“I don’t know why we’re bothering. We’re not gonna keep her for a pet,” Loretta groused, as Marty set down the plate. Her sausage-tight gown was slit down the ass, revealing soiled satin panties full of holes.
Audrey smelled the food. Her mouth watered. She peeled back the bread. Tuna and stale mayonnaise. It had been left out, so its sides were yellowed. Still, she took a bite. It was the best sandwich she’d ever tasted. Her eyes shone with gratitude. Her stomach gurgled, and for few seconds, stopped hurting. She ate slowly, chewing every bite again and again, to make sure it stayed down. The flavors—salt, tuna, sugar, fat—were so crisp that they snapped. And then, something sharp. She bit hard. The temporary crown in the back of her mouth broke in half.
“Ah! Wha—?” she cried, just as Martin coughed, and her tongue traced the outline of the thing that he’d sneaked into her food.
“What? There something in that? Martin did you put something in that?” Loretta whined as he bent forward to inflate the deflated mattress she’d been sleeping in and whispered in her ear quick and pleading with rancid dog breath: “Please!”
“Marty, did you put something in the food?” Loretta asked. “She thinks she’s so pretty but she’s not. I could dye my hair brown, too.”
Audrey shook her head. Said something that sounded like the old, high-maintenance Audrey, before The Breviary. “I don’t like Wonder Bread. It’s all corn syrup.”
Loretta narrowed her eyes. She bent down, and her dressing gown ripped along its side seam. Flesh bulged. Either she didn’t notice, or she didn’t care. “Well, la!” she said, pointing her hip to the left, “Di!” the hip went to the right, “Da!” the hip jutted back again.
They left. The sound they made as they clopped down the hall was peculiar. A clack-clacking, like their bodies were becoming harder than flesh. They were changing into something spiderlike, just like Schermerhorn.
Audrey finished the sandwich, and felt the most grounded she’d been in days. The most like herself. She waited an hour. Maybe two. She couldn’t tell. Was afraid to take Martin’s present out of her mouth. She didn’t want the apartment to see.
She limped down the hall. Her knee was better—the ligament had reattached, but it still wasn’t healed. Same dirty clothes. Hair so greasy it was wet. She spit out half her crown, along with the small brass key. It fit into a knee-height hole at the edge of the door and unsprung the lock. Then she put the key back into the side of her cheek and opened the door.
In the carpet were sandy bits of ceramic and a lampshade. Jayne’s ashes? No, Hula Girl’s remains. Tears welled. Guilt gnawed. “Jayne,” she whispered, then kept limping.
The fire door to the stairs creaked. She squinted, as if to diminish the sound, then began hopping. Cold metal against her feet. She leaped two steps with the left foot, then swung the right leg without bending it. Panting. Panting. The sound of her breath echoed in the metal chamber.
Slap-swing-slap-swing! How many floors? She didn’t know. The farther she got, the more she allowed herself to hope.
Slap-swing-slap-swing! The lobby! But then, she looked through the small wire window built into the fire door and saw the tenants. They were out there. Sitting on the antique couches in the former church altar where Schermerhorn’s body had once hung. Chatting with each other in old cocktail dresses and faded black suits. Was it Monday again already? Cocktail night for the unemployed? They were drinking Manhattans with cherries. Thirty of them. Maybe more. She was crestfallen, like needles in her stomach, poking holes in a thousand places, until she remembered: there had to be an exit through the basement.
She climbed down one more flight and shoved open the fire door. The basement stank something terrible. Red ants, everywhere. Scampering things, too. Her feet got wet on the peeling, gray-painted cement floors. But at least the lights were on. In her dark apartment, she’d missed light so much. You imagine such terrible things in the dark.
She scooted through the hall, leaning against the wall for balance. There were doors on all sides. A pile of garbage bags lay straight ahead.
She looked for EXIT signs, but didn’t see any. Ants scampered each time she stepped. In her mind she dissected them; pulled their chitin inside out, then made them disappear. Made the place smell like roses. Made the air sweet as hash. The visualization worked, and