I couldn’t park in my usual space because there was a helicopter in it. I drove to visitor parking and then walked back until I was stopped by a yellow-and-blue line of police tape.

     “Who are you?” said a man wearing a blue police uniform on the other side.

     “I live there.” I pointed at the building.

     “You’re the roommate, right?”

     “I am a roommate.”

     He nodded. “Go talk to them.” He pointed at two men standing between two posts holding the yellow-and-blue tape up. I walked over to them.

     The one closer to me, who was not wearing a blue police uniform, said, “You’re the room-mate, right?”

     “I am a room-mate.”

     The other, who was not wearing a blue police uniform and was farther away, said, “You live there.” He pointed at the building.

     “Right.”

     “We have a situation,” said the first.

     “Situation?”

     “Yes,” said the second, “not in the sense of location, but in the sense of a problem or, maybe you could say, a euphemism for a problem.”

     “A euphemism?”

     “Yes.”

     The first said, “My partner is trying to speak your language. He uses these words so that you will understand him and take him seriously. Please understand us and take us seriously.”

     “Yes,” I said, “I do.”

     “You do?”

     “Yes.”

     “Good.” The second and the first nodded at each other.

     “What’s the situation?”

     The first started, “The situation is this.” He stopped and looked at his partner.

     “Your room-mate,” finished the second.

     “Yes,” I said.

     “He’s holed up in his room.”

     “He holes up all the time,” I said.

     “He’s with someone else,” said the second, moving closer so that we formed an equilateral triangle.

     “That’s good. He doesn’t get out much.”

     “A girl,” said the first.

     “He’s with a girl,” said the second.

     “Even better,” I said.

     “She’s a hostage,” said the second, looking at his partner.

     “Oh,” I said.

     “You see.” The first nodded.

     “Yes,” I said.

     “Good.”

     “So what are you going to do?” I said.

     They looked at each other.

     “Well, that’s our situation, you see.”

     “I thought that he was holed up was your situation,” I said.

     “No. That we can deal with. That we don’t need you for. To maybe speak into a megaphone, tell him to come out, that we need you for. Normally. But this is different.”

     “Different?” I said.

     “He has no demands.”

     “I see,” I said.

     “You do?” said the first.

     “No, not really. But go on.”

     They looked at each other.

     “No demands?” I said to spur them on. They looked like they wanted to be spurred on.

     “That’s right.” The first bowed his head.

     “Isn’t it normal to have demands in a situation like this?” I said.

     They looked at each other. “Exactly.”

     “But he has no demands?” I said.

     “Yes.”

     “No ride to the airport and jet to Cuba?” I said.

     “No.”

     “Cash?”

     “No.”

     “Maybe a promotion, an old girlfriend back?”

     “No.”

     “His mom?”

     They looked at each other a long time.

     “No.”

     The first looked at me. “How come you know so much about this?”

     “I’m trying to speak your language,” I said, “I’m trying to show you that I take you, and the situation, seriously.”

     They both nodded and stepped forward. We became scalene. “Good.”

     “Who’s the hostage?” I said.

     “We don’t know. We’re checking. Maybe the cleaning lady,” said the second one.

     “How often does she come?”

     “Once, twice a week,” I said.

     “She cleans?”

     “Some,” I said.

     They nodded.

     “What does she say?” I said.

     “She says she wants to stay there. She may be forced to say that,” the first said.

     “She says she likes it there,” said the second.

     “She may have Stockholm syndrome,” said the first, moving backward, then forward until he stood exactly where he had stood before.

     “Stockholm syndrome?” I said.

     “Named after Stockholm.”

     “Of course,” said the second.

     “Sweden?”

     “Sweden.” The first nodded.

     “The hostage feels connected to the hostage-taker.” The second put his hands together.

     “Or the terrorist.” The first opened his hands, then closed them.

     “Or the terrorist.”

     “Was there a hostage situation in Sweden?” I said.

     “In Stockholm.”

     “In Stockholm,” said the second, “if there had been a terrorist situation it would have been in Stockholm.”

     The first nodded. “Have you ever been?”

     “No.”

     “Very nice, I understand,” said the second.

     “Pretty women,” said the first.

     “Swedish women,” said the second.

     “Blondes,” said the second.

     “Big blondes,” said the first.

     “Large breasts,” said the second.

     “Big tits,” I said.

     “You like girls with big tits?” said the first.

     “Yes,” I said.

     “You like girls?” said the second.

     “Sure,” I said, and looked at the first, then the second, “as much as the next guy.”

     They looked at each other.

     “Why do you live with a guy, then?” said the first.

     “It’s pricey here,” I said.

     “I see.”

     “So not by choice?” The second scratched his head.

     I shrugged.

     “You get along with your room-mate?”

     “Why do you ask?”

     “You may not be our man.”

     “You may not do it.”

     “Not if you don’t get along with him.”

     “I’m your man,” I said.

     They looked at each other.

     “Good.”

     “Good.”

     “We want you to go in there.”

     “And see what his demands are.”

     “And then?” I said.

     “And then you come out.” We turned to look at the building. There were white police trucks, two television vans. There were police in blue uniforms and other people not in uniform. There were camera lights. Behind me, there was a helicopter in my parking space.

     “If he lets you.”

     “And then?” I said.

     “And then we get him.”

     “Get him how?” I said.

     “One way or another.”

     “But first you go in,” said the first.

     “Do you give in to his demands?” I said.

     “If it means we get to get him,” said the second.

     “If he doesn’t let me out?” I said.

     “Then we have another situation.”

     “A euphemism?”

     The two looked at each other.

     “A situation.”

     “If he won’t let you out,” said the first, “we come in and get you.”

     “Okay?” said the second.

     “Okay,” I said.

     The two moved aside. I walked to the other side of the yellow-and-blue tape. There were camera lights on me and people got out of my way. I walked to the building and opened the door.

     I walked up the stairs. I walked to the door. I knocked.

     “Hello,” I said.

     “Hello,” he said, from the other side.

     “I’ll use my key if I have to,” I said.

     “You have to,” he said.

     I used my key.

     He was sitting on the floor by the window with some rags tied to a broomstick on his lap. The telephone was on the floor by the window.

     “Hello,” I said.

     “Hello.”

     “Is that your hostage?” I said.

     “This is some rags tied to a broomstick.”

     “Yes,” I said, “it is.”

     The phone rang. He answered it .

     “Yes,” he said, “she’s here.”

     He put the phone away from his head and then brought it back. “Hello,” he said, in a sort of a woman’s voice, “I’m fine. Really.” He hung up.

     We looked at each other.

     “There are people out there who are worried,” I said.

     “Yes,” he said.

     “They’re calling this a situation.”

     “Really?” He looked down at the rags tied to a broomstick.

     “Have you heard of the Stockholm syndrome?” I said.

     “Stockholm?”

     “Yes.”

     “Sweden.” He patted the rags.

     “You don’t even have any demands,” I said.

     “I didn’t plan this.”

     “Well,” I said.

     “Yes, well.”

     “So why did you dress up the broom like that?” I said.

     “I wanted to see what would happen.”

     “And now you’ve seen,” I said.

     “Yes.”

     “So,” I said.

     “Can you think of any demands?”

     “What do you want?”

     “I want them to go away.”

     “So maybe that could be your demand.”

     “Yes, I guess it could,” he said.

     “Except-” I said.

     “Except.”

     “Except they find out what your demand is, then they get you,” I said.

     “I see.”

     “They think it’s the cleaning lady,” I said.

     “If they see this is just some rags tied to a broomstick, do you think they’ll let me go?”

     I looked at it. It didn’t look like the cleaning lady. The cleaning lady was gorgeous.

     “Yes,” I said, “I think they would.”

     “Maybe you should tell them.”

     “I’ll tell them,” I said.

     I went back down and walked through the light of the television cameras.

     “He’s got some rags tied to a broomstick,” I said. “No hostage.”

     “No hostage?” said the first.

     “No,” I said.

     “This is more of a situation than we thought,” said the second.

     “He’s still holed up in there,” said the first.

     “What do you think we should do?” said the second.

     “We said we would get him,” said the first.

     “We need to get the hostage,” said the second.

     “There is no hostage,” said the first.

     “We have a situation.” The first and the second held hands and looked into each others’ eyes, then dropped hands and looked at me.

     “He gave me a demand,” I said.

     “What?” said the second.

     “He wants you to go away.”

     “We’ll go away, but we still need to get him.”

     “We still need the hostage.”

     “The hostage is a woman,” I said.

     “Yes.”

     “Yes.”

     “Perhaps the cleaning lady,” I said.

     “Yes.”

     “You could get the cleaning lady,” I said, “after you went away.”

     “Yes,” said the first.

     “Does she come today?”

     “Maybe,” I said.

     “We need to get somebody today.”

     “You could take the rags tied to the broom,” I said, “and pretend it was the cleaning lady. Then you could get the cleaning lady later if you wanted.”

     “We could,” said the first.

     I went back inside, through the camera lights, up the stairs, through the door.

     “They’re going to take the rags tied to the broom,” I said.

     “Okay,” he said. “Are they going to get me?”

     “I don’t think so.”

     He picked up the telephone and dialed. He said, “Okay, come get me,” in a sort of a woman’s voice.

     I walked to the window and watched the two, first and second, come into the building, walking   through the camera lights.

     Eventually, the helicopter went away.

_________________________________________________________

     Aharon Levy lives in Brooklyn, New York. His writing has appeared in The Sun Magazine, Opium, Skive, and elsewhere, and he has received residencies from the Vermont Studio Center and the MacDowell Colony. He is at work on his first novel, tentatively titled The Autonomous Region of Heaven.

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