caught his breath and kept walking. Faster. As fast as he could. The building swayed. He could feel it rocking, like the top of the Empire State Building, only he didn’t think it had been engineered to bow with the wind: this thing was no longer sound.
At the fourth-floor landing, an old woman peeked out from the fire door. She’d smeared coral lipstick across her forehead and cheeks, but otherwise was wearing nothing at all. Her breasts hung slack around her belly. “She doesn’t want you!” The woman giggled. “But they want to wear you!” She pointed and laughed, and he walked faster.
He picked up his pace. It was hard to keep his balance with his arms in casts, so he leaned against the railing. Thought about calling the cops, but didn’t know yet what to tell them.
He got to the sixth floor. Sweat dripped from his brow. It was humid in here. Red ants scurried up the steps as if seeking higher ground. He felt something in his stomach. Gnawing. It got bigger inside him, like indigestion.
She said you couldn’t make a porn star cum.
Had someone just said something? He slowed. Two steps at a time. Had Audrey been talking about him?
She said she was after your money, only you don’t have any. You’re just your mother’s bitch.
One step at a time.
You never met a Twinkie you didn’t love.
He’s always wanted a girl like Audrey, who called her own shots. He’d thought she’d seen past his drawbacks. But how can anyone see past 280 pounds?
And these dreams he’d had, of a house. Before Audrey, he’d used his family’s credit card to buy movie tickets. He’d eaten entire pizzas for dinner, followed by two pitchers of beer. He’d never paid his bills, or cooked, or cleaned. These dreams of his, they belonged to someone else.
He stopped at the tenth-floor landing. The lights flickered. The banister was hot beneath his fingers. And why was he doing this? For a woman who’d treated him like garbage and cleaned their toilet every time he used it, like she thought his ass germs would put her in a hospital.
He got to the eleventh floor. Breathing so hard he was dizzy.
She’s spreading her legs for both the partners at her office. She was easy, too. All she wanted out of it was a raise.
Saraub clenched his jaw. The bitch deserved a right hook. A tooth knocked out, or maybe her pretty face slashed, so she’d know how bad it felt to be stared at for being different.
She said she’d have respected you, if just once, you’d punched something besides a wall.
He got to the twelfth-floor landing. His fury swelled. He saw, but did not place, the dried and bloody footprints on the steps, as belonging to Audrey. The fourteenth floor. He walked down the red carpet. It was a mess of white powder and broken ceramic. All the doors except 14B were open. In 14C, an old woman in a torn dressing gown pointed at him, and shouted, “He’s here! He’s here! I tole you!”
He walked on. A white-haired old man leaned inside 14A’s doorway and shot his arm with a hypodermic needle full of cloudy fluid. When he saw Saraub, he frowned. “How are we going to get rid of the carcass? You’re too big for the chute.”
He turned the handle to 14B. It creaked open. His panting was fast, and sweat poured. He didn’t notice the running water, or the shadows that raced down the hall and into the den. Didn’t notice the Steinway chopped to bits. From its bones and her moving boxes, she’d made a door. The blackbirds in the windows flapped their wings, trapped in glass. Alive. He didn’t register this, either. All he heard was that voice in his mind, and the walls, and the air: Give it to her. She wants it. The only way to keep her in line is the back of your hand. If you don’t do it, she’ll find a man who can.
He charged. First walking fast, then running with his broken arms at his sides. Her expression was flat and without emotion. Her eyes were black. She was wearing a sweat suit that fit her like a blanket, and she stank. “You bitch,” he said. Then he took a swing with his plaster cast.
She swung, too, but she was faster. He didn’t have the time to block the blow. Only heard the sound as his shoulder cracked, and he crashed to the floor.