Thank you Lena7
Three
Maria woke to find her room bathed in an eerie glow. It was still night outside but it was bright enough for her to be able to pick out the shapes of the furniture in the room. She wondered what was causing it. It wasn’t the glow of artificial lights that she was used to in the city and it was kind of creepy. She threw back the covers and climbed out of the bed. The room was cold but not freezing. In fact, despite her bitching earlier, the cabin was quiet pleasant. Though not really warm enough to parade around in her underwear as she had done earlier to annoy Michael.
She lifted the curtain and gasped. The scene outside her window was breathtaking. The ground was covered in a fresh blanket of snow which reflected the light of the full moon. Maria would have stood there for hours but the cold got to her and she pulled away. She realized that she wasn’t really sleepy anymore, so decided to go downstairs and get a drink of water. There was a throw on the back of a chair by the window and she grabbed it and wrapped it around her body toga style in lieu of a dressing gown.
Out in the landing, she flipped the light switch, but nothing happened. Maria stepped back into her room and tried the switch by the door but the bedroom light failed to come on either. The power was out. “Shit.”
Maria made her way down the stairs carefully, keeping a firm hold of the banister. There was some light in the living room from the dying embers of the fire and Maria was able to make out a candle sitting on the mantelpiece. She made her way across the room, bumping into a coffee table across the way. “Shit.” She hopped twice and rubbed her shin then limped the rest of the way.
After lighting the candle she spotted a sweater belonging to Michael lying on the couch. She pulled it on over her head. It was massive on her petite frame but it was warm. It had also retained some of his smell, which was woody and masculine and not nearly as nasty as she would have thought. Her stomach flipped for some odd reason. But she pushed the thought of Michael out of her mind and made her way into the kitchen. It was spotless and she chuckled at the thought of Michael cleaning up the mess she had deliberately made. Served him right for being such a jerk. She poured herself a glass of water and stood at the window looking out. It really was so beautiful here.
Though she’d never in a million years admit it to anybody she was kind of glad that Michael was there too. After all she was in an isolated cabin, surrounded by woods on a practically deserted island. And the lights had just gone out. That was the point the horror portion usually started in the horror movies. She shivered at the thought. It was a relief to have a big, strapping man in the cabin with her. Maybe she should wake him up and alert him to the power cut. Perhaps it was only a blown fuse.
Briefly she wondered what he wore to bed.
One time when she was younger, she had stayed over at Liz’s house and they had snuck into Michael’s room to cover him with toothpaste and shaving cream and other such things only to discover that he was sleeping naked. He had been sleeping on his stomach so she had only seen his finely toned ass. But it left a lasting impression. Of course that was during a hot dry summer in the desert of New Mexico, it was unlikely he went naked in the cold winter of the Pacific North West.
That was a good thing. She so didn’t want to see him naked. Ugh.
Then she heard it. A scraping sound right outside the door. She listened intently, her whole body rigid with terror. Though muffled by the snow, she could hear heavy footsteps.
Oh God, it was the gun toting neighbor who didn’t like people. He had come to murder them in their beds. She wanted to scream for Michael but was too scared. She didn’t want the murderer to know that she was right there, on the other side of the door.
She cast around the kitchen for a weapon and picked up a saucepan, it was small, but it was an old cast-iron type and pretty heavy. She gripped it like she might grip a baseball bat and very slowly, very quietly began to creep in the direction of the door leading to the hallway. She kept her eyes trained on the back door.
To her horror, she realized the door was unlocked. Goddamn Michael, the idiot hadn’t locked the door. If she survived this, she was going to kill him.
She took another step closer to her escape route but it also brought her nearer to the back door. At that exact moment it swung open. Acting completely on instinct, Maria raised her arms, rushed towards the door and brought the saucepan down swift and hard on the head of the intruder.
He crumbled to the ground, swearing and grunting. Maria raised her arm again and brought her weapon down a second time. This time hitting something considerably meatier than a head, a shoulder probably.
“Maria, stop.”
At the sound of Michael’s voice from the floor Maria froze, saucepan poised to come crashing down a third time.
“Michael?” She gasped in shock, looking down at him lying on the floor.
“Who did you think it was, Santa Claus?” he asked, bringing his hand to the spot on his head where she had whacked him. “Fuck,” he hissed.
“OhmyGod, OhmyGod,” Maria shrieked. She dropped the saucepan and knelt down onto her knees beside him. “I’m so sorry. Are you ok? I thought it was your crazy neighbor. I’m so sorry. Are you ok?”
“No, I’m not ok. What did you hit me with? Help me up.”
Maria stood up and helped Michael climb unsteadily to his feet. She kicked the back door closed and led him into the living room and helped him sit on the chair by the fireplace. “I’m going to get the candle,” she told him. She hurried into the kitchen, grabbed the candle and rushed back again.
Michael was holding his head in his hands and groaning. When she put the candle down, he looked up at her and she was shocked at how pale he looked. “There’s more candles in the chest,” he said to her, indicating the chest in the corner of the room. Maria hurried over, grabbed a few candles out of it and lit them, placing them around the room.
“Let me see,” she commanded when there was enough light. She took his head gently in her hands and turned it so that the light of the candle on the mantelpiece could illuminate it. There was no blood thankfully, but there was already a large bump forming. “God, I’m so sorry.”
“You should be.”
“What the hell were you doing outside at one o’clock in the morning anyway? I thought you were in bed. How was I supposed to know it was you skulking outside?”
Michael pulled away from her. “I was not skulking. I went down to bring back your bags.”
“At this hour of the night? Are you crazy?” Maria asked incredulously. She went to the door of the kitchen and looked in, but couldn’t see her bags. “Where are they? Did you leave them outside? They’ll be all wet.” She ran to the door and pulled it open. Sure enough her two Louis Vuitton bags were sitting on the snow covered doorstep. She picked them up, locked the back door, and brought the bags in to sit them close to the fire to dry out. “They might be ruined.”
“I’m sooo sorry,” Michael snarled. He winced and held his head again. “Jesus, what did you hit me with?”
“A saucepan,” Maria told him flippantly, feeling better about it now that she knew he might have ruined her clothes. She checked her bags and decided that they weren’t too badly damaged. She looked at Michael and relented. “How are you feeling?”
“Dizzy.”
“Shit, do you think you might have concussion? Quick, what’s today’s date?”
“I don’t know. Is it the twenty somethingth? I don’t keep track of the dates.”
Maria bit her lip in concern. What if she had really hurt him? “Maybe I should call Liz.”
“The phones are out. So is the electricity,” Michael informed her. He stood up and swayed. “I’m going to go to bed.”
“I don’t think you should,” Maria argued, pushing him back down. He sat down without any resistance. “I’ve heard that you’re not supposed to let people with concussion go to sleep in case they can’t wake up.”
“I don’t have concussion, I just have a really sore head.”
“What date is Liz’s birthday?”
“I don’t know, three days after my Mom calls to remind me to get her something.”
“See,” Maria said triumphantly.
Michael shook his head. “What?”
“You can’t answer my questions. That’s a sign of concussion. You can’t go to bed. You’re going to stay up and I’ll stay with you to keep an eye on you.”
“I don’t think so,” Michael laughed. He stood up again and his vision swam. “Fuck. Ok, I’ll just stay here for a minute.”
Maria knelt down and untied his boots and pulled them off his feet, wrinkling her nose in an exaggerated fashion. Then she helped him out of his jacket and placed them by the door. “Are you comfortable? Can I get you anything?”
He shook his head. “I’m fine. Can you get the fire going again? I’m a little cold.”
Maria, with Michael issuing instructions, managed to get the fire blazing and before long the room was warm and cheerful.
“It’s a good thing we have the fire,” she commented, thinking of how cold the cabin would get without the heating.
“The fire here and the range in the kitchen heats the place. We can manage fine without electricity,” Michael assured her. “It heats the house and the water, and we can cook on it. What more do you need?”
A lot, Maria would have said, but actually it wasn’t so bad for the time being. She was sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace but it was uncomfortable. “Hey, where’s the rug I bought. It used to be here.”
“I kept tripping over it so I put it in the closet in the hall.”
Maria glared at him and went to find the rug. It was a real sheepskin rug that she had bought while she was touring in Australia a couple of years earlier. She had given it to Liz who had gushed about it and declared it was perfect for the cabin.
She rolled it out in front of the fire and sat upon it. It was so soft and comfortable. “This is really cosy,” she sighed.
“Mmm,” Michael agreed sleepily. Maria whacked his leg and his eyes shot open. “What the hell? Haven’t you done enough damage to me tonight?”
“Never,” Maria grinned. “Don’t fall asleep, it’s dangerous. You might die. What were you doing out there at this time anyway?”
“I love going out when it’s like this. The world is so quiet and peaceful. I just felt like a walk and then when I was down at the jetty I remembered your bags and I figured I’d bring them up to you. You’re welcome, by the way.”
“Thanks,” Maria said grudgingly. “Although it was a waste of time, I’ll be going back on the ferry tomorrow.”
“You are so ungrateful.”
“I didn’t ask you to go down and get them.”
“Yes you did.”
“Whatever,” Maria huffed and tuned her attention back to the fire.
“If you’re going back to the mainland, does that mean you won’t be spending Christmas here with Liz, Max and I?” Michael asked after they had been silent for a few minutes.
Maria shrugged her shoulders.
“What about Billy Bob? Will he be joining us?” Michael asked, not disguising his dislike of Maria’s boyfriend.
“No,” Maria stated emphatically.
“Did he finally wise up and dump you?” Michael gloated.
“
I dumped
him actually,” Maria corrected. “Bastard.”
Michael wasn’t sure if she was referring to him or Billy Bob.
“What’s your book about?” She asked in a very transparent attempt to change the subject.
Normally Michael didn’t like to talk about what he was working on but, maybe because of the bump on his head, he answered her. “It’s about a day in the life of a ten year old boy. He’s in a bad foster home and sees no way out of his situation. But it’s more of a treatment on loneliness and alienation than a straight narrative. It’s kind of autobiographical too.”
Then he seemed to realize that he had said much more than he wanted to and shifted uncomfortably. Sensing this, Maria didn’t probe further.
“Don’t you ever write anything that people will actually read?” she asked.
Michael’s books, though critically acclaimed and prize winning, weren’t best sellers. He sold enough to be able to make a living at it, which was more than enough for him. Maria had read his two previous books. And although she was able to appreciate that he was a good writer, they weren’t light reading material.
“At least I’m not a sell out,” he retorted.
Maria didn’t react to his barb in the way he had expected. She just gazed at the fire sadly. “Yeah,” she agreed softly.
He immediately felt guilty. “Maria…”
“No, I know what I am. I write stupid pop songs and make stupid videos. I’m a complete sell out.”
“You don’t have to be,” Michael told her. “I remember the songs you used to write before you got a record contract. They were so good. Why don’t you make those kinds of songs anymore?”
Maria shrugged. It was the shrug of somebody who knew the answer but didn’t want to give it.
Michael persisted. “There was one song, on your last album,
So long, that song was amazing. It was just you and your guitar, none of those annoying pop sounds. Why don’t you make more songs like that?”
“I hate that song,” Maria said angrily.
“What, why?” Michael was shocked, he thought it was by far her best song. He knew it was one of her most successful. She had won a handful of Grammys for it.
Maria rolled her eyes. “I never meant for anybody to hear that song. It was really personal to me. It’s about my father. He came looking for me after my first album was a hit. I told him to take a hike and then I wrote that song. It was kind of therapy for me, putting all my feelings about him into song. Then my producer heard it and forced me to put it on the album. Next thing you know, the whole world is singing my deepest, most painful moments. It’s on every radio show, every stupid TV show. Every country star and opera star and crappy boyband on the planet has covered it. They’ve taken it and played it to death and I never want to hear it or sing it again.”
“Oh.” Michael listened mostly to metal stations so he hadn’t been subjected to its massive overplaying like everybody else on the planet. “But it was a good song. That’s the type of song you used to write, why did you change?”
Maria sighed. “They made me. They gave me a recording contract and I was so excited and happy and then they told me that I had to change everything. They brought Billy in to help me make my songs into pop songs and got hot choreographers and directors to make me a pop star and put me in slutty outfits. I was so swept away by everything that I didn’t have the guts to say no. And now I have fans and all these other people who depend on me to deliver the same thing over and over again.”
“But wasn’t that song your biggest hit, ever? Your fans must have loved it. The record company can’t deny that it didn’t make them lots of money. There’s no reason why you can’t write more like it… Unless you’re afraid to,” he guessed.
“Maybe I am.”
Inspired by her honesty, he opened up. “I can understand that. When I write, I put myself into those words. The things the characters think and feel are what I’ve felt and thought. I put myself out there just like you did in that song.”
“The only difference is that nobody reads your books,” Maria reminded him with an affectionate smile.
He laughed softly, “True.”
Maria’s expression sobered again. “I tried to talk about this with Billy but he didn’t want to hear it.”
“Because if you write the songs you want to write then you won’t need him to add the pop beats. That was all him wasn’t it?”
She nodded. “Yeah. But it wasn’t like I was going to cut him out completely. He was my friend and my boyfriend and my songwriting partner for years. He’s amazing on the guitar and he has a great voice. And he’s a good producer too. I would have wanted to work with him.”
“Is that why you broke up?”
“Sort of,” Maria said sadly. “I had tried talking to him about it a few times. I thought if he supported me it would be easier to go to the record company and get them to allow me to make the album I want to make. But like I said, he wouldn’t even talk about it with me. We were having dinner and he had just shut me down completely and wouldn’t discuss the matter at all. I started thinking, is this what our relationship is always going to be like? Then it hit me, the thought of being in a relationship with him for the rest of my life made me nauseous. I broke up with him right then even though it was only a few days before Christmas. I couldn’t spend Christmas with him. I couldn’t go to Hawaii with him. But I thought we would stay friends. I thought that if nothing else, the money he made by being my writing partner would be enough for him to make sure that our friendship survived.”
“He didn’t take it well?” Michael concluded.
Maria shook her head and pulled up the sleeve of the sweater she was wearing to reveal large purple bruises on her forearm. “He did this to me. Kyle was home and heard him screaming and kicked him out.”
Michael held her arm gently and examined it in the firelight. “I hope Kyle kicked his ass. Does it hurt?”
“My wrist is a little sore.” She pouted then, “Having to carry my bags the whole way up here yesterday didn’t help.”
“Please, what was in that bag? Panties and bras and other frilly things?”
“Actually, yes. My assistant packed it, thinking it was for a romantic holiday in Hawaii and then with everything else that happened we forgot to repack.”
“What else happened?”
“He went to the press and told them that he dumped me. And oh yeah, apparently he filmed us having sex and is now trying to sell it to the highest bidder. Happy Christmas Maria,” She said bitterly. “It could be all over the internet right now for all I know.”
And that explained why she had come to the island, Michael realized.
“So everybody gets to see your bony ass but me. That’s hardly fair. I think you should give me a viewing.”
Maria laughed in outrage. “In your dreams, you jerk.”
He gestured to his head. “You owe me.”
“I’m staying up to nurse you, aren’t I?”
“What about cleaning up your mess in the kitchen? Or bringing up your bags? And that’s my sweater you’re wearing.”
“You must really have concussion if you think any of those things would make me flash you,” Maria told him with a smile.
He grinned at her cheekily and then yawned. Seconds later, she yawned too.
“Can I go to bed now?” He asked. “I feel fine,” he added to pre-empt her next question.
Maria smothered another yawn. “Ok, I’m too tired to care if you die in your sleep.”
“Charming,” Michael said with a smile. He rose from his seat and helped Maria up from the sheepskin rug.
They took a candle each and blew the remainder out.
“Sweet dreams,” she said to him as they parted at the bottom of the stairs. “Try not to die, it would totally ruin Liz’s Christmas.”
***