The People in Room 3P

Abstract

From a distance of ten miles or so it looks like a museum. Built of light colored stone, it is barely distinguishable from the surrounding bone-white terrain, and as it wavers in the heat waves rising from the sand, one can't help but wonder whether it's a mirage. To the right, almost on the horizon, an other similar structure can be seen, isolated and silent and wavering like a flame, but it appears to be too far away to be visited. Standing in front of the building and tilting back one's head, one counts nine stories and notices that the shades at all the windows, inset and framed in stone, are down. The staircase leading up from the sand to the colonnade is of some size and the shallow steps provide the expected mild pleasure. Turning around at the top and looking back over the terrain one has crossed, one wonders how. . . . The front doors are a good thirty feet high and when pushed inward offer no more resistance than sheets hanging from a clothesline. One's footsteps echo with cinematic distinctness in the marble-walled lobby. The air is cooler here and one feels relieved to be in out of the sun. Occupying the center of the marble floor is a sign in a chrome stand depicting a drawing of a hand with its index finger pointing straight up. One walks past it to the broad interior staircase and starts climbing. On the third floor landing there is a sign similar to the first, though this time the index finger points in the direction of a wide hallway to the right. At intervals along the hallway are heavy-looking brass doors set in blond oak architraves. At the end of the hallway one turns right again and sees, roughly halfway down the corridor ahead, a third sign, this one pointing at a brass door on the right marked 3P. The frame around the door is dripping with what appears to be blood, or a good imitation, and to one side stands a wooden bookcase bearing a variety of odds and ends. Open ing the door and flipping on the light, it can be seen that room 3P, lacking a window and smelling of floor wax, is circular in shape and no bigger than a broom closet. Were its purpose to accommodate people, it could hold no