her skull. Into her thoughts. She touched her throat, and thought, I’m wounded, and you know it. So why do you keep knocking?
She pressed her cheek against cool plaster. Jayne leaned against the opposing wall and wrapped her arms around her waist like a lonely hug.
“Does he hit you?” Jayne whispered with the phlegmy rasp of a habitual smoker. In the gray light, her eyes shone bright and wet. Audrey understood then, why Jayne called men five times a day. She needed reassurance. She expected the worst from them because the worst was all she’d ever known.
Oh, Jayne, you poor thing, she thought. She considered taking the girl’s hand in her own, but it wasn’t her way to touch other people, so instead she matched Jayne’s honesty with her own. “He’s never hit me, but I worry. He holds it in. I’m afraid he’ll burst. He used to hit the walls when I wasn’t home…There’s this place in his study nook with holes in the drywall from his fists”
Jayne nodded like, of course, she’d expected this. Weren’t all women afraid of getting hit? On the other side of the door, Saraub slammed the brass knocker into wood three times: Clack!-Clack!-Clack!
Audrey looked down the drab hall and the doors that opened upon cavernous rooms. She remembered what Jayne had helped her forget: murder had happened here. New grout and Home Depot tiles didn’t change the truth: this was a bad place.
“How long have you been together?” Jayne asked. Her cheeks were boozily flushed, and runny eyeliner had congealed into black gook in the corners of her eyes. She acted late twenties, but looking at her in the harsh hall light, Audrey realized with some shock that she had to be at least forty.
Audrey looked down at her turquoise pumps and tried to forget the lines cut into Jayne’s cheeks like scored glass. Tried to see Jayne the way she wanted and deserved to be seen: fresh and young and fearless. “We’ve been together two and a half years…” she said.
Jayne answered in a whisper. “That’s a long time. I don’t know for sure, but I think he’d have done it by now.”
“Probably,” Audrey said. “But it’s still not a good sign.”
“If you love him, you should answer it.” Jayne fixed her eyes on Audrey, like she was willing her to be brave, because maybe she didn’t think she’d ever find love, but she wanted it for her friends.
“Bam!” Saraub knocked again, but she could tell that he was getting tired, and the knocks were becoming less frequent. Soon, he’d give up and go home. And pretty soon after that, he’d move on and find someone else. It can happen like that, even when it’s the real thing: love dies all the time.
“I should answer it, shouldn’t I?”
Jayne’s dimples deepened. “Well, duh! He’s a total hottie.”
Audrey took a breath and headed for the door. She realized then, that if Jayne hadn’t been with her, she would never have answered the intercom. She would have stayed in this vast, miserable apartment, lit only by the light of the television, as she’d rearranged the furniture, or God help her, worked on that door, and the night had passed into day. And another day. And another. Until this mistake of an apartment became her prison. Thank God for Jayne.
As she pulled the latch on the door, Saraub banged once more: Bam!
Then, suddenly, an old woman shrieked, “No subletting! I’m calling the police!”
This was followed by another raspy, feminine shout: “She’s not home. Leave her alone!”
And then a baritone: “What’s this, young man? You don’t live here!”
Audrey swung the door wide and wondered for a moment if she’d accidentally moved into an old-age home. About ten residents were standing in the hall. Unlike at Betty’s loony bin, none had shoulder dandruff, or drooled. Instead, their hair plugs, wigs, and sprayed-over bald spots were coiffed into Claudette Colbert curls and dapper pomade comb-overs. A few clutched gimlet glasses filled with brown liquid and cherries—Manhattans? They wore cocktail dresses or dapper suits that had faded over the years, but were fine nonetheless. Their skin was pulled taut, so she could see the ridges of their skulls and blue veins. More surgery. Some of it was good, some of it, horrific. It was close to midnight on a Monday night, and these fossils had been having a cocktail party.
One of the old men was even wearing a white porcelain mask with holes for his eyes and nose, but no