1 Escalante, UtahThe Fourth Night
There are times when joy settles perfectly inside my body.
I notice.
The world twisted out of shape around me, years ago. My brain rewired itself to keep me safe.
Check your door before bed, it tells me.
Once, twice, three times. Unlock the door to make sure it was locked. Then lock it again.Look through the peephole. Make sure the stove is off. Is the dog okay? Is he breathing? Doesn’t matter that you’ve already checked. Do it one more time.My mind: always anxious. My whole world like a dollhouse. I know where everything is, how everything works. No surprises.
Which makes the exceptions all the more vivid. Happiness sprouting in the unlikeliest places—a green spray of ivy curling around barbed wire, flowers blooming on the grassy surface of a shallow grave.
Like now. Gabriel asleep in our shared suite, me on our private patio. Above, the desert sky.
In a few hours, the sun will rise. The hotel, our unlikely oasis of straight lines and modern architecture, will flood with natural light. Morning smells will waft through the air, the rich aroma of coffee, the fresh bursts of perfume, the sweet mist of sunscreen. The pool will shimmer, golden blue, like a mirage. Guests will head to breakfast in a sleepy shuffle.
But for now, it’s all quiet. All mine. The insomniac’s privilege.
I reach in the pocket of my hoodie, pull a cigarette from the pack, click my lighter. Empty. I hesitate, then use the one provided by the hotel for the gas fireplace.
First puff. A gust of wind teases the hem of my shorts, lifts it at the edge of the three white stripes.
I’m not alone.The thought cuts through my mind in a red slash.
Two voices disrupt the night’s quiet.
I know these voices. I’ve heard them intermittently over the past four days, rippling in hushed tones near the spa, in clipped sentences over the dinner table.
The young wife and her old husband.
I recognized them by the pool on our first day, from a
60 Minutes segment I watched last year. Most of what I know about the world, I learned on TV.
“Look,” I told Gabriel, my elbow digging into his ribs. “That’s William Brenner.”
When he didn’t respond, I explained: “He’s a big tabloid guy. Wealthy. I think that’s his . . . third wife?”
What a pairing they make. Sabrina Brenner, not yet thirty, her skin already tightened by injectables. Her long hair, shimmery platinum. Everything about her delicate and airy, a cloud of sweet perfume enveloping her, something evoking a state fair, the wholesome aromas of sugar and vanilla.
Trailing her, the blunt shape of her husband. William Brenner radiates a bullish kind of confidence, from the shiny top of his balding skull to his professionally polished loafers. He’s got that smile, too—the sly grin of a man who has never wanted for the company of ladies. Who knows himself to be not handsome, but charming, and who understands that
charming is enough to get what he wants.
The
60 Minutes segment was about the tabloid culture of the early 2000s, specifically the ways in which it ruined people’s lives. “People like good stories,” William Brenner had said, his bulk perched on an ornate armchair in his Upper East Side apartment. “And we are here to give them exactly that.”
What’s he saying now?
My cigarette hisses softly as I stub it out on the sole of my sandal. The concept of tobacco does not exist at the Ara hotel, nor do ashtrays. Back inside, in the bathroom, I hold the cigarette butt under a thin stream of water, wrap it in toilet paper, and bury it in the trash can.
Gabriel is still sleeping, curled in a fetal position. Like when we were kids: limbs tangled at his front, a knot of a boy shielding himself from the world.
I grab my key card and slip away.
The voices lead me close to the edge of the compound, to the last patch of sandstone before the hotel ends and the desert begins.
Here they are. The Brenners.
Sabrina paces away from her husband, still in the outfit she wore to dinner, the white satin, the high heels. She’s almost fluorescent in the moonlight, a glowing fish darting across the bottom of an aquarium, the sleek folds of her dress rippling like fins.
William staggers after her. He, too, is still in his dinner clothes, white button-down and a suit, the fabric a little too thick for the desert.
Standing about twenty feet from them, I keep my shoulders hunched, hoping for invisibility.
“I’m sorry,” Sabrina says, in the voice of a woman who has been sorry for a long time—always in vain.
Has anyone else noticed?
How Sabrina keeps herself out of her husband’s reach? How her gaze rises whenever he stands up? How she tracks his movements, no doubt the same way she monitors his moods?
“Oh,” William growls. “Now you’re fucking sorry?”
He snatches at his wife’s arm, misses, stumbles forward.
“Stop lying to me.”
Sabrina raises her palms in front of her.
“I’m sorry,” she says again. “I’m not lying to you. Let’s just go back to the—”
William grabs her young wrists. A phantom pain buzzes through my right side: a pull at my shoulder years ago, my arm hanging limp afterward.
William slurs: “You stupid whore.”
I realize I’m holding my breath.
Get away from her. Leave her the fuck alone.Sabrina whips around to face her husband.
“I’m not stupid,” she says.
All trace of apology has left her voice. This version of Sabrina is strong, willful, outraged on her own behalf.
William goes still.
“What did you just say?”
“I said, I’m not stup—”
As Sabrina moves to step past her husband, her gaze travels above him.
She spots me.
I think I see her shoulders tense.
She must have assumed they were alone. Our fellow guests are safely tucked in their suites, asleep behind thick stone walls and triple-pane windows.
Within the compound, the Ara has created discrete, hushed bubbles for each set of guests. Our suites are standalone buildings, nestled at the end of individual walkways. Tables in the dining room are distanced, other people’s conversations reduced to a low hum. It’s a trick the hotel has been playing on us: assuring us that we don’t need to concern ourselves with the other guests, that we are safe from one another.
For half a second, Sabrina considers me. Then she gives the faintest shake of the head.
Don’t.I understand. Back when I was a kid, the mothers grew irate if we called for help. Their voices rose, indignant:
What the hell do you think you’re doing? If they were in a hitting mood, they hit harder. They made sure we regretted looking for a lifeline, every single time.
William follows his wife’s gaze.
Shit.I duck behind a large planter. There are dozens around the hotel: oval-shaped, each the size of a small bathtub and housing a lone tree. The soil is hidden beneath a layer of decorative rocks. “A lot of trees in the desert manage to grow through cracks in the stone,” Catalina, the hotel’s manager, explained when she gave us a tour on the first day, her sleek, dark ponytail gleaming in the sunlight. “Our architect was very inspired by them.”
These rocks aren’t ordinary, though. Nothing at the hotel is. “White marble chunks from Italy,” Catalina said. “You won’t find them anywhere else in the region.”
I crouch as low as I can behind the planter and its expensive rocks. My heartbeat pulses in my ears.
“What are you looking at?” William asks, imperious.
Is the sound of his voice closer, or am I imagining it?
“Nothing. I’m not looking at anything.”
Still crouched, I inch behind a nearby wall.
Like a coward.No.
Sabrina doesn’t want me to get involved.
“Leave me alone,” she tells her husband.
“And what would you do, if I left you alone?”
Her answer is muffled as I sidestep back toward the suite. There are words I can’t make out, then: “I would thrive.”
Her tone is clear and self-righteous. The tone of a woman who knows she contains limitless worlds, and who is sick of reining them in.
Tomorrow, I’ll talk to her.
I won’t say anything about her husband. I’m not an idiot. But I’ll do what I’ve avoided for the past four days: I’ll introduce myself, ask her how her stay is going. I’ll make a comment about the weather.
I’ll let her know that someone’s here for her, that she has a friend if she wants one.
Tomorrow. In a few hours.
Everything’s easier in the daylight. We’re all braver in the morning.
Copyright © 2025 by Clémence Michallon. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
