The thing at Elizabeth's feet lay motionless, its head covered with potting soil. She sat on the bed and stared at it a long time. It looked ridiculous, really.
She stood and walked carefully around it and into the bathroom. She peeled off the nightgown and, for the third time in just a few minutes, began to bathe her wounds.
She was almost out of Bacitracin.
She remembered that her mother had favored Mercurochrome.
She found an old, half-empty bottle in the medicine cabinet. The orange lines on her cheeks made her look like an Indian in war paint. There were teeth marks and scratches on her thighs, legs, breasts, and stomach. She dabbed them with Mercurochrome.
There were stripes all over her now.
She walked back into the living room. The body had not moved. Of course it hadn't. There were sounds coming from the Brauns' apartment next door but she barely registered them. She turned on the television. There was nothing but a lot of static. She turned it off again.
A dullness, a lethargy had settled in. As a dancer it was strange for her not to feel in touch with her body. But there was little sensation except for the throbbing of her wounds. Her arms felt weightless, the soles of her feet, numb. She realized she was naked.
Where had she left it? The nightgown?
She walked to the bathroom again and there it was on the floor. It was streaked with dry blood.
It wasn't what she wanted.
She'd get dressed instead.
She went to the closet and picked out a blue silk blouse and loose-fitting white linen pants. Soft against the wounds.
She put them on and thought, what next?
Everything tumbled in a gentle confusion.
She couldn't just sit there with that thing on the floor.
Her eyes kept returning to the window. Her thoughts seemed bound up in that cobalt sky. Dawn was arriving soon and the window beckoned.
The woman had come through the window.
She opened it an inch. She felt a cool breeze on her bare hands, felt it billow the blue silk blouse. Sensation. She opened it further, closed her eyes and let the breeze wash over her, felt it brush the skin of her throat and rustle her hair.
She heard screams from the street and simultaneously, laughter from the hallway. She slammed the window shut.
The woman had come through the window.
But if the woman had come in that way, couldn't she go out that way?
Sure she could. She could wait till dawn, look for a policeman or a man — any man — to walk by, then call out to him below through the window and climb out onto the tree and escape. She only had to wait.
She sat down on the bed, willing the sky to brighten. Soon, she thought. She glanced at the thing on the floor in the ruins of her room and thought how it had not moved and now neither would she. She smiled.
We're two of a kind, she thought.