Page 69 of Tell Me Why
In point of fact, no, but it wasn’t something hedid.
There was a knock on the door and he put a finger up, as though pausing an important conversation, and went to answer it. Tina stayed where she was. Only four people knew where they were, and she wasn’t much in a mood to talk to any of them.
A woman stood at the door, human, with a clothing rack behind her.
“Which way to the lady’s bedroom?” she asked, like this was a perfectly normal question.
“First door,” Tell answered, pointing.
“And the man’s,” a man said, following with a second clothing rack.
“Second door,” Tell said, pointing the same direction.
“Kitchen,” a man said, pulling a cart.
Tell just pointed. Tina shifted out of the way.
“The second elevator load will be right behind me,” the kitchen man said.
Tina blinked.
“Tell, what is this?” she asked.
“Isabella,” Tell answered. “Old-school hospitality.”
Tell stood with the door open as a man came through with a dolly, creatively laden with two extremely heavy metal panels.
“Is that…?” Tina asked.
“Yup,” Tell answered.
“You’re serious,” Tina said.
“It’s the best solution,” Tell said.
“That can’t be true,” Tina said.
“It is,” he said. “Believe me in this. We’ve been doing this for a long time.”
She tipped her head at him, and Tell winked.
“I’m going to go see if she included a swimsuit,” he said. “Just for the sake of decency.”
And with that, he left the front door open and walked away.
Tina sighed.
“I guess I will, too,” she said to no one in particular.
The coffin was a lot.
She had the strength to lift the top off of it, without a problem, but Tell helped her get settled, that first night, and closing the lid, even with the soft blue light that kept her from being in total darkness, felt like ending a story.
It wasn’tactuallya coffin.
It was designed to look like a coffee table or a desk, depending on how you set it up, and the inside of it was plush and actually reasonably comfortable, if you weren’t looking for a full-depth mattress. She could have brought two people into it with her, if she wanted, though Tina suspected that the average human would have a hard time lifting the lid back off. There was a door at the end that would be less-than-dignified to crawl outof, but it was just on a simple hinge, because the point wasn’t to keeppeoplein or out. It was about the light-power of the sun.
It had venting to keep from the foggy-eared air-tightness that she’d felt in the prison room, and the smells were organic and clean, rather than forced or stale.
