"I'll lead," she said. Meekly, he followed.
At the top of the steps she glanced round at him, and caught him dabbing sweat from his chin with his handkerchief. She waited until he caught up with her, and then led him halfway along the landing to the damp room.
The door had been left ajar.
"Come on in," she said.
He obeyed. Once inside it took him a few moments to become accustomed to the gloom, and a further time to give voice to his observation: "There's no bed."
She closed the door, and switched on the light. She had hung one of Rory's old jackets on the back of the door. In its pocket she'd left the knife.
He said again: "No bed."
"What's wrong with the floor?" she replied.
"The floor?"
"Take off your Jacket. You're warm."
"I am," he agreed, but did nothing, so she moved across to him, and began to slip the knot of his tie. He was trembling, poor lamb. Poor, bleatless lamb. While she removed the tie, he began to shrug off his jacket.
Was Frank watching this? she wondered. Her eyes strayed momentarily to the wall. Yes, she thought;
he's there. He sees. He knows. He licks his lips and grows impatient.
The lamb spoke. "Why don't you..." he began, "why don't you maybe...do the same?"
"Would you like to see me naked?" she teased. The words made his eyes gleam.
"Yes," he said thickly. "Yes. I'd like that."
"Very much?"
"Very much."
He was unbuttoning his shirt.
"Maybe you will," she said.
He gave her that dwarf smile again.
"Is it a game?" he ventured.
"If you want it to be," she said, and helped him out of his shirt. His body was pale and waxy, like a fungus. His upper chest was heavy, his belly too. She put her hands to his face. He kissed her fingertips.
"You're beautiful," he said, spitting the words out as though they'd been vexing him for hours.
"Am I?"
"You know you are. Lovely. Loveliest woman I ever set eyes on."
"That's gallant of you," she said, and turned back to the door. Behind her she heard his belt buckle clink, and the sound of cloth slipping over skin as he dropped his trousers.
So far and no farther, she thought. She had no wish to see him babe-naked. It was enough to have him like this-
She reached into the jacket pocket.
"Oh dear," the lamb suddenly said.
She let the knife lie. "What is it?" she asked, turning to look at him. If the ring on his finger hadn't already given his status away, she would have known him to be a married man by the underpants he wore: baggy and overwashed, an unflattering garment bought by a wife who had long since ceased to think of her husband in sexual terms.
"I think I need to empty my bladder," he said. "Too many whiskies."
She shrugged a small shrug, and turned back to the door.
"Won't be a moment," he said at her back. But her hand was in the jacket pocket before the words were out, and as he stepped towards the door, she turned on him, slaughtering knife in hand.
His pace was too quick to see the blade until the very last moment, and even then it was bemusement that crossed his face, not fear. It was a short-lived look. The knife was in him a moment after, slicing his belly with the ease of a blade in overripe cheese. She opened one cut, and then another.
As the blood started, she was certain the room flickered, the bricks and mortar trembling to see the spurts that flew from him.
She had a breath's length to admire the phenomena, no more, before the lamb let out a wheezing curse,
and-instead of moving out of the knife's range as she had anticipated-took a step toward her and knocked the weapon from her hand. It spun across the floorboards and collided with the skirting. Then he was upon her.
He put his hand into her hair and took a fistful. It seemed his intention was not violence but escape, for he relinquished his hold as soon as he'd pulled away from the door. She fell against the wall, looking up to see him wrestling with the door handle, his free hand clamped to his cuts.
She was quick now. Across to where the knife lay, up, and back toward him in one fluid motion. He had got the door open by inches, but not far enough. She brought the knife down in the middle of his pockmarked back. He yelled, and released the door handle. She was already drawing the knife out, and plunging into him a second time, and now a third and a fourth. Indeed she lost count of the wounds she made, her attack lent venom by his refusal to lie down and die. He stumbled around the room, grieving and complaining, blood following blood onto his buttocks and legs. Finally, after an age of this farcical stuff, he keeled over and hit the floor.
This time she was certain her senses did not deceive her. The room, or the spirit in it, responded with soft sighs of anticipation.
Somewhere, a bell was ringing...
Almost as an afterthought, she registered that the lamb had stopped breathing. She crossed the blood-spangled floor to where he lay, and said:
"Enough?"
Then she went to wash her face.
As she moved down the landing she heard the room groan-there was no other word for it. She stopped in her tracks, almost tempted to go back. But the blood was drying on her hands, and its stickiness revolted her.
In the bathroom she stripped off her flower-patterned blouse, and rinsed first her hands, then her speckled arms, and finally her neck. The dowsing both chilled and braced her. It felt good. That done, she washed the knife, rinsed the sink and returned along the landing without bothering to dry herself or to dress.
She had no need for either. The room was like a furnace, as the dead man's energies pulsed from his body. They didn't get far. Already the blood on the floor was crawling away toward the wall where Frank was, the beads seeming to boil and evaporate as they came within range of the skirting boards. She watched, entranced. But there was more. Something was happening to the corpse. It was being drained of every nutritious element, the body convulsing as its innards were sucked out, gases moaning in its bowels and throat, the skin dessicating in front of her startled eyes. At one point the plastic teeth dropped back into the gullet, the gums withered around them.
And in mere moments, it was done. Anything the body might have usefully offered by way of nourishment had been taken; the husk that remained would not have sustained a family of fleas. She was impressed.
Suddenly, the bulb began to flicker. She looked to the wall, expecting it to tremble and spit her lover from hiding. But no. The bulb went out. There was only the dim light that crept through the age-beaten
blind.
"Where are you?" she said.
The walls remained mute.
"Where are you?"
Still nothing. The room was cooling. Her breasts had grown gooseflesh. She peered down at the luminous watch on the lamb's shriveled arm. It ticked away, indifferent to the apocalypse that had overtaken its owner. It read 4:41. Rory would be back anytime after 5:15, depending on how dense the traffic was. She had work to do before then.
Bundling up the blue suit and the rest of his clothes, she put them in several plastic bags, and then went in search of a larger bag for the remains. She had expected Frank to be here to help her with this labor, but as he hadn't shown she had no choice but to do it herself. When she came back to the room, the deterioration of the lamb was still continuing, though now much slowed. Perhaps Frank was still finding nutriments to squeeze from the corpse, but she doubted it. More likely the pauperized body, sucked clean of marrow and every vital fluid, was no longer strong enough to support itself. When she had