Locked in the Cold

The car had been making that noise for a week. I knew it was making that noise, and I knew what the noise meant, and I drove it anyway because taking it to the shop meant taking the bus, and I hate the bus. So that's on me.

I'm Linda, I'm 34, and I'm the assistant curator at a small maritime museum in Dune Point. Assistant curator, which means curator except when there's money involved, and then it means I call Gary. It's November, the town is half shut down, and the only people left on the main strip are the hardware store guy and the women who run the bakery, who fight all winter and make up every spring.

That night I was locking the front doors at 6:15 and thinking about a grilled cheese when the engine made a sound like a dropped wrench and quit. I turned the key. Nothing. Turned it again. Click, click, click.

"No," I told the car. "No, not tonight!"

I sat there with my forehead on the wheel for a minute. Then I saw the workshop lights were still on across the lot.

Chester had been working late all month. He's the contractor the museum brings in for exhibit builds, and I'd met him before, twice, at dinner parties at Suzanne's place back in the city. He's 39, big shoulders, gray coming in at the temples, and he has that thing where he's nice about everything. Always has a compliment ready. Always asks how your weekend was and actually waits for the answer. Easy. That's the word for men like him. Easy.

I've been dating casually since I was 29. Nothing serious stuck, not even the marine biologist I saw for a few months when I was 31, and he was the best of the lot. They were all pleasant and accommodating and they all let me steer, and somewhere around last spring I realized I was tired of steering. I was tired of being the one with the plan while some pleasant man floated along behind me saying "whatever you think, Linda." So I'd been half deliberately avoiding exactly what Chester was, which made it extra annoying that he was the only person in the parking lot.

I knocked on the workshop door and he came over wiping his hands on a rag.

"Trouble?" he said.

"Dead battery, probably. Or the alternator. Or the whole electrical system, knowing this car."

"Pop the hood and I'll take a look. I've got jumper cables in the truck."

So he looked, and jumped it, and the engine turned over and died, turned over and died, and after the third time he stood up and shook his head.

"That's not the battery. That's your alternator, I'd bet money. It's done."

"Can you drive me to the garage?"

"Garage closes at five and Al doesn't answer his phone after six, ever. But I can call my tow guy. He owes me a favor."

He called. I stood there hugging myself while he talked, and it was getting cold, the kind of cold that comes off the water sideways in November. I watched his face and I could tell before he hung up.

"Well?" I said.

"So. Marty can come, but he can't get here till morning. There's a storm drain repair on the coast road, whole thing's closed till dawn. Both roads out of town, actually."

"Both roads."

"Both roads. Small town in the off season. Sorry."

I laughed, and not the fun kind of laugh. "Of course. Of course the roads are closed. Why would one road be open when you can close both."

"It's dumb, I know." He shoved the rag in his pocket. "But hey, we're not stranded in the woods. We've got a whole building. You've got keys."

He said it easy, like it was obvious, and I felt this little flare of irritation at how easy he was being about it. Of course he had a plan. Easy men always have a plan, and it's always a good one, and it's always delivered like a favor.

"Fine," I said. "Fine. Come on."

He grabbed his coat and followed me to the side door. Inside the museum it was dark and smelled like dust and old rope, which is the smell of every maritime museum on earth and also, I'll admit, my favorite smell. I clicked on the hall lights and led him back to the staff room.

Our staff room has a particular quality. Gary, the director, is a worrier, and years ago some winter storm stranded the whole staff for a night, so now there's a cabinet in the corner with emergency supplies. Sleeping bags, a camp stove, a kettle, a big tin of instant coffee, granola bars that expired sometime in the last administration. Chester found the cabinet in about ninety seconds, which annoyed me even more.

"Sleeping bags," he said, pulling one out and holding it up. "Three of them. And coffee. You guys are set up like this on purpose?"

"Gary's paranoia. There was a storm about six years ago."

"Smart paranoia." He set the kettle on to boil like he owned the place. Found a mug. Asked me how I take it, and when I said black he nodded like that was useful information he'd be keeping.

That was when I snapped. I heard myself do it and I did it anyway.

"You know what, you're very comfortable. You're very comfortable taking charge of everything. The tow truck, the kettle, the sleeping bags. Did you notice I have hands? I have hands and a mouth and I could ask for coffee myself."

He stopped with the spoon halfway to the mug. He didn't get defensive, which was worse somehow. He just looked at me, and then he set the spoon down and leaned back against the counter.

"Okay," he said. "I've been wondering when that was coming."

"When what was coming?"

"That. You've been biting my head off since the parking lot and I figured you were cold and fed up. But it's more than that, isn't it." He crossed his arms. "You want to run this. Fine. You run it. You want me to sit in the corner and be quiet, I'll sit in the corner and be quiet. Just say the word."

"What word?"

"Octopus."

I stared at him. "Octopus."

"Octopus. I figured you'd remember it, you work at a maritime museum." He shrugged one shoulder. "Suzanne and I joke about it. It means back off, stop, whatever. If you say octopus, I stop. If you don't say it, then stop telling me to sit in the corner, because I'm not doing that."

There was a silence where I was supposed to say something. I didn't. The kettle started making noise and he took it off before it whistled and poured the water, and he did it slow, like he was giving me time.

I could tell you what was going through my head, or I could, but honestly it wasn't complicated. Every easy man I'd ever dated, if I'd snapped at him like that, would have apologized and made it my problem to fix. Chester didn't apologize. He just set a line and waited to see what I'd do with it. It didn't feel easy at all. It felt like being looked at straight on for the first time in about five years.

"Chester," I said.

"Yeah."

"I don't want you to stop."

His eyebrows went up a little. "You sure? Because that's not octopus, that's just you talking."

"I know what I said. I said I don't want you to stop."

He handed me the mug. Our fingers touched on the handle and stayed there a second longer than coffee required.

"Then drink that," he said, "because it's going to be a long night, and I've got about six hours of figuring this out to make up for."

"That's not what I meant either."

"Then say what you meant."

And that's where I got stuck, standing in a staff room holding a mug of terrible instant coffee with a man who'd just handed me the wheel and then taken it right back. I'm still shaking a little writing this, and I'll tell you why eventually, but I have to get through the middle of it first. The lights were on a timer in the galleries so half the building was going dark, the storm was coming in off the water, and Chester was watching me like he had all night to wait for an answer.

Which he did. We both did.

I drank the coffee. It was awful. I've never liked anything more.

I put the mug down on the counter and said the dumbest thing I've ever said out loud, and I've said plenty.

"I'm not saying octopus. Not once. Not all night."

Chester set his own mug down and looked at me, and I could see him deciding whether I meant it. "You understand what you just did," he said. "You just told me you'd rather lose than tap out."

"Sue me."

"Alright." He jerked his chin toward the workshop doorway. "Then get in there. And since you can't keep a civil tongue in your head, you can kneel on the floor while I decide what to do about it. Hands on your head."

I should have laughed. Any sane person would have laughed. Instead my feet carried me through the doorway into the workshop, past the sawdust and the half-built exhibit panels, and I knelt down on that hard concrete floor with my hands laced on top of my head like it was the most natural thing in the world. My knees hurt immediately. I didn't care. There was something in doing it out of pure spite that made it feel like winning.

Chester came and stood in front of me, hands in his pockets. "Comfortable?"

"Delighted."

"Smart mouth. Stay there." He went to the back wall where they keep the exhibition rigging, and I heard him dig around in a bin. When he came back he had a length of soft white rope, the kind we use for hanging signage, maybe six feet of it. He crouched down so we were eye to eye. "Last chance. This goes behind your back, wrists together. It won't be tight enough to hurt, but you'll feel it. Say octopus and we go back to coffee."

"Rope me."

He stood and moved behind me. "Hands down, palms together at your lower back." I did it and felt him loop the rope around my wrists, twice, then a knot that pulled snug but not tight. He tested it with two fingers between the rope and my skin, which I hadn't asked him to do and which made my throat go tight for a second. "Good?" he said.

"Good."

"Stand up. Slow."

Getting up with your hands tied behind you is not dignified. He steadied my elbow anyway, which I also hadn't asked for. Then he pointed at a packing crate near the worktable, one of the sturdy plywood ones we ship artifacts in, about knee height with a flat top. "Bend over that. Forearms down, weight on them."

I got myself arranged over the crate, cheek nearly against the plywood, and realized with my hands bound behind me