Sylvie crosses her arms, eyes him. “You’re the only one who can make it stop,” she tells him. Then she thinks about him forcing them to stand in the windows with signs. She does not want a repeat of that. “Would you like me to answer it and tell them to stop calling?” she asks.
He thinks about this, blinking slowly as he does. He is no longer as drunk as he was, but he is not what someone would call sober. He nods, looking down. She gets up and goes to the phone, ending the shrill ringing by raising the receiver to her ear.
“Hello?” she asks, just like she would answer any other call.
“Who am I speaking with?” a female voice—female!—says on the other end. What a surprise!
“This is Sylvie,” says Sylvie. She does not give her last name. She’d prefer that Tommy not know it.
“Okay, Sylvie,” says the voice. “I’m Hope.”
Hope, Sylvie thinks.That’s just what we need.
She listens for a moment to Hope’s instructions before hanging up and looking at Tommy, who is still trying to see out the windows yet keep his distance, a hangdog expression on his face. “What’d he say?” he asks her, his voice sullen.
“Shesaid that they’d like to know what you want.”
“What I want?” Tommy asks. “What does that mean?”
“It means that when someone takes hostages, they usually have demands to go with it. Things they want in exchange for the hostages’ release,” Sylvie explains.
“You learn that from your cop shows?” Tommy sneers at her.
Blythe watches Sylvie’s shoulders tense, then release. “The nice lady on the other end just told me so,” she replies. Blythe sees her manage a smile for Tommy. “She’s going to call back in a little bit. So you should probably be thinking about what you’re going to ask for.”
Tommy makes a show of shrugging his shoulders. “How do I know?” he says, his voice like a wail. He points at the windows. “Iwantto be out there,” he says. “Free.” He cocks his head at Sylvie. “Think you can negotiate that deal?”
“I’m not a negotiator,” Sylvie says. There is something, Blythe notes, in the way she says it.
“Then what are you?” Tommy asks.
Sylvie straightens up to her full five-two height before replying, “I’m your hostage, trying to help you get us all out of here safely.”
Tommy looks away, stares at the ground for a moment, chastened. No one says anything as he studies the floor for a long time. Finally, he lifts his head. “I don’t know what I want.” And for the first time since this all began, Blythe feels a flicker of sympathy for Tommy. She hates him for keeping them all here, but she also understands what he means. It is harder than it looks to decide what you want. Harder still to ask for it.
And so, they wait. They wait for Tommy to think about what he wants and for the phone to ring again. From her vantage point in the circle of stools, Morrow can see out one of the windows that looks out onto the parking lot. It is not a full vantage point but enough to see movement, to see the life happening outside of this room. People come and go, vehicles drive past. Her car, and the others’ cars, are all still parked in the spots where they left them. She supposes they are evidence now. But of what? How good they had it this morning, walking around of their own free will? Able to come and go as they pleased?
She’d been so burdened by that little package as she got out of the car, her tote had actually felt heavier on her shoulder. Now she would happily send that package off if she could, happily hug her daughter and tell her what she did this morning, then watch as her daughter gave her that smile that told her she’d done the right thing, that their relationship has been salvaged once again.
Morrow notices the press has started to gather. People with microphones and cameras draw as close to the building as the police will allow. Morrow looks away. She cannot watch the goings-on outside the window for too long; the longing it stirs up inside her is too painful to bear.
Once she was on a plane, sitting in the first row behind first class on a cross-country flight. When they dropped the sheer curtain that separated first class from the plebeians behind them, she could still see everything that was happening. She recalls watching as the first-class patrons were served a real lunch with napkins and hot cloths to clean their hands while she made do with cookies as dry as sawdust and water to wash them down.This, she thinks now,is like that. I can see it. But I cannot have it.
Maya, she thinks. She looks at the watch she wears, her mother’s. Morrow inherited it years ago and wears it still, even as so many people strap technological miracles to their wrists to count steps and heart rates and calories, keeping track of every aspect of themselves. But Morrow continues to wear this most basic timepiece, consistently good at doing what she needs it to do: tell time.
Her watch tells her it is 3:10. By now Maya is out of school. She wonders if the police have figured out it’s her car parked there. She wonders if her family has been notified that she is in this post office, trapped. She thinks of Maya learning this andwonders if she will worry or if she will toss her hair and decide that in this situation, as in everything else, Morrow will find a way to work things out.
When Morrow was a few years younger than Maya, she learned that her mother had been diagnosed with cancer. She can’t remember if she was seized with worry immediately or if it took a while for her to realize how serious the diagnosis was. She wonders if Maya will appreciate the seriousness of what is happening today. She wonders if Maya will replay their fight this morning on a loop like Morrow herself has done. Though it is probably wrong to think this way, Morrow hopes so.
When Nadine speaks up, they swivel their heads in her direction. She has said little beyond her barbs at Tommy, quiet with the shame of what her actions have brought on others. Even if they insist that’s not the case, she can’t help but feel it is. But now she lifts her head in a defiant sort of way. She thinks of her mother’s words to her as she speaks.“You’re a smart girl, honey. You’ll figure it out.”
“If you don’t know what you want, Tommy,” Nadine says, “then I know something I want.” She points toward the vestibule. “There’s a bathroom out there. I think we should all be allowed a bathroom break.”
Tommy points at his barricade in front of the doors, blocking them in. “How do you think we can go out to the bathroom when all that stuff is in the way?” He says this to Nadine like she is the dumb one now.
“You’ll take it down,” Nadine says.
“I ain’t taking all of that down and then putting it all back up again.”
