Campbell gapes at me a moment longer. “I was checking on PT’s place. There was a problem with some of the drainage pipes before hedied and with the storm—I mean, whatever. What the fuck, Faye? Are you okay? Why are you—”
I throw myself into his arms, babbling about Henry bringing me here, locking me inside the cabin, taunting me, torturing me. Campbell is holding me in one of those swaying hugs, alternating from foot to foot like we’re dancing. When he releases me, I note, faintly, that our positions are now reversed. Campbell is the one with his back to the door and I am the one stuck on the inside.
“Did he saywhy?” Campbell asks.
I dig the heels of my hands into my eyes and shake my head. Something inside me screams at me to be evasive, and though I listen, it makes no sense. This isCampbell. One of my oldest and only real friends. “Revenge?” I guess. “For writing about him? Humiliating him?”
“Okay.” Campbell exhales hard, hands on hips, looking around us like he is trying to come up with a game plan. Under normal circumstances, nothing could be more reassuring, but for some reason my teeth will not stop knocking together and I have to bite down hard to make them stop. “Okay,” Campbell repeats. “Where is he now?”
“He went to shore. I got out through a window and ended up here.” I go mute with anxiety as I realize that Henry will have to pass the clubhouse on his way back to his property. He will see Campbell’s boat docked, he will pull over, investigate… My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.
“We have to go,” I say, sounding like I’ve got a wad of cotton balled up in my throat. “Before he comes back.”
Campbell nods, but he stands there, unmoving and in the way. “Yeah,” he agrees, the way people do when they’re not really listening to you. “The backup battery should be charged soon. Then we can call someone.”
“The backup battery?” I stare at Campbell’s formerly white T-shirt,now stamped with my mucky silhouette. I must look like a wild thing, roughed up from the storm, and yet Campbell has not moved to offer me his dry windbreaker, or a towel from one of the linen closets. It would be musty and maybe even crawling with something, but it is at least a considerate gesture. And long ago I filed away Campbell as someone with pristine manners.
“The storm knocked out the main generator,” he explains.
“But if there’s no power, how are you charging a backup battery?” The moment the words are out of my mouth, I wish I could take them back. Campbell gives me a blank stare that renders him utterly unrecognizable to me. Though, that’s not really true, is it? I saw something in him the morning I ran into him outside the chapel. Something different. Something black. I begin to shake, hard and uncontrollably.
“What’s going on?” I whisper, like the answer is something we are trying to hide from the real bad guys.
Campbell does not speak. He holds out an arm and begins to herd me back behind the desk, and I’m performing an Olympian floor routine in my head to assign a reasonable explanation to all this. This is Campbell.Campbell, who installed the window unit in the bedroom of the small yellow house I lived in my senior year, Campbell who paid for things when I was broke and never made a big deal about it, Campbell who sent me flowers after I won my Emmy, Campbell who went on a coke rant about girls and their three-quarter-length-sleeve shirts and made us all howl, Campbell who once dumped a drink on a townie girl in a knockoff Juicy Couture sweatsuit, who cheated on Corrine with a freshman girl and then ostracized her so severely she transferred in the middle of the year, who is older now, and meaner around the eyes. Campbell, who is caging me into the farthest corner of the small office with his chest, which is broader than I remembered it being.
“Does Corrine know you’re here?” I ask accusingly.
Campbell gives me a confused look, and for a moment, I imagine him saying she is already here. That it was Corrine who I heard calling out my name and asking if I was okay last night when Henry almost drowned me. But no, it could not be her. It’s not like I know Corrine’s voice so well after all these years, but I do know that she would not speak my name with concern. The voice I heard was worried for me.
I stammer an explanation for why I am asking about his wife. “I mean. If Henry comes back, and something happens. Corrine will call someone if you don’t come home.” I am saying this as a reminder to him, but as a reminder to him of what? That he can’t hurt me? That’s preposterous. Why would Campbell want to hurt me?
“Everyone knows I’m here,” he says vaguely. He taps the keyboard. “Internet’s working.”
I see the home page of Google load, and I relax slightly. I reach for the landline, but Campbell puts his hand on top of mine, stopping me.
“Phone is DSL, and that’s down,” Campbell says. These are all words that mean nothing to me. In ways I am proud of and ways I am not, I am a stereotypical silly little girl who figured out enough to make it in this world and let everyone who wanted to take care of her when things got hard do just that. Campbell takes out his own phone and makes a show of thumbing the screen, tossing in an irritable sigh here and there meant to convey his frustration.
“Anything?”
“Fucking Verizon,” he grumbles. He nods at the screen of the desktop. “If you want to check your email or anything until this loads, be my guest.”
A small tremor begins at the base of my spine. I keep my voice steady. “I think let’s just get out of here.” I pause, give him a chance to agree. When he doesn’t, I follow up uselessly, “Please, Campbell.”
“Mmmm,” Campbell murmurs noncommittally, eyes on the screenof his phone. There is the telltale vibrational chime of one text, then another. Slowly, Campbell puts his phone in his pocket, then lowers his eyes to mine. “You should check your email, Faye.”
“Why?” I am scared and hungry, cold and exhausted, but my voice is laced with irritation. What the fuck does everyone want with my email?
Campbell groans with real irritation now. “Please, Faye, make my life fucking easy, for once.”
That’s hilarious, but I decide against reminding Campbell that he grew up in the wealthiest zip code in Connecticut with a silver spoon in every one of his orifices. “Maybe,” I say, “if someone would tell me why my email matters so God damn much, I might be willing to help you out.”
“So Henry did try to get into your account.”
I debate my answer, decide honesty is best. “Yes.”
“And you refused him?” There’s something perverted in his tone.
“So far, yes.” I’m flushing like I’ve done something to flush about.