=14=

How she steps up on the chair, a second straight-backed chair, identical to the chair upon which the man by the window is still sitting, a second chair borrowed, perhaps, from another room (agreed: unthinkable that there should be two such chairs in one room; but why is it unthinkable?), how she looks deliberately away from the fatal constellation of man-window-umbrella, and away from the door through which she will again pass alive, how she lifts the noose, surprisingly heavy in her graceful, manicured, pale and delicate hands, how she slips her head through the absolute zero of burly hemp, her hair worn in a formal up-do especially for the occasion, exposing a long, slender neck and the intricately marvelous pink pastry of her ears, from which dangle, by the way, elaborate rhinestone earrings rendered in noose designs (!); how the stray scratchy "pubic hairs" of the rough rope abrade and tickle the soft flesh at her throat and at the back of her neck, how she places her bare feet demurely together, ankle to bare ankle in preparation and how the man, in the meantime, having already risen from his chair and crossed the room, is now tying those feet together with a thin, shiny black cord like a shoelace, yes, in fact, it is a shoelace, a simple black shoelace from a man’s dress shoe, his own, let’s say, pulled free from the eyelets of his left shoe, and how, only earlier that day, Neena had her toes freshly pedicured and polished by a pretty Korean girl on Third Avenue to whom she purposely confided that she was having her nails especially done for her suicide that evening, and how the girl nodded and smiled quizzically, as Neena knew she would, having only just enough English to be uncertain whether or not she had heard Neena correctly—of all of this, let us say nothing. Let it also go without saying that the man must have prepared the room for this hanging in advance of this evening, equipping it with a hook bolted to a ceiling beam strong enough to hold the weight of Neena's body (115.5 pounds), this room modification certainly requiring the knowledge, if not the cooperation, paid or unpaid, of the building manager, the complicity, at the very least, of whoever would have been on duty at the time (Juanita’s theoretical husband, perhaps?) such modifications to the premises were made, for this person would also have been responsible for explaining, as "routine maintenance," the hammering and whatnot attendant upon the installation of this hook to anyone who might have complained.

As it is, the front desk has recorded no complaints from the guests who, for various reasons of their own, wish to keep a low-to-no profile. The matron sits peaceably at her post on a duct-taped vinyl stool, smoking a fresh cigarette, her attention divided three ways: listening to the television in the next room, wondering if the man on the third floor had “done it” yet, and planning her look of surprise when someone eventually comes upon yet another corpse in room 318.

[Pinker:  Please follow-up on the possible numerological significance of the room number in this passage—and, while you’re at it, all the other numerical values given in this account. I don’t hold truck with numerology or any of that pseudo mystic hoo-ha as you well know but others (including you) do and I concede such nonsense very often provides the only clues we have to go on, the only ones left behind by these criminal kooks (especially in fiction and have therefore come to be expected)—indeed, in some cases, the idiosyncratic patterns left behind by this obsessive voodoo-making are as good as it ever gets to an out-and-out explanation of these sorts of crimes, fanciful as these explanations are thereby destined to be. Damn, this idiotic business! Anyway, get on it ASAP, if you haven’t already. Start with divisors of three. Baby steps, at first. For crissakes, I don’t have to tell you what needs to be done. I sure as hell hope not! As the sneakers say, Just-Do-It.]