I need anything else before he leaves.

“Hi,” I say, hugging her tightly when she enters the door to the apartment. “Sorry, I...” and then I stop and decide not to tell her that I was locked in a dungeon for hours, probably by a psychopath who’s out to get me, and that I feel like I’m losing my mind here. I’m glad to see my oldest friend, but all I want right now is to shower off the last few hours and then bawl into my pillow for a good while before I can absorb one more thing today.

“Wow, Anna. Yikes. This was his studio? God, I imagined some Joanna Gaines shit going on—it sounded romantic, like a loft with exposed brick and soaring twenty-foot vaulted ceilings with beams. God, is that a popcorn ceiling? What the hell?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I thought the same thing when he showed it to me last year, but if this is how he got his inspiration, who am I to judge?”

It shouldn’t be that shocking. I mean, it sort of is. He probably could have rented the kind of artist loft with a cityscape view she’s describing, but he’s known for gritty portraits—real people, unfiltered. This place meant something to him for reasons I can’t understand but for reasons that were his own; that I can at least accept. I feel protective of him when someone doubts him like this, and she should know that.

“Sorry,” she says, pulling a bottle of champagne from her oversize Coach tote. “Just—” she looks around with raised brows “—not what I expected. But, hey, I brought brunch to you. Thought you could use it.”

She smooths her sleek black hair with her hand nervously and looks around like every surface is too disgusting to place her bag down. She can come off a bit... I don’t know, crass? Direct maybe. Is that the word? But I know her enough to know that acting like things are normal and we can drink through any problem is key. Talking aimlessly about the everyday mundane and ignoring the impossible, traumatizing reality is the way you get through hard times, and sometimes that’s just the kind of friend you need—one who won’t ask you how you feel. Not because she doesn’t care, but as a very purposeful strategy to keep you in good spirits and distracted.

It might not be what I need right now, but a mimosa and idle conversation about her new hair stylist “who does stellar lowlights but who’s sadly moving to Lake Havasu” and “what is she going to do” is going to keep me from losing it right now, so we pull out a wooden chair from the small kitchen nook and set it up next to the ugly metal chair on the balcony and sit, drinking warm bubbly and SunnyD out of Dixie cups.

Below us, some of the pool girls are already bringing out a folding table and taping a dollar store plastic cover over it where they place sleeves of Solo cups and hot dog buns and other prep for the Friday evening barbecue.

Monica must be stunned into silence by the place because her lips are pursed and her eyes are darting around. She swats away a fly as if even that is a product of this filthy place and would never have bothered her somewhere more posh. “So you...live here now?” she asks.

“No. I mean, I’m just going through all his stuff, and it was paid up for the next month, so why not take my time while the house sells?”

“Then where? You know you can stay with me and Steven, right? I mean, his mother is there now, ugh, but just for another week, thank Christ. She told Katie her Barbies were dressed like whores and then ordered colonial prairie dresses for them. Can you believe they even make those? Now Katie’s playing Amish village or Little House on the Prairie or whatever the hell she’s doing out there, because her dolls ‘rough it’ in the backyard now and she wants to sell Barbie’s Dreamhouse for a decent profit, Christ. So I mean, if you need Realtor referrals or anything,” she says, and I smirk at this.

“But really,” she continues. “If you don’t wanna go back to your house, we have the pool house. It’s private. You can stay as long as you want.”

“Well, thanks. I’m still figuring out what I wanna do.” I don’t tell her I still dream of just leaving and wandering the world and not buying another suburban house and not begging for a mid-level, soul-stealing journalism job I’ll get turned down for anyway. “I just need to sort through everything here and... I just need to figure out what happened,” I say, willing my voice not to break.

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