Page 95 of Our Last Resort

“Can I speak to you for a few minutes?”

Without waiting for an answer, she ushers me toward a corner of the lobby.

“I’m sorry to have to do this,” Catalina says, “but I need to ask you—”

I spare her.

“You want us to go.”

Catalina nods.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“Don’t be. We’ll go.”

At this, Catalina is visibly relieved.

“But can you give us one more night?” I ask, and gesture around at the chaos. “I just don’t think we can get flights today.”

I look at her with my most innocent eyes.

I am not a suspect. I am a mere person of interest. And I am still, despite everything, a guest at this hotel.

“That’ll be fine,” Catalina says.

I glance at the clock above the check-in counter. It’s a little after three-thirty.

One afternoon, one evening, one night. That’s the time I have to get the truth out of Gabriel.

After that, he’ll head back to Seattle. I’ll head back to New York. We’ll be lost to each other, possibly forever.

And still, the documentary will happen. Even if I refuse to participate, my absence will become part of the narrative. The cameras will make their demands for a truth, a “coherent story.”

If we’re not ready to provide what they need, then what?

They’ll come for us. The producers, the documentary, the viewers.

Who knows what they’ll say: what theories they’ll put together, what stories they’ll invent?

People can be so creative.

33Bloomfield, New Jersey and Spring Lake, New Jersey

Eleven Years Ago

The month before Annie and Gabriel got married, Annie had an idea.

“What if we went to the beach this summer? We could do Spring Lake. I went there all the time when I was a kid.”

It was a source of fascination to me, Annie’s insistence on addressing us as though we were normal people whowent to the beach,whodid Spring Lake.

“Don’t you already have plans this summer?” I asked. “Like your own wedding?”

Annie shrugged. We were in the living room of their new house, drinking wine and eating olives. They’d moved to Bloomfield the previous week. There were still unpacked boxes piled against a wall. One of them served as our table.

“I meant we could go after.”

It wasn’t inconceivable that Annie and Gabriel might include me on a trip.

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