Free Caught by Lisa Moore

the weird material she was wearing that must be made of some reconstituted petroleum product. It had a shine that seeped and crept like a living thing over the ultra-white folds and wrinkles.
    She was looking up at him in the mirror. She had an ordinary face, her eyes protruded, and she was rosy-cheeked and had a dimple in her chin. He thought plain and then he thought beautiful. She was looking his way but she wasn’t thinking about him.
    I don’t know where everybody is, the bride said. She had turned from the mirror to look Slaney over again. She twisted a little travelling alarm clock so it faced her.
    I got a full hour of freedom left, she said. Then she folded the clock under the lid of the little black case to which it was attached and clicked it shut. Slaney heard the men enter his room. He’d packed his mother’s blue suitcase and pushed it under the bed.
    The bride had a cigarette going in a brown glass ashtray the size of a Frisbee. She picked up the cigarette and tapped it three times and put it down again without smoking it.
    Slaney could hear somebody running a bath in the room on the other side of the bride’s room. The water ran and ran, splashing and tumbling, and he heard the heel of a foot scrudge across the tub and then the water was turned off. The bride tilted her chin down to her chest and told Slaney to try again with the zipper.
    Hurry up, she told him. Let’s get this over with. Slaney stepped forward and gingerly lifted away layer after layer of veil until he found her naked back. Her spine. She arched away from his fingers.
    Cold hands, she said. She was talking about the idea of being married and starting a family young so that you wouldn’t be old when the kids grew up and moved out. How you could still have a life after they left. She knew she was young, she said, but you might as well start early and get it over with. She said she was a firm believer in if life put something in front of you it’s important to deal with it. She tossed her head up suddenly and eyed him in the mirror.
    You know what I’m saying. You’re the kind of guy deals with things, am I right?
    There was a knock on her door then and she called out she was getting dressed and to give her a minute.
    The cops had left Slaney’s room and come to hers, and they moved at her command to the next door with the guy in the bath. Slaney heard the pipes shudder as the man turned the water off and sloshed out of the tub to get the door. There was talk but he couldn’t make it out.
    The bride lowered her head again and Slaney swayed the veils out of the way. There was a dark brown freckle on her white back and he moved his thumb over the freckle without thinking. After a moment he said he agreed. He said it was important to deal with things as they came up. He said it was a pity.
    What, she said.
    That you can’t see what’s coming, he said. She snorted.
    Look at me, she said. Just look.
    What?
    Do you think I saw this coming? she said. She mentioned a flower girl, her little niece on the groom’s side, who was spoiled rotten and had done her best to ruin all the fun at the rehearsal. She would have enjoyed slapping the child as hard as she could, if the kid were hers, she said. But then she said that she would never end up with a kid like that.
    A bit of fabric was threaded through the head of the zipper on the right side. Slaney would have to pry the fabric free. He worked at it but his hands were shaking, knowing the cops would be back at the bride’s door in a minute. The metal teeth beneath the fabric were bunching against one another; one of the slots in the head of the zipper was jammed with two crooked teeth.
    She told him then that her father felt she was a disgrace.
    I’m afraid I’m going to tear it, he said.
    Is it not moving at all? she asked.
    It’s still stuck, he said.
    Don’t break it, she said. A broken zipper is all I need.
    Why won’t the bloody thing move? he asked. He flicked a loose curl over one