Mark was next, followed by Tina. Maggie and Gerome took the rear. Maggie was surprised when they were led into a stairwell. She’d assumed they’d get a room on the main level. She was further surprised when Pete walked them not up the stairs, but down. She hadn’t realized—how could she have?—that the hotel was built into a hill and that there was an entire basement level with windows looking out onto a back parking lot. What Maggie liked about Pete and Tina was their youthfulness, their hopefulness and straightforwardness. There was something pleasantly stupid about Pete in particular that Maggie found comforting, as if he lacked the imagination necessary to commit any wrong. It was the right way for a man to be if he didn’t have imagination: sturdy and loyal as a dog. There seemed in him the quality of indefatigable goodness, something god-inspired, she suspected. And, sure, ordinarily she tended to fall on the more judgmental side of people who actually practiced religion, but right then she felt protected by its rote unwillingness to tolerate evil.
