Chapter 8 Maria

Chapter 8

?Maria

The electrician looks back at her with a smile that says: See? Just as I predicted—nothing happened.

Something inside Maria shifts, and she realizes with odd clarity that she wishes something had happened—to him. She wishes something bad had happened when that lovely, helpful, kind man, with all his misplaced male confidence, had pressed the button just to prove to her, and himself, that the world was as he expected and not as she feared.

That wish, that the world had opened up and swallowed him whole for his baseless assumptions, no doubt springing from anger built up over a lifetime of having to anticipate every eventuality in her own life as a woman: just in case.

Of course he can just press the button. But Maria knows bitterness is a pointless emotion. So instead she gives him an enthusiastic cheerleader clap for his bravery and ushers him safely back out of the room.

"I guess the button must just be for show then," she says, a hand gently leading him out into the dim hall. "That's so great to know, thank you so much for taking a look in there." The signals she's giving are clear, she hopes. She's telling him he has done what he was asked and now it's time for him to go.

Social order gently reintroduces itself to the equation.

The man looks momentarily deflated that their tiny adventure, where he was the hero and she applauded on the sidelines, is over but as they reach the stairs his ego rallies and makes sense of it all somehow.

At the front door, goodbyes are oddly exchanged and then he is gone.

—

Maria sits by the pool, her limbs loose and warmed to the bone as she sips an iced coffee, hard won, from the professional-standard coffee machine she's finally managed to work out how to use.

The client and the children are not coming. She feels it now as if it is fact.

She lets the cool drink slide down her throat and closes her eyes. She tries to forget the green button, the man, the white room. She listens to the wind in the palms and she almost, almost lets it all go…until the sound of the house phone brings her eyes flashing open.

—

It's the woman with the too-tight chignon checking on the work completed.

"Yes, he fixed the lighting issue. Yes." Maria almost stops there but decides to continue, her newfound anger still there, like a will-o'-the-wisp, rolling deep in the hidden parts of her. "He couldn't fix the problem with the locked room, though," she adds with an odd relish.

The woman at the other end falters a moment at this new information. "Excuse me?"

"The room you told me not to go in. It's open, unlocked. The man you sent tried to fix it but it's broken. Well, not broken exactly, the room just isn't locked anymore," Maria explains.

The woman on the other end makes an odd clicking noise, half tut, half hesitation.

" You haven't entered the room, though?" she clarifies.

"No, I have not entered the room," Maria tells her, with a strange jolt of satisfaction.

The woman is silent for a moment before answering, "Good, that's good."

"Great," Maria counters, "so I'll just stay away from the now unlocked room, right? That's what you're telling me to do? Right?" Maria isn't entirely sure what exactly she's asking but it seems to require specificity.

"Yes, that room is off limits, correct."

Maria gives the woman another moment to stew before filling the awkward silence. "Okay, understood," she says, before adding, "And I take it they're not coming. The children? The client?"

Oddly, the woman doesn't disagree. "We are still attempting to contact—"

"Right. Well, I'll be here. Until the final contracted day. Unless you'd like to cancel the rest of the booking?"

"No, no. Let's stick to the plan," the woman counters.

—

Maria constructs a new plan: stay until the end, don't go near the white room, and collect the full amount of contracted money in ten days. No client is coming. It will be easy money.

—

The next eight hours are some of the simplest, most carefree moments of Maria's life.

She lies on the warm sand of the beach, her skin gently bronzing as she reads. She swims in the warm emerald shallows and feels the sand ooze satisfyingly underfoot.

Then she lunches by the pool, sleeps on a sun-warmed lounger, swims in the cool chlorinated water when the temperature gets too much, hotfooting it across the baked-earthenware tiles back to the comfort of her towel. That evening she showers, drinks a glass of wine, and eats dinner while music drifts from the overhead speakers. She feels as close to free as she ever has. No one to tend to, no one to impress, just life to be lived.

Before bed, she goes through the house, closing up as she goes. She places the docket the electrician left her earlier that day on the hall table under a small ebony sculpture.

Downstairs, the door to the white room slides open as she passes it carrying damp towels from the indoor pool area to the laundry. Something new inside it catches her eye.

On the floor about a foot into the room lies a small object. She recognizes it immediately. She doubles back, squats down in the hallway, towels in hand, and squints into the room. A pencil: short, red, chewed at the end. It was the electrician's; he must have dropped it.

Maria considers the pencil for a long while. Then seemingly on a whim, she reaches out the short distance from the hall and tries to grab it, careful all the while to remain firmly in the hallway. But the little red pencil is just beyond her reach.

Of course it is.

"Oh, for fuck's sake," she huffs, and goes to get something long.

Spatula in hand, she tries again, wafting and leaning until she bites the bullet and crawls with both hands into the room, her knees still in the hall.

Overhead the lighting, sensing her presence, suddenly changes.

Surprised, Maria looks up quickly, loses her balance, and falls, whacking her elbow hard onto the floor. Pain shoots through her funny bone and instinctively her knees pull into the room. She freezes. Then lightning quick, realizing what she's done, she leaps back up, and jumps back out into the safety of the hallway. But nothing happens. She stares back at the room, almost disappointed. Nothing happened.

"Huh," she says.

The red pencil is still on the floor in there. So she just walks into the room and picks it up. Still nothing happens.

She looks around the space, her confidence growing. She spreads her arms now, like the man did earlier, like Christ the Redeemer, and she spins. Still nothing happens.

She walks over to the pulsing green button and stares at it. Then, as the man did before her, she smooths her hands over the white walls surrounding the button. He was right: no join, no access panel. But regardless, nothing happens.

So she too presses the green button.

A bassy low-frequency alarm is emitted, the lighting in the room immediately changing again, this time from white to pink.

This definitely did not happen when the man pressed the button.

Panic flares inside Maria. She spins but—as fast as she moves, and she moves fast—she does not make it back across the space before the door to the hallway seals shut in front of her.