Until the Thaw

The manager left at noon, before the storm closed the pass. Six months, she said. No guests until April. Log the boiler pressure twice a day, don't let the roof load past two feet. She handed me a key ring the size of a dinner plate and drove down the switchbacks without looking back.

I took this job because a winter alone costs less than a lawyer, and because nobody up here knows what I walked out of in October.

At four, headlights swing across the lobby windows.

He comes in stamping snow off his boots, duffel over one shoulder, dark hair curling wet against his neck. He pulls off his gloves finger by finger knuckles split, a carpenter's hands and reads the room the way I did three hours ago. Ninety empty rooms, one lit desk, no one else.

Eliot|“You're not the manager.”

Protagonist|“I'm not. I'm the winter caretaker.”

He laughs once, no humor in it, and digs out a folded contract. Same letterhead. Same start date. Same job.

Eliot|“The agency double-booked us. Nobody's answering until Monday.”

Then the lobby goes black. Every light, all at once. Somewhere below us the boiler shudders and quits, and the cold starts moving in through the glass like something with a schedule.

I hear him drop the duffel. A lighter scrapes; his face jumps out of the dark, close, brows drawn.

Eliot|“Generator?”

Protagonist|“Sub-basement. I've never seen it.”

He holds the flame out toward me, low, so I can see the floor between us.

Eliot|“Then we go together.”