She began to get dressed, slowly, one item at a time, not covering up, no coyly turning away from him like before. So Charles went into the bathroom, where he flinched at his own reflection, thinking at first that it was someone else staring back at him. It couldn’t possibly be him. But this was Charles the clown, remember? He of the bulbous nose and red paint and fright wig.
He pressed a wet towel up against his nose, where it stung, as if he’d applied iodine. He smoothed down his hair and tried to wipe the blood away from his cheeks.
When he came back into the room, she was more or less dressed. One stocking ripped, skirt slit where it wasn’t before, yet she was put back together in a reasonable facsimile of a dressed woman. The way a mannequin is a reasonable facsimile of a dressed woman — minus the thing that actually makes a woman alive.
“What do we do?” Charles asked her, not just her, but himself as well, because he didn’t know.
And she said, “Nothing.”
Nothing. It sounded so ridiculously preposterous. So blatantly ludicrous. The criminal was still at large, his victims beaten and bleeding, and what does she propose doing? Nothing.
Only the opposite of nothing is something, and he couldn't think of a something.
Go to the police?
Of course you go to the police. You’ve been robbed and raped and beaten, so you go to the police. Only . . .
What were you doing at the Fairfax Hotel?
Well, we were . . .
What were you doing at the Fairfax Hotel in the middle of the morning?
Well, the thing is . . .
What were the two of you doing at the Fairfax Hotel?
If I could take a minute to explain . . .
Maybe they could ask for some discretion here, maybe you were allowed to ask for a little discretion, and the police detective would wink at them and say, I understand. That he’d be sure to keep this just between them, no need to worry. Only . . .
There was a criminal here, and sometimes criminals get caught—you report them to the police, and sometimes the police actually apprehend them and bring them to court. And then there are trials, public forums that make the front pages, where witnesses have to get up and say, He did it, Your Honor. Those witnesses being him. Him and Lucinda.
And what were you doing at the Fairfax Hotel?
Well, we were . . .
What were you doing at the Fairfax Hotel in the middle of the morning?
Well, the thing is . . .
Just answer the question.
What do we do? That was the question.
Nothing. Maybe not as ludicrous as it first appeared. Maybe not so ridiculous.
Yet was it possible that they could just ignore what had happened to them? That she could just forget about it, like a rude comment or a vulgar gesture? Go to sleep and wake up and poof — gone.
Lucinda said, “I’m going.”
“Where?”
“Home.”
Home. To the blond five-year-old who never met a playground swing she didn’t like. To the husband with the nine handicap who might or might not notice the sudden pallor in her cheeks, the bit lip and shell-shocked disposition.
“I’m sorry, Lucinda,” he said.
“Yes,” she said.
He was sorry for everything. That he’d asked her up here in the first place. That he hadn’t seen the man lurking in the stairwell opposite their room. That he’d sat and watched as the man raped her again and again. That he hadn’t protected her.
Lucinda trudged to the door — that amazingly elegant gait turned plodding and ungainly. She didn’t look back, either. Charles thought about offering to call a car for her, but he knew she’d turn him down. He hadn’t been able to provide the one thing she’d really needed him to. She’d want nothing more from him.
She opened the door, stepped through the open space, and shut it behind her.
ATTICA
Sorry, I have to interrupt here.
I think I should come clean.
Three things happened.
On Wednesday, a man rang our doorbell to see the house. He’d gotten the listing from a real estate agent, he said.
My wife answered the door and told him the house wasn’t for sale. It must be some kind of mistake.
Your husband’s a teacher, isn’t he? he said.
Yes, she said. But it was still some sort of mistake. The house wasn’t for sale.
The man apologized and left.
He didn’t look like a man who was in the market for a house, she told me later.
Well, what did he look like? I asked her.
Like one of your students, she said.
A high school kid? I said.
No. Like one of your other students.
Then the second thing happened.
A CO called Fat Tommy informed me in the lounge that I was going to be ass out soon.
What did that mean? I asked him.
It means you’re going to be ass out soon, he said.
Fat Tommy was over three hundred pounds and had been known to sit on unruly prisoners who’d been shackled face-down on the floors of their cells.
Why? I asked him.
Cutbacks. I guess somebody finally realized they’ve got better things to do with our taxes than teach coons to read.
I asked him if he knew when.
Nah, he said. But I wouldn’t start teaching them War and Peace.
When Fat Tommy laughed, his three chins jiggled.
Then the third thing happened.
The writer penned a note on the bottom of chapter 10. At first I thought it was just part of the story, something Charles said to Lucinda or even to himself. But it wasn’t. It was to me — a kind of editorial aside.
“Like the story so far?”
That’s what he wrote.
The answer, by the way, was no.
I didn’t.
For one thing, the story lacked suspense.
It was missing the one crucial ingredient needed to make it suspenseful.
Surprise.
Because suspense depends on not knowing what’s going to happen.
But I did know what was going to happen.
I knew, for example, what would be on the other side of the door of room 1207. I knew what was going to come in when they opened that door. I knew what that man was going to do to Lucinda over and over for the next four hours.
I remembered it all from a previous life.
In this previous life, I woke up every morning wondering why I preferred to remain sleeping.
I showered and dressed and tried not to look at a blood meter sitting on the kitchen counter. I took the 8:43 to Penn Station, with the exception of one morning in November when I didn’t. The morning my daughter made me late and I took the 9:05. The morning that I looked up from my paper and was asked for a ticket I didn’t have.