“Let me spare you some trouble. The phone lines and the Internet connections to this part of the building have been turned off. I understand these rooms were constructed with soundproofing and without windows for technical reasons. I expect that’s why there’s no cell phone reception. You’ll find a sack of groceries in the front closet and the plumbing is working just fine. If you get bored I suggest you turn on the television, which is working. On channel twelve you’ll find a live broadcast of John’s wedding to Caroline. I’m sure you won’t want to miss that.” She smiled broadly, and Angie was glad to see a smear of lipstick on one of her incisors. “Tomorrow morning, once they have left on their honeymoon, I’ll open the door.”

The screen went blank. Angie turned to John, who was wobbling on his feet. He looked vaguely green.

“Honeymoon?”

“Montreal,” he said.

“How elegant.” Angie said. “If you’re going to throw up, please don’t do it here.”

In the plastic cubicle that served as a shower, John stood for a half hour with his head bent until the last of the nausea left him. Then he wiped himself down with a fistful of paper towels, got back into clothes that deserved to be burned, and went to find Angie.

She was in the bigger editing room, working in front of a monitor. Her gaze shifted from the screen to the paper in front of her and back again, her pen moving steadily. Once in a while her left hand reached out to touch a control that stopped the flow of film, and then to start it again. For a few minutes John listened to Miss Zula talking to her sister about whether it was 1960 or 1961 that Martin Luther King Jr. had stopped in Ogilvie and preached a sermon, and then he called her name.

She looked up, startled and confused and irritated, and John felt his throat closing on all the things he had wanted to say to her. Instead something completely different came out.

“It’s half past ten,” he said. “Can I turn on the television?”

Angie looked at the set, suspended from a ceiling mount in the corner. “If you’re dead set on watching Caroline get stood up, be my guest.”