22

Ada drives the narrator in a grey van, carefully checking for tails before winding through side streets to a derelict brownstone mansion in Parkdale, now furnished apartments. The narrator, disoriented and hyperaware, notices the building’s “Carnarvon” arch and decayed surroundings.

Inside, Ada settles the narrator on a sofa with a duvet, trying to warm and calm her. The girl’s shock heightens detail and dread. When evening comes, Ada turns on the TV, showing the wreckage of The Clothes Hound and Melanie’s destroyed car. The narrator mutes the broadcast, unable to bear the commentary, and shuts it off.

Ada brings food—sandwich, apple, then birthday cake and ice cream—and ginger ale, trying to stabilize the narrator, who refuses most and is physically sick in the bathroom. The birthday candle underscores the rupture of normal life.

As city noises drift in, the narrator lies shivering while Ada moves briskly in the kitchen and speaks quietly on the phone, taking charge. The apartment door opens and closes in the distance, suggesting covert arrangements as the narrator yields to a passive, feverish state of being cared for and hidden.