Rose Madder

II. THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS

She had a great many bad moments during the first weeks of her new life, but even at what was very nearly the worst of them all-getting off the bus at three in the morning and entering a terminal four times the size of Portside-she did not regret her decision. She was, however, terrified. Rosie stood just inside the doorway of Gate 62, clutching her handbag tightly in both hands and looking around with wide eyes as people rushed past in riptides, some dragging suitcases, some balancing string-tied cardboard boxes on their shoulders, some with their arms around the shoulders of their girlfriends or the waists of their boyfriends. As she watched, a man sprinted toward a woman who had just gotten off Rosie’s bus, seized her, and spun her around so violently that her feet left the ground. The woman crowed with delight and terror, her cry as bright as a flashgun in the crowded, confused terminal. There was a bank of video games to Rosie’s right, and although it was the darkest hour of the morning, kids-most with their baseball caps turned around backward and at least eighty per cent of their hair buzzed off-were bellied up to all of them.

“Try again, Space Cadet!” the one nearest to Rosie invited in a grinding, inhuman voice.

“Try again, Space Cadet! Try again, Space Cadet!” She walked slowly past the video games and into the terminal, sure of only one thing: she didn’t dare go out at this hour of the morning. She felt the chances were excellent that she would be raped, killed, and stuffed into the nearest garbage can if she did. She glanced left and saw a pair of uniformed policemen coming down the escalator from the upper level. One was twirling his nightstick in a complex pattern. The other was grinning in a hard, humorless way that made her think of a man eight hundred miles behind her. He grinned, but there was no grin in his constantly moving eyes. What if their job is to tour the place every hour or so and kick out everyone who doesn’t have a ticket? What will you do then? She’d handle that if it came up, that was what she’d do. For the time being she moved away from the escalator and toward an alcove where a dozen or so travelers were parked in hard plastic contour chairs. Small coin-op TVs were bolted to the arms of these chairs. Rosie kept an eye on the cops as she went and was relieved to see them move across the floor of the terminal and away from her. In two and a half hours, three at the most, it would be daylight. After that they could catch her and kick her out. Until then she wanted to stay right here, where there were lights and lots of people. She sat down in one of the TV chairs. Two seats away on her left, a girl wearing a faded denim jacket and holding a backpack on her lap was dozing. Her eyes rolled beneath her purple-tinged eyelids, and a long, silvery strand of saliva depended from her lower lip. Four words had been tattooed on the back of her right hand, straggling blue capitals that announced I LOVE MY HUNNEY. Where’s your honey now, sweetheart? Rosie thought. She looked at the blank screen of the TV, then at the tiled wall on her right. Here someone had scrawled the words SUCK MY AIDS-INFECTED COCK in red Magic Marker. She looked away hastily, as if the words would burn her retinas if she looked at them too long, and gazed across the terminal. On the far wall was a huge lighted clock. It was 3:16 a.m. Two and a half more hours and I can leave, she thought, and began to wait them through.

She’d had a cheeseburger and a lemonade when the bus made a rest-stop around six o’clock the previous evening, nothing since then, and she was hungry. She sat in the TV alcove until the hands of the big clock made it around to four, then decided she’d better get a bite. She crossed to the small cafeteria near the ticket windows, stepping over several sleeping people on her way. Many of them had their arms curled protectively around bulging, tape-mended plastic garbage bags, and by the time Rosie got coffee and juice and a bowl of Special K, she understood that she had been needlessly worried about being kicked out by the cops. These sleepers weren’t through-travelers; they were homeless people camping out in the bus terminal. Rosie felt sorry for them, but she also felt perversely comforted-it was good to know there would be a place for her tomorrow night, if she really needed one. And if he comes here, to this city, where do you think he’ll check first? What do you think will be his very first stop? That was silly-he wasn’t going to find her, there was absolutely no way he could find her-but the thought still sent a cold finger up her back, tracing the curve of her spine. The food made her feel better, stronger and more awake. When she had finished (lingering over her coffee until she saw the Chicano busboy looking at her with unconcealed impatience), she started slowly back to the TV alcove. On the way, she caught sight of a blue-and-white circle over a booth near the rental-car kiosks. The words bending their way around the circle’s blue outer stripe were TRAVELERS AID, and Rosie thought, not without a twinkle of humor, that if there had ever been a traveler in the history of the world who needed aid, it was her. She took a step toward the lighted circle. There was a man sitting inside the booth under it, she saw-a middle-aged guy with thinning hair and hornrimmed glasses. He was reading a newspaper. She took another step in his direction, then stopped again. She wasn’t really going over there, was she? What in God’s name would she tell him? That she had left her husband? That she had gone with nothing but her handbag, his ATM card, and the clothes she stood up in? Why not? Practical-Sensible asked, and the total lack of sympathy in her voice struck Rosie like a slap. If you had the guts to leave him in the first place, don’t you have the guts to own up to it? She didn’t know if she did or not, but she knew that telling a stranger the central fact of her life at four o’clock in the morning would be very difficult. And probably he’d just tell me to get lost, anyway. Probably his job is helping people to replace their lost tickets, or making lost-children announcements over the loudspeakers. But her feet started moving in the direction of the Travelers Aid booth just the same, and she understood that she did mean to speak to the stranger with the thinning hair and the hornrimmed glasses, and that she was going to do it for the simplest reason in the universe: she had no other choice. In the days ahead she would probably have to tell a lot of people that she had left her husband, that she had lived in a daze behind a closed door for fourteen years, that she had damned few life-skills and no work-skills at all, that she needed help, that she needed to depend on the kindness of strangers. But none of that is really my fault, is it? she thought, and her own calmness surprised her, almost stunned her. She came to the booth and put the hand not currently clutching the strap of her bag on the counter. She looked hopefully and fearfully down at the bent head of the man in the hornrimmed glasses, looking at his brown, freckled skull through the strands of hair laid across it in neat thin rows. She waited for him to look up, but he was absorbed in his paper, which was written in a foreign language that looked like either Greek or Russian. He carefully turned a page and frowned at a picture of two soccer players tussling over a ball.

“Excuse me?” she asked in a small voice, and the man in the booth raised his head. Please let his eyes be kind, she thought suddenly. Even if he can’t do anything, please let his eyes be kind… and let them see me, me, the real person who is standing here with nothing but the strap of this Kmart bag to hold onto. And, she saw, his eyes were kind. Weak and swimmy behind the thick lenses of his glasses… but kind.

“I’m sorry, but can you help me?” she asked.

The Travelers Aid volunteer introduced himself as Peter Slowik, and he listened to Rosie’s story in attentive silence. She told as much as she could, having already come to the conclusion that she could not depend on the kindness of strangers if she held what was true about her in reserve, out of either pride or shame. The only important thing she didn’t tell him-because she couldn’t think of a way to express it-was how unarmed she felt, how totally unprepared for the world. Until the last eighteen hours or so, she’d had no conception of how much of the world she knew only from TV, or from the daily paper her husband brought home.

'I understand that you left on the spur of the moment,” Mr Slowik said, “but while you were riding the bus did you have any ideas about what you should do or where you should go when you got here? Any ideas at all?”

“I thought I might be able to find a women’s hotel, to start with,” she said.

“Are there still such places?”

“Yes, at least three that I know of, but the cheapest has rates that would probably leave you broke in a week. They’re hotels for well-to-do ladies, for the most part-ladies who’ve come to spend a week in the city touring the shops, or visiting relatives who don’t have room to put them up.”

“Oh,” she said.

“Well, then, what about the YWCA?” Mr Slowik shook his head.

“They closed down the last of their boarding facilities in 1990. They were being overrun by crazy people and drug addicts.” She felt a touch of panic, then made herself think of the people who slept here on the floor, with their arms around their taped garbage bags of possessions. There’s always that, she thought. “do you have any ideas?” she asked. He looked at her for a moment, tapping his lower lip with the barrel of a ballpoint pen, a plain-faced little man with watery eyes who had nevertheless seen her and spoken to her-who hadn’t just told her to get lost. And, of course, he didn’t tell me to lean forward so he could talk to me up close, she thought. Slowik seemed to come to a decision. He opened his coat (an off-the-rack polyester that had seen better days), felt around in his inside pocket, and brought out a business card. On the side where his name and the Travelers Aid logo were displayed, he carefully printed an address. Then he turned the card over and signed the blank side, writing in letters that struck her as comically large. His oversized signature made her think of something her American History teacher had told her class back in high school, about why John Hancock had written his name in especially large letters on the Declaration of Independence. “so King George can read it without his spectacles,” Hancock was supposed to have said.

“Can you make out the address?” he asked, handing her the card.

“Yes,” she said.

“251 Durham Avenue.”

“Good. Put the card in your purse and don’t lose it. Someone will probably want a look at it when you get there. I’m sending you to a place called Daughters and Sisters. It’s a shelter for battered women. Rather unique. Based on your story, I’d say you qualify.”

“How long will they let me stay?” He shrugged.

“I believe that varies from case to case.” So that’s what I am now, she thought. A case. He seemed to read her thought, because he smiled. There was nothing very lovely about the teeth the smile revealed, but it looked honest enough. He patted her hand. It was a quick touch, awkward and a bit timid.

“If your husband beat you as badly as you say, Ms McClendon, you’ve bettered your situation wherever you end up.”

“Yes,” she said.

“I think so, too. And if all else fails, there’s always the floor here, isn’t there?” He looked taken aback.

“Oh, I don’t think it will come to that.”

“It might. It could.” She nodded at two of the homeless people, sleeping side by side on their spread coats at the end of a bench. One of them had a dirty orange cap pulled down over his face to block out the relentless light. Slowik looked at them for a moment, then back at her.

“It won’t come to that,” he repeated, this time sounding more sure of himself.

“The city buses stop right outside the main doors; turn to your left and you’ll see where. Various parts of the curb are painted to correspond with the various bus routes. You want an Orange Line bus, so you’ll stand on the orange part of the curb. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“It costs a buck, and the driver will want exact change. He’s apt to be impatient with you if you don’t have it.”

“I’ve got plenty of change.”

“Good. Get off at the corner of Dearborn and Elk, then walk up Elk two blocks… or maybe it’s three, I can’t remember for sure. Anyway, you’ll come to Durham Avenue. You’ll want to make a left. It’s about four blocks up, but they’re short blocks. A big white frame house. I’d tell you it looks like it needs to be painted, but they might have gotten around to that by now. Can you remember all that?”

“Yes.”

“One more thing. Stay in the bus terminal until it’s daylight. Don’t go out anywhere-not even to the city bus stop-until then.”

“I wasn’t planning to,” she said.

She had gotten only two or three hours” worth of broken sleep on the Continental Express which had brought her here, and so what happened after she stepped off the Orange Line bus really wasn’t surprising: she got lost. Rosie decided later that she must have started by going the wrong way on Elk Street, but the result-almost three hours of wandering in a strange neighborhood-was much more important than the reason. She trudged around block after block, looking for Durham Avenue and not finding it. Her feet hurt. Her lower back throbbed. She began to get a headache. And there were certainly no Peter Slowiks in this neighborhood; the faces which did not ignore her completely regarded her with mistrust, suspicion, or outright disdain. Not long after getting off the bus she passed a dirty, secretive-looking bar called The Wee Nip. The shades were down, the beer signs were dark, and a grate had been pulled across the door. When she came back to the same bar some twenty minutes later (not realizing she was re-covering ground she’d already walked until she saw it; the houses all looked the same), the shades were still down but the beer signs were on and the grate had been rolled back. A man in chino workclothes leaned in the doorway with a half-empty beer-stein in his hand. She looked at her watch and saw it was not quite six-thirty in the morning. Rosie lowered her head until she could see the man only from the corner of one eye, held the strap of her bag a little tighter, and walked a little faster. She guessed the man in the doorway would know where Durham Avenue was, but she had no intention of asking him for directions. He had the look of a guy who liked to talk to people-women, especially-up close.

“Hey baby hey baby,” he said as she passed The Wee Nip. His voice was absolutely uninflected, almost the voice of a robot. And although she didn’t want to look at him, she couldn’t help shooting a single terrified glance back at him over her shoulder. He had a receding hairline, pale skin on which a number of blemishes stood out like partially healed burns, and a dark red walrus moustache that made her think of David Crosby. There were little dots of beer-foam in it.

“Hey baby wanna get it on you don’t look too bad priddy good in fact nice tits whaddaya say wanna get it on do some low ridin wanna get it on wanna do the dog whaddaya say?” She turned away from him and forced herself to walk at a steady pace, her head now bent, like a Muslim woman on her way to market; forced herself not to acknowledge him further in any way. If she did that, he might come after her.

“Hey baby let’s put all four on the floor whaddaya say? Let’s get down let’s do the dog let’s get it on get it on get it on.” She turned the corner and let out a long breath that pulsed like a living thing with the frantic, frightened beat of her heart. Until that moment she hadn’t missed her old town or neighborhood in the slightest, but now her fear of the man in the bar doorway and her disorientation-why did all the houses have to look so much the same, why?-combined in a feeling that was close to homesickness. She had never felt so horribly alone, or so convinced that things were going to turn out badly. It occurred to her that perhaps she would never escape this nightmare, that perhaps this was just a preview of what the rest of her life was going to be like. She even began to speculate that there was no Durham Avenue; that Mr Slowik in Travelers Aid, who had seemed so nice, was actually a sadistic sicko who delighted in turning people who were already lost even further around. At quarter past eight by her watch-long after the sun had come up on what promised to be an unseasonably hot day-she approached a fat woman in a housedress who was at the foot of her driveway, loading empty garbage cans onto a dolly with slow, stylized movements. Rosie took off her sunglasses.

“Beg pardon?” The woman wheeled around at once. Her head was lowered and she wore the truculent expression of a lady who has frequently been called fatty-fatty-two-by-four from across the street or perhaps from passing cars.

“Whatchoo want?”

“I’m looking for 251 Durham Avenue,” Rosie said.

“It’s a place called Daughters and Sisters. I had directions, but I guess-”

“What, the welfare lesbians? You ast the wrong chicken, baby girl. I got no use for crack-snackers. Get lost. The fuck outta here.” With that she turned back to her dolly and began to push the rattling cans up the driveway in the same slow, ceremonial manner, holding them on with one plump white hand. Her buttocks jiggled freely beneath her faded housedress. When she reached the steps she turned and looked back at the sidewalk.

“Didn’t you hear me? Get the fuck outta here.”

“Fore I call the cops.” That last word felt like a sharp pinch in a sensitive place. Rosie put her sunglasses back on and walked quickly away. Cops? No thank you. She wanted nothing to do with the cops. Any cops. But after she had put a little distance between herself and the fat lady, Rosie realized she actually felt a little better. She had at least made sure that Daughters and Sisters (known in some quarters as the welfare lesbians) actually existed, and that was a step in the right direction. Two blocks farther down, she came to a mom-and-pop store with a bike rack in front and a sign reading OVEN-FRESH ROLLS in the window. She went in, bought a roll-it was still warm and made Rosie think of her mother-and asked the old man behind the counter if he could direct her to Durham Avenue.

“You come a little out of your way,” he said.

“Oh? How much?”

“Two mile or so. C'mere.” He settled a bony hand on her shoulder, led her back to the door, and pointed to a busy intersection only a block away.

“That there’s Dearborn Avenue.”

“Oh God, is it?” Rosie wasn’t sure if she needed to laugh or cry.

“Yessum. Only trouble with findin things by way of Big D is that she run mostway across the city. You see that shutdown movie tee-ayter?”

“Yes.”

“You want to turn right onto Dearborn there. You have to go sixteen-eighteen blocks. It’s a bit of a heel n toe. You’d best take the bus.”

“I suppose,” Rosie said, knowing she wouldn’t. Her quarters were gone, and if a bus driver gave her a hard time about breaking a dollar bill, she would burst into tears. (The thought that the man she was talking to would have happily given her change for a buck never crossed her tired, confused mind.)

“Eventually you’ll come to-”

“-Elk Street.” He gave her a look of exasperation.

“Lady! If you knew how to go, why’d you ask?”

“I didn’t know how to go,” she said, and although there had been nothing particularly unkind in the old man’s voice, she could feel the tears threatening.

“I don’t know anything! I’ve been wandering around for hours, I’m tired, and-”

“Okay, okay,” he said, “that’s all right, don’t get your water hot, you’ll be just fine. Get off the bus at Elk. Durham is just two or three blocks up. Easy as pie. You got a street address?” She nodded her head.

“All right, there you go,” he said. “should be no problem.”

“Thank you.” He pulled a wrinkled but clean handkerchief from his back pocket. He held it out to her with one gnarled hand.

“Wipe you face a li’l bit, dear,” he said.

“You leakin.”

She walked slowly up Dearborn Avenue, barely noticing the buses that snored past her, resting every block or two on bus stop benches. Her headache, which had come mostly from the stress of being lost, was gone, but her feet and back hurt worse than ever. It took her an hour to get to Elk Street. She turned right on it and asked the first person she saw-a pregnant young woman-if she was headed toward Durham Avenue.

“Buzz off,” the pregnant young woman said, her face so instantly wrathful that Rosie took two quick steps backward.

“I’m sorry,” Rosie said. “sorry, schmorry. Who ast you to speak to me in the first place, that’s what I’d like to know! Get outta my way!” And she pushed by Rosie so violently she almost knocked her into the gutter. Rosie watched her go with a kind of stupefied amazement, then turned and went on her way.

She walked more slowly than ever up Elk, a street of small shops-dry-cleaning establishments, florists, delis with fruit displays out front on the sidewalk, stationers. She was now so tired she didn’t know how long she would be able to remain on her feet, let alone keep walking. She felt a lift when she came to Durham Avenue, but it was only temporary. Had Mr Slowik told her to turn right or left on Durham? She couldn’t remember. She tried right and found the numbers going up from the mid-four hundreds.

“Par for the course,” she muttered, and turned around again. Ten minutes later she was standing in front of a very large white frame house (which was indeed in serious need of paint), three stories high and set back behind a big, well-kept lawn. The shades were pulled. There were wicker chairs on the porch, almost a dozen of them, but none was currently occupied. There was no sign reading Daughters and Sisters, but the street-number on the column to the left of the steps leading to the porch was 251. She made her way slowly up the flagged walk and then the steps, her bag now hanging at her side. They’re going to send you away, a voice whispered. They’ll send you away, then you can head on back to the bus station. You’ll want to get there early, so you can stake out a nice piece of floor. The doorbell had been covered over with layers of electrician’s tape, and the keyhole had been plugged with metal. To the left of the door was a keycard slot that looked brand-new, and an intercom box above it. Below the box was a small sign which read VISITORS PRESS AND SPEAK. Rosie pressed. In the course of her long morning’s tramp she had rehearsed several things she might say, several ways she might introduce herself, but now that she was actually here, even the least clever and most straightforward of her possible opening gambits had gone out of her head. Her mind was a total blank. She simply let go of the button and waited. The seconds passed, each one like a little chunk of lead. She was reaching for the button again when a woman’s voice came out of the speaker. It sounded tinny and emotionless.

“Can I help you?” Although the man with the moustache outside The Wee Nip had frightened her and the pregnant woman had amazed her, neither had made her cry. Now, at the sound of this voice, the tears came-there was nothing at all she could do to stop them.

“I hope someone can,” Rosie said, wiping at her cheeks with her free hand.

“I’m sorry, but I’m in the city all by myself, I don’t know anyone, and I need a place to stay. If you’re all full I understand, but could I at least come in and sit for awhile and maybe have a glass of water?” There was more silence. Rosie was reaching for the button again when the tinny voice asked who had sent her.

“The man in the Travelers Aid booth at the bus station. David Slowik.” She thought that over, then shook her head.

“No, that’s wrong. Peter. His name was Peter, not David.” “did he give you a business card?” the tinny voice asked.

“Yes.”

“Please find it.” She opened her purse and rummaged for what felt like hours. Just as fresh tears began to prick at her eyes and double her vision, she happened on the card. It had been hiding beneath a wad of Kleenex.

“I have it,” she said. “do you want me to put it through the letter-slot?”

“No,” the voice said.

“There’s a camera right over your head.” She looked up, startled. There was indeed a camera mounted over the door and looking down at her with its round black eye.

“Hold it up to the camera, please. Not the front but the back.” As she did so, she remembered the way Slowik had signed the business card, making his signature as large as he possibly could. Now she understood why.

“Okay,” the voice said.

“I’m going to buzz you inside.”

“Thanks,” Rosie said. She used the Kleenex to wipe at her cheeks but it did no good; she was crying harder than ever, and she couldn’t seem to stop.

That evening, as Norman Daniels lay on the sofa in his living room, looking up at the ceiling and already thinking of how he might begin the job of finding the bitch (a break, he thought, I need a break to start with, just a little one would probably be enough), his wife was being taken to meet Anna Stevenson. By then Rosie felt a strange but welcome calm-the sort of calm one might feel in a recognized dream. She half-believed she was dreaming. She had been given a late breakfast (or perhaps it had been an early lunch) and then taken to one of the downstairs bedrooms, where she had slept like a stone for six hours. Then, before being shown into Anna’s study, she had been fed again-roast chicken, mashed potatoes, peas. She had eaten guiltily but hugely, unable to shake the idea that it was non-caloric dreamfood she was stuffing herself with. She finished with a goblet of Jell-O in which bits of canned fruit floated like bugs in amber. She was aware that the other women at the table were looking at her, but their curiosity seemed friendly. They talked, but Rosie could not follow their conversations. Somebody mentioned the Indigo Girls, and she at least knew who they were-she had seen them once on Austin City Limits while waiting for Norman to come home from work. While they ate their Jell-O desserts, one of the women put on a Little Richard record and two other women danced the jitterbug, popping their hips and twirling. There was laughter and applause. Rosie looked at the dancers with a numb absence of interest, wondering if they were welfare lesbians. Later, when the table was cleared, Rosie tried to help but they wouldn’t let her.

“Come on,” one of the women said. Rosie thought her name was Consuelo. She had a wide, disfiguring scar under her left eye and down her left cheek.

“Anna wants to meet you.”

“Who’s Anna?”

“Anna Stevenson,” Consuelo said as she led Rosie down a short hall which opened off the kitchen.

“Boss-lady.”

“What’s she like?”

“You’ll see.” Consuelo opened the door of a room which had probably once been the pantry, but made no move to go in. The room was dominated by the most fabulously cluttered desk Rosie had ever seen. The woman who sat behind it was a bit stout but undeniably handsome. With her short but carefully dressed white hair, she reminded Rosie of Beatrice Arthur, who had played Maude on the old TV sitcom. The severe white blouse/black jumper combination accentuated the resemblance even further, and Rosie approached the desk timidly. She was more than half convinced that, now that she had been fed and allowed a few hours” sleep, she would be turned out onto the street again. She told herself not to argue or plead if that happened; it was their place, after all, and she was already two meals to the good. She wouldn’t have to stake out a piece of bus station floor, either, at least not yet-she still had money enough for several nights in a cheap hotel or motel. Things could be worse. A lot worse. She knew that was true, but the woman’s crisp demeanor and direct blue eyes-eyes that must have seen hundreds of Rosies come and go over the years-still intimidated her. “sit down,” Anna invited, and when Rosie was seated in the room’s only other chair (she had to remove a stack of papers from the seat and put them on the floor beside her-the nearest shelf was full), Anna introduced herself and then asked Rosie for her name.

“I guess it’s actually Rose Daniels,” she said, “but I’ve gone back to McClendon-my maiden name. I suppose that isn’t legal, but I don’t want to use my husband’s name anymore. He beat me, and so I left him.” She realized that sounded as if she’d left him the first time he’d done it and her hand went to her nose, which was still a little tender up where the bridge ended.

“We were married a long time before I got up the courage, though.”

“How long a time are we talking about?”

“Fourteen years.” Rosie discovered she could no longer meet Anna Stevenson’s direct blue gaze. She dropped her eyes to her hands, which were knotted so tightly together in her lap that the knuckles were white. Now she’ll ask why it took me so long to wake up, she thought. She won’t ask if maybe some sick part of me liked getting beaten up, but she’ll think it. Instead of asking why about anything, the woman asked how long Rosie had been gone. It was a question she found she had to consider carefully, and not just because she was now on Central Standard Time. The hours on the bus combined with the unaccustomed stretch of sleep in the middle of the day had disoriented her time-sense.

“About thirty-six hours,” she said after a bit of mental calculation.

“Give or take.”

“Uh-huh.” Rosie kept expecting forms which Anna would either hand to Rosie or start filling in herself, but the woman only went on looking at her over the strenuous topography of her desk. It was unnerving.

“Now tell me about it. Tell me everything.” Rosie drew a deep breath and told Anna about the drop of blood on the sheet. She didn’t want to give Anna the idea that she was so lazy-or so crazy-that she had left her husband of fourteen years because she didn’t want to change the bed-linen, but she was terribly afraid that was how it must sound. She wasn’t able to explain the complex feelings that spot had aroused in her, and she wasn’t able to admit to the anger she had felt-anger which had seemed simultaneously new and like an old friend-but she did tell Anna that she had rocked so hard she had been afraid she might break Pooh’s Chair.

“That’s what I call my rocker,” she said, blushing so hard that her cheeks felt as if they might be on the verge of smoking.

“I know it’s stupid-”

Anna Stevenson waved it off.

“What did you do after you made your mind up to go? Tell me that.” Rosie told her about the ATM card, and how she had been sure that Norman would have a hunch about what she was doing and either call or come home. She couldn’t bring herself to tell this severely handsome woman that she had been so scared she’d gone into someone’s back yard to pee, but she told about using the ATM card, and how much she’d drawn out, and how she’d come to this city because it seemed far enough away and the bus would be leaving soon. The words came out of her in bursts surrounded by periods of silence in which she tried to think of what to say next and contemplated with amazement and near-disbelief what she had done. She finished by telling Anna about how she’d gotten lost that morning, and showing her Peter Slowik’s card. Anna handed it back after a single quick glance. “do you know him very well?” Rosie asked.

“Mr Slowik?” Anna smiled-to Rosie it looked like it had a bitter edge.

“Oh yes,” she said.

“He is a friend of mine. An old friend. Indeed he is. And a friend of women like you, as well.”

“Anyway, I finally got here,” Rosie finished.

“I don’t know what comes next, but at least I got this far.” A ghost of a smile touched the corners of Anna Stevenson’s mouth.

“Yes. And made a good job of it, too.” Gathering all her remaining courage-the last thirty-six hours had taken a great deal of it-Rosie asked if she could spend the night at Daughters and Sisters.

“Quite a bit longer than that, if you need to,” Anna replied.

“Technically speaking, this is a shelter-a privately endowed halfway house. You can stay up to eight weeks, and even that is an arbitrary number. We are quite flexible here at Daughters and Sisters.” She preened slightly (and probably unconsciously) as she said this, and Rosie found herself remembering something she had learned about a thousand years ago, in French II: L” etat, c'est moi. Then the thought was swept away by amazement as she really realized what the woman was saying.

“Eight… eight…”

She thought of the pale young man who had been sitting outside the entrance to the Portside terminal, the one with the sign in his lap reading HOMELESS amp; HAVE AIDS, and suddenly knew how he would feel if a passing stranger for some reason dropped a hundred-dollar bill into his cigar-box.

“Pardon me, did you say up to eight weeks'?” Dig out your ears, little lady, Anna Stevenson would say briskly. Days, I said- eight days. Do you think we’d let the likes of you stay here for eight weeks? Let’s be sensible, shall we? Instead, Anna nodded.

“Although very few of the women who come to us end up having to stay so long. That’s a point of pride with us. And you’ll eventually pay for your room and board, although we like to think the prices here are very reasonable.” She smiled that brief, preening smile again.

“You should be aware that the accommodations are a long way from fancy. Most of the second floor has been turned into a dormitory. There are thirty beds-well, camp-beds-and one of them just happens to be vacant, which is why we are able to take you in. The room you slept in today belongs to one of the live-in counsellors. We have three.” “don’t you have to ask someone?” Rosie whispered.

“Put my name up before a committee, or something?”

“I’m the committee,” Anna replied, and Rosie later thought that it had probably been years since the woman had heard the faint arrogance in her own voice. “daughters and Sisters was set up by my parents, who were well-to-do. There’s a very helpful endowed trust. I choose who’s invited to stay, and who isn’t invited to stay… although the reactions of the other women to potential D and S candidates are important. Crucial, maybe. Their reaction to you was favorable.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?” Rosie asked faintly.

“Yes indeed.” Anna rummaged on her desk, moved documents, and finally found what she wanted behind the Power-Book computer sitting to her left. She flapped a sheet of paper with a blue Daughters and Sisters letterhead at Rosie.

“Here. Read this and sign it. Basically it says that you agree to pay sixteen dollars a night, room and board, payment to be deferred if necessary. It’s not even really legal; just “promise. We like it if you can pay half as you go, at least for awhile.”

“I can,” Rosie said.

“I still have some money. I don’t know how to thank you for this, Mrs Stevenson.”

“It’s Ms to my business associates and Anna to you,” she said, watching Rosie scribble her name on the bottom of the sheet.

“And you don’t need to thank me, or Peter Slowik, either. It was Providence that brought you here-Providence with a capital P, just like in a Charles Dickens novel. I really believe that. I’ve seen too many women crawl in here broken and walk out whole not to believe it. Peter is one of two dozen people in the city who refer women to me, but the force that brought you to him, Rose… that was Providence.”

“With a capital P.”

“Correct.” Anna glanced at Rosie’s signature, then placed the paper on a shelf to her right, where, Rosie felt sure, it would disappear into the general clutter before another twenty-four hours had passed.

“Now,” Anna said, speaking with the air of someone who has finished with the boring formalities and may now get down to what she really likes.

“What can you do?” “do?” Rosie echoed. She suddenly felt faint again. She knew what was coming.

“Yes, do, what can you do? Any shorthand skills, for instance?”

“I…”

She swallowed. She had taken Shorthand I and II back at Aubreyville High, and she had gotten A’s in both, but these days she wouldn’t know a pothook from a boathook. She shook her head.

“No. No shorthand. Once, but no more.”

“Any other secretarial skills?” She shook her head. Warm prickles stung at her eyes. She blinked them back savagely. The knuckles of her interlocked hands were gleaming white again.

“Clerical skills? Typing, maybe?”

“No.”

“Math? Accounting? Banking?”

“No!” Anna Stevenson happened on a pencil amid the heaps of paper, extracted it, and tapped the eraser end against her clean white teeth.

“Can you waitress?” Rosie desperately wanted to say yes, but she thought about the large trays waitresses had to balance all day long… and then she thought about her back and her kidneys.

“No,” she whispered. She was losing her battle with the tears; the little room and the woman on the other side of the desk began to blur and soften.

“Not yet, anyway. Maybe in a month or two. My back… right now it’s not strong.” And oh, it sounded like a lie. It was the kind of thing that, when he heard someone say it on TV, made Norman laugh cynically and talk about welfare Cadillacs and foodstamp millionaires. Anna Stevenson did not seem particularly perturbed, however.

“What skills do you have, Rose? Any at all?”

“Yes!” she said, appalled by the harsh, angry edge she heard in her voice but unable to make it go away or even mute it.

“Yes indeed! I can dust, I can wash dishes, I can make beds, I can vacuum the floor, I can cook meals for two, I can sleep with my husband once a week. And I can take a punch. That’s another skill I have. Do you suppose any of the local gyms have openings for sparring partners?” Then she did burst into tears. She wept into her cupped hands as she had so often during the years since she had married him, wept and waited for Anna to tell her to get out, that they could fill that empty cot upstairs with someone who wasn’t a smartass. Something bumped the back of her left hand. She lowered it and saw a box of Kleenex. Anna Stevenson was holding it out to her. And, incredibly, Anna Stevenson was smiling.

“I don’t think you’ll have to be anyone’s sparring partner,” she said.

“Things are going to work out for you, I think-they almost always do. Here, dry your eyes.” And, as Rosie dried them, Anna explained about the Whitestone Hotel, with which Daughters and Sisters had had a long and useful relationship. The Whitestone was owned by a corporation on whose board Anna’s well-to-do father had once sat, and a great many women had relearned the satisfactions of working for pay there. Anna told Rosie that she would have to work only as hard as her back allowed her to work, and that if her overall physical condition didn’t begin to improve in twenty-one days, she would be hauled off the job and taken to a hospital for tests.

“Also, you’ll be paired with a woman who knows the ropes. A sort of counsellor who lives here full time. She’ll teach you, and she’ll be responsible for you. If you steal something, it’ll be her who gets in trouble, not you… but you’re not a thief, are you?” Rosie shook her head.

“Just my husband’s bank card, that’s all, and I only used it once. To make sure I could get away.”

“You’ll work at the Whitestone until you find something that suits you better, as you almost certainly will-Providence, remember.”

“With a capital P.”

“Yes. While you’re at the Whitestone, we ask only that you do your best-in order to protect the jobs of all the women who’ll come after you, if for no other reason. Do you follow me?” Rosie nodded. “don’t spoil it for the next person.” “don’t spoil it for the next person, just so. It’s good to have you here, Rose McClendon.” Anna stood up and extended both hands in a gesture which held more than a little of the unconscious arrogance Rosie had already sensed in her. Rosie hesitated, then stood and took the offered hands. Now their fingers were linked above the clutter of the desk.

“I have three more things to tell you,” Anna said.

“They’re important, so I want you to clear your mind and listen carefully. Will you do that?”

“Yes,” Rosie said. She was fascinated by Anna Stevenson’s clear blue gaze.

“First, taking the bank card doesn’t make you a thief. That was your money as well as his. Second, there’s nothing illegal about resuming your maiden name-it will belong to you your whole life. Third, you can be free if you want to.” She paused, looking at Rosie with her remarkable blue eyes from above their clasped hands. “do you understand me? You can be free if you want to. Free of his hands, free of his ideas, free of him. Do you want that? To be free?”

“Yes,” Rosie said in a low, wavering voice.

“I want that more than anything in the world.” Anna Stevenson bent across the desk and kissed Rosie softly on the cheek. At the same time she squeezed Rosie’s hands.

“Then you’ve come to the right place. Welcome home, dear.”

It was early May, real spring, the time when a young man’s fancy is supposed to lightly turn to thoughts of love, a wonderful season and undoubtedly a great emotion, but Norman Daniels had other things on his mind. He had wanted a break, one little break, and now it had come. It had taken too long-almost three goddam weeks-but it had finally come. He sat on a park bench eight hundred miles from the place where his wife was currently changing hotel sheets, a big man in a red polo shirt and gray gabardine slacks. In one hand he held a fluorescent green tennis ball. The muscles of his forearm flexed rhythmically as he squeezed it. A second man came across the street, stood at the edge of the sidewalk looking into the park, then spotted the man on the bench and began walking toward him. He ducked as a Frisbee sailed close by, then stopped short as a large German Shepherd charged past him, chasing it. This second man was both younger and slighter than the man on the bench. He had a handsome, unreliable face and a tiny Errol Flynn moustache. He stopped in front of the man with the tennis ball in his right hand and looked at him uncertainly.

“Help you, bro?” the man with the tennis ball asked.

“Is your name Daniels?” The man with the tennis ball nodded that it was. The man with the Errol Flynn moustache pointed across the street at a new highrise loaded with glass and angles.

“Guy in there told me to come over here and see you. He said maybe you could help me with my problem.”

“Was it Lieutenant Morelli?” the man with the tennis ball asked.

“Yeah. That was his name.”

“And what problem do you have?”

“You know,” the man with the Errol Flynn moustache said.

“Tell you what, bro-maybe I do and maybe I don’t. Either way, I’m the man and you’re just a greasy little halfbreed cockgobbler with a very troubled life. I think you better tell me what I want to hear, don’t you? And what I want to hear right now is what kind of problem you’ve got. Say it right out loud.”

“I’m up on a dope charge,” the man with the Errol Flynn moustache said. He looked sullenly at Daniels. “sold an eightball to a narc.”

“Ooops,” the man with the tennis ball said.

“That’s a felony. It can be a felony, anyway. But it gets worse, doesn’t it? They found something of mine in your wallet, didn’t they?”

“Yeah. Your fuckin bank card. Just my luck. Find an ATM card in the trash, it belongs to a fuckin cop.” “sit down,” Daniels said genially, but when the man with the Errol Flynn moustache started to move to the right side of the bench, the cop shook his head impatiently.

“Other side, dickweed, other side.” The man with the moustache backtracked, then sat gingerly down on Daniels’s left side. He watched as the right hand squeezed the tennis ball in a steady, quick rhythm. Squeeze… squeeze… squeeze. Thick blue veins wriggled up the white underside of the cop’s arm like watersnakes. The Frisbee floated by. The two men watched the German Shepherd chase after, its long legs galloping like the legs of a horse.

“Beautiful dog,” Daniels said. “shepherds are beautiful dogs. I always like a Shepherd, don’t you?” “sure, great,” the man with the moustache said, although he actually thought the dog was butt-ugly and looked like it would happily chew you a new asshole if you gave it half a chance.

“We’ve got a lot to talk about,” the cop with the tennis ball said.

“In fact, I think this is going to be one of the most important conversations of your young life, my friend. Are you ready for that?” The man with the moustache swallowed past some sort of blockage in his throat and wished-for about the eight hundredth time that day-that he had gotten rid of the goddam bank card. Why hadn’t he? Why had he been such a total goddamned idiot? Except he knew why he had been such a total goddamned idiot-because he’d kept thinking that eventually he might figure out a way to use it. Because he was an optimist. This was America, after all, the Land of Opportunity. Also because (and this was a lot closer to the nub of the truth) he had sort of forgotten it was there in his wallet, tucked in behind a bunch of the business cards he was always picking up. Coke had that effect on you-it kept you running, but you couldn’t fuckin remember why you were running. The cop was looking at him, and he was smiling, but there was no smile in his eyes. The eyes looked… famished. All at once the man with the moustache felt like one of the three little pigs sitting on a park bench next to the big bad wolf.

“Listen, man, I never used your bank card. Let’s just get that up front. They told you that, didn’t they? I never fuckin used it once.”

“Of course you didn’t,” the cop said, half-laughing.

“You couldn’t get the pin-number. It’s based on my home phone number, and my number’s unlisted… like most cops.” But I bet you already know that, right? I bet you checked.”

“No!” the man with the moustache said.

“No, I didn’t!” He had, of course. He had checked the phone book after trying several different combinations of the street address on the card, and the zip-code, with no luck. He had punched ATM buttons all over the city at first. He had punched buttons until his fingers were sore and he felt like an asshole playing the world’s most miserly slot machine. “so what’s gonna happen when we check the computer runs on Merchant’s Bank ATM machines?” the cop asked.

“We’re not going to find my card in the CANCEL/RETRY column about a billion times? Hey, if we don’t, I’ll buy you a steak dinner. What do you think about that, bro?” The man with the moustache didn’t know what to think about it, or anything else. He was getting a very bad feeling. A bitch of a bad feeling. Meanwhile, the cop’s fingers went on working the tennis ball-in and out, in and out, in and out. It was creepy how he never stopped doing that.

“Your name’s Ramon Sanders,” the cop named Daniels said.

“You got a rap sheet long as my arm. Theft, con, dope, vice. Everything but assault, battery, crimes of that nature. No mixing it up for you, right? You fags don’t like getting hit, do you? Even the ones that look like Schwarzenegger. Oh, they don’t mind wearing a security tee-shirt and flexing their pecs for the limousines in front of some homo club, but if anyone actually starts hitting, you guys go flat in a hurry. Don’t you?” Ramon Sanders said nothing. It seemed by far the wisest course.

“I don’t mind hitting, “the cop named Daniels said.

“Kicking, either. Even biting.” He spoke almost reflectively. He seemed to be looking both at and beyond the German Shepherd, which was now trotting back in their direction with the Frisbee in its mouth.

“What do you think of that, angel eyes?” Ramon went on saying nothing, and he tried to keep a poker face, but a lot of little lights inside his head were turning red, and a dismaying tingle had begun to shake its way through his nerve-tree. His heart was picking up speed like a train leaving the station and heading into open country. He kept snatching little glances of the big man in the red polo shirt, and liking less and less what he saw. The guy’s right forearm was totally flexed now, veins fat with blood, muscles popped like freshly risen breadrolls. Daniels didn’t seem to mind Ramon’s failure to answer. The face he turned toward the smaller man was smiling… or appeared to be smiling, if you ignored the eyes. The eyes were as blank and shiny as two new quarters.

“I got good news for you, little hero. You can do the stroll on the dope charge. Give me a little help and you’re as free as a bird. Now what do you think about that?” What he thought was that he wanted to go right on keeping his mouth shut, but that no longer seemed like an option. This time the cop wasn’t just rolling on; this time he was waiting for an answer.

“That’s great,” Ramon said, hoping he was giving the right one.

“That’s great, really excellent, thanks for giving me a break.”

“Well, maybe I like you, Ramon,” the cop said, and then he did an astounding thing, something Ramon never would have expected from a screwhead ex-gyrene like this guy: he plopped his left hand into Ramon’s crotch and began giving him a rubdown, right out in front of God, the kids on the playground, and anybody who cared to take a look. He slid his hand in a gentle clockwise motion, his palm moving back and forth and up and down over the little patch of flesh which had more or less run Ramon’s life ever since two of his father’s buddies-men Ramon was supposed to call Uncle Bill and Uncle Carlo-had taken turns blowing him when he was nine years old. And what happened next was probably not very extraordinary, although it seemed very fucking bizarre right then: he began to get hard.

“Yeah, maybe I like you, maybe I like you a lot, greasy little cocksucker in shiny black pants and pointy shoes, what’s not to like?” The cop kept on giving his cock a shoeshine while he talked. He varied his stroke every now and then, applying a little squeeze that caused Ramon to gasp.

“And it’s a good thing I like you, Ramon, you better believe it, because they really nailed you this time. Felony bust. But you know what bothers me? Leffingwell and Brewster-the cops who busted you-were laughing in the squadroom this morning. They were laughing about you, and that was okay, but I also have this feeling that they were laughing about me, and that’s not okay. I don’t like for people to laugh about me, and I generally don’t put up with it. But this morning I had to, and this afternoon I’m going to be your best friend, I’m going to lose some pretty serious drug charges even though you had my fucking bank card. Can you guess why?” The Frisbee floated by again with the German Shepherd in close pursuit, but this time Ramon Sanders barely saw it. He was stiff as a railspike under the cop’s hand, and as scared as a mouse under the claws of a cat. The hand squeezed harder this time, and Ramon uttered a hoarse little howl. His cafe-au-lait skin was running with sweat; his moustache looked like a dead earthworm after a hard rain.

“Can you guess, Ramon?”

“No,” Ramon said.

“Because the woman who ditched the card was my wife,” Daniels said.

“That’s mostly why Leffingwell and Brewster were laughing, that’s my deduction. She takes my bank card, she uses it to draw a few hundred bucks out of the bank-money I earned-and when the card turns up again, it’s in the possession of a greasy little spick cocksucker named Ramon. No wonder they’re laughing.” Please, Ramon wanted to say, please don’t hurt me, I’ll tell you anything but please don’t hurt me. He wanted to say those things, but he couldn’t say a word. Not one. His asshole had contracted until it felt roughly the size of an inner-tube valve. The big cop leaned closer to him, close enough so that Ramon could smell cigarettes and Scotch on his breath.

“Now that I’ve shared with you, I want you to share with me.” The rubbing stopped, and strong fingers curled around Ramon’s testes through the thin fabric of his slacks. The shape of his erect penis was clear above the cop’s hand; it looked like one of those toy bats you could buy at a baseball park souvenir stand. Ramon could feel the strength in that hand.

“And you better share the right thing, Ramon. Do you know why?” Ramon shook his head numbly. He felt as if someone had turned on a warm water tap somewhere in his body and his entire skin was leaking. Daniels extended his right hand, the one with the tennis ball, until it was under Ramon’s nose. Then he closed his hand with a sudden, vicious snap. There was a pop and a brief harsh whisper-fwahhhh-as his fingers punched through the ball’s furry fluorescent skin. The ball collapsed inward, then turned halfway inside-out.

“I can do that with my left hand, too,” Daniels said. “do you believe that?” Ramon tried to say he did and found he still couldn’t talk. He nodded instead.

“Will you keep it in mind?” Ramon nodded again.

“Okeydoke. So now here’s what I want you to tell me, Ramon. I know you’re just a stinking little spick rump-wrangler who doesn’t know much about women, except maybe for fucking your mother up the ass in your younger years-you’ve just got that motherfucker look about you, somehow-but you go on and use your imagination. How do you think it feels to come home and find out that your wife, the woman who promised to love, honor, and fucking obey you-has run off with your bank card? How do you think it feels to find out she used it to pay for her fucking vacation, and then she stuffed it in a bus-terminal garbage can for a greasy little penis-vacuum like you to find?”

“Not too good,” Ramon whispered.

“I bet it don’t feel too good, please don’t hurt me, officer, please don’t-”

Daniels slowly tightened his hand; tightened it until the tendons in his wrist stood out like the strings on a guitar. A wave of pain, heavy as liquid lead, rolled into Ramon’s belly and he tried to scream. Nothing came out but a hoarse exhalation.

“Not too good?” Daniels whispered in his face. His breath was warm and steamy and boozy and cigarettey.

“Is that the best you can do? What a fucking numbnuts you are! Still… I guess it’s not an entirely wrong answer, either.” The hand loosened, but only a little. Ramon’s lower belly was a lake of agony, but his penis was as hard as ever. He had never been into pain, whatever drove the bondage freaks was totally beyond him, and he could only suppose he still had a hardon because the blood in his cock was trapped there by the heel of the cop’s hand. He swore to himself that if he got out of this alive, he would go directly to St Patrick’s and say fifty Hail Marys. Fifty? A hundred and fifty.

“They’re laughing at me in there,” the cop said, lifting his chin in the direction of the brand-new cop-shop across the street.

“They’re laughing all right, oh yeah. Big tough Norman Daniels, and guess what? His wife ran out on him… but she took time to clean out most of the ready before she went.” Daniels made an inarticulate growling sound, the sort of sound that a person should have to hear only while visiting the zoo, and gave Ramon’s balls another squeeze. The pain was unbearable. He leaned forward and vomited between his knees-white chunks of curd laced with brown streaks that was probably the remains of the quesadilla he’d eaten for lunch. Daniels did not seem to notice. He was gazing into the sky above the jungle gym, lost in his own world.

“I should let them dance you around so even more people can laugh?” he asked. “so that they can yuck it up at the courthouse as well as at the police station? I don’t think so.” He turned and looked into Ramon’s eyes. He smiled. The smile made Ramon want to scream.

“Here comes the big question,” the cop said.

“And if you lie, little hero, I’m going to rip your scrote off and feed it to you.” Daniels squeezed Ramon’s crotch again, and now folds of darkness began to fall across Ramon’s vision. He fought them desperately. If he passed out, the cop was apt to kill him just for spite. “do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes!” Ramon wept.

“I unnerstand! I unnerstand!”

“You were at the bus station and you saw her stick the card in the trash. That much I know. What I need to know is where she went next.” Ramon could have wept with relief because, although there was no reason why he should be able to answer this question, it just so happened he could. He had looked after the woman once to make sure she wasn’t looking back at him… and then, five minutes later, long after he had slid the green plastic card into his wallet, he had spotted her again. She had been hard to miss, with that red thing over her hair; it was as bright as the side of a freshly painted barn. “she was at the ticket-windows!” Ramon cried out of the darkness that was relentlessly enveloping him.

“At the windows!” This effort was rewarded by another ruthless squeeze. Ramon began to feel as if his balls had been torn open, doused with lighter fluid, and then set on fire.

“I know she was at the windows!” Daniels half-laughed, half-screamed at him.

“What else would she be doing at Portside if she wasn’t going someplace on a bus? Doing a sociological study on scumbuckets like you? Which ticket-window, that’s what I want to know-which fucking window and what fucking time?” And oh thank God, thank Jesus and Mother Mary, he knew the answers to both of those questions, too.

“Continental Express!” he cried, now separated from his own voice by what felt like miles.

“I seen her at the Continental Express window, ten-thirty, quarter of eleven!”

“Continental? You’re sure?” Ramon Sanders didn’t answer. He collapsed sideways on the bench, one hand dangling, slim fingers outstretched. His face was dead white except for two small purplish patches high on his cheeks. A young man and a young woman walked by, looked at the man lying on the bench, then looked at Daniels, who had by now removed his hand from Ramon’s crotch. “don’t worry,” Daniels said, giving the couple a large smile.

“He’s epileptic.” He paused and let his smile widen.

“I’ll take care of him. I’m a cop.” They walked on a little faster and didn’t look back. Daniels got an arm around Ramon’s shoulders. The bones in there felt as fragile as bird’s wings.

“Upsa-daisy, big boy,” he said, and hauled Ramon up to a sitting position. Ramon’s head lolled like the head of a flower on a broken stalk. He started to slide back down immediately,making little thick grunts in his throat. Daniels hauled him up again, and this time Ramon balanced. Daniels sat there beside him, watching the German Shepherd race joyfully after the Frisbee. He envied dogs, he really did. They had no responsibilities, no need to work-not in this country, anyhow-all food was provided for them, plus a place to sleep, and they didn’t even have to worry about heaven or hell when the ride was over. He had once asked Father O'Brian back in Aubreyville about that and Father had told him that pets had no souls- when they died they just winked out like Fourth of July sparklers. It was true that the Shep had probably lost his balls not even six months after he was born, but…

“But in a way that’s a blessing, too,” Daniels murmured. He patted Ramon’s crotch, where the penis was now deflating even as the testicles began to swell.

“Right, big boy?” Ramon muttered deep in his throat. It was the sound of a man having a terrible dream. Still, Daniels thought, what you got was what you got, and so you might as well be content with it. He might be lucky enough to be a German Shepherd in his next life, with nothing to do but chase Frisbees in the park and stick his head out the back window of the car on his way home to a nice big supper of Purina Dog Chow, but in this one he was a man, with a man’s problems. At least he was a man, unlike his little buddy. Continental Express. Ramon had seen her at the Continental Express ticket-window at ten-thirty or quarter to eleven, and she wouldn’t have waited long-she was too scared of him to wait for long, he’d bet his life on that. So he was looking for a bus that had left Portside between, say, eleven in the morning and one in the afternoon. Probably headed for a large city where she felt she could lose herself.

“But you can’t do that,” Daniels said. He watched the Shep jump and snatch the Frisbee out of the air with its long white teeth. No, she couldn’t do that. She might think she could, but she was wrong. He would work it on weekends to start with, mostly using the phone. He would have to do it that way; there was a lot going on at the company store, a big bust coming down (his bust, if he was lucky). But that was all right. He’d be ready to turn his full attention to Rose soon enough, and before long she was going to regret what she had done. Yes. She was going to regret it for the rest of her life, a period of time which might be short but which would be extremely… well…

“Extremely intense,” he said out loud, and yes-that was the right word. Exactly the right word. He got up and walked briskly back toward the street and the police station on the other side, not wasting a second glance on the semiconscious young man sitting on the bench with his head down and his hands laced limply together in his crotch. In Detective Inspector 2/Gr Norman Daniels’s mind, Ramon had ceased to exist. Daniels was thinking about his wife, and all the things she had to learn. About all the things they had to talk about. And they would talk about them, just as soon as he tracked her down. All sorts of things-ships and sails and sealing wax, not to mention what should happen to wives who promised to love, honor, and obey, and then took a powder their husbands” bank cards in their purses. All those things. They would talk about them up close.

She was making another bed, but this time it was all right. It was a different bed, in a different room, in a different city. Best of all, this was a bed she had never slept in and never would. A month had passed since she had left the house eight hundred miles east of here, and things were a lot better. Currently her worst problem was her back, and even that was getting better; she was sure of it. Right now the ache around her kidneys was strong and unpleasant, true enough, but this was her eighteenth room of the day, and when she’d begun at the Whitestone she had been close to fainting after a dozen rooms and unable to go on after fourteen-she’d had to ask Pam for help. Four weeks could make a hell of a difference in a person’s outlook, Rosie was discovering, especially if it was four weeks without any hard shots to the kidneys or the pit of the stomach. Still, for now it was enough. She went to the hall door, poked her head out, and looked in both directions. She saw nothing but a few room-service trays left over from breakfast, Pam’s trolley down by the Lake Michigan Suite at the end of the hall, and her own trolley out here in front of 624. Rosie lifted a pile of fresh washcloths stacked on the end of the trolley, exposing a banana. She took it, walked back across the room to the overstuffed chair by 624’s window, and sat down. She peeled the piece of fruit and began to eat it slowly, looking out at the lake, which glimmered like a mirror on this still, rainy afternoon in May. Her heart and mind were filled with a huge, simple emotion-gratitude. Her life wasn’t perfect, at least not yet, but it was better than she ever would have believed on that day in mid-April when she had stood on the porch of Daughters and Sisters, looking at the intercom box and the keyhole that had been filled with metal. At that moment, she had seen nothing in the future but darkness and misery. Now her kidneys hurt, and her feet hurt, and she was very aware that she did not want to spend the rest of her life as an off-the-books chambermaid in the Whitestone Hotel, but the banana tasted good and the chair felt wonderful beneath her. At that moment she would not have traded her place in the scheme of things for anyone’s. In the weeks since she had left Norman, Rosie had become exquisitely aware of small pleasures: reading for half an hour before bed, talking with some of the other women about movies or TV shows as they did the supper dishes together, or taking five minutes off to sit down and eat a banana. It was also wonderful to know what was coming next, and to feel sure it wasn’t going to include something sudden and painful. To know, for instance, that there were only two more rooms to go, and then she and Pam could go down in the service elevator and out the back door. On the way to the bus stop (she was now able to differentiate easily between Orange, Red, and Blue Line buses) they would probably pop into the Hot Pot for coffee. Simple things. Simple pleasures. The world could be good. She supposed she had known that as a child, but she had forgotten. Now she was learning it over again, and it was a sweet lesson. She didn’t have all she wanted, not by any means, but she had enough for now… especially since she didn’t know what the rest might be. That would have to wait until she was out of Daughters and Sisters, but she had a feeling she would be moving soon, probably the next time a room turned up vacant on what the residents at D amp; S called Anna’s List. A shadow fell across the open hotel doorway, and before she could even think where she might hide her half-eaten banana, let alone get to her feet, Pam poked her head in.

“Peek, baby,” she said, and giggled when Rosie jumped. “don’t ever do that, Pammy! You almost gave me a heart attack.”

“Aww, they’d never fire you for sitting down and eating a banana,” Pam said.

“You should see some of the stuff that goes on in this place. What have you got left, Twenty-two and Twenty?”

“Yes.”

“Want some help?”

“Oh, you don’t have to-”

“I don’t mind,” Pam said. “really. With two of us on the case, we can turn those two rooms in fifteen minutes. What do you say?”

“I say yes,” Rosie told her gratefully.

“And I’m buying at the Hot Pot after work-pie as well as coffee, if you want.” Pam grinned.

“If they’ve got any of that chocolate cream, I want, believe me.”

Good days-four weeks of good days, give or take. That night, as she lay on her camp-bed with her hands laced behind her head, looking into the darkness and listening to the woman who had come in the previous evening sobbing quietly two or three beds down on her left, Rosie thought that the days were mostly good for a negative reason: there was no Norman in them. She sensed, however, that it would soon take more than his absence to satisfy and fulfil her. Not quite yet, though, she thought, and closed her eyes. For now, what I’ve got is still plenty. These simple days of work, food, sleep… and no Norman Daniels. She began to drift, to come untethered from her conscious mind, and in her head Carole King once again started to sing the lullaby that sent her off to sleep most nights: I’m really Rosie… and I’m Rosie Real… you better believe me… I’m a great big deal… Then there was darkness, and a night-they were becoming more frequent-when there were no bad dreams.