ONE
Sleep Chamber, Lake View
Mark wakes at 6:20 this morning, the same time as every morning, alone in a tiny room. The mural opposite the bed offers a view of a blue lake surrounded by trees. The image seems real enough to convince him briefly, at least while his mind is still partly blurred by sleep, that he’s looking at a beautiful scene outside an actual window, not just a photograph on a wall. For a moment, the lake is a tangible place, very near.
As he rises into consciousness, Mark realizes it’s impossible. So deep beneath the ground, there are no windows.
Every other room on this level is identical, other than the murals, all of which feature different nature scenes. That wall is always unobstructed by furniture, broken only by the door. The hallway outside makes a curve so long and gradual, it nearly completes a circle. Doors along both sides open to these rooms. A bed, a metal box to contain clothing, and a wall-sized image of a lake, a mountain, an ocean or a forest, serving in place of a view. Placement of the image opposite the bed ensures it’s the first thing seen every morning.
This may help alleviate the sense of confinement. This whole place has a smell, or at least Mark believes it does. He’s never mentioned this to the others. It’s an odor of intrusive wetness, not unpleasant, but incongruous in such a deep, dry place. It’s the kind of damp that might settle out of a pile of leaves in a grass field, or rain-soaked pine needles on a forest floor. Outside, that smell might suggest organic processes, a chain of life. Here, it makes no sense.
Mark isn’t sure he remembers selecting this particular room. He can only guess his choice might have been driven by affinity for this particular flat, clear lake. Certain details persist when his eyes are closed, sometimes when he’s not even in his room. The way the trees bounding the lake lean inward, conveying a sense of yearning, of striving to become unanchored and slide into the water. Though on some level Mark never completely forgets it’s only a large photograph, often his subconscious operates as if he really might be living on the shore of some nameless lake, water teeming with life below the surface. A perfect plane of blue, bordered by living trees, encircled by walking paths of dirt and gravel, overlooked by other houses or cabins similar to his own, structures whose presence suggest the existence of others living nearby, strangers, potential friends, each living in their own distinct milieu of images, smells, memories. He’s not alone.
Of course Mark doesn’t live in a lake cabin. He lives down here. It’s not that he’s actually forgotten.
Another consideration in selecting this particular room may have been its placement near one end of the hallway’s broken circle. The location offers proximity to one of the bath facilities at each end, as well as being the farthest point from where Polly and Greyson reside at the opposite extreme. That distance, the conscious decision to separate from the others by the greatest possible gap, demonstrates mutual respect and understanding of the individual’s need for privacy. He and Jenna at this end, Polly and Greyson at theirs.
The others still seem to believe that Mark and Jenna share a single room, though Jenna sleeps across the hall now. He and Jenna go to some lengths to encourage perpetuation of this idea of themselves as an ongoing pair, but at the end of each day, after they return to this level, and to their end of the hall, they part and live separately. Without ever crossing paths, they share the bath and shower facility, designed to accommodate a much larger population, hypothetical residents of many rooms never occupied. Partitions, stalls and enclosures exist that would allow both to utilize the space simultaneously without coming into contact at all, without any chance of one embarrassing the other in the middle of some private or intimate act. To be safe, Mark and Jenna have worked out a schedule so as to absolutely avoid any possible conflict during use of showers, bathtubs, toilets, sinks and mirrors. It’s best this way, a perfectly frictionless arrangement.
Because she requires more time to prepare, Jenna wakes twenty minutes earlier, showers first, then returns to her own room, where she finishes getting ready. On her way past, she knocks once on Mark’s door so he knows it’s his turn to use the washroom.
When he’s ready, Mark waits in the hall outside Jenna’s door, until together they climb to the next level, a common area called the Square Lounge. There they meet Greyson and Polly for breakfast and coffee every morning, and return some evenings to the tavern on that same level.
As Mark showers, the spray echoing within one of many indistinct tile partitions, steaming water spraying down from the shower head, he feels confused, even irritated, as to one specific matter of recollection.
When did he and Jenna stop being an actual couple, and start pretending?
Maybe they were never truly together. He worries their love affair, their physical and emotional intimacy, might be something he only ever imagined. A shared past once seemed solid, definite beyond question. He knows aspects of Jenna, intimacies he could never have discovered otherwise, but now worries he’s only imagined this private catalog of images, tastes, smells, textures and sounds. Increasingly Mark wonders back to the beginning of his time here. He envisions days when he and Jenna were closer, his mind seeking back toward a time when existence made sense, when their interactions were natural, not made awkward by pretense. Without any need to worry about how they might appear to others, they enjoyed simply being together. His belief in this reality feels as true as anything he knows. Why, then, does he often fear these memories are nothing but a pleasant-seeming invention, a backstory his mind created to help explain the loneliness he suffers in his solitary room? Some actual cause must exist that would justify his pangs of longing for a woman who is always near, but separate.
To believe it was once an actual relationship that somehow ended makes more sense than any alternative explanation. While life may have shifted to become strange and bewildering, the solidity of matter and persistence of events and relationships used to be constant, solid, never questioned.
Mark wakes alone. He showers alone, returns to his solitary room, and dresses alone.
Then he steps out his door, takes four steps, and waits outside Jenna’s room. His wristwatch, a bulky gold antique he himself repaired and restored somewhere else, a time long ago, says 6:53. Experience tells him she’s nearly ready. In two minutes, maybe three, her door will open, she’ll emerge, and together they’ll make the short trip upstairs to Square Lounge. Side by side they’ll come into view of Greyson and Polly, creating the impression of being a connected pair. Greyson and Polly will assume this couple spent the night together, just as Mark and Jenna assume Greyson and Polly did, despite not actually seeing them go into the same room, or climb into a single bed. The beds are so small, it’s not impossible to imagine Greyson and Polly might prefer to sleep apart, but, crucially, there’s no reason to assume so.
This cycle repeats. Mark wants to believe each day is exactly like previous days have always been, and it’s only his mind that ever changes.
An Interlude
Two Climbing Stairs
Footfalls echo in the concrete stairwell. Mark leads while Jenna walks behind. Accumulating echoes create an impression of many footsteps overlapping, sounds of more than two people climbing. He knows she’s still here. Less than a minute has passed since she emerged from her room to join him. This meeting and their departure together occurred so recently that although she’s out of Mark’s sight, and the sound of her behind him is disguised by an illusion of many conflicting steps echoing from different angles, he hasn’t yet begun to doubt that she’s actually still here.