“Ow,” Lula said, standing. “Ow, ow, ow.”
“You’re going to be the first one to lose a tongue,” Oswald said to Lula. “I’d cut it out now, but it leaves a mess.”
“That wouldn’t be good,” Lula said, “because I notice you keep your hidey-hole nice and neat. Even your dishes are clean in your dish rack. I bet your refrigerator has its jars all lined up and spotless. No ketchup smudges or anything. I’m surprised that you could tolerate all the blood involved in the throat slitting and tongue circumcision.”
“It was necessary,” he said. “I had to make a statement. I thought the tongue amputation was a nice touch. And while the blood is messy, the sight and feel of it is pleasant.”
“I would never have thought of that,” Lula said. “I bet you would have made a good butcher.”
I looked over at Oswald to see if he was going to kill Lula on the spot.
“I think you’re right,” he said, smiling. “I would have made a very good butcher.”
Lula walked into the middle of the bedroom and looked around. “There’s no furniture in here. How are we supposed to sit?”
“Not my problem,” Oswald said, stepping out of the room, closing and locking the door.
Lula went to the door and tried the handle. “Yep, it’s locked, all right.” She crossed the room and looked out the window. “There’s an alleyway down there and the building next to us looks worse than this one. The windows are dirty and some of them are broken. It looks abandoned.”
I looked out at the building. “Oswald said it was going to be torn down.”
Lula shimmied down a wall and sat against it. “Do you think Diesel will give up Melvin and Charlotte?”
“No. I think he’ll go to Ranger for help, and they’ll come in here like commandos.”
“That might get me blown up,” Lula said.
“Oswald plans to blow us up anyway. He wouldn’t have told us about the space station if he intended to trade us for Melvin and Charlotte. He wanted to vent and to brag and we were a safe audience.”
“It’s that damn freaking moon that did this to me,” Lula said. She looked down at the vest. “Do you think you can get me out of this?”
“I’d be afraid to try,” I said. “It looks complicated, and I don’t know anything about explosives.”
“This is depressing. I never got to do a hair correction. What are people going to think when they see me dead with bad hair?”
If Oswald detonated Lula’s vest there wasn’t going to be enough of her left to fill a jelly jar. I didn’t think she had to worry about her hair.
“I don’t suppose you have your cell phone on you,” I said to Lula.
“He took it,” Lula said. “How about you?”
“He took mine, too.”
A small bright spot in the whole ugly situation was that if Oswald didn’t disable my phone, Ranger could track it.
From time to time Oswald would check on us. He’d open the door a crack and peek in. This would last maybe ten seconds before he’d slam the door shut and lock it.
“What the heck is he doing out there?” Lula asked. “I don’t hear any sounds. We’ve been locked in this stupid room for hours.”
“I imagine he’s working. Finding the shortest route to crash the space station into something.”
* * *
It was beginning to get dark in our bedroom. The sky was overcast and the sun was setting. Not a lot of light was filtering in between the buildings. My peripheral vision caught a flash of motion at the window. I turned to see what had caught my attention and saw Melvin in a homemade harness, dangling on a rope, looking in at us. He was wearing a bike helmet with a GoPro camera attached and he looked terrified.
“Holy crap,” I whispered, and I made a motion to Lula not to say anything.
A second rope dropped down. It had a harness attached and Melvin pantomimed that it was for us.
Lula and I rushed to the window and tried to open it. I got the latch turned, but the window wouldn’t budge.
“It’s old and stuck,” Lula whispered. “It needs a good shove. On the count of three… one, two, three.”
We jammed our hands against the window frame, but it didn’t move.
Melvin had his feet and his hands against the window like Spider-Man. His eyes were wide, staring at Lula and the vest with the explosives attached.
“I can’t see any way of doing this except to break the window,” Lula said.