Till Summer Do Us Part(43)

Whispering, she says, “Do you think it’s a camera? Maybe they have this place miked up. I don’t think mics can pick up a lower register in the voice.” She starts talking in a deep, husky tone. “We need to come up with our own language to bypass the spying.”

“For the love of God,” I say, getting out of bed. “They do not have the cabin miked up.”

“You don’t know that,” she says, still in a deep voice. “This could be how they choose what we do every day. It could be how they knew we’d taken all the erotica merch down too. Quick, come over here, and act like we’re doing it. Maybe they’ll release us from this hellhole early because all our problems are solved.” She slaps the wall but then shakes her hand and says, “Ouch.”

“What are you doing?”

She picks up a Kama Sutra book that is on her nightstand and starts tapping it against the wall. “Oh…oh, Wilder,” she says in a girly voice. “You big, big man. Look at that…at that slayer of yours. Enormous.” She continues to tap the wall, replicating the sound of a steady headboard hitting the wall. “You’re so…full of girth and ready to explode.”

A cringe takes over my expression. “Jesus Christ, is that how you talk while having sex?”

She doesn’t listen to me though. She keeps pounding. “Oh yes, right there. You’re hitting the spot made by the gods.”

“What does that even mean?”

“Look at my nipples. They’re hard for your penis.”

“That’s a first.”

“And oh wow, yeah, shimmy again for me.”

I point at her. “I don’t shimmy during sex. Only when I’m singing ‘Luck Be a Lady.’”

“Yes, you wear those nipple tassels. Shake them, baby.”

Okay, that’s enough. I walk up to her, take the Kama Sutra, and toss it to the side. “Stop that. They don’t have mics in here.”

“Then what was that sound?” she asks. “We don’t have cellular devices. They took them from us. There are electronics in here, and we need to sniff them out.”

She flies out of bed and starts sniffing the air.

I rub my hand over my forehead and say, “What the fuck are you sniffing for?”

“Warmth.”

Okay, seriously, Mika did not warn me about this. I know I said life experiences wanted, but having to calm down a paranoid woman because she’s sniffing for “warmth” while looking for electronics—that’s not what I had in mind.

Ding.

The sound fills the room, causing Scottie to stand upright in her matching pink pajama set. “Did you hear that?” She walks up to me and shows her arm. “Look, goose bumps. Someone is in here.” She hurries over to the dresser, picks up the longest dildo from the minibar, and wields it like a sword before walking up behind me and gripping my shirt, using me as a human shield.

And then, in the creepiest voice I think I’ve ever heard, a voice that will haunt me in my dreams until the day I die, she says, “Come out, come out wherever you are. We’re ready to play with you.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I shout and then shake her off me. “Jesus Christ, Scottie, it’s probably just a smoke detector needing a new battery.”

She lets that process for a second and then stands taller. “Huh, you know, I never thought about that.”

“No, instead, you go right to trying to beat someone with a ten-pound dildo.”

She crosses her arms at her chest and juts her hip out. “You know, must be nice walking around as a man, not a worry or care that something bad is going to happen to you.” She jostles the dildo at me as she speaks. “We women have to be on guard at all times, so excuse me for covering all bases.”

“You’re not covering bases. You’re going straight to insanity.”

Ding.

She stiffens and then crouches around me again, holding out the dildo. Whispering in her lower register, she says, “That is not a smoke detector. That is an electronic device. I can sense it.”

“Yeah, and I can sense that you’re losing it.”

“Can we please just look around?”

“Fine,” I say, exasperated. Then together, we walk the perimeter of the cabin, her hiding behind me, holding the dildo out. What is she going to do? Penetrate someone to death with that thing?

We check under the bed, inside the closet, in the bathroom even though we already both took showers. She sneers at the flesh poker, and then we arrive back at the bed just as another ding goes off. This time, I hear it come from her nightstand.

“I think it’s in your nightstand,” I say.

“Really?” she asks, clawing at my shirt. “Well, go…go look.”

I’m about to reach for the handle to pull it open, but she stops me.

“Wait, use this,” she says, holding the dildo out to me.

“No.”

“I’m serious,” she says, stopping me from opening the drawer. “You might need to bludgeon something to death, whatever it is.”

“I’m not going to bludgeon whatever is inside. Jesus.”

I lean forward, grip the drawer pull, and feel her tense behind me as her free hand claws at my shirt. When I pull the drawer open, whatever is inside dings one more time.