The Hostage Bargain (9 page)

Again I wondered about Zeus. How did he fit in? They hadn’t seemed to expect him to join. Is this how it would be for the week? A cool détente from Zeus? I’d felt such a fierce connection with him at the bank, but now that I was in, he seemed to barely tolerate me.

“Come on,” Thor said, getting up from the couch.

I wandered over to the liquor cart and grabbed a handful of pretzels as the two guys sank into the tub. It was here I noticed the flowers had been reduced to just stems, with a few ragged petals hanging off.

“What the hell happened to the flowers?” I asked.

“Zeus,” Thor said.

“Oh,” I said, sensing that a follow-up question might not be the thing.

We took a dip in the hot tub while we waited for our food. It was large for an in-room pool—the size of two king beds—and surrounded by marble. I rested my head on the side of the pool, letting the jets hit my back and allowing my body to float, letting all the tension drain away. I learned this was one of my bandit boys’ favorite hotels. From their conversation, I got the feeling they were fancy hotel connoisseurs.

“Isn’t it expensive?” I asked. “To stay in this suite? I mean, sure, bank robbers make a lot of money, but wouldn’t it be prudent to save some for the future?”

“The bank robber lifestyle is high stakes, high reward,” Thor said. “You can’t go skimping on the reward part of the equation.”

“It’s the opposite of a farm,” Odin added. “We’re into maximizing today, not tomorrow.”

This struck me as poignant. Like they didn't see a big future for themselves. How had they come to this? And did they plan to go out in a blaze? I’d probably never know.

Well, it was definitely the opposite of a farm. On a farm, you were thinking about tomorrow. Again my thoughts went to my sisters.

A better person would go back immediately. I tried to conjure up some sense of missing that life but I couldn’t. I reminded myself that I’d just seen them that morning. And that if I stayed, I’d get money to save the life they loved. It was kind of impressive how many excuses I could manufacture to make it okay to stay. Bottom line: going back went against everything in me. I felt like I’d been closed up in a closet, suffocating, and now I was free, and I just needed to stay out a little while longer, gasping my fill of the cool, fresh air.

Odin hoisted himself out of the hot tub and grabbed towels and fluffy white matching hotel bathrobes for the three of us to bundle up in. Minutes later, the food came.

The room service waiter was allowed to set the table properly this time, with a linen tablecloth and linen napkins and fine silver, all set out right over the surface upon which I was so wantonly and deliciously misused just an hour earlier.

The three of us sat down to feast, wearing our matching fluffy robes. We ate and laughed. I drank a glass of champagne, which made me feel a little better about things.

“I really do need to get a message to my sisters,” I said.

“We’ll talk to Zeus,” Thor said.

I finished my entire plate of pasta plus half my pizza before I threw in the napkin.

Odin sat back in his chair, one arm sprawled over the chair beside him, feeding himself chocolate-covered cherries.

“I see chocolate-covered cherries as really 1970s,” I said.

“Am I going to have to punish you again?” Odin asked.

“You said always be honest,” I said.

Odin grunted.

Thor turned his chair and set his feet on my lap. “I see them more as a 1960s food. But you sure get more chocolate bang for your buck than with chocolate-covered strawberries.”

Odin picked up one of the champagne bottles and drank straight from it, completely draining it. I drained my flute and Thor poured more from the other bottle.

Eventually I ended up on Odin’s lap with Thor’s feet on my lap, and us feasting on dessert like insane and decadent Roman gods.

“Is there a vomitorium in this place?” I asked. “One more chocolate and I’m there.”

Odin and Thor laughed. I was so pleased they got the reference. These guys were weirdly well educated. Or else they read a lot, as I had. You do that when you’re stuck on a sheep farm.

“What about Zeus?” I asked. “I mean, he’s been working out all this time?”

“It’s not uncommon for him to go two, three hours.”

“So he should be back soon. Should we have waited for him? To eat with us?”

Thor said, “He’s a big boy.”

“Let him be,” Odin said darkly.

I rubbed my finger along the rim of the glass. “Does he ever join in, you know...”

The two of them glanced at each other, then Odin pushed back my hair and gave me a quizzical look. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean,” I said.

“The bank robberies?” Thor asked.

I pinched one of his toes. “You know what I mean. The reindeer games.”

Odin put his hands around my belly. “Did you just call them reindeer games?”

“Does he?” I pressed. “Does he join in ever?” They exchanged glances and said nothing. “Excuse my curiosity, having just been with two men for the first ever time, wanting to know if another will be added to the mix. Just color me curious.”

“You don’t get to be curious about those things,” Odin said.

“Come on.” I looked over at Thor. “Isis wants to know.”

Thor swirled the champagne in his glass, just short of sloshing it out over the sides, and stared out the window. “Do you want him to join in?”

“Do you?” I asked.

“Yes,” Thor said. “We always do. It would be good. It would mean…” He paused, rephrased. “It would have a positive meaning.”

“It’s not likely, though,” Odin added. “Very unlikely at this point.”

A knock at the door. “Room service.”

Odin exchanged glances with Thor. “Enter,” he called.

A new room service waiter entered with a bucket of ice and a new bottle of champagne.

Odin smiled, dislodging me from his lap—roughly, I thought. “Please. And take the empty.”

Thor sprang up. “Awesome!”

Odin collected some of our discarded clothes as the waiter popped the cork. He was a big guy with splotchy skin. “May I?”

“Sure.” I pushed my glass to the center of the table, watching the bubbles dance in the golden liquid as he poured, marveling that I’d been tied up on this very table. It seemed funny we’d use it for any other purpose now. I brought the glass to my lips.

“Don’t drink it,” Thor said.

“What?” I looked up. Thor stood behind the waiter, holding a gun to his ribs. I widened my eyes.

Odin ripped a piece of duct tape from a roll and slapped it over the man’s mouth, then yanked a gun from the man’s pocket and set it on the table. Thor extracted a wallet, handling the man roughly.

Odin yanked the man’s head back by his hair. The man’s eyes looked rabid. “How many out there?”

The man mumbled frantically under the tape.

“What’s going on?” I couldn’t believe the change in Odin and Thor, as if they’d transformed into dangerous militants.

Thor searched through the man’s wallet and extracted an ID. “Always so convenient to know where a man lives. On account of the propensity to give wrong information.”

Odin jerked the man by the hair. “Fingers. How many?”

I backed up.

“Fine,” Thor said. He walked over and opened the sliding door to the balcony. The night sounds burst in the window on a rush of cool air. “Off you go. One.” A pause. “Two.”

The man mumbled and held up both hands.

“Where?”

The man mumbled.

“Fuck up and we’ll waste you right here.” Odin ripped the tape from his mouth.

“Seven in the hall, two at each exit,” the man blurted. “You can still walk out of here. Get Barzun. We can negotiate.”

“Fucking-g negotiations.” Odin practically spat the word. “Fuck them.”

The waiter addressed me. “I don’t know where you came from, but I know you’re not part of this. You can help yourself. These guys won’t help you, but you make this go—”

“Enough.” Odin grabbed the champagne bottle and squeezed the man’s cheeks together. “Drink.” He poured champagne into his mouth. The man spit and struggled.

“Now.” Thor shoved the gun into the man’s temple and the man started glugging and then he coughed. Odin clapped a hand over the man’s mouth, forcing him to swallow, and then they force fed him some more.

I pulled my bathrobe tight around me. The man stumbled back, seeming to lose his balance, and then he just collapsed onto the floor. Thor knelt beside him and pulled open one of the man’s eyelid. “Jesus,” he said.

Odin duct taped the man’s mouth and hands and dragged him off.

“What’s going on?” I said. “Did they chase us here?”

“This isn’t from the robbery,” Thor said, pulling on his pants. “It’s from something else. Get your clothes on.”

“Are they cops?”

“No,” Thor said simply.

I gathered my clothes and pulled them on with shaking hands. “Seven guys in the hall?” I said. “What are you going to do? He said you can still walk out of here.”

“He was lying, Isis.” Thor snapped a pack around his waist. Odin was back and he put one on, too. Fanny packs. I’d have given them shit for being if I hadn’t been so freaked. “We don’t get to walk out of anywhere. We wouldn’t make it to the elevator.”

“But they’re from the government?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Odin said, tossing a rope out the balcony, attaching part to the wrought iron railing.

“We’re going over?” I asked.

“No, we’re going up. Come on.” Thor rushed down a hall down into the far bathroom and started pulling off ceiling panels until he got to a locked hatch. Odin climbed up onto the side of the tub and worked at a lock with some tiny tools that looked like dental instruments.

Thor put a hand on my shoulder. “We’re going to leave you up on the roof and you’ll stay there. You’ll be safe there. They don’t even know you exist right now. The recon man was surprised by your presence. Did you see that, Odin?”

Odin grunted his assent.

“He expected three guys, and he got two guys and a girl. And he’ll be out for a day.”

“But the first room service waiter saw me.”

Thor shook his head. “That one was a real waiter. They keep their noses down. He didn’t see you or didn’t give it to these guys.”

Odin shoved open the hatch.

“What about you guys?” I asked.

“Up.” Thor made a step with his hands. I took off my heels, strapped them around my wrist, and scrambled up into the dark space above the ceiling after Odin.

“Sub-roof,” Odin whispered.

The place was humming with pipes and fans and machines and it smelled like oil, and it had a low ceiling, like a paradise for mechanically-inclined gnomes.

The rough concrete floor was cold on my bare feet.

Thor hoisted himself up and he and Odin took great care to replace everything from above, making the bathroom ceiling look normal as possible, I guessed. All the better to make people think they’d gone over the side.

We climbed up a ladder through a ceiling door and emerged on the dark rooftop in a forest of mammoth metal fans and blowers of different shapes and sizes. The roof was covered with a black semi-spongy substance that felt warm under my feet. Wind whipped my hair and my heart pounded. I felt as if we had stepped onto the edge of the world.

Odin pulled a phone from his pack and made a call. He looked at Thor, shaking his head. “Fuck me. Hey, Z, get out and get to the car now. We’re up top. Visitors. Call us, dammit!” He stuffed his phone back in the pack. “They thought he was in the suite. You heard.”

“They thought he was there,” Thor confirmed. “Definitely.”

Odin got up and moved quickly away from us, walking bent over like he was in a war zone, careful footsteps across the dark roof.

“What’s happening?” I asked breathlessly.

“What’s happening is that we forced you up here.” Thor clutched my shoulders. “Listen, we terrorized you, cut your hair, kept you drugged, got it? Act catatonic and too upset to talk about anything. If they’ve hooked you up with the stunt you pulled in the traffic jam, there was a gun on you. Okay? But don’t volunteer it. Act traumatized and silent. Repeat after me, ‘I can act traumatized and silent for as long as I goddamn want.’”

I stared at him, confused. “What about you?”

He shook me. “Say it!”

“I can act silent and traumatized as long as I goddamn want.”

“Months if I want. They can’t fuck with me if I don’t talk.”

“They can’t fuck with me if I don’t talk,” I said. “Don’t worry. But what about you?”

“We’ll find Zeus. Get to the van. Try not to make a hot exit.”

“I can still be your hostage,” I said. “Wouldn’t that help?”

“It only helps if they want the hostage to remain alive. These aren’t cops, remember?”

“They wouldn’t care if I were killed?”

“They’d prefer it that way. Probably do it themselves,” Thor said. “Witnesses tend to complicate things.”

“Zeus is still in the workout room?”

“Yeah,” Thor said. “But he’s not answering. Which means he’s heavy into some reps or he’s got trouble. But the recon guy seemed to believe Zeus was in our suite so…look, we just don’t know. We can’t let him go up to the suite, that’s all. We have to get back in.”

“You can’t go back in!” I said.

“We won’t leave without Zeus. It’s not how we do things. We don’t leave each other behind.”

“No matter what?” I asked.

“No matter what.”

Meaning, they’d die before they’d leave each other. Shivers came over me—primal shivers—the kind you get when you glimpse something majestically bigger than yourself, like a rock in the middle of the ocean, and you realize it’s the tip of an underwater mountain. It’s here I think I fell in love with them. Not individually, but the gang itself and their fierce one-for-all-ness.

Odin was back. “Drop into a room on the east?”

Thor sighed.

Odin tried another call again. “
Fucking g-answer!
” he whisper-yelled at the phone.

“You can’t go back inside and get him without risk, but what if I did?” I asked. “You need Zeus to get out of the hotel, right?”

Thor shook his head.

“You said they don’t know me. They’re watching for you, but not me. For all they know, I’m a hotel guest. I can’t pop down to the workout room?”