sparkling lights. She watched, she waited, she struggled to seize the slightest opportunity, but he was too wakeful, too fast.
And then he tied her up. There was to be no study, no project. “I know what I need to know.”
The first time he left it was for a day. The second time for an entire night and most of the morning. The third time had been this time—four days perhaps.
And now look what he had done to this cold modern bedroom of white walls and glass windows, and laminated furniture.
Her legs hurt so much. She limped out of the bathroom and into the bedroom. He had cleaned up the bed; it was draped in rose-colored sheets, and he had surrounded it with flowers. This brought a strange image to her mind, of a woman who had committed suicide in California. She had ordered lots of flowers for herself first, then put them all around the bed, and taken poison. Or was she simply remembering Deirdre’s funeral, with all those flowers and the woman in the coffin like a big doll?
This looked like a place to die. Flowers in big bouquets, and in vases everywhere she looked. And if she died, perhaps he’d blunder. He was so foolish. She had to be calm. She had to think, to live and be clever.
“Such lilies. Such roses. Did you bring them up yourself?” she asked.
He shook his head. “They were all delivered and outside the door before I ever put the key in the lock.”
“You thought you’d find me dead in here, didn’t you?”
“I’m not that sentimental, except when it comes to music,” he said with a bright smile. “The food is in the other room. I’ll bring it to you. What can I do to make you love me? Is there something I can tell you? Is there any news that will bring you to your senses?”
“I hate you totally and completely,” she said. She sat down on the bed, because there were no chairs in the room, and she could not stand any longer. Her ankles ached. Her arms ached. She was starving. “Why do you keep me alive?”
He went out and came back with a large tray full of delicatessen salads, packs of cold meat, portable processed garbage.
She ate it ravenously. Then she shoved the tray away. There was a quart of orange juice there and she drank all of it. She rose and staggered into the bathroom, nearly falling. She remained in that small room for a long time, crouched on the toilet, her head against the wall. She feared she would vomit. Slowly she made an inventory of the room. There was nothing with which to kill herself.
She wasn’t going to try it yet anyway. She had fight in her, plenty of it. If necessary, the two of them would go up in flames. That she could arrange surely. But how?
Wearily, she opened the door. He was there, with arms folded. He picked her up and carried her to the bed. He had littered it with white daisies from one of the bouquets and when she sank down on the stiff stems and fragrant blossoms, she laughed. It felt so good she let herself go, laughing and laughing, until it rippled out of her just like a song.
He bent to kiss her.
“Don’t do it again. If I miscarry again, I’ll die. There are easier, quicker ways to kill me. You can’t have a child by me, don’t you understand? What makes you think you can have a child by anyone?”
“Ah, but you won’t miscarry this time,” he said. He lay beside her. He placed his hand on her belly. He smiled. He uttered a string of rapid syllables in a hum, his mouth grotesque for one moment as he did it—it was a language!
“Yes, my darling, my love, the child’s alive and the child can hear me. The child is female. The child is there.”
She screamed.
She turned her fury on the unborn thing, kill it, kill it, kill it, and then—as she lay back, drenched in sweat, stinking again, the taste of vomit in her mouth—she heard a sound that was like someone crying.
He made that strange humming song.
Then came the crying.
She shut her eyes, trying to break it down into something coherent.
She could not. But she could hear a new voice now and the new voice was inside her and it was speaking to her in a tongue she could understand, without words. It sought her love,