Karen took the paperback thriller, opened it in the middle, put it facedown on the floor, and broke the spine. She flipped a few pages and smashed the spine again. She picked up the book, grabbed the pages, and slowly, carefully tore them out.
They came out attached by the glue from the spine. She carefully separated two pages from the bunch. She opened them up in the middle and flattened them out. The pages held. She set them aside, and did it again. She tore out a dozen more attached pages.
Now, if she just had a way to stick them together. Tape, or glue, or staples. Anything.
The room had clearly been used as a workroom. The old metal sink was stained with bleach and floor wax and shellac and varnish and whatever else had been dumped into it over the years. One blue paint smear was fairly thick and relatively fresh. It appeared to be enamel paint. It gave when Karen picked at it.
Karen dumped the sandwich on the floor and used the edge of the plastic plate to scrape some paint off the sink. She diluted it with water, mushed it around with her fingertips. After several minutes it felt slightly sticky.
It was poor glue at best, but it would have to do. Karen laid two pages on the floor side by side and smeared a half-inch line of paint down the edge of one. She overlapped the other, then leaned all her weight on them, pressing them together against the floor as hard as she could. She relaxed the pressure, sat back on her heels to evaluate her work. It wasn’t big enough, of course, she’d have to add to it, but it would tell her if her paint-glue would hold.
It wouldn’t.
The pages came apart as soon as she tried to tug them across the floor. And that was without the added weight of the key. She needed better glue.
Karen had been so engrossed in her task she’d neglected to clean up. The big man would be coming in to get the plate. There was paint on the edge of it. And paint on her hands. And the pages from the book were lying on the floor.
Karen gathered up the pages and shoved them back in the book. She washed her hands and washed the plate. The plate fared better. When she was done, there was just a trace of paint on the edge, barely detectable. Her hands would not pass a close inspection.
She put the sandwich on the plate. She knew she should eat it, or the big man would wonder why, might think she was sick. Then the Arab would come back with his doctor bag and try to cure her. She shivered at the thought.
It didn’t matter that she had no appetite. She had to choke down the sandwich.
Karen blinked.
The cheese and mayonnaise sandwich.
Mayonnaise.
—
IT WORKED. The mayonnaise held. The two pages passed the tug test. Cursing herself for wasting so much time with the paint, Karen pasted pages together into a single sheet. It was a rectangle, three pages wide by two pages deep. It should be enough. If only the key didn’t bounce sideways, or too far away from the door.
Karen knelt down and started to slide her makeshift sheet of paper under the door, just below the key.
The key turned in the lock!
Karen whisked the paper away from the door, thrust it under the mattress, and threw herself facedown on the cot.
The door opened and he came in. She snuck a peek. To her relief, it was the big man. He scowled at her uneaten mangled sandwich, but he didn’t say anything, he just picked up the plate and went out.
She waited a minute to make sure he was gone. Then she retrieved the paper from under the mattress. It was crushed and torn. All the pages were separated. And the big man had taken the sandwich, so there was no mayonnaise to fix it.
It wouldn’t have mattered.
He’d also taken the key.