"She said she wanted so sleep late, so we're not going to wake her."

"But..."

"Young man, you may be her boyfriend, but this is her house, and that was her birthday party last night, and it is her birthday today, and I am her mother. If she doesn't want to be disturbed then I am not going to let you disturb her."

That was at noon. I'd already been up four hours, wandering the small and inconsequential house, sitting in the living room with her parents and the incessant television, visiting her little office nook in the basement where we usually snuck off to make out, grabbing snacks from the kitchen to withering looks from her mother. Not quite as withering as when she'd found me asleep on the living room floor at eight o'clock, but I suspect she was glad I was this side of her daughter's locked bedroom door. Gladder than I was, I know that for sure. I'd tried to go in, found it locked, rattled the doorknob, gotten no answer, tried again at nine, ten, and eleven, which led finally to my frustrated request to her mother, from whom I got no relief or assistance.

At two in the afternoon, her mother, finally concerned for her daughter's health, had knocked on the door and called her name.

"Go away" I'd heard distinctly down the hall.

"She said..."

"Yes. I heard."

"She was quite..."

"Yes. I heard."

We'd sat in silence together in the living room watching soap operas for another few hours before I decided to take a walk. I walked around the block, considering my options. It was a long irregular block in what my girlfriend calls pseudo-suburbia, and therefore a long irregular walk, and I wasn't moving very quickly either.

"She came out," reported her mother when I got back to the house.

"Where is she?"

"Used the bathroom, came to the kitchen, said 'hi', grabbed a bunch of food and went back to her room."

"I thought you didn't want her eating in there!"

"It's her birthday. Are you staying for dinner?"

"Sure. I guess. My parents are out town anyway. Let me freshen up."

Standing outside the bathroom door which was directly opposite her bedroom door I could mostly hear the sound of her television, one of seven in the miniscule house. I thought about all my hopes and dreams for the future, my original plans for the day, which I'd thought had been "our" plans for the day, of spending her her birthday in my empty parentless house without interruption or adult supervision. Life is funny that way sometimes.

Her father cooked dinner, one of his giant Italian/German, Indian influenced combinations, sausages and pasta and potato salad with curry. I was stuffed and depressed and feeling sleepy. Her father and I retired to the living room couch to watch a hockey game and her mother wandered back to the bedroom to watch the soap operas she'd taped while watching her favorites live, or maybe it was the other way around, I'm never sure which.

I awoke around three in the morning, still on the couch, more than twenty-four hours since my girlfriend had disappeared, the house dark and quiet, except for a sliver of light from under the door and the sound of the beat of a stereo coming from my girlfriend's room.

Her father was asleep in his recliner, snoring, the television off, presumably at the hands of her mother asleep in her bed.

I rose and walked quietly down the hall, not that anybody would have heard me. If her parents could sleep through the noise coming out of their daughter's room they sure weren't going to be disturbed by my footsteps, and I knew for sure I wasn't going to be heard in my girlfriend's room.

I waited there, outside her door, from three until seven before going home to my own bed with my own thoughts, waited for her to come out again, which she never did, waited and listened to her stereo, and her screams and her cries and her moans and the grunts and the shouts of the guy who was in there with her, listened for four hours to my girlfriend being fucked and eaten silly.