Part 2

Julia carried Belle over to the bed. As she tried to put it down, one of its claws became entangled in her dress. The cat started to struggle as if finally awakened. Julia reached over for a pillow. Sweat stood out on her forehead. Her tears blinded her. She saw the mass of fur. She saw the softness. The claws were freed. She brought the pillow down over Belle.

Julia blacked out, sprawled across the pillow.

She couldn't have been out long. She pulled herself from the bed. The pillow was on the floor. Belle was gone.

Vassi's voice was in her head. "It worked! The anatomists are wild! I've never seen so much excitement!"

"Belle is all right?"

"Wonderful. It took them no time at all to revive her. The laboratory is a bedlam. Everyone wants to examine her."

"How should I do it? I'll never be able to suffocate myself." She laughed a little. "I can't even turn on the gas range. Mine is electric."

She looked around the apartment. If she slashed her wrists there would be too much blood. She hated blood. The thought of poison repelled her. Wait--she had it.

She pulled one of the sheets off the bed and twisted it. She pushed the overstuffed chair into the center of the room and stood on one of the arms to attach an end of the sheet to the ceiling fixture. At the other end she made a noose.

There was a knock on the door again.

"Julia, if you're not well, it's no good you should be alone," Mrs. Shultz said.

Julia slipped the noose over her head.

"Vassi, do you love me?"

"Of course. I just hope you'll love me."

Mrs. Shultz knocked hard. "Julia, I hear you talking. I know you're home. Let me in. I have some soup for you."

"Vassi, do you think I'm beautiful?"

"The most beautiful woman I have ever seen."

Mrs. Shultz pounded on the door. "Julia, why don't you answer me?"

As Julia stepped off the arm of the chair, she saw the open window. A thought crossed her mind before the noose tightened. Belle could have jumped out of the window when I passed out. _Julia, you're a realist!_

* * * * *

Mrs. Shultz put down the pot of soup and opened the door.

The apartment is called a single. It consists of a Murphy bed, a chest of drawers, an overstuffed chair, a sofa, a coffee table, a seventeen-inch television set, a bookcase partially filled with the volumes A through F of an encyclopedia from the supermarket, and assorted paperback books, and a radio that doesn't work. In the ceiling is a fixture with two twenty-five-watt bulbs. From the fixture hangs a twisted sheet with a hangman's knot in the end of it. The noose is quite empty. So is the apartment.