Three
Back in the sun room, things seemed a lot more cheery than they had previously. The presence of the hippies really livened things up, and despite the fact that she suspected she wouldn't want to be friends with a single one of them in real life, on this particular occasion Terra was really glad they were here. She scanned the room for any sign of the old man, but he didn't appear to be anywhere. The short-haired woman spotted Terra and crossed the room in grand strides. Terra noted that when the room was full of noisy people, the sound of footsteps was no longer audible.
The short-haired woman smiled broadly and extended her hand. "Hi, I'm Terra, nice to meet you," she said.
What?
Terra could hardly believe what she had just heard. "Excuse me?" she said. "Sorry, I mean, did you say your name was Tara? Because my name is Terra, with an e."
The woman wrinkled her face up in confusion. "No, I said my name was Denise."
Terra blinked a couple of times. She didn't quite know how to respond.
Denise smiled again and shrugged, "ah, it doesn't matter," she said. "this room is so echoey, it's difficult to hear things when everyone is talking. And as you can see," she gestured to the young hippies, "my friends do like to talk. I have no idea how they're going to be completely silent for ten days!" Denise laughed heartily.
Terra smiled and said nothing. Once again she felt... frightened? No, not frightened, she thought. Like Mehmet had said, she just wasn't good with new people. These sorts of unpleasant feelings always came bubbling up when she had to meet people for the first time. She decided she was just flustered, not frightened. Frightened would be too dramatic a description.
Denise picked up the slack in the conversation. "So, Terra, is this your first time doing one of these things?"
Terra liked questions she already knew the answer to. "No," she said. "I've been to quite a few of them, actually. Never here, though, and obviously never with this group, but... yeah. I'm not new to this."
Denise furrowed her brow. "Well, you do know," she said, "that you can't predict what will happen during one of our courses based on your previous experiences elsewhere. We don't really copy anyone else's style, we kind of have our own way of doing things here."
Why does everyone keep calling it a course? Terra thought. "Yeah, well, I'm pretty open-minded, so I don't anticipate any snags," she said.
"I should hope not," Denise replied sternly. All traces of the smile had dissolved from her face.
Terra cleared her throat and tried to think of something to say to lighten the mood, but she never got the chance. Denise suddenly snapped back into her cheerful mode and patted Terra firmly on the shoulder. "Well, I hope you find this a fulfilling experience, " she said, and strode off toward her friends, whose chatter had not stopped since they exited the van. Terra exhaled and noted that there was now one less new person left to meet. She was looking forward to the point where it would be time for the silence. If she could make it through until then, she knew everything would be okay.
Slowly more people started arriving, trickling in one by one, a few on foot and a couple of them by taxi. They each had the same look of trepidation that told Terra she wasn't the only outsider after all. As they each arrived, Denise would greet them with the same broad smile, and send them off to their lounge chairs with the same firm pat on the shoulder. Terra thought it all seemed kind of artificial, but then she supposed that it must be difficult to think of creative things to say to thirty different people who are all there for the same reason.
At precisely two o'clock a bell rang. Terra couldn't see where the bell was, but it was a loud, deeply resonant sound that suggested the source was quite large. The room went suddenly quiet, and Denise announced that orientation was about to begin. She pointed to several stacks of plastic chairs collected in the corner, and asked that each person take one chair and wait over on the far side of the room. As people lined up for their chairs, Denise started to move the lounge furniture to the margins of the room to make space for the orientation. She was soon joined by a young man who appeared from the same hallway where Rose and the old man had mysteriously entered and never returned. Terra was suddenly overwhelmed with a desire to run outside and see if Rose still had her hand pressed to that upstairs window, but she resisted the temptation.
Denise and the young man quickly shifted the remainder of the lounge furniture from the centre of the room, and then the man invited everyone to bring their chairs to the middle and arrange them facing him. Terra noticed that there was no conversation during this exercise, that even the previously motor-mouthed hippies were now completely silent. Terra wondered what it was that had shut them up so effectively, if it was respect for Denise, or for this new guy, or something else.
Once everyone was seated the young man introduced himself as John, the supervisor of the men, and he introduced Denise as the supervisor of the women. Denise flashed her broad smile once again, and Terra chuckled to herself as she imagined Denise flicking a switch to turn the smile on and off. John started handing out small booklets to each of the attendees. When Terra got hers she noticed it said "course guidelines." She sighed at the repeated use of that word —this was, after all a retreat— but opened the booklet and flipped through the pages. There were no surprises; these things were the same wherever you went and the rules were always identical. For the duration of the ten days, there would be no talking, and indeed no communication of any kind. Eye contact and physical touching were forbidden. The men would be separated from the women. There would be no food served after eleven in the morning, though water would be available at any time. Attendees (or students, as this handbook referred to them) were asked to remain within the confines of the course boundaries— in this case, within the hotel walls.
John then requested that everyone turn to page sixteen of the booklet. On this page Terra found a list of items that were designated as "forbidden" to have in one's possession during the course. John explained that he'd pass out some manila envelopes, and each person was to consult the list, decide which of their belongings needed to be handed in, and seal the items up in the envelope. Terra scanned the list. Under the section labelled "electronics," she saw all the usual expected things— phones, music players, video players, digital cameras, and recording devices. Oddly, she didn't see anything about laptop computers. She knew, of course, that the computer wouldn't be allowed, but as the list didn't specifically mention it and the manila envelope was hardly big enough anyway...
Terra bit her lip and thought hard. Lying and deception were two big things you were absolutely not supposed to do at these retreats. Well, technically you weren't really supposed to do them anywhere, she thought, but here it was an explicit rule.
She looked at the list.
She thought about how she'd only be cheating herself if she broke the rules.
She thought about the old man's warning, but it was the phone he had warned her about, and she was planning on handing in her phone regardless.
Then she saw an image in her head of Rose and that crazy smile pressed against the upstairs window, and with that picture clearly in her mind Terra popped her phone and her camera in the envelope along with her iPod, sealed the envelope, wrote her name in block capitals across the front, and handed the envelope to John. When John asked her if everything was in there, she didn't make eye contact with him. She couldn't even speak— she just nodded and sat back in her chair, and watched as John whisked the envelope away. Bye-bye phone.
After the handing-things-over ritual, Denise asked everyone to line up in front of her so she could give out room numbers. Terra was nearly last in line— she wasn't in a tremendous hurry to join Rose and the old man. She waited as the line slowly progressed forward, and when she got to the front she was given a room on the third floor: number 36. She grabbed her bags and headed toward the dark hallway, not terribly curious to find out what was in there.
Her anxiety turned out to be for nothing. The hallway soon emptied out into a foyer of sorts, where a large staircase led up to the rooms. When Terra got up to the third floor, she was surprised to find it light and fresh and not at all like the dim gloom of the alleged sun room. Room 36 was right on the end, and much to her delight was on the side of the hotel that was facing the sea. When she reached the door, however, she found it slightly ajar, and through the crack between the door and the frame she could see movement. Movement... and a wisp of curly hair.
Oh god, please tell me she's not my roommate, Terra thought. She gently pressed her fingertips against the door and as it slowly swung open, she was shocked to find not Rose, but rather John, putting clean sheets on the bed. John didn't turn to face Terra, he just kept making the bed, and she figured he hadn't heard her approaching, but when he started to speak it was clear he had already known she was there. "I slept in this room last night," he said, "so I thought you'd probably want clean sheets on the bed. I'll just be a few minutes."
"Oh, well," Terra replied, "if this is your room I don't want to kick you out. I'm sure there are some empty rooms left, so why don't I just take one of—"
"NO!" John snapped, and Terra gasped a little. "This room is yours now," he said. "You will stay here."
"Yeah, sure, no problem," Terra said nervously. She didn't understand what the big deal was, but clearly they had a system for room assignments, a system that had no room for flexibility.
John finished up the bed and turned to Terra. "Okay, you're all set," he said. "Dinner will be at six, followed by course instructions and then an early bed time."
Terra squinted. Course instructions? Was she even in the right place?
John asked if anything was wrong, but Terra shook her head and John made his way out of the room. "A bell will ring at six to let you know it's time to come down," he said.
As he left, Terra thought of something. "Oh, John," she said, "the key?"
John first made a confused face and then laughed. "No no no," he said. "We don't lock doors here."
We don't? thought Terra. By that time, though, John had already disappeared down the staircase.
Terra lowered her bags to the floor and spent a few minutes absorbing the feel of her room. It was a pleasant space, not quite cheery, but certainly not dreary. The wall farthest from the door was entirely comprised of plate glass windows, two of which were sliding doors opening out onto a large balcony. The view of the sea was incredible— the entire window was filled with sky, water, and sand. Terra slid the doors open and stepped out onto the balcony. Now this was a place where she could see herself spending time. She felt lucky; half the attendees would be on the other side of the hotel, facing the land rather than the sea.
She wondered what time it was, and thought it might be a smart idea to start unpacking before too much time got away from her. After having travelled overnight, she wanted to shower and put on some clean clothes and rest a while before the dinner bell. She hadn't brought a tremendous amount of stuff with her, but nonetheless she liked to have everything in order. She swung her large duffel bag onto the bed and unzipped it. On one side was clothing, and on the other side, toiletries. There was a small dresser without a mirror against one wall of the room, and Terra carefully laid her clothes in the drawers. She then set about arranging her various bottles on the top of the dresser— shampoo, body wash, lotion, aspirin. Even though she had tried to pack light, she always ended up bringing more bathroom goods than she knew what to do with. After she completely loaded up the top of the dresser with items, she turned and fetched her backpack from the floor. Inside was her contraband laptop, and she figured she ought to find a place to hide it seeing as not only was it forbidden, she would have no way to lock her door once she left the room.
After several minutes of considering various hiding places, Terra finally settled on the idea of sliding the computer into the bottom dresser drawer, under her clothes. She wasn't expecting anyone to come looking for it anyway, so as long as it was out of sight that was good enough. She grabbed the handle of the bottom drawer, but it stuck, and when she tried to pull the drawer out instead the whole dresser rocked, sending toiletries off the top of the dresser tumbling down in all directions.
"Shit!" Emma yelled, and then checked herself for being so loud. She placed the computer on the bed and then got down on her knees to collect the fallen bottles and containers. It was amazing how far things would travel after having dropped such a short distance. She found things under the bed and on either side of the dresser, and piled them all on the bed next to her laptop. But even after it appeared she had collected everything, she noticed there were still some items missing. Where are my tweezers? she thought. She put her face down near the floor and checked under the bed again. Nothing. She turned her head the other way and scanned the rest of the carpet around the dresser. No sign of anything. Terra sighed and got to her feet, walked over to the dresser and craned her neck over the top to have a look behind it. There, on the ground behind the dresser, she saw something shiny and silver. Aha! she thought, and started to pull the dresser out from the wall. It was heavier than she expected considering it was only a small chest of drawers, and she had to kind of wiggle it out little by little, left-right-left-right.
Once she managed to pull the dresser out about a foot or so, Terra crawled around to the back. Sure enough, there were her tweezers. She picked them up and tossed them on the bed and then had a second look behind the dresser in case there was anything she missed. She ran her hand along the carpet, cringing slightly because she could tell no one had ever moved the furniture to vacuum. Convinced she had found everything, Terra started to get up to move the dresser back against the wall, but as she was about to get to her feet she spotted something. Frowning, she squinted a little to get a better look, but she still couldn't tell what the object was. It looked like the corner of something metal, sticking out slightly from under the dresser.
Terra exhaled and bent down again. With her finger she gently prodded the metal corner, and then slid her finger under the dresser and fished the object out. It was a large key, and a very old key from the look of it. Terra brushed the dust and cobwebs from it and studied the key closely. Maybe it's the key to my room, she thought, and immediately went over to the door. But the lock on the door was shaped for a much more modern key, not an old skeleton key like this one. Emma sighed in disappointment and went to the balcony door. "This one doesn't even have a lock," she said to herself, and wondered what the key could be for. Perhaps it was the key to a previous lock on that front door, or more likely some hotel guest just lost it a long time ago, she thought. But as she considered the possibilities, she noted that the hotel itself didn't appear to be that old— she suspected it had only been built maybe thirty years before. This key was clearly much older than that. Yes, someone must have lost it behind the dresser and left it behind. That was the most likely explanation. But it was a pretty key, might be nice to keep, Terra thought. She took it to the bathroom and rinsed it off in the sink, and as she washed her hands the water turned a deep grey. Ew, she thought. They really need to clean behind the furniture sometimes.
After she placed the key in her backpack, Terra finally got her laptop hidden away in a drawer, and then she replaced all her bathroom items on the dresser. Satisfied with her job of settling in, she grabbed a towel from the stack in the bathroom and took a quick shower. Hot water felt amazing after such a long night of travelling, and Terra came out refreshed and relaxed. She put on some sweat pants and a t-shirt and settled down on the bed. She wanted to read, but she hadn't even brought any books because reading materials were on the forbidden list.
Meditation was a funny thing. There were so many schools of thought and so many different ways to practice. Terra hadn't experimented too much, because it was generally accepted that one should choose a way of practising and stick with it, develop it. Nonetheless, even within a single school of thought there were so many variations, almost as many as there were practitioners. And retreats were yet another world entirely. When you participated in a meditation retreat, there were always extra rules and guidelines that far exceeded the self-discipline you might expect to exercise in your daily life. Some rules were pretty standard across the board —every retreat Terra had been to had been silent, for example— but each experience at a different place and with a different set of people brought something new. Some retreats had great food, some had awful food or almost no food at all. Some required you to keep a meditation journal, others (like this one) wouldn't allow you to have any reading or writing materials. It just depended. Terra found, though, that the important thing was being introspective, dealing less with life and more with the self. It sounded like something those young hippies might say, but she felt the benefits of meditation certainly had a profound effect on her life.
Terra hadn't even remembered feeling sleepy, and when she woke up it was dark in the room. She spent a few seconds confused, wondering where she was and where Mehmet was. Then it all came flooding back to her, and she sat upright in a panic. The retreat! It shouldn't be this dark at six in the evening. She must have slept through the dinner bell! But why hadn't someone come and knocked on the door? Flustered, Terra jumped to her feet, flicked the light on, and quickly pulled her hair back into a ponytail. This was bad, this was a really awful way to start what should have been a relaxing ten days. She didn't want to have the reputation of the girl who was always late for things, and if they'd already had the evening meeting she would have missed out on a lot of essential information. Cursing herself, she slipped on her shoes and bolted out the door, accidentally slamming it behind her.
She stopped suddenly. The hallway was dark and quiet. There were no sounds coming from the direction of the stairwell, no sounds at all from anywhere. It certainly didn't seem like anyone was awake in the building. Had she napped all the way through the nine o'clock lights-out? Even more confused than before, Terra stood still and took a few breaths. She wished she had some way to tell the time.
Her computer! Of course. Terra opened the door to her room, the gentle creaking sound excruciatingly loud in the silence. She ran over to the dresser and retrieved her laptop from its hiding place. She sat down on the bed and opened it up, willing it to hurry through its booting-up sequence. When the desktop finally appeared, Terra blinked a few times at the time displayed clearly in the menu bar.
19:11
Ten past seven. The group would have just finished dinner. They should be in the evening meeting now.
They must just be speaking so quietly in the sun room that I can't hear them from up here, she thought. But it still didn't explain why no one had come up to wake her. Terra shook her head, closed her computer, and shoved it back into the drawer. As she left her room she frowned in disappointment. None of this made sense. Sure, the mistake was hers, but had they completely forgotten about her? Had they not done a head count at dinner? Certainly she was not the first person ever to sleep through a bell. Did they not want to make sure everyone attended the evening meeting?
Terra felt along the wall until she found a light switch. The ugly fluorescent light in the ceiling sputtered to life, and Terra made her way down the stairs. I don't even hear anyone clearing the dishes from dinner, she thought. Or maybe they finished dinner early. Or maybe the clock on my computer was wrong? No. That couldn't be it. Maybe I'm just still half asleep and I should stop trying to analyse everything and just get down to the meeting.
But when Terra emerged from the ground floor hallway into the sun room, she stopped cold.
There was no one there.
