“I think we did fall into Wonderland.”
When we returned to the neighbor’s apartment, Kozma went on knocking on walls and wooden screens. Knock knock knock. Thump. In the living room he found a hidden closet. Two panels, floor to ceiling, hard oak boards, painted white just like the walls. It was not simple but we eventually found an indentation where we could fit our fingers in and slide the panel open. In one compartment there were stacks of cardboard boxes. It looked like the boxes had once contained an assortment of A/V equipment, but now appeared mostly empty. In the other, we found a wardrobe full of women’s clothing, from doctors’ coats and leather corsets to wigs of all colors. On the closet floor there was a similarly wide selection of footwear, from high heels to flats.
“What’s going on here?” Kozma asked.
Instead of a reply, someone opened the front door on the other side of the apartment. In the empty space it sounded like a gunshot.
“Hello?” a woman’s voice said.
Kozma started flapping his hands as if trying to fly. “This hasn’t happened before!” he croaked. “They never come two days in a row!”
I interrupted him by pushing him inside the closet with the boxes, barely squeezing myself in. Pulling the panel after me, I left a narrow crack to watch through. Kozma leaned over me hoping to see something too. We probably looked like a twisted totem pole, two sorry old men peering from their hidey-hole. I wasn’t sure we were completely hidden from the outside.
A tall blonde in a business suit entered the room. I’d say I had never seen her before but for two minor details: her skirt slit and those strong calves. She peeked into the kitchen, snapped her bubble gum, and took off her hair in a single practiced motion. Underneath, she had short black hair. Now I was certain she was the woman from the night before.
She opened the other wing of the closet and threw her wig inside, then pulled out a leather corset. She took everything off, white jacket and skirt, black bra and panties. I managed to count three tattoos: a scorpion on her shoulder, a crescent moon on her stomach, and a whip on her thigh. She squeezed herself into the corset, her waist becoming so small I wondered how she could breathe. The two of us did not breathe, did not swallow, did not dare look away.
When she went to the bathroom and we heard her turn on the tap, I whispered to Kozma, “This is where all your women disappeared. Into this closet.”
“I can’t believe it,” he whispered back. “She’s the same one. But that doesn’t explain—”
I shushed him. The front door opened again.
“I’m in here. Will be out in a sec,” the woman called from the bathroom.
We heard someone turn off the radio and then our neighbor entered with a paper bag in his hand. He took out a hamburger and bit into it. He had his mouth full when the woman entered the living room.
“Sorry,” he said between bites. “I’m sick of just snacks.” He wiped himself off and they kissed on the mouth.
“How come we’re working tonight?” he asked.
“He begged me for an extra day.”
The neighbor nodded. “I’m going to get ready.” He unlocked the next room with a little key from his pocket and closed the door behind him before we could see anything more.
The woman started rummaging through the closet, taking out more clothes. She draped herself with something and put some kind of cap on her head.
A sound system crackled. Over invisible loudspeakers we heard the neighbor’s voice: “You look stunning, as always.”
She leaned forward and pointed her bottom toward the mirror.
We heard him chuckle. “He rang the bell in the other apartment. Go get him. You know he doesn’t like to wait.”
When she went to the kitchen, the apartment remained oddly silent. Kozma started digging through the boxes behind us and pulled one out. The label on the box showed that it had once contained a video camera. I sat down on the closet floor and Kozma slid down next to me.
“We’ll never get out of this one,” I whispered.
“Let’s wait a bit, then go for the door,” he replied.
“You’re not scared?”
“No.”
“How come?”
“Everything I dreaded in life has already happened to me.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know how you survived.”
“Life goes on,” he said. “It’s just that afterward… Well, there’s always sadness underneath everything. Like a river.” He smiled.
His answer didn’t surprise me. He probably didn’t know I would take his river of sadness over mine anytime, though he might’ve suspected it. Maybe that’s why he put up with me in the first place.
Peering through the crack, I watched the woman enter the room. This time I clearly saw that she was wearing a green army jacket, while on her head there was an army cap with a red five-pointed star. She was followed by a gray-haired man in a long coat.
“The loudmouth,” whispered Kozma.
It was the politician we’d seen the day before, a patient in the clinic connected to this apartment. He managed to drop his pants down to his ankles before she pushed him onto the bed. He tried to get up, but she wouldn’t let him. She pulled out three different-sized lashes from under the bed and tried them all out in the air. He screamed after each swing although she did not touch him.
“More,” he said, panting. “I need more. You’re crossing all my boundaries.”
The woman swung once again, this time hitting him. He moaned.
Kozma and I looked at each other in the dark. We sat back down and listened to the lashings and shouts for some time. Despite worrying about my bladder, I eventually dozed off.
I came to sensing a light on my face, and when I opened my eyes, I saw Kozma’s eyes were shut too. The politician stood in the open door of the closet, his face purple and his body red all over. He only had on leather underpants with spikes.
“Didn’t I tell you I heard snoring?” he said to the woman.
When Kozma and I fell out of the closet, the woman was standing in the middle of the room slapping the lash against her palm.
“Who are these people?” the politician shouted.
“Nobody,” the neighbor said from behind him. “Annoying old nobodies.”
The neighbor had come out of the next room with a small black gun in his hand. It seemed to me it was pointed more at me than Kozma.
“And who the hell are you?” the politician said.
I gestured toward the mirror hanging on the wall opposite the bed. “You think you’re just having some perverted fun, but they have you on tape. They’ll squeeze you dry before the elections, for money or something else.”
“Don’t listen to them,” the neighbor said.
“Stop waving that under my nose or I’ll shove it up your ass,” the politician said, but then he frowned at the mirror.
“All right,” the neighbor said. “Listen to them, then. You don’t want us talking to your electorate. We recorded everything you two did. Just remember.”
The politician turned to the woman. “Pandora!”
“Do what you’re told,” she said, holding his gaze.
“I’ll tell the authorities!”
Pandora snapped her gum. “Give me the gun,” she said to the neighbor.
The naked apartment suddenly became too crowded. The dominatrix playing a kinky partisan, the politician caught with his pants down, the psycho whose eyes I still couldn’t see.
And us, two jinxes. I thought they’d kill each other off, and that Kozma and I would just have to sit back and wait it all out.
No such luck.
The politician burst into tears. He cried his heart out while collecting his clothes from the bed. Wiping his face, he asked, “What do I have to do?”