=22=

Satisfied, apparently, at least for the time being (and time being such how can anyone be truly said to be satisfied any other way?) that Neena will say nothing more, and having stretched beyond its breaking point a mortal silence of some unbearable duration, the man stands up, turns, and walks unhurriedly towards the reinforced steel door of the interview room.

He pauses, however, just before summoning the guard (is there a guard or is that just another obligatory cliché?), and, without turning back to the room, places his right hand over his heart, as if about to ask Neena something “in all sincerity,” or, perhaps, theatrically adopting the conceit of an actor on the classical stage, the heroic posturing of a Cicero addressing the Roman masses during a grandiloquent climactic passage, or some-such, but, mind you, suggestive only, for he neither turns from the door, nor does he speak, but after an interval of pensive suspense (seen by whom?), raps smartly on the door to signal to whomever may or may not wait on the other side that he wishes to exit the scene, post-haste.

We are left to ponder…perhaps it was a forgotten cell phone lodged in the inside breast pocket of his sports coat that, vibrating its silent, urgent signal over his heart like a dangerous tachycardia, demanded his urgent attention (a call from the Chief regarding another kidnapping? A call from his mistress, who happens to be the Chief’s mentally unstable wife?), or, indeed, it may be a very real and un-metaphoric ventricular fibrillation, an attack of a dangerous case of angina pectoris, symptomatic of an undiagnosed heart condition he carries with him in his chest like a slim silver filigreed cigarette case of plastic explosives. On the other hand, maybe it was only gas.

These are only a few of the possibilities that Neena, staring resolutely at the scarred table, mentally lays down  before her, one by one, patiently, as if dealing out a game of solitaire from an alien deck of cards that bears no discernible organizing symbolism whatsoever. 

And that is where we leave her, (or pretend to leave her, because as you can see, we’re all still here!) sitting alone, in the largely featureless and empty interrogation room, once again acutely aware, as she always is on some level, of all those who may be (and, indeed, are) watching.