The bathroom light went out suddenly.
He flattened himself against the brick wall of the building. The girl was humming when she came into the room. The humming trailed off abruptly, she was turning on the radio. It came on very loud, for Christ’s sake, she was going to wake up the whole damn building! She kept twisting the dial until she found the station she wanted, sweet music, lots of violins and muted trumpets, and then she lowered the volume. He waited. In a moment, she came to the window and pulled down the shade. Good, he thought, she didn’t lock the window. He waited a moment longer, and then flattened himself onto the fire escape so that he could peer into the room beneath the lower edge of the shade, where the girl had left a good two-inch gap between it and the windowsill.
The girl was still dressed. She was wearing the tan dress she had worn to dinner with Blondie, but when she turned away and began walking toward the closet, he saw that she had already lowered the zipper at the back. The dress was spread in a wide V, the white elastic line of her brassiere crossing her back, the zipper lowered to a point just above the beginning curve of her buttocks. The radio was playing a song she knew, and she began humming along with it again as she opened the closet door and took her nightgown from a hook. She closed the door and then walked to the bed, sitting on the side facing the window and lifting her dress up over her thighs to unhook first one garter and then the other. She took off her shoes and rolled down her stockings, and then walked to the closet to put the shoes away and to put the stockings into some kind of a bag hanging on the inside doorknob. She closed the door again, and then took off her dress, standing just outside the closet and not moving toward the bed again. In her bra and half-slip, she walked over to the other side of the room, where he couldn’t see her anymore, almost as if the lousy little bitch knew he was watching her! She was still humming. His hands were wet. He dried them on the sleeves of his coat and waited.
She came back so suddenly that she startled him. She had taken off her underwear, and she walked swiftly to the bed, naked, to pick up her nightgown. Jesus, she was beautiful! Jesus, he hadn’t realized how goddamn beautiful she really was. He watched her as she bent slightly to pull the gown over her head, straightened, and then let it fall down over her breasts and her tilted hips. She yawned. She looked at her watch and then went across the room again, out of sight, and came back to the bed carrying a paperback book. She got into the bed, her legs parting, opening, as she swung up onto it, and then pulled the blanket up over her knees, and fluffed the pillow, and scratched her jaw, and opened the book. She yawned. She looked at her watch again, seemed to change her mind about reading the book, put it down on the night table, and yawned again.
A moment later, she turned out the light.
The first thing she heard was the voice.
It said “Cindy,” and for the briefest tick of time she thought she was dreaming because the voice was just a whisper. And then she heard it again, “Cindy,” hovering somewhere just above her face, and her eyes popped wide, and she tried to sit up but something pressed her fiercely back against the pillow. She opened her mouth to scream, but a hand clamped over her lips. She stared over the edge of the thick fingers into the darkness, trying to see. “Be quiet, Cindy,” the voice said. “Just be quiet now.”
His grip on her mouth was hard and tight. He was straddling her now, his knees on the bed, his legs tight against her pinioned arms, sitting on her abdomen, one arm flung across her chest, holding her to the pillow.
“Can you hear me?” he asked.
She nodded. His hand stayed tight on her mouth, hurting her. She wanted to bite his hand, but she could not free her mouth. His weight upon her was unbearable. She tried to move, but she was helplessly caught in the vise of his knees, the tight band of his arm thrown across her chest.
“Listen to me,” he said. “I’m going to beat the shit out of you.”
She believed him instantly; terror rocketed into her skull. Her eyes were growing accustomed to the darkness. She could dimly see his grinning face hovering above her. His fingers smelled of tobacco. He kept his right hand clamped over her mouth, his left arm thrown across her chest, lower now, so that the hand was gripping her breast. He kept working his hand as he talked to her, grasping her through the thin nylon gown, squeezing her nipple as his voice continued in a slow lazy monotone, “Do you know why I’m going to beat you, Cindy?”
She tried to shake her head, but his hand was so tight against her mouth that she could not move. She knew she would begin to cry within the next few moments. She was trembling beneath his weight. His hand was cruel on her breast. Each time he tightened it on her nipple, she winced with pain.
“I don’t like you to go out with cops,” he said. “I don’t like you to go out with anybody, but cops especially.”
She could see his face clearly now. He was the same man who had come to the office, the same man who had beaten up the policeman. She remembered the way he had kicked the policeman when he was on the floor, and she began trembling more violently. She heard him laugh.
“I’m going to take my hand off your mouth now,” he said, “because we have to talk. But if you scream, I’ll kill you. Do you understand me?”
She tried to nod. His hand was relaxing. He was slowly lifting it from her mouth, cupped, as though cautiously peering under it to see if he had captured a fly. She debated screaming, and knew at once that if she did he would keep his promise and kill her. He shifted his body to the left, relaxing his grip across her chest, lifting his arm, freeing her breast. He rested his hands palms downward on his thighs, his legs bent under him, his knees still holding her arms tightly against her side, most of his weight still on her abdomen. Her breast was throbbing with pain. A trickle of sweat rolled down toward her belly and she thought for a moment it was blood, had he made her bleed somehow? A new wave of fear caused her to begin trembling again. She was ashamed of herself for being so frightened, but the fear was something uncontrollable, a raw animal panic that shrieked silently of pain and possible death.
“You’ll get rid of him tomorrow,” he whispered. He sat straddling her with his huge hands relaxed on his own thighs.
“Who?” she said. “Who do you—”
“The cop. You’ll get rid of him tomorrow.”
“All right.” She nodded in the darkness. “All right,” she said again.
“You’ll call his precinct—what precinct is it?”
“The 8…the 87th, I think.”
“You’ll call him.”
“Yes. Yes, I will.”
“You’ll tell him you don’t need a police escort no more. You’ll tell him everything is all right now.”
“Yes, all right,” she said. “Yes, I will.”
“You’ll tell him you patched things up with your boyfriend.”
“My…” She paused. Her heart was beating wildly, she was sure he could feel her heart beating in panic. “My boyfriend?”
“Me,” he said, and grinned.
“I…I don’t even know you,” she said.
“I’m your boyfriend.”
She shook her head.
“I’m your lover.”
She kept shaking her head.
“Yes.”
“I don’t know you,” she said, and suddenly she began weeping. “What do you want from me? Please, won’t you go? Won’t you please leave me alone? I don’t even know you. Please, please.”
“Beg,” he said, and grinned.