Tessa watches the seventh floor become the eighth.
“There wasn’t any pain,” Brian says. “There wasn’t any physical pain.”
Tessa’s eyes fall shut. She’s very tired. She slept two hours last night. “I’m sorry. I am.”
Brian is stony. He watches the ninth floor pass. “For what?”
The tenth floor passes.
“How about you tell me what you’re sorry for,” he says. “For bad--mouthing my career every chance you’ve gotten tonight? For calling me stupid, or—”
“I never—”
“For saying it’s my fault he’s dead?”
Tessa backs away from him. Her shoulders hit the glass. She mutely shakes her head. She shakes.
Brian watches the eleventh floor. The twelfth. He could be searching the carpet for bloodstains.
Tessa’s voice is too soft to hear.
“What?” Brian says, watching the fourteenth floor. There is no thirteenth floor.
“Look at me.”
Brian watches the start of the fifteenth floor.
Tessa hits the “Emergency Stop” button on the elevator. It rings up the shaft like an alarm clock. Jules, Justin, Henri, and the sous--chefs are in the kitchen, arguing about noise levels. Delores is the only person in the ballroom. She is the only person upstairs who would conceivably hear the alarm, but she has earbuds in. They are plugged into her iPhone, which is in her apron pocket. She hates French accordion music.
The Killer hears the alarm. He gets up from the bed, leaves Room 717, follows the hallway, and stands at the main elevator’s doors. He looks at the buttons above the doors, sees the button for the fourteenth floor is illuminated. The Killer enters the stairwell.
“You never think about yourself,” Tessa says. “You never have.”
Brian reaches for the elevator buttons, but Tessa bats his hand.
“That’s all I’m saying. You loved school. You were on the honor roll every semester. Look at me, Brian.”
Brian acquiesces, because he can’t not. Tessa’s face is inches from his. Muscles in his neck clench. His fists dig and dig in his jacket pockets.
“I never made it a secret how I felt about you on those things.” Tessa sounds angry. Or, she would, to someone who doesn’t know what she sounds like when really angry.
“Motorcycles,” Brian corrects. “You can say the word, Tess. They’re called motorcycles.”
“Now, Mitch?” Tessa says, like she didn’t hear. “Mitch I shut up about. He was going to do what he was going to do. He always did. It drove me crazy, and it drove you crazy. Remember?”
“No. I don’t.”
“Yes, you do. You tried to talk him out of it. You tried to talk him out of riding back when you were both too short to reach the clutch pedal, but he taped hockey pucks to his boots. Remember that?” Tessa foils Brian’s attempt to look at the floor by grabbing his chin. “And when you saw that, you taped hockey pucks to your boots so he wouldn’t be ripping over the hills all by himself. And when he started trying tricks, you did them, too, and you were better at them than he was, and so you said, ‘Let’s do tricks together,’ and you did that so you could make him take it slow, cycle up through the less dangerous stuff first—”
“I liked stunts. I liked doing them.”
“But you never loved doing them. Not like Mitch did.” Tessa is still holding his chin. She puts her thumb in the middle and strokes an indent there. “You did this the day you tried your first jump with him. I was watching. Have you forgotten I was there? Mitch botched his landing. You nailed yours, but you turned to see if he hit his, and you spun out. Mitch sprained his wrist, but you landed on your chin and skidded through the dirt. I held your head while Mitch ran for the house. You came to and you told me—remember?”
He reaches up and holds her hand holding his chin. “Yeah, Tess. I remember.”
“You said, ‘Mitch needs to quit this before it kills me.’ You laughed, but I was crying so hard, I almost threw up. So you sat up. And you hugged me. You told me you were fine, everything was okay. And you bled so much, you needed a transfusion at the ER.” Brian tries to hug her now. Tessa wriggles free and puts a distance between them. “You never thought about yourself, not once. Not until he died and you decided to stay on the circuit when I really needed you.”
“Tess,” Brian says.
“What?”
Brian points at the segment of the fourteenth floor that is visible to him. “Who’s that?”
Where the main elevator has stopped, Tessa and Brian are about two--thirds on the fifteenth floor and one--third on the fourteenth floor. This means, when Brian asks, “Who’s that?” he’s referring to the Killer’s black boots. When Brian asks, “Who’s that?” the Killer’s black boots move, calmly walking to the left.
Tessa says, “A member of the security team, doing a check.” She twists a hank of her hair into a knot. “Probably.”
Brian flattens his belly to the elevator’s floor. “Where’s—there, hey! He’s wearing a mask.”
“A what?” Tessa also lowers to the floor. “Bri, if you’re making this up . . .”
The Killer has paused at the door to the stairs. He and Brian are four feet and two glass panes apart. Tessa appears next to Brian, and the Killer looks at her.
Tessa shouts, “Franklin! You’re so incredibly fired!”
A second passes. Then the Killer shakes his head at Tessa. Slowly.
“It’s—that’s Franklin,” Tessa says. “Gotta be. Or—security’s running a scenario.”
The Killer taps his wrist, where a watch would be. He then opens the door to the stairs and lets it fall closed behind him.
“What scenario?” Brian says.
Tessa stands and hits the “Emergency Stop” button. The elevator rises. Tessa gasps. The Killer is on the fifteenth floor. Brian stands and gets in front of her as the Killer’s neck sinks backward, watching them rise. Tessa’s and Brian’s necks sink forward, watching him recede.
“They ran a scenario last week,” Tessa says, “where there was a bomb in the lecture hall. They cleared us all out. No one told any employees about it. Charles didn’t even know about it. We thought it was the real thing.” She watches the sixteenth floor’s empty halls. Then the seventeenth floor’s empty halls. “They’re making sure we take the proper steps, that’s all.”
“And what are the proper steps?” Brian asks.
“Form a large group in an open space and wait for the notification that the scenario has been run to its conclusion,” Tessa recites verbatim. Love blooms through me like a bright red flower. This is intolerable.
“What if it isn’t?” Brian says.
“Isn’t what?”
Brian gives Tessa the stank eye.
She gives it back. “Isn’t a training exercise? Then Bri?” She claps her hand on his shoulder. “It’s been great knowing you.”
He doesn’t laugh.
Tessa does. “Chill out. Honestly, you haven’t met the guards here. They’re the most intense bunch of suits that ever existed. They take it personally when stuff gets by them.” She blows a strand of hair out of her eye, comfortable now in her own explanation. “That mask. Franklin wore it to scare the staff on Halloween.” She scoffs. “They could’ve at least come up with something original.”
Brian jumps when the elevator dings at the nineteenth floor. Delores is on the bandstand; she’s sweeping in preparation to mop.
“See?” Tessa says, reading his relief at this tidbit of normality.
The elevator doors glide open. He follows her into the ballroom.
The volume of Henri’s music shoots to a deafening level. Tessa and Brian cover their ears. Tessa says, “Del! Delores!” as she and Brian skirt the bandstand, but Delores can’t hear. Delores, oddly, favors heavy metal. Tessa jogs toward the kitchen door, bursts in unnoticed for all the noise, crosses to the portable stereo on a shelf near the pantry, and only when she’s hit the “Power” button do Justin and Henri stop yelling at each other and look at her. “What the hell,” Tessa says, “is going on up here?”
Brian, per his promise to stay out of the way, is lurking unassumingly by the dishwasher. He peeks underneath it and taps its controls like a friend.
“I told him,” Justin says, stepping away from Henri. Justin looks as angry as he ever does, his forehead a lightning storm. Jules’s forehead is confused: her husband’s sense of righteous offense is out of proportion with the crime. “Have at him.”
Henri’s cheeks are fading from plum to a uniform maroon as he says petulantly, “They need—”
“The musique?” Tessa says.
Henri’s lower lip quivers. He knows that Tessa is kind, but not nice. She is accommodating, but not a pushover. He has pushed her, and she will not go over.
She turns to the stove, where the sous--chefs are feeding Jules spoons of cherry coulis experiments. “Sous--chefs go hang out in the ballroom,” Tessa says. “We’re waiting on an all clear from security, and then you can go home.”
“Mais non!” Henri throws his hand towel, as his sous--chefs flip the burners dark and set down spoons. “You stupide children, you shall remain here with me until—”
“Henri—”
“Stupide! Stupide!” he shouts—not at her, but at the sous--chefs hanging up their white smocks. Tessa blinks on a pellet of Henri’s spit as he shouts, “Cochons de lait! Putains!” He moves to intercept his assistants as if Tessa’s not standing five feet ahead of him. He knocks into her. Tessa totters on her boot heels.
Henri’s coat makes a farting sound as the back of it splits. The white fabric is tissue in Brian’s grip. Brian places Henri against the wall, like Henri is a troublesome robotic knickknack marching off the end of a mantel. He holds Henri there by the front of a cherry--stained smock. The sous--chefs hesitate by the walk--in freezer. The walk--in freezer locks. The walk--in refrigerator does not, because the secret elevator is hidden behind the shelf that holds the juice concentrate.
Tessa has regained her balance. Brian seems to realize his own obviousness. He holds Henri against the wall, huffing a hard breath in annoyance at himself. Jules and Justin both have their eyebrows high up on their heads, and they blow on spoonfuls of cherries periodically, like all of this is an excellent show, complete with food.
Tessa tells the sous--chefs, again, “Go to the ballroom, guys. I’ll tell you when it’s time to leave. Start bright and early tomorrow.” She looks at Henri and says with a level of calm he should recognize as dangerous, “Shall we say seven?”
Henri sticks his nose in the air.
“Seven,” Tessa tells the sous--chefs. “Go have a seat. Don’t mess with the place settings, no card games.”
The sous--chefs mutter, leaving.
Tessa goes closer to Henri. She looks at Brian as if to say something, but Brian shakes his head. Tessa was ready to say, “Let him go,” and Brian was saying, “Don’t tell me to do that, because I won’t do it.” They are painfully transparent.
Tessa points at Henri. “You’re a brilliant chef, but you should keep in mind that there are chefs younger than you, less choleric than you, who would eat rat droppings to work in this facility. I’m thinking of a dozen names right now. I’m thinking of their phone numbers, because I’ve memorized them, because your brilliance is not worth what I have to do to keep you in check.” Tessa goes still closer to Henri. Brian lets Henri go, because Henri is crying quietly. Henri does this often; he’s faking it. “Stop crying,” Tessa says, “or I’ll fire you right now. I don’t give a fuck what it does to the opening.” Henri’s trembling lip drops. “You can go home,” Tessa says, “or you can stay here. But you play your music at the volume I indicated with a fluorescent green piece of tape to mark where it’s not splitting everybody else’s ears. If you decide to stay, you’re going to take an hour and eat. You haven’t eaten all day, except sampling, and all the sampling has been cherries. Your blood sugar’s going nuts. That’s why you’re being such a pill.”
The four sous--chefs have settled at a table near the bandstand. One of them moves a place setting’s shrimp fork inside a wineglass, but his companions nag at him until he puts it back. The same sous--chef then takes a cell phone out of his pocket and fiddles with it. The other sous--chefs ignore this, eager to see him get in trouble. Delores departs the bandstand, holding her broom, and enters the storage area where, presumably, she is filling the mop bucket, as running water can be heard.
Henri is now sitting on a stool by the dishwasher. Tessa has gotten him crackers and cheese from the walk--in refrigerator. She keeps Tupperware full of snacks specifically for Henri, for times like these. Henri is diabetic; he ought not to skip meals. She pats his back and makes the sober suggestion that he apologize to his sous--chefs. Henri gets up, toting his Tupperware in both hands, his gait mildly unsteady, since notification of low blood sugar can make the effects more drastically felt.
Camera 34
Brian, Justin, and Jules all stand by the stove. They have all three tasted all four varieties of cherry coulis. They have each chosen a favorite, which they now eat. Actually, Brian let Jules and Justin pick their favorites first, and he took one of the two remaining. Brian asks, “When does Tess get a break?” Jules and Justin laugh. Jules says, “Sorry. Sorry, you didn’t mean that to be funny.” Justin says, “If you can get her to leave the hotel for five minutes, you’ll go down in the annals of myth.” Jules says, “Forgive him. He talks like that sometimes.” Their silverware scrapes the bottoms of the steel pots. Jules says, “Did you two ever . . . ?” Brian licks his spoon and frowns, perplexed. Justin says, “Sleep together. My wife is asking if you and Tessa ever slept together. Because that’s completely appropriate, honey.” Jules says, “Oh, what? I point out the elephant in the room and I’m a jerk?” Justin says, “No. You poke the elephant in the eye and you’re a jerk.” Brian says, “Yeah. We slept together.” He plugs his mouth with cherries and garbles, “She was eight and I was ten.”