Page 8 of Close Your Eyes and Count to 10

As they passed the towering sign and rounded the bend in the road, the abandoned hotel rose before the vista, windows yawning black, overgrown foliage leaking from the roof, deep fissures in the concrete walls. It was a great shadow looming at the precipice of a steep cliff overlooking a glittering volcanic lake.

The last light of the day glinted on the still water.

Maverick felt that familiar excitement, that electric current through his veins. His whole body vibrated with it.

The dark structure hulked, a huge concrete dare. Man, how he loved the broken thing, the jagged edge, the crumbling ruin. It thrilled him to see how things broke down.

“Holy shit,” said Gustavo, dropping his feet and leaning forward. He was lean and muscular, with a square jaw, and long black hair that he pulled back into ponytail, a bandanna over his head. That toothy smile, a wide arc of mischief and joy. It always connected Mav to his inner adolescent boy. “Thisis going to be extreme,brah.”

“This is going to benothingif we don’t get a permit from the town council,” said Angeline from beside Hector in the back seat, tapping on her phone.

“We’ll get it,” said Maverick. They locked eyes in the mirror. “Trust me.”

“Like Mav doesn’talwaysget what he wants,” said Alex from the too-small third row of the vehicle. He’d been mostly quiet on this trip, except to chime in with something negative. “In the meantime, he’s going to bankrupt us if we keep having to pay everyone off.”

“It’s not apayoff,” said Maverick. “It’s adonationto build a library for the town. Just trying to grease the wheels.”

“Hmm,” said Alex. “Okay.”

Mav looked for Alex’s indulgent smile, the one that made him feel like everything was okay, but his friend was staring at his phone.Frowning. His vibe was off. Trouble at home, maybe. Alex and his wife, Lucia, had a new baby, and Mama was not too happy about this outing.

I can’t just pick up and go at a moment’s notice anymore, Mav,Alex had complained before the trip, which he had vigorously opposed.

And that wasexactly whyMav was never having kids or tethering himself to a woman who wanted to settle down. Angeline had an adventurer’s heart. He glanced at her in the mirror again. She and Alex had identical postures, heads bent over their respective screens, faces glowing in the light. If Angeline thought about marriage and kids, she’d never said so.

He pulled the vehicle to a crunching stop and stepped out. The air was so fresh that it made his lungs ache, everything around him a dripping, fecund green.

Maverick held up his phone and tried to frame the view before him on the screen. But there was no way to capture any of it, its beauty, its drama. The deserted structure sucked in all the light. The mineral green of the water, the hyperorange and gunmetal gray of the sky, and the rolling mountains beyond were made flat and dead by two dimensions. Even his eyes could barely take it in.You can’t squeeze the whole world into that rectangle in your hand, his dad, who refused to carry a smartphone, liked to say.

That’s not what he was trying to do. The phone—it wasn’t a box. It was a portal. He was trying togivesomething to his followers, many of whom rarely left their gaming chairs.

“It’s perfect,” Mav said, the silence swallowing his words. But it wasn’t really silence. The movement of the trees, the wind, the calling of birds, the rustling of undergrowth wove a chorus of whispers, a landscape of sound.

No one answered him.

Angeline was on her phone again. Having exited the vehicle, she moved purposefully toward the tilting gate at the grand entrance. Her form was a slim shadow, tiny against the towering old-growth forest.

Though he had the urge to call after her, bring her back closer to him, he stayed quiet, watching her. Her voice, but not her words, carried on the night. She sounded angry. But then she was usually angry, or at least annoyed. As the chief operating officer of Extreme, she was constantly in the middle of his circus, cracking the whip. Making sure things worked, that the haters stayed at a safe distance, that his plans came to life.

Gustavo and Hector already had the gear and were moving toward the open corpse of the hotel, laughing, their voices echoing. Gustavo Bello, or Tavo as they mostly called him, with Hector’s reluctant help would rappel down the empty elevator shaft to inspect the foundation. Extreme’s social-media director and main sidekick, Tavocouldandwouldclimb in or out of anything with agility and grace. As thin and powerful as a galvanized-steel cable, his body was seemingly not beholden to the laws of gravity that others had to obey.

Hector Cruz’s role—his official title at Extreme was producer—was to stay on the sidelines telling them to be careful, identifying potential threats, managing safety. He was the one holding the rope, pulling them out when things went FUBAR.

Alex Tang, number cruncher, was still in the vehicle.

“You coming?” Mav called.

But Alex gave him a wave, pointed at his screen. Maverick pressed down a rush of annoyance, their last conversation—fight, really—still lingering.

The numbers don’t work, Mav. We’re in major trouble.

It’s your job to make the numbers work, isn’t it?

I’m the CFO, not a fucking magician.

Mav hesitated another second, then followed Hector and Tavo, watching the beams of their flashlights dancing around the near darkness.

When he was closer, he spun around and flipped the camera so that it was his own face he saw,turned to put the hotel and the vista behind him. He knew that he should tell Angeline that he was going live, but instead he just pressed the button.

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