Set Free Read Free Page B

days, I quickly concluded. If I’d been out that long, I’d feel woozier and my face would itch with stubble.
    With nothing to look at, and nothing to listen to—the place was like a tomb—I was left with what was going on inside my head. Even that seemed a fool’s game. Try as I might, I couldn’t manage to focus on anything of importance, instead always coming back to fretting over the cost of that damned riad . Whenever my mind dared veer into the deep dark place that was reality, it snapped away like an elastic band, not wanting to deal with what was there.
    I was on the verge of falling asleep when I heard the noise. A muted, low grumbling coming from somewhere below me. My first clue telling me I was in a room above another. There was either a basement beneath me, or I was on a second floor or higher. I strained to hear, to identify the sound. The lack of any other stimuli made it easier to concentrate.
    Voices.
    People. There were people in the building.
    Were they here to save me or hurt me?
    Should I thump the floor with my feet and scream bloody hell through my gag? Or should I remain deathly quiet?
    The garbled sound continued. At least two people were having an exchange. Probably in a language I wouldn’t understand. Were they talking about something important? Were they talking about me? Time passed. Whatever the discussion was didn’t seem to lead to someone coming for me. I didn’t know if I should be disappointed or relieved.
    The conversation continued so long that I began to nod off, the muffled chatter a bizarre lullaby. It reminded me of falling asleep to the sound of my parents talking in the living room, their voices low, sometimes stifling laughs, always cognizant of their slumbering sons. Desperate, I grasped onto that pleasant memory. I eventually found myself easing into a drowsy recollection of my final conversation with Jenn, the day I left Boston.
    It had been snowing for two days. Winter: a time of year I’d always loved for its coziness and the fact that a string of bad weather always seemed to inspire a blitz of good writing. Until now. I didn’t love winter anymore. Or summer. Or autumn. Or spring.
    I’d gone outside earlier to shovel a skiff that had accumulated on the driveway. My bag was packed and sitting by the front door. I was hungry, but decided I’d grab something quick at the airport. I didn’t want to put Jenn through the trial of a drawn-out farewell meal, sitting across from each other, food sticking in our dry throats as we tried to make light conversation.
    “The yard guy should be here on Monday to take care of the leaves.” We should have done the raking ourselves, but we’d waited too long. Too many other things going on. Now it was winter and I was going away.
    “Okay.” Jenn was on the couch in the living room, feet tucked under her, laptop perched on her right thigh—a favorite position.
    I walked over and switched on the lamp nearest her. Left on her own, she’d go half blind before thinking to turn on a light. One of her peccadilloes.
    “Thanks,” she said, looking up briefly, a distracted look bothering her pretty face.
    Conversations move much quicker when sentences consist of one word or less. It had been like this for weeks. Ever since the trial, and the long, frigid fallout that came after it. It was as if we’d somehow managed to live through a nuclear blast, and now we were waiting to find out if we’d survive or die from its poison.
    I dropped into the armchair closest to where she’d set herself up in a nest of work. “I don’t have to go.”
    “Of course you should go. We’ve talked about this. Why are you bringing it up again now?”
    She was right. We had talked about it. Made a decision. My cab was five minutes out.
    “It feels wrong, leaving you here alone.”
    Her eyes rose from the computer screen, the line of her mouth tight as wire. “Nothing’s going to happen.” The words barely slipping through.
    “I know that,” I