The sun rose, then set, then rose, like a stop-motion camera. When she was thirsty, she slurped water from the sink. When she was hungry, she rationed the leftover Chinese food she’d ordered with Jayne, and when that was gone, just like back in Hinton, she got weaker. The pile of boxes got smaller. The door got bigger. The humming walls lulled her into a place between sleep and waking life, where around one corner there was a pretty house in Yonkers, and around another there was Schermerhorn, leaning over a tub full of sleeping cherubs while his ghost wife, Clara, screamed. The thing in her stomach filled the crevices of her body. When she looked in the bathroom mirror, she didn’t see her own reflection. Only a black-eyed silhouette that did not quite stand erect. So she broke the mirror, and even broke the chrome toaster, too. Hours, days, or maybe weeks later, Martin and Loretta returned. Wearing their dusty wool suit and Claudette Colbert silk, they were a mad couple in frayed finery, like ghosts from the Titanic.
