And then it was like that for a long time, him at the table, thinking, and she and Lisa on the couch. The ice had all melted but she did not dare ask for more. Her sleeve was wet and the couch cushion between them was wet, too, and some of the wetness was blood. The moisture had soaked through her leggings but she did not try to move away from it. On the other side of the stain, Lisa sat motionless, so motionless that every so often Meredith cut her eyes toward her to make sure she was not unconscious.
The clock on the cable box was flashing 12:08, so she had no idea what time it really was. She was pretty sure that in a nearby apartment someone was watching TV, because although she couldn’t make out any voices, every once in a while there would be the canned murmur of a laugh track. But after a while even that seemed to stop and then it was only silent, as if no one else lived in these apartments, or no one else lived anywhere.
“I have to pee,” Lisa said.
“Do you?” he said.
“Yes,” she said flatly, no nasty comeback even on her radar judging from the tone of her voice.
“You sure?”
He was trying to pick a fight, Meredith saw. Maybe he missed the girl who had talked back to him.
“Yes.”
“Fine. Actually, yeah, fine. You want to go to the bathroom, why don’t you both go to the bathroom?” He stood and picked up the gun. “Both of you, in the bathroom. You go in there and you stay in there until I come for you. You got that? And I don’t want to hear a single word.”
They must have been sitting a long time because Meredith’s legs ached when she stood, maybe from tensing them for so long. She limped on her way to the bathroom.
“What’s wrong with you?” he asked. “Something wrong with you?”
“No,” she said softly.
“You sure?”
She had the feeling he would kill her if there were something wrong with her. “I’m sure,” she said.
He pushed them both into the tiny bathroom.
“Quiet,” he said. He put his finger to his lips. Then he closed the door. She could hear something being dragged in front of it. Something heavier than a chair. A trunk, maybe. An army trunk.
The bathroom had a tub and a toilet and a small basin but had not been designed to hold any actual people, much less two. There was about one square yard of floor space between the three appliances. Lisa peed while Meredith washed the blood from her hands. Then Lisa wetted a wad of toilet paper and wiped the blood from her face and her neck. They stood for a minute, awkwardly suspended in each other’s space, and then Meredith realized they could sit in the bathtub. She gestured to it with her head and then got in and sat down. Lisa climbed in quietly and sat down on the other side of the tub. It was a small tub and even sitting cross-legged their feet and knees touched. It was like they were on a small boat—no, not a boat, but a raft. They were bobbing in the water.
Then they heard his voice. At first Meredith thought there was actually someone else in the apartment, but after a few seconds she realized he was on the phone. She couldn’t hear what he was saying but she didn’t think he was ordering a pizza: there was a desperate whine to his voice that was clear even when the words were not. He was telling someone what he had done. He was calling to ask for help.
“Are you okay?” she whispered to Lisa, as quietly as she could, not a slumber party whisper or even a library whisper but more like a funeral whisper. Some of the words weren’t even words, just the movement of lips and eyes.
“I think so,” Lisa whispered back. “Just hurts.”
“Cold water?”
Lisa shook her head.
Out in the apartment the voice continued to rise and fall. Every so often a recognizable word or words: “she,” “tomorrow,” “Jason,” “I know!”
“Who do you think?” Lisa whispered.
Meredith shrugged. “Friend?”
“Girlfriend?”
Girlfriend. It was an encouraging thought, a wonderful-sounding word, in fact, a thousand times better than simply “friend.” He’d called someone for advice. And a girlfriend would definitely tell him to let the girls go, as soon as possible. A girlfriend would be, finally, a girl. One of them. “Jesus Christ,” she would say. “And now they’re in your bathroom? Seriously? What were you thinking?” She might worry about what would happen to him, but this too could work in their favor: “Let them go right now,” the girlfriend would say. “And then we’ll leave town. We’ll just clear out of here. We’ll go far away.”
A friend, a male friend, might have other ideas, ones that would not work in their favor. A male friend might make different kinds of suggestions. Maybe a male friend would even offer to help implement those suggestions. Suddenly it was very easy to divide the world in this way, even though Meredith knew it wasn’t fair to do this, not fair to her brother or her father or Steven Overbeck. Fair didn’t matter. The fact of the moment was this: everything depended on whether the person on the other end of the phone was male or female.
Lisa leaned forward. “Do you think he killed him?” she asked. Again, it was as much mouthing as speaking, the words just hints of words.
“Who?”
“Deli Barn. Do you think he killed him?”
Meredith leaned in so that their foreheads were almost touching. “He didn’t shoot him,” Meredith said. “No gunshot. So probably not.”
“He doesn’t look like he’d kill someone,” Lisa said. “He doesn’t look that bad.”
“He’s scared,” Meredith agreed. “He just wants it to be over. It’s easier if he lets us go.”
They quieted as they realized the talking out in the apartment had ceased. Had he hung up? Had he heard them whispering? Was he standing in the hall with his ear pressed to the door? It was impossible to tell. They both sat listening. What if he had left? How long before they should stand up?
“Hey.”
He was on the other side of the door. “You hear me? Say yes if you hear me.”
“Yes,” they both said.
“You’re gonna hear the door close. I’m just going out to my car. I’m not going to be more than fifty steps from you. If you scream, I’ll hear you. If you try to go through the window, I’ll see you. You got that?”
“Yes.”
His car. Why would he go to his car?
The apartment door closed, then locked.
“He’s gonna wipe it,” Lisa said, still whispering but with a little more sound behind it.
“What?”
“He’s gonna wipe it clean. Our fingerpints are all over it. That’s what the person on the phone was doing, telling him how to get rid of the evidence.”
“Maybe he’s going for cigarettes or something.”
Lisa frowned and leaned back. “Shit. My backpack’s in the car.”
“Mine, too.”
“I bet he’s throwing them in the Dumpster.”
Meredith thought of all her school books, of all the threats the teachers made at the beginning of the year about what would happen to you if you lost a book, how much money your parents would have to pay. Surely there were exceptions.
“What time do you think it is?” Lisa asked.
“I don’t know. Late.”
Lisa looked up at the ceiling.
“My mother probably doesn’t even know yet,” she said.
Meredith didn’t say anything. She didn’t know anything about Lisa Bellow’s mother or family or where she lived.
“She works till seven, and then she probably thought I was at somebody’s house. She might still think that. Would your parents know?”
“Know what?”