She closed and locked the door behind her, reveling in the silence. For he first time since she’d left her compartment in the train, she was alone with complete privacy. She was drunk on the new-apartment smell. She was nearly overwhelmed with the compulsion to strip off all her clothes and run n***d through the apartment giggling like a madwoman, feeling the tickle of plush carpeting between her bare toes, until she fell to the floor in a paroxysm of insane cackles.
Then her ankle throbbed, and she knew there’d be no running today. No, she told herself, this place was so big she might not find her way back to the entrance for days or weeks. And, unfortunately, there were still things to do.
The first thing she did was go to the one telephone handset plugged into the living room wall. Sh
