Chapter 3 - The Intercom and the Audience
In the narrow, carpeted canyon of the fourth floor, the reaction was instantaneous, biological, and magnificent.
Megan jumped sixteen inches off the floor.
Her boots hit the Earl Grey rhombuses with a heavy, hollow thud, the three-inch multi-tool slipping from her fingers and clattering across the baseboards before wedging itself between the carpet strip and the wall.
Jason dropped both blue garment bags simultaneously. They hit the floor like fifty pounds of damp laundry, his hands flying to his chest as if he had just suffered an acute myocardial infarction in the middle of a commercial lobby.
Arthur Van Der Bilte took one slow, dignified step backward, his silver eyebrows lifting half an inch, his mouth opening in that small, round O that elderly gentlemen make when an electrical appliance begins to speak to them in a language they didn't study at the land-grant university.
And Oliver, leaning against the sheetrock opposite my door, stopped kicking his heels. He looked at the black box with wide, eight-year-old eyes, his thumb coming out of his mouth with a wet, popping sound.
"The door is talking," Oliver announced to the hallway.
"Shut up, Oliver," Megan hissed, though she didn't take her eyes off the lens.
She stepped closer. She was three inches from the glass now, her pupils dilated, her camel-hair coat unbuttoned, her face so close to the sensor that I could see the tiny, golden flecks of powder around the bridge of her nose and the small, white scar above her left eyebrow where she had fallen off our cousin’s tractor in 1999.
"Caleb?" she breathed. Her voice was high, thin, whistling through her teeth. "Where are you?"
"I’m in the parking lot at Target," I said through the speaker. The sound was clean, dry, completely devoid of the echo that usually accompanies speakerphones. "I’m looking at a carton of milk that has twenty-two minutes left before the cold chain fails. And I’m looking at eight people standing on my doormat like an eviction squad from a Charles Dickens novel."
"Unlock this door!" she screamed, her face turning that dark, terrifying purple again as she realized my voice was coming from a three-by-five-inch piece of hardware. "Unlock it this second! You are embarrassing me in front of Jason’s parents!"
"Megan," I said, leaning my back against the headrest of my Subaru, watching the video stream on my phone while I unscrewed the cap of my ginger beer with my thumb. "You embarrassed yourself the second you told four senior citizens that my two-bedroom rental was an auxiliary annex of your personal estate. Did you tell them about the lease? Did you tell them that my building has an association rule regarding unauthorized guests staying more than forty-eight hours?"
"You don't have an association rule!" she shouted. "It’s an apartment! You rent from a management company!"
"Paragraph twelve, Section B," I recited, my voice level, steady, rhythmic as a metronome. "The St. James Court Residential Agreement. 'No tenant shall permit the occupancy of any unit by more than four individuals for any period exceeding seventy-two hours without prior written certification from the building superintendent.' There are eight of you, Megan. Counting Trevor’s fiancée and the two boys, there are eight human bodies currently occupying sixty square feet of municipal hallway."
Eleanor Van Der Bilte stepped forward.
She did not address the lock; she addressed her son.
"Jason," she said, her voice like an iron file on a copper pipe. "Who is this person?"
"It’s... it’s Caleb, Mom," Jason stammered, his hands fluttering around his belt as if he were looking for a pen to sign a surrender document. "Megan’s brother. The... the computer one."
"The one who works from home?" Eleanor asked, her tone making the words works from home sound like an administrative term for habitual vagrancy.
"Yes, ma'am," I said through the speaker. "The computer one. The one whose living room you were planning to use as an overflow dormitory while you attended the regional duplicate bridge championship at the Washington State Convention Center."
Eleanor froze.
Her plum-colored boiled wool jacket went rigid. Her eyes—cold, slate-gray, identical to Jason’s except for the thirty additional years of small-town banking authority behind them—drifted slowly toward the black box beside the handle.
"How do you know about the tournament?" she demanded.
"Because Megan posted the tournament schedule on Facebook on Tuesday afternoon," I said. "With a caption that said: 'So excited to host the family in our private city flat! Caleb was so generous to offer!' Which was interesting to read, Eleanor, considering Caleb was never asked, Caleb was never consulted, and Caleb’s private city flat is an eight-hundred-square-foot walk-up with one bathroom that currently has a low-flow toilet with a temperamental flapper valve."
Jason looked at Megan.
The look was not fraternal; it was the look of an associate director who had just discovered that his lead leasing agent had sold thirty units in a swamp that was currently three feet under tidal water.
"Meg," Jason said, his voice dropping an octave into genuine, marital horror. "Did you not ask him?"
"I texted him!" she screamed, turning on him with the speed of an uncoiling spring. "I texted him at five-fifteen! I told him we were ten minutes away! That is plenty of notice for a brother! When we had that flood in the basement in Liberty Lake, who drove sixty miles with the sump pump? Mom did! We are family, Jason! We don't need a formal diplomatic treaty to sleep on a sofa!"
"You didn't text him until we were on the bridge," Jason said.
"It doesn't matter when I texted him!"
"It matters to the deadbolt, Megan," I said through the speaker.
The hallway went quiet again, save for the sixty-hertz hum of the fluorescent tubes and the faint, rhythmic thump, thump, thump of Oliver’s sneakers against the drywall.
Then my phone vibrated in my palm.
A WhatsApp notification.
GROUP: CARTER FAMILY EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE (8 MEMBERS)
MOM: Caleb, what is this link? Why am I looking at your hallway?
DAVE: LMAO is that Jason’s mom? Why does she look like she’s about to foreclose on the elevator?
DAD: Caleb. Turn that off.
I looked down at the screen.
Thirty-two seconds had elapsed since I had dropped the live-stream URL into the family group chat.
My father was currently sitting in his leather recliner in Spokane with his iPad balanced on his knees, his reading glasses halfway down his nose, watching his daughter scream at an aluminum faceplate in high definition.
My cousin Dave, who worked the night shift at the rail yards in Pasco and lived on energy drinks and spite, was already typing again.
DAVE: Look at the bags! Did they bring the whole guest room from Walla Walla? Tell Aunt Eleanor the minibar in 4B only has generic seltzer and half a jar of mayonnaise.
MOM: Caleb Nathaniel Carter. You delete that link this instant. You are airing our dirty laundry to the entire family.
I tapped the microphone icon again.
"Hey Megan," I said, my voice sweet, calm, and carrying the terrible, weightless ease of a man who had already paid his deductible. "Say hello to Mom and Dad. They’re watching on the sixty-five-inch Sony in the den. Dad says you're standing on the wrong side of the door. And Dave says the minibar only has mayonnaise."
Megan stopped breathing.
Her smartphone was in her hand before I finished the sentence. She stared at the illuminated screen, her thumb moving with frantic, spastic swipes as the WhatsApp notifications rolled across her display like an avalanche of small, green curses.
Her jaw did not drop; it unhinged.
Her face went from magenta to the dull, curdled gray of skim milk that had been left on a radiator for three days.
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"You didn't," she whispered.
"I did," I said. "And the stream has eighty-four viewers now because Dave just forwarded the link to the cousins in Bozeman."
