There was no time in the room.
He was her clock, she realized.
She dozed and awakened again. She sipped water from the bowl. She nibbled at the meat in the other bowl. When she grew cold again, she put on the long white robe over her clothes, and sat huddled on the floor, hugging herself. She dozed again.
When he came into the room again, he left the door open. He was wearing a dark brown overcoat, and in the open V of the coat, she could see the collar of a white shirt, and a dark tie with a narrow knot. Behind him, from a window somewhere in the apartment, there was the faint wintry light of early morning.
“I must go to work now,” he said. His tone was colder than it had been.
“What time is it?” she asked.
“It’s six thirty A.M.”
“You go to work early,” she said.
“Yes,” he said.
“What sort of work do you do?”
“That is no concern of yours,” he said. “I will return by three-thirty at the latest. I will prepare you for the ceremony then.”
“What sort of ceremony is it to be?” she asked.
“I see no harm in telling you,” he said.
“Yes, I’d really like to know.”
“We are to be married, Augusta,” he said.
“I’m already married.”
“Your marriage has not taken effect.”
“What do you mean?”
“It has not been consummated.”
She said nothing.
“Do you remember the wedding gown you wore in Brides magazine?”
“Yes.”
“I have it. I bought it for you.”
“Look I… I appreciate what—”
“No, I don’t think so,” he said.
“What?”
“I don’t think you do appreciate the trouble I’ve gone to.”
“I do, really I do. But…”
“I didn’t know your shoe size, that’s why I didn’t buy any shoes. The article about you didn’t mention your shoe size.”
“Probably because I have such big feet,” she said, and smiled.
“You shall have to be married barefoot,” he said.
“But, you see,” she said, refusing to enter into his delusion, “I’m already married. I got married on Sunday afternoon. I’m Mrs. Bertram…”
“I was there at the church, you don’t have to tell me.”
“Then you know I’m married.”
“Are you angry about the shoes?”
“You have a trick,” she said.
“Oh? What trick is that?”
“Of refusing to face reality.”
“There is only one reality,” he said. “You are here, and you are mine. That is reality.”
“I’m here, that’s reality, yes. But I’m not yours.”
“I’ll be late for work,” he said, and looked at his watch.
“There’s your trick again. I’m mine,” she said. “I belong to me.”
“You were yours. You are no longer yours. You are mine. This afternoon, after the ceremony, I will demonstrate that to you.”
“Let’s talk about reality again, okay?”
“Augusta, that is the reality. I will be home at three-thirty. I will take you to the bathroom, where you will bathe yourself and anoint yourself with the perfume I’ve purchased — L’Oriel is your favorite, am I correct? That’s what the article said. And then you will put on the white undergarments I bought, and the blue garter, and the gown you modeled in Brides. And then we shall have a simple wedding ceremony, uniting us in the eyes of God.”
“No,” she said, “I’m already—”
“Yes,” he insisted. “And then we shall make love, Augusta. I have been waiting a long time to make love to you. I have been waiting since I first saw your photograph in a magazine. That was more than two years ago, Augusta, you should not have dared give yourself to another man. Two long years, Augusta! I’ve loved you all that time, I’ve been waiting all that time to possess you, yes, Augusta. When I saw you on television doing a hair commercial — do you remember the Clairol commercial? — saw you moving, Augusta, saw your photographs suddenly coming to life, your hair floating on the wind as you ran, how beautiful you looked, Augusta — I waited for the commercial again. I sat before the set, waiting for you to appear again, and finally I was rewarded — but ah, how brief the commercial was, how long are I hose commercials? Thirty seconds? Sixty seconds?”
“They vary,” she answered automatically, and was suddenly aware of the lunatic nightmare proportions of the conversation. She was discussing the length of television commercials with a man who planned to marry her today in a fantasy ceremony…
“I abuse myself with your photographs,” he said suddenly. “Does that excite you? The thought of my doing such things with your pictures?”
She did not answer him.
“But this afternoon I will actually possess you. We will be married, Augusta, and then we will make love together.”
“No, we—”
“Yes,” he said. “And then I will slit your throat.”
She was alone in the apartment.
The entire place was still.
She had listened very carefully after he’d gone out of the room and locked the door. She had gone to the door instantly, and put her ear against it, listening the way Bert had told her he listened before entering a suspect premises. She had heard the front door of the apartment closing behind him, and then she had continued listening, her ear pressed to the wooden door, listening for footsteps approaching the storage room again, suspecting a trick. She did not have a watch, he had taken that from her, but she counted to sixty, and then to sixty again, and again, and over again until she estimated that she’d been standing inside the door with her ear pressed to the wood for about fifteen minutes. In all that time, she heard nothing. She had to assume he was really and truly gone.
He had left the clothing behind.
More important than that, he had left the wire hangers and the wooden clothes rack. He was a very careful man, he had installed a double key way dead bolt on the door as soon as he’d decided to abduct her, a most methodical, most fastidious, foresighted person. But he had forgotten that he was dealing with a cop’s wife, and he had neglected to notice that the door opened into the room, and that the hinge pins were on Augusta’s side of the door. Quickly, she removed all the clothing from the rack and tossed it into one corner of the room. Then she dragged the rack over to the door, and opened up one of the wire hangers by twisting the curved hook away from the body.
She was ready to go to work.
The hinge pins had been painted into the hinges.
Augusta had broken off one of the pegs on the clothes rack, and tried using that as a makeshift mallet, hoping to chip away the paint. But the peg wasn’t heavy enough, and however hard she struck at the hinge, the paint remained solidly caked to it. She had no idea what time it was, but she’d been working on just that single hinge for what seemed like hours. She had made no headway, and there were three hinges on the door, and he had told her he would be back in the apartment by three-thirty. She picked up the clothes rack now, picked it up in both hands, and using it like a battering ram, she began smashing at the middle hinge on the door. A chip of paint flaked off.
She stepped out of the storage room into a narrow corridor painted white. She turned to her left and walked into a kitchen similarly painted white, its single window slanting wintry sunlight onto the white vinyl-tile floor. There was a swinging door at the opposite end of the kitchen, just to the right of the refrigerator, and she walked to that now, and pushed it open, and that was when the sterile whiteness ended.