She couldnt actually see the coaster on which the glass stoodthe shelf cut it offbut she didnt have to see it to visualize the dark, spreading ring of moisture forming on it as those cool beads of condensate continued to trickle down the sides of the glass and pool around it at the bottom. Jessies tongue slipped out and swiped across her upper lip, not imparting much moisture. I want a drink! the scared, demanding voice of the childof somebodys sweet little Punkinyelled. I want it and I want it right... NOW! But she couldnt reach the glass. It was a clearcut case of so near and yet so far. Ruth Dont give up so easyif you could hit the goddam dog with an ashtray, tootsie, maybe you can get the glass. Maybe you can. Jessie raised her right hand again, straining as hard as her throbbing shoulder would allow, and still came up at least two and a half inches short. She swallowed, grimacing at the sandpapery jerk and clench of her throat. See? she asked. Are you happy now? Ruth didnt reply, but Goody did. She spoke up softly, almost apologetically, inside Jessies head. She said get it, not reach it. They... they might not be the same thing. Goody laughed in an embarrassed whoamItostickmyoarin way, and Jessie had a moment to think again how surpassingly odd it was to feel a part of yourself laughing like that, as if it really were an entirely separate entity. If I had a few more voices, Jessie thought, we could have a goddam bridge tournament in here. She looked at the glass a moment longer, then let herself flop back down on the pillows so she could study the underside of the shelf. It wasnt attached to the wall, she saw; it lay on four steel brackets that looked like upsidedown capital Ls. And the shelf wasnt attached to them, eithershe was sure of it. She remembered once when Gerald had been talking on the phone, and had absentmindedly attempted to lean on the shelf. Her end had started to come up, levitating like the end of a seesaw, and if Gerald hadnt snatched his hand away immediately, he would have flipped the shelf like a tiddlywink. The thought of the telephone distracted her for a moment, but only a moment. It sat on the low table in front of the east window, the one with its scenic view of the driveway and the Mercedes, and it might as well have been on another planet, for all the good it could do in her current situation. Her eyes returned to the underside of the shelf, first studying the plank itself and then scanning the Lshaped brackets again. When Gerald leaned on his end, her end had tilted. If she exerted enough pressure on her end to tilt his, the glass of water ... It might slide down, she said in a hoarse, musing voice. It might slide down to my end. Of course it might also go sliding gaily right past her to shatter on the floor, and it might bang into some unseen obstacle up there and overturn before it ever got to her, but it was worth trying, wasnt it? Sure, I guess so, she thought. I mean, I was planning to fly to New York in my Learjeteat at Four Seasons, dance the night away at Birdlandbut with Gerald dead I guess that would be a little tacky. And with all the good books currently out of reachall the bad ones, too, as far as that goesI guess I might as well try for the consolation prize. All right; how was she supposed to go about it? Very carefully, she said. Thats how. She used the handcuffs to pull herself up again and studied the glass some more. Not being able to actually see the surface of the shelf now struck her as a drawback. She had a pretty good idea of what was on her end, but was less sure about Geralds and the nomansland in the middle. Of course it wasnt surprising; who but someone with an eidetic memory could reel off a complete inventory of the items on a bedroom shelf? Who would have ever thought such things could matter? Well, they matter now. Im living in a world where all the perspectives have changed. Yes indeed. In this world a stray dog could be scarier than Freddy Krueger, the phone was in the Twilight Zone, the soughtfor desert oasis, goal of a thousand grizzled Foreign Legionnaires in a hundred desert romances, was a glass of water with a few last slivers of ice floating on top. In this new world order, the bedroom shelf had become a shipping lane as vital as the Panama Canal and an old paperback western or mystery in the wrong place could become a lethal roadblock. Dont you think youre exaggerating a little? she asked herself uneasily, but in truth she did not. This would be a longodds operation under the best of circumstances, but if there was junk on the runway, forget it. A single skinny Hercule Poirotor one of the Star Trek novels Gerald read and then dropped like used napkinswouldnt show above the angle of the shelf, but it would be more than enough to stop or overturn the waterglass. No, she wasnt exaggerating. The perspectives of this world really had changed, and enough to make her think of that science fiction movie where the hero started to shrink and went on getting smaller until he was living in his daughters dollhouse and going in fear of the family cat. She was going to learn the new rules in a hurry ... learn them and live by them. Dont lose your courage, Jessie, Ruths voice whispered. Dont worry, she said. Im going to tryI really am. But sometimes its good to know what youre up against. I think sometimes that makes a difference. She rotated her right wrist outward from her body as far as it would go, then raised her arm. In this position she looked like a womanshape in a line of Egyptian hieroglyphs. She began to patter her fingers on the shelf again, feeling for obstructions along the stretch where she hoped the glass would finish up. She touched a piece of fairly heavygauge paper and thumbed it for a moment, trying to think what it might be. Her first guess was a sheet from the notepad that usually hid in the clutter on the telephone table, but it wasnt thin enough for that. Her eye happened on a magazineeither Time or Newsweek, Gerald had brought both alonglying facedown beside the phone. She remembered him thumbing rapidly through one of the magazines while he took off his socks and unbuttoned his shirt. The piece of paper on the shelf was probably one of those annoying blowin subscription cards with which the newsstand copies of magazines are always loaded. Gerald often laid such cards aside for later use as bookmarks. It might be something else, but Jessie decided it didnt matter to her plans in any case. It wasnt solid enough to stop the glass or overturn it. There was nothing else up there, at least within reach of her stretching, wriggling fingers. Okay, Jessie said. Her heart had started to pound hard. Some sadistic pirate broadcaster in her mind tried to transmit a picture of the glass tumbling off the shelf and she immediately blocked the image out. Easy; easy does it. Slow and easy wins the race. I hope. Holding her right hand where it was, although bending it away from her body in that direction didnt work very well and hurt like the devil, Jessie raised her left hand (My ashtraythrowing hand, she thought with a grim glint of humor) and gripped the shelf with it well beyond the last supporting bracket on her side of the bed. Here we go, she thought, and began to exert downward pressure with her left hand. Nothing happened. Im probably pulling too close to that last bracket to get enough leverage. The problem is the goddam handcuff chain. I dont have enough slack to get as far out on the shelf as I need to be. Probably true, but the insight didnt change the fact that she wasnt doing a thing to the shelf with her left hand where it was. She would have to spider her fingers out a little fartherif she could, that wasand hope it would be enough. It was funnybook physics, simple but deadly. The irony was that she could reach under the shelf and push it up any time she liked. There was one small problem with that, howeverit would tip the glass the wrong way, off Geralds end and onto the floor. When you considered it closely, you saw that the situation really did have its amusing side; it was like an Americas Funniest Home Videos segment sent in from hell. Suddenly the wind dropped and the sounds from the entry seemed very loud. Are you enjoying him, shithead? Jessie screamed. Pain ripped at her throat, but she didntcouldntstop. I hope so, because the first thing Im going to do when I get out of these cuffs is blow your head off! Big talk, she thought. Very big talk for a woman who no longer even remembers if Geralds old shotgunthe one that belonged to his dadis here or in the attic of the Portland house. Nevertheless, there was a gratifying moment of silence from the shadowy world beyond the bedroom door. It was almost as if the dog were giving this threat its soberest, most thoughtful consideration. Then the smackings and chewings began again. Jessies right wrist twanged warningly, threatening to cramp up, warning her that she had better get on with her business right away ... if she actually had any business to do, that was. She leaned to the left and stretched her hand as far as the chain would allow. Then she began to put the pressure on the shelf again. At first there was nothing. She pulled harder, eyes slitted almost shut, the corners of her mouth turned down. It was the face of a child who expects a dose of bad medicine. And, just before she reached the maximum downward pressure her aching arm muscles could exert, she felt a tiny shift in the board, a change in the uniform drag of gravity so minute that it was more intuited than actually sensed. Wishful thinking, Jessthats all you felt. Only that and nothing more. No. It was the input of senses which had been jacked into the stratosphere by terror, perhaps, but it wasnt wishful thinking. She let go of the shelf and just lay there for a few moments, taking long slow breaths and letting her muscles recover. She didnt want them spasming or cramping up at the critical moment; she had quite enough problems without that, thanks. When she thought she felt as ready as she could feel, she curled her left fist loosely around the bedpost and slid it up and down until the sweat on her palm dried and the mahogany squeaked. Then she stretched out her arm and gripped the shelf again. It was time. Got to be careful, though. The shelf moved, no question about that, and itll move more, but its going to take all my strength to get that glass in motion... if I can do it at all, that is. And when a person gets near the end of their strength, control gets spotty. That was true, but it wasnt the kicker. The kicker was this she had no feel for the shelfs tippoint. Absolutely none at all. Jessie remembered seesawing with her sister Maddy on the playground behind Falmouth Grammar School they had come back early from the lake one summer and it seemed to her she had spent that whole August going up and down on those paintpeeling teeterboards with Maddy as her partnerand how they had been able to balance perfectly whenever they felt like it. All it took was for Maddy, who weighed a little more, to move a butts length in toward the middle. Long hot afternoons of practice, singing jumprope songs to each other as they went up and down, had enabled them to find each seesaws tippoint with an almost scientific exactitude; those half a dozen warped green boards standing in a row on the sizzling hottop had seemed almost like living things to them. She felt none of that eager liveliness under her fingers now. She would simply have to try her best and hope it was good enough. And whatever the Bible may say to the contrary, dont let your left hand forget what your right hand is supposed to be doing. Your left may be your ashtraythrowing hand, but your right had better be your glasscatching hand, Jessie. Theres only a few inches of shelf where youll have a chance to get hold of it. If it slides past that area, it wont matter if it stays upitll be as out of reach as it is right now. Jessie didnt think she could forget what her right hand was doingit hurt too much. Whether or not it would be able to do what she needed it to do was another question entirely, though. She increased the pressure on the left side of the shelf as steadily and as gradually as she could. A stinging drop of sweat ran into the corner of one eye and she blinked it away. Somewhere the back door was banging again, but it had joined the telephone in that other universe. Here there was only the glass, the shelf, and Jessie. Part of her expected the shelf to come up all at once like a brutal Jackinthebox, catapulting everything off, and she tried to steel herself against the possible disappointment. Worry about that if it happens, toots. In the meantime, dont lose your concentration. I think somethings happening. Something was. She could feel that minute shift againthat feel of the shelf starting to come unanchored at some point along Geralds side. This time Jessie didnt let up her pressure but increased it, the muscles in her upper left arm standing out in hard little arcs that trembled with strain. She voiced a series of small explosive grunts. That sense of the shelf coming unanchored grew steadily stronger. And suddenly the flat circular surface of the water in Geralds glass was a tilted plane and she heard the last slivers of ice chatter faintly as the right end of the board actually did come up. The glass itself did not move, however, and a horrible thought occurred to her what if some of the water trickling down the sides of the glass had seeped beneath the cardboard coaster on which it sat? What if it had formed a seal, bonding it to the shelf? No that cant happen. The words came out in a single whispered blurt, like a tired childs rote prayer. She pulled down harder on the left end of the shelf, using all her strength. Every last horse was now running in harness; the stable was empty. Please dont let it happen. Please. Geralds end of the shelf continued to rise, its end wavering wildly. A tube of Max Factor blush spilled off Jessies end and landed on the floor near the place where Geralds head had lain before the dog had come along and dragged him away from the bed. And now a new possibilitymore of a probability, actuallyoccurred to her. If she increased the angle of the shelf much more, it would simply slide down the line of Lbrackets, glass and all, like a toboggan going down a snowy hill. Thinking of the shelf as a seesaw could get her into trouble. It wasnt a seesaw; there was no central pivotpoint to which it was attached. Slide, you bastard! she screamed at the glass in a high, breathy voice. She had forgotten Gerald; had forgotten she was thirsty; had forgotten everything but the glass, now tilted at an angle so acute that water was almost slopping over the rim and she couldnt understand why it didnt simply fall over. It didnt, though; it just went on standing where it had stood all along, as if it had been glued to the spot. Slide! Suddenly it did. Its movement ran so counter to her black imaginings that she was almost unable to understand what was happening. Later it would occur to her that the adventure of the sliding glass suggested something less than admirable about her own mindset she had in some fashion or other been prepared for failure. It was success which left her shocked and gaping. The short, smooth journey of the glass down the shelf toward her right hand so stunned her that Jessie almost pulled harder with her left, a move that almost certainly would have overbalanced the precariously tilted shelf and sent it crashing to the floor. Then her fingers were actually touching the glass, and she screamed again. It was the wordless, delighted shriek of a woman who has just won the lottery. The shelf wavered, began to slip, then paused, as if it had a rudimentary mind of its own and was considering whether or not it really wanted to do this. Not much time, toots, Ruth warned. Grab the goddam thing while the grabbings good. Jessie tried, but the pads of her fingers only slid along the slick wet surface of the glass. There was nothing to grab, it seemed, and she couldnt get quite enough fingersurface on the thricedamned thing to grip. Water sloshed onto her hand, and now she sensed that even if the shelf held, the glass would soon tip over. Imagination, tootsjust the old idea that a sad little Punkin like you can never do anything right. That wasnt far from the markit was certainly too close for comfortbut it wasnt on the mark, not this time. The glass was getting ready to tip over, it really was, and she didnt have the slightest idea of what she could do to prevent that from happening. Why did she have to have such short, stubby, ugly fingers? Why? If only she could get them a little farther around the glass ... A nightmare image from some old TV commercial occurred to her a smiling woman in a fifties hairdo with a pair of blue rubber gloves on her hands. So flexible you can pick up a dime! the woman was screaming through her smile. Too bad you dont have a pair, little Punkin or Goodwife or whoever the hell you are! Maybe you could get that fucking glass before everything on the goddam shelf takes the express elevator! Jessie suddenly realized the smiling, screaming woman in the Playtex rubber gloves was her mother, and a dry sob escaped her. Dont give up, Jessie! Ruth yelled. Not yet! Youre close! I swear you are! She exerted the last tiny scrap of her strength on the left side of the shelf, praying incoherently that it wouldnt slidenot yet, Oh please God or whoever You are, please dont let it slide, not now, not yet. The board did slide ... but only a little. Then it held again, perhaps temporarily snagged on a splinter or balked by a warp in the wood. The glass slid a little farther into her hand, and nowcrazier and crazier it seemed to be talking, too, the goddam glass. It sounded like one of those grizzled bigcity cabdrivers who have a perpetual hardon against the world Jesus, lady, what else ya want me to do? Grow myself a goddam handle and turn into a fuckin pitcher forya? A fresh trickle of water fell on Jessies straining right hand. Now the glass would fall; now it was inevitable. In her mind she could already feel the freeze as icewater doused the back of her neck. No! She twisted her right shoulder a little farther, opened her fingers a little wider, let the glass slide a tiny bit deeper into the straining pocket of her hand. The cuff was digging into the back of that hand, sending jabs of pain all the way up to her elbow, but Jessie ignored them. The muscles of her left arm were twanging wildly now, and the shakes were communicating themselves to the tilted, unstable shelf. Another tube of makeup tumbled to the floor. The last few slivers of ice chimed faintly. Above the shelf, she could see the shadow of the glass on the wall. In the long sunset light it looked like a grain silo blown atilt by a strong prairie wind. More ... just a little bit more ... There is no more! There better be. Theres got to be. She stretched her right hand to its absolute tendoncreaking limit and felt the glass slide a tiny bit farther down the shelf. Then she closed her fingers again, praying it would finally be enough, because now there really was no moreshe had pushed her resources to their absolute limit. It almost wasnt; she could still feel the wet glass trying to squirm away. It had begun to seem like a live thing to her, a sentient being with a mean streak as wide as a turnpike passing lane. Its goal was to keep flirting toward her and then squirming away until her sanity broke and she lay here in the shadows of twilight, handcuffed and raving. Dont let it get away Jessie dont you dare DONT YOU DARE LET THAT FUCKING GLASS GET AWAY And although there was no more, not a single footpound of pressure, not a single quarterinch of stretch, she managed a little more anyway, turning her right wrist one final bit in toward the board. And this time when she curved her fingers around the glass, it remained motionless. I think maybe Ive got it. Not for sure, but maybe. Maybe. Or maybe it was just that she had finally gotten to the wishfulthinking part. She didnt care. Maybe this and maybe that and none of the maybes mattered anymore and that was actually a relief. The certainty was thisshe couldnt hold the shelf any longer. She had only tilted it three or four inches anyway, five at the most, but it felt as if she had bent down and picked up the whole house by one corner. That was the certainty. She thought, Everything is perspective... and the voices that describe the world to you, I suppose. They matter. The voices inside your head. With an incoherent prayer that the glass would remain in her hand when the shelf was no longer there to support it, she let go with her left hand. The shelf banged back onto its brackets, only slightly askew and shifted only an inch or two down to the left. The glass did stay in her hand, and now she could see the coaster. It clung to the bottom of the glass like a flying saucer. Please God dont let me drop it now. Dont let me dr A cramp knotted her left arm, making her jerk back against the headboard. Her face knotted as well, pinching inward until the lips were a white scar and the eyes were agonized slits. Wait, it will pass ... it will pass ... Yes, of course it would. Shed had enough muscle cramps in her life to know that, but in the meantime oh God it hurt. If she had been able to touch the biceps of her left arm with her right hand, she knew, the skin there would have felt as if it had been stretched over a number of small smooth stones and then sewn up again with cunning invisible thread. It didnt feel like a Charley horse; it felt like rigorfuckingmortis. No, just a Charley horse, Jessie. Like the one you had earlier. Wait it out, thats all. Wait it out and for Christs sweet sake dont drop that glass of water. She waited, and after an eternity or two, the muscles in her arm began to relax and the pain began to ease. Jessie breathed out a long harsh sigh of relief, then prepared to drink her reward. Drink, yes, Goody thought, but I think you owe yourself a little more than just a nice cool drink, my dear. Enjoy your reward... but enjoy it with dignity. No piggy gulping! Goody, you never change, she thought, but when she raised the glass, she did so with the stately calm of a guest at a court dinner, ignoring the alkali dryness along the roof of her mouth and the bitter pulse of thirst in her throat. Because you could put Goody down all you wantedshe practically begged for it sometimesbut behaving with a little dignity under these circumstances (especially under these circumstances) wasnt such a bad idea. She had worked for the water; why not take the time to honor herself by enjoying it? That first cold sip sliding over her lips and coiling across the hot rug of her tongue was going to taste like victory ... and after the run of lousy luck shed just been through, that would indeed be a taste to savor. Jessie brought the glass toward her mouth, concentrating on the wet sweetness just ahead, the drenching downpour. Her tastebuds cramped with anticipation, her toes curled, and she could feel a furious pulse beating beneath the angle of her jaw. She realized her nipples had hardened, as they sometimes did when she was turned on. Secrets of female sexuality you never dreamed of, Gerald, she thought. Handcuff me to the bedposts and nothing happens. Show me a glass of water, though, and I turn into a raving nympho. The thought made her smile and when the glass came to an abrupt halt still a foot away from her face, slopping water onto her bare thigh and making it ripple with gooseflesh, the smile stayed on at first. She felt nothing in those first few seconds but a species of stupid amazement and (?huh?) incomprehension. What was wrong? What could be wrong? You know what, one of the UFO voices said. It spoke with a calm certainty Jessie found dreadful. Yes, she supposed she did know, somewhere inside, but she didnt want to let that knowledge step into the spotlight which was her conscious mind. Some truths were simply too harsh to be acknowledged. Too unfair. Unfortunately, some truths were also selfevident. As Jessie gazed at the glass, her bloodshot, puffy eyes began to fill with horrified comprehension. The chain was the reason she wasnt getting her drink. The handcuff chain was just too fucking short. The fact had been so obvious that she had missed it completely. Jessie suddenly found herself remembering the night George Bush had been elected President. She and Gerald had been invited to a posh celebration party in the Hotel Sonestas rooftop restaurant. Senator William Cohen was the guest of honor, and the Presidentelect, Lonesome George himself, was expected to make a closedcircuit television call shortly before midnight. Gerald had hired a fogcolored limo for the occasion and it had pulled into their driveway at seven oclock, dead on time, but at ten past the hour she had still been sitting on the bed in her best black dress, rummaging through her jewelry box and cursing as she hunted for a special pair of gold earrings. Gerald had poked his head impatiently into the room to see what was holding her up, listened with that Why are you girls always so darned silly? expression that she absolutely hated on his face, then said he wasnt sure, but he thought she was wearing the ones she was looking for. She had been. It had made her feel small and stupid, a perfect justification for his patronizing expression. It had also made her feel like flying at him and knocking out his beautifully capped teeth with one of the sexy but exquisitely uncomfortable highheeled shoes she was wearing. What she had felt then was mild compared to what she was feeling now, however, and if anyone deserved getting their teeth knocked out, it was her. She thrust her head as far forward as she could, pooching her lips out like the heroine of some corny old blackandwhite romance movie. She got so close to the glass that she could see tiny sprays of airbubbles caught in the last few slivers of ice, close enough to actually smell the minerals in the wellwater (or to imagine she did), but she did not get quite close enough to drink from it. When she reached the point where she could simply stretch no farther, her puckered kissme lips were still a good four inches from the glass. It was almost enough, but almost, as Gerald (and her father as well, now that she thought about it) had been fond of saying, only counted in horseshoes. I dont believe it, she heard herself saying in her new hoarse ScotchandMarlboros voice. I just dont believe it. Anger suddenly woke inside her and screamed at her in Ruth Nearys voice to throw the glass across the room; if she could not drink from it, Ruths voice proclaimed harshly, she would punish it; if she could not satisfy her thirst with what was in it, she could at least satisfy her mind with the sound of it shattering to a thousand bits against the wall. Her grip on the glass tightened and the steel chain softened to a lax arc as she drew her hand back to do just that. Unfair! It was just so unfair! The voice which stopped her was the soft, tentative voice of Goodwife Burlingame. Maybe theres a way, Jessie. Dont give up yetmaybe theres still a way. Ruth made no verbal reply to this, but there was no mistaking her sneer of disbelief; it was as heavy as iron and as bitter as a squirt of lemonjuice. Ruth still wanted her to throw the glass. Nora Callighan would undoubtedly have said that Ruth was heavily invested in the concept of payback. Dont pay any attention to her, the Goodwife said. Her voice had lost its unusual tentative quality; it sounded almost excited now. Put it back on the shelf, Jessie. And what then? Ruth asked. What then, O Great White Guru, O Goddess of Tupperware and Patron Saint of the Church of ShopbyMail? Goody told her, and Ruths voice fell silent as Jessie and all the other voices inside her listened. 10 She put the glass back on the shelf carefully, taking care to make sure she didnt leave it hanging over the edge. Her tongue now felt like a piece of 5 sandpaper and her throat actually seemed infected with thirst. It reminded her of the way she had felt in the autumn of her tenth year, when a combined case of the flu and bronchitis had kept her out of school for a month and a half. There had been long nights during that siege when she had awakened from confused, jangling nightmares she couldnt remember (except you can Jessie you dreamed about the smoked glass; you dreamed about how the sun went out; you dreamed about the flat and tearful smell that was like minerals in wellwater; you dreamed about his hands) and she was drenched with sweat but felt too weak to reach for the pitcher of water on the bedtable. She remembered lying there, wet and sticky and feversmelling on the outside, parched and full of phantoms on the inside; lying there and thinking that her real disease was not bronchitis but thirst. Now, all these years later, she felt exactly the same way. Her mind kept trying to return to the horrible moment when she had realized she wasnt going to be able to bridge the last sliver of distance between the glass and her mouth. She kept seeing the tiny sprays of airbubbles in the melting ice, kept smelling the faint aroma of minerals trapped in the aquifer far beneath the lake. These images taunted her like an unreachable itch between the shoulderblades. Nevertheless, she made herself wait. The part of her that was Goody Burlingame said she needed to take some time in spite of the taunting images and her throbbing throat. She needed to wait for her heart to slow down, for her muscles to stop trembling, for her emotions to settle a bit. Outside, the last color was fading from the air; the world was going a solemn and melancholy gray. On the lake, the loon lifted its piercing cry into the evening gloom. Shut your yap, Mr. Loon, Jessie said, and chuckled. It sounded like a rusty hinge. All right, dear, the Goodwife said. I think its time to try. Before it gets dark. Better dry your hands again first, though. She cupped both hands around the bedposts this time, rubbing them up and down until they produced squeaks. She held up her right hand and wiggled it in front of her eyes. They laughed when I sat down at the piano, she thought. Then, carefully, she reached just beyond the place where the glass stood on the edge of the shelf. She began to patter her fingers along the wood again. The handcuff chinked against the side of the glass once and she froze, waiting for it to overturn. When it didnt, she resumed her cautious exploration. She had almost decided that what she was looking for had slid down the shelfor entirely off itwhen she finally touched the corner of the blowin card. She tweezed it between the first and second fingers of her right hand and brought it carefully up and away from the shelf and the glass. Jessie steadied her grip on the card with her thumb and looked at it curiously. It was bright purple, with noisemakers dancing tipsily along the upper edge. Confetti and streamers drifted down between the words. Newsweek was celebrating BIG BIG SAVINGS, the card announced, and it wanted her to join the party. Newsweeks writers would keep her up to date on world events, take her behind the scenes with world leaders, and offer her indepth coverage of arts, politics, and the sporting life. Although it did not come right out and say so, the card pretty much implied that Newsweek could help Jessie make sense of the entire cosmos.


Best of all, those lovable lunatics in Newsweeks subscription department were offering a deal so amazing it could make your urine steam and your head explode if she used THIS VERY CARD to subscribe to Newsweek for three years, she would get each issue AT LESS THAN HALF THE NEWSSTAND PRICE! And was money a problem? Absolutely not! She would be billed later. I wonder if they have Direct Bed Service for handcuffed ladies, Jessie thought. Maybe with George Will or Jane Bryant Quinn or one of those other pompous old poops to turn the pages for mehandcuffs make doing that so dreadfully difficult, you know. Yet below the sarcasm, she felt a species of odd nervous wonder, and she couldnt seem to stop studying the purple card with its letshaveaparty motif, its blanks for her name and address, and its little squares marked DiCl, MC, Visa, and AMEX. Ive been cursing these cards all my lifeespecially when I have to bend over and pick one of the damned things up or see myself as just another litterbugwithout ever guessing that my sanity, maybe even my life, might depend on one someday. Her life? Was that really possible? Did she actually have to admit such a horrid idea into her calculations after all? Jessie was reluctantly coming to believe that she did. She might be here for quite awhile before someone discovered her, and yes, she supposed it was just barely possible that the difference between life and death could come down to a single drink of water. The idea was surreal but it no longer seemed patently ridiculous. Same thing as before, dearslow and easy wins the race. Yes ... but who would ever have believed the finishline would turn out to be situated in such weird countryside? She did move slowly and carefully, however, and was relieved to discover that manipulating the blowin card onehanded was not as difficult as she had feared it might be. This was partly because it was about six inches by fouralmost the size of two playing cards laid side by sidebut mostly because she wasnt trying to do anything very tricky with it. She held the card lengthwise between her first and second fingers, then used her thumb to bend the last halfinch of the long side all the way down. The fold wasnt even, but she thought it would serve. Besides, nobody was going to come along and judge her work; Brownie Crafts Hour on Thursday nights at the First Methodist Church of Falmouth was long behind her now. She pinched the purple card firmly between her first two fingers again and folded over another halfinch. It took her almost three minutes and seven foldovers to get to the end of the card. When she finally did, she had something that looked like a bomber joint clumsily rolled in jaunty purple paper. Or, if you stretched your imagination a little, a straw. Jessie stuck it in her mouth, trying to hold the crooked folds together with her teeth. When she had it as firmly as she thought she was going to get it, she began feeling around for the glass again. Stay careful, Jessie. Dont spoil it all with impatience now! Thanks for the advice. Also for the idea. It was greatI really mean that. Now, however, Id like you to shut up long enough for me to take my shot. Okay? When her fingertips touched the smooth surface of the glass, she slid them around it with the gentleness and caution of a young lover slipping her hand into her boyfriends fly for the first time. Gripping the glass in its new position was a relatively simple matter. She brought it around and lifted it as far as the chain would allow. The last slivers of ice had melted, she saw; tempus had gone fugiting merrily along despite her feeling that it had stopped dead in its tracks around the time the dog had put in its first appearance. But she wouldnt think about the dog. In fact, she was going to work hard at believing that no dog had ever been here. Youre good at unhappening things, arent you, tootsiewootsie? Hey, RuthIm trying to keep a grip on myself as well as on the damned glass, in case you didnt notice. If playing a few mindgames helps me do that, I dont see what the big deal is. Just shut up for awhile, okay? Give it a rest and let me get on with my business. Ruth apparently had no intention of giving it a rest, however. Shut up! she marvelled. Boy, how that takes me backits better than a Beach Boys oldie on the radio. You always did give good shut up, Jessieremember that night in the dorm after we came back from your first and last consciousnessraising session at Neuworth? I dont want to remember, Ruth. Im sure you dont, so Ill remember for both of us, hows that for a deal? You kept saying it was the girl with the scars on her breasts that had upset you, only her and nothing more, and when I tried to tell you what youd said in the kitchenabout how you and your father had been alone at your place on Dark Score Lake when the sun went out in 1963, and how hed done something to youyou told me to shut up. When I wouldnt, you tried to slap me. When I still wouldnt, you grabbed your coat, ran out, and spent the night somewhere elseprobably in Susie Timmels little fleabag cabin down by the river, the one we used to call Susies Lez Hotel. By the end of the week, youd found some girls who had an apartment downtown and needed another roomie. Boom, as fast as that ... but then, you always moved fast when youd made up your mind, Jess, Ill give you that. And like I said, you always gave good shut up. Shu There! Whatd I tell you? Leave me alone! Im pretty familiar with that one, too. You know what hurt me the most, Jessie? It wasnt the trust thingI knew even then that it was nothing personal, that you felt you couldnt trust anyone with the story of what happened that day, including yourself. What hurt was knowing how close you came to spilling it all, there in the kitchen of the Neuworth Parsonage. We were sitting with our backs against the door and our arms around each other and you started to talk. You said, I could never tell, it would have killed my Mom, and even if it didnt, she would have left him and I loved him. We all loved him, we all needed him, they would have blamed me, and he didnt do anything, not really. I asked you who didnt do anything and it came out of you so fast it was like youd spent the last nine years waiting for someone to pop the question. My father, you said. We were at Dark Score Lake on the day the sun went out.  You would have told me the restI know you wouldbut that was when that dumb bitch came in and asked, Is she all right? As if you looked all right, you know what I mean? Jesus, sometimes I cant believe how dumb people can be. They ought to make it a law that you have to get a license, or at least a learners permit, before youre allowed to talk. Until you pass your Talkers Test, you should have to be a mute. It would solve a lot of problems. But thats not the way things are, and as soon as Hart Halls answer to Florence Nightingale came in, you closed up like a clam. There was nothing I could do to make you open up again, although God knows I tried. You should have just left me alone! Jessie returned. The glass of water was starting to shake in her hand, and the makeshift purple straw was trembling between her lips. You should have stopped meddling! It didnt concern you! Sometimes friends cant help their concern, Jessie, the voice inside said, and it was so full of kindness that Jessie was silenced. I looked it up, you know. I figured out what you must have been talking about and I looked it up. I didnt remember anything at all about an eclipse back in the early sixties, but of course I was in Florida at the time, and a lot more interested in snorkeling and the Delray lifeguardI had the most incredible crush on himthan I was in astronomical phenomena. I guess I wanted to make sure the whole thing wasnt some kind of crazy fantasy or somethingmaybe brought on by that girl with the horrible burns on her bazooms. It was no fantasy. There was a total solar eclipse in Maine, and your summer house on Dark Score Lake would have been right in the path of totality. July of 1963. Just a girl and her Dad, watching the eclipse. You wouldnt tell me what good old Dad did to you, but I knew two things, Jessie that he was your father, which was bad, and that you were tengoingoneleven, on the childhood rim of puberty ... and that was worse. Ruth, please stop. You couldnt have picked a worse time to start raking up all that old But Ruth would not be stopped. The Ruth who had once been Jessies roommate had always been determined to have her sayevery single word of itand the Ruth who was now Jessies headmate apparently hadnt changed a bit. The next thing I knew, you were living offcampus with three little Sorority Susiesprincesses in Aline jumpers and Ship n Shore blouses, each undoubtedly owning a set of those underpants with the days of the week sewn on them. I think you made a conscious decision to go into training for the Olympic Dusting and FloorWaxing Team right around then. You unhappened that night at the Neuworth Parsonage, you unhappened the tears and the hurt and the anger, you unhappened me. Oh, we still saw each other once in awhilesplit the occasional pizza and pitcher of Molsons down at Patsbut our friendship was really over, wasnt it? When it came down to a choice between me and what happened to you in July of 1963, you chose the eclipse. The glass of water was trembling harder. Why now, Ruth? she asked, unaware that she was actually mouthing the words in the darkening bedroom. Why now, thats what I want to knowgiven that in this incarnation youre really a part of me, why now? Why at the exact time when I can least afford being upset and distracted? The most obvious answer to that question was also the most unappetizing because there was an enemy inside, a sad, bad bitch who liked her just the way she washandcuffed, aching, thirsty, scared, and miserablejust fine. Who didnt want to see that condition alleviated in the slightest. Who would stoop to any dirty trick to see that it wasnt. The total solar eclipse lasted just over a minute that day, Jessie... except in your mind. In there, its still going on, isnt it? She closed her eyes and focused all her thought and will on steadying the glass in her hand. Now she spoke mentally to Ruths voice without selfconsciousness, as if she really were speaking to another person instead of to a part of her brain that had suddenly decided this was the right time to do a little work on herself, as Nora Callighan would have put it. Let me alone, Ruth. If you still want to discuss these things after Ive taken a stab at getting a drink, okay. But for now, will you please just shut the fuck up, she finished in a low whisper. Yes, Ruth replied at once. I know theres something or someone inside you, trying to throw dirt in the works, and I know it sometimes uses my voiceits a great ventriloquist, no doubt about thatbut its not me. I loved you then, and I love you now. That was why I kept trying to stay in touch as long as I did ... because I loved you. And, I suppose, because us highriding bitches have to stick together. Jessie smiled a little, or tried to, around the makeshift straw. Now go for it, Jessie, and go hard. Jessie waited for a moment, but there was nothing else. Ruth was gone, at least for the time being. She opened her eyes again, then slowly bent her head forward, the rolledup card jutting out of her mouth like FDRs cigarette holder. Please God, Im begging you ... let this work. Her makeshift straw slid into the water. Jessie closed her eyes and sucked. For a moment there was nothing, and clear despair rose up in her mind. Then water filled her mouth, cool and sweet and there, surprising her into a kind of ecstasy. She would have sobbed with gratitude if her mouth hadnt been so strenuously puckered around the end of the rolledup subscription card; as it was, she could make only a foggy hooting sound through her nose. She swallowed the water, feeling it coating her throat like liquid satin, and then began to suck again. She did this as ardently and as mindlessly as a hungry calf working at its mothers teat. Her straw was a long way from perfect, delivering only sips and slurps and rills instead of a steady stream, and most of what she was sucking into the tube was spilling out again from the imperfect seals and crooked folds. On some level she knew this, could hear water pattering to the coverlet like raindrops, but her grateful mind still fervently believed that her straw was one of the greatest inventions ever created by the mind of woman, and that this moment, this drink from her dead husbands waterglass, was the apogee of her life. Dont drink it all, Jesssave some for later. She didnt know which of her phantom companions had spoken this time, and it didnt matter. It was great advice, but so was telling an eighteenyearold boy halfmad with six months of heavy petting that it didnt matter if the girl was finally willing; if he didnt have a rubber, he should wait. Sometimes, she was discovering, it was impossible to take the minds advice, no matter how good it was. Sometimes the body simply rose up and slapped all that good advice aside. She was discovering something else, as wellgiving in to those simple physical needs could be an inexpressible relief. Jessie went on sucking through the rolledup card, tilting the glass to keep the surface of the water brimming over the far end of the soggy, misshapen purple thing, aware in some part of her mind that the card was leaking worse than ever and she was insane not to stop and wait for it to dry out again, but going on anyway. What finally stopped her was the realization that she was sucking nothing but air, and had been for several seconds. There was water left in Geralds glass, but the tip of her makeshift straw could no longer quite touch it. The coverlet beneath the rolledup blowin card was dark with moisture. I could get whats left, though. I could. If I could turn my hand a little farther in that unnatural backward direction when I needed to get hold of the miserable glass in the first place, I think I can stick my neck a little farther forward to get those last few sips of water. Think I can? I know I can. She did know it, and later on she would test the idea, but for now the whitecollar guys on the top floorthe ones with all the good viewshad once again wrested control away from the daylaborers and shop stewards who ran the machinery; the mutiny was over. Her thirst was a long way from being entirely slaked, but her throat had quit throbbing and she felt a lot better ... mentally as well as physically. Sharper in her thoughts and marginally brighter in her outlook. She found she was glad shed left that last little bit in the glass. Two sips of water through a leaky straw probably wouldnt spell the difference between remaining handcuffed to the bed and finding a way to wiggle out of this mess on her ownlet alone between life and deathbut getting those last couple of sips might occupy her mind when and if it tried to turn to its own morbid devices again. After all, night was coming, her husband was lying dead nearby, and it looked like she was camping out. Not a pretty picture, especially when you added the hungry stray who was camping out with her, but Jessie found she was growing sleepy again just the same. She tried to think of reasons to fight her growing drowsiness and couldnt come up with any good ones. Even the thought of waking up with her arms numb to the elbows didnt seem like a particularly big deal. She would simply move them around until the blood was flowing briskly again. It wouldnt be pleasant, but she had no doubt about her ability to do it. Also, you might have an idea while youre asleep, dear, Goodwife Burlingame said. That always happens in books. Maybe you will, Jessie said. After all, youve had the best one so far. She let herself lie down, using her shoulderblades to scrunch the pillow as far up against the head of the bed as she could. Her shoulders ached, her arms (especially the left one) throbbed, and her stomach muscles were still fluttering with the strain of holding her upper body far enough forward to drink through the straw ... but she felt strangely content, just the same. At peace with herself. Content? How can you feel content? Your husband is dead, after all, and you played a part in that, Jessie. And suppose you are found? Suppose you are rescued? Have you thought about how this situation is going to took to whoever finds you? How do you suppose its going to look to Constable Teagarden, as far as that goes? How long do you think it will take him to decide to call the State Police? Thirty seconds? Maybe forty? They think a little slower out here in the country, though, dont theyit might take him all of two minutes. She couldnt argue with any of that. It was true. Then how can you feel content, Jessie? How can you possibly feel content with things like that hanging over you? She didnt know, but she did. Her sense of tranquility was as deep as a featherbed on the night a March gale filled with sleet roars out of the northwest, and as warm as the goosedown comforter on that bed. She suspected that most of this feeling stemmed from causes which were purely physical if you were thirsty enough, it was apparently possible to get stoned on half a glass of water. But there was a mental side, as well. Ten years ago she had reluctantly given up her job as a substitute teacher, finally giving in to the pressure of Geralds persistent (or maybe relentless was the word she was actually looking for) logic. He was making almost a hundred thousand dollars a year by then; next to that, her five to seven grand looked pretty paltry. It was, in fact, an actual annoyance at tax time, when the IRS took most of it and then went sniffing over their financial records, wondering where the rest of it was. When she complained about their suspicious behavior, Gerald had looked at her with a mixture of love and exasperation. It wasnt quite his Why are you girls always so silly? expressionthat one didnt start to show up regularly for another five or six yearsbut it was close. They see what Im making, he told her, they see two large German cars in the garage, they look at the pictures of the place on the lake, and then they look at your tax forms and see youre working for what they think of as chump change. They cant believe itit looks phony to them, a cover for something elseand so they go snooping around, looking for whatever that something else might be. They dont know you like I do, thats all. She had been unable to explain to Gerald what the substitute contract meant to her ... or maybe it was that he had been unwilling to listen. Either way, it came to the same teaching, even on a parttime basis, filled her up in some important way, and Gerald didnt get that. Nor had he been able to get the fact that subbing formed a bridge to the life she had lived before shed met Gerald at that Republican mixer, when shed been a fulltime English teacher at Waterville High, a woman on her own who was working for a living, who was wellliked and respected by her colleagues, and who was beholden to no one. She had been unable to explain (or he had been unwilling to listen) how quitting teachingeven on that final parttime, piecework basismade her feel mournful and lost and somehow useless. That rudderless feelingprobably caused as much by her inability to catch pregnant as by her decision to return her contract unsignedhad departed from the surface of her mind after a year or so, but it had never entirely left the deeper ranges of her heart. She had sometimes felt like a clich to herselfyoung teacherlady weds successful lawyer whose name goes up on the door at the tender (professionally speaking, that is) age of thirty. This young (well, relatively young) woman eventually steps into the foyer of that puzzle palace known as middle age, looks around, and finds she is suddenly all aloneno job, no kids, and a husband who is almost completely focused (one wouldnt want to say fixated; that might be accurate, but it would also be unkind) on climbing that fabled ladder of success. This woman, suddenly faced with forty just beyond the next bend in the road, is exactly the sort of woman most likely to get in trouble with drugs, booze, or another man. A younger man, usually. None of that happened to this young (well ... previously young) woman, but Jessie still found herself with a scary amount of time on her handstime to garden, time to go malling, time to take classes (the painting, the pottery, the poetry ... and she could have had an affair with the man who taught the poetry if shed wanted to, and she had almost wanted to). There had also been time to do a little work on herself, which was how she had happened to meet Nora. Yet not one of those things had left her feeling the way she felt now, as though her weariness and aches were badges of valor and her sleepiness a justly won reward ... the handcuffed ladies version of Miller Time, you might say. Hey, Jessthe way you got that water really was pretty great. It was another UFO, but this time Jessie didnt mind. Just as long as Ruth didnt show up for awhile. Ruth was interesting, but she was also exhausting. A lot of people never would have even gotten the glass, her UFO fan continued, and using the blowin card for a straw ... that was a masterstroke. So go ahead and feel good. Its allowed. A little nap is allowed, too. But the dog, Goody said doubtfully. That dog isnt going to bother you one damned bit ... and you know why. Yes. The reason the dog wasnt going to bother her was lying nearby on the bedroom floor. Gerald was now nothing but a shadow among shadows, for which Jessie was grateful. Outside, the wind gusted again. The sound of it hissing through the pines was comforting, lulling. Jessie closed her eyes. But be careful what you dream! Goody called after her in sudden alarm, but her voice was distant and not terribly compelling. Still, it tried again Be careful what you dream, Jessie! Im serious! Yes, of course she was. The Goodwife was always serious, which meant she was also often tiresome. Whatever I dream, Jessie thought, it wont be that Im thirsty. I havent had many clear victories over the last ten yearsmostly one murky guerrilla engagement after anotherbut getting that drink of water was a clear win. Wasnt it? Yes, the UFO voice agreed. It was a vaguely masculine voice, and she found herself wondering in a sleepy way if perhaps it was the voice of her brother, Will ... Will as hed been as a child, back in the sixties. You bet it was. It was great. Five minutes later Jessie was sleeping deeply, arms up and splayed in a limp Vshape, wrists held loosely to the bedposts by the handcuffs, head lolling against her right shoulder (the less painful one), long, slow snores drifting from her mouth. And at some pointlong after dark had fallen and a white rind of moon had risen in the eastthe dog appeared in the doorway again. Like Jessie, it was calmer now that its most immediate need had been met and the clamor in its stomach had been stilled to some extent. It gazed at her for a long time with its good ear cocked and its muzzle up, trying to decide if she was really asleep or only pretending. It decided (mostly on the basis of smellthe sweat which was now drying, the total absence of the crackling ozone stink of adrenaline) that she was asleep. There would be no kicks or shouts this timenot if it was careful not to wake her up. The dog padded softly to the heap of meat in the middle of the floor. Although its hunger was now less, the meat actually smelled better. This was because its first meal had gone a long way toward breaking down the ancient, inbred taboo against this sort of meat, although the dog did not know this and wouldnt have cared if it did. It lowered its head, first sniffing the nowattractive aroma of dead lawyer with all the delicacy of a gourmet, then closing its teeth gently on Geralds lower lip. It pulled, applying pressure slowly, stretching the flesh further and further. Gerald began to look as if he were deep in some monstrous pout. The lip finally tore off, revealing his bottom teeth in a big dead grin. The dog swallowed this small delicacy in a single gulp, then licked its chops. Its tail began to wag again, this time moving in slow, contented sweeps. Two tiny spots of light danced on the ceiling high above; moonlight reflected from the fillings in two of Geralds lower molars. These fillings had been done only the week before, and they were still as fresh and shiny as newly minted quarters. The dog licked its chops a second time, looking lovingly at Gerald as it did so. Then it stretched its neck forward, almost exactly as Jessie had stretched hers in order to finally plop her straw into the glass. The dog sniffed Geralds face, but it did not just sniff; it allowed its nose to go on a kind of olfactory vacation there, first sampling the faint floorpolishy aroma of brown wax buried deep in the dead masters left ear, then the intermingled odors of sweat and Prell at the hairline, then the sharp, entrancingly bitter smell of clotted blood on the crown of Geralds head. It lingered especially long at Geralds nose, conducting a delicate investigation into those now tideless channels with its scratched, dirty, but ohsosensitive muzzle. Again there was that sense of gourmandizing, a feeling that the dog was choosing among many treasures. At last it sank its sharp teeth deeply into Geralds left cheek, clamped them together, and began to pull. On the bed, Jessies eyes had begun to move rapidly back and forth behind her lids and now she moaneda high, wavering sound, full of terror and recognition. The dog looked up at once, its body dropping into an instinctive cringe of guilt and fear. It didnt last long; already it had begun to see this pile of meat as its private larder, for which it would fightand perhaps dieif challenged. Besides, it was only the bitchmaster making that sound, and the dog was now quite sure that the bitchmaster was powerless. It dipped its head down, seized Gerald Burlingames cheek once more, and yanked backward, shaking its head briskly from side to side as it did so. A long strip of the dead mans cheek came free with a sound like strapping tape being pulled briskly off the dispenser roll. Gerald now wore the ferocious, predatory smile of a man who has just filled a straightflush in a highstakes poker game. Jessie moaned again. The sound was followed by a string of guttural, unintelligible sleeptalk. The dog glanced up at her once more. It was sure she couldnt get off the bed and bother it, but those sounds made it uneasy, just the same. The old taboo had faded, but it hadnt disappeared. Besides, its hunger was sated; what it was doing now wasnt eating but snacking. It turned and trotted out of the room again. Most of Geralds left cheek dangled from its mouth like the scalp of an infant. 11 It is August 14th, 1965a little over two years since the day the sun went out. It is Wills birthday; he has gone around all day solemnly telling people that he has now lived a year for each inning in a baseball game. Jessie is unable to understand why this seems like a big deal to her brother, but it clearly does, and she decides that if Will wants to compare his life to a baseball game, thats perfectly okay. For quite awhile everything that happens at her little brothers birthday party is perfectly okay. Marvin Gaye is on the recordplayer, true, but it is not the bad song, the dangerous song. I wouldnt be doggone, Marvin sings, mockthreatening, Id be long gone ... baybee. Actually sort of a cute song, and the truth is that the day has been a lot better than okay, at least so far; it has been, in the words of Jessies greataunt Katherine, finer than fiddlemusic. Even her Dad thinks so, although he wasnt very keen on coming back to Falmouth for Wills birthday when the idea was first suggested. Jessie has heard him say I guess it was a pretty good idea, after all to her Mom, and that makes her feel good, because it was sheJessie Mahout, daughter of Tom and Sally, sister of Will and Maddy, wife of nobodywho put the idea over. Shes the reason theyre here instead of inland, at Sunset Trails. Sunset Trails is the family camp (although after three generations of haphazard family expansion, it is really big enough to be called a compound) on the north end of Dark Score Lake. This year they have broken their customary nine weeks of seclusion there because Will wantsjust once, he has told his mother and father, speaking in the tones of a nobly suffering old grandee who knows he cannot cheat the reaper much longerto have a birthday party with his restoftheyear friends as well as his family. Tom Mahout vetoes the idea at first. He is a stock broker who divides his time between Portland and Boston, and for years he has told his family not to believe all that propaganda about how guys who go to work wearing ties and shirts with white collars spend their days goofing offeither hanging around the watercooler or dictating lunch invitations to pretty blondes from the steno pool. No hardscrabble spudfarmer in Aroostook County works any harder than I do, he frequently tells them. Keeping up with the market isnt easy, and it isnt particularly glamorous, either, no matter what you may have heard to the contrary.  The truth is none of them have heard anything to the contrary, all of them (his wife included, most likely, although Sally would never say so) think his job sounds duller than donkeyshit, and only Maddy has the vaguest idea of what it is he does. Tom insists that he needs that time on the lake to recover from the stresses of his job, and that his son will have plenty of birthdays with his friends later on. Will is turning nine, after all, not ninety. Plus, Tom adds, birthday parties with your pals really arent much fun until youre old enough to have a keg or two. So Wills request to have his birthday at the familys yearround home on the coast would probably have been denied if not for Jessies sudden, surprising support of the plan (and to Will its plenty surprising; Jessie is three years older and lots of times hes not sure she remembers she even has a brother). Following her initial softvoiced suggestion that maybe it would be fun to come homejust for two or three days, of courseand have a lawnparty, with croquet and badminton and a barbecue and Japanese lanterns that would come on at dusk, Tom begins to warm to the idea. He is the sort of man who thinks of himself as a strongwilled son of a bitch and is often thought of as a stubborn old goat by others; whichever way you saw it, he has always been a tough man to move once he has set his feet ... and his jaw. When it comes to moving himto changing his mindhis younger daughter has more luck than the rest of them put together. Jessie often finds a way into her fathers mind by means of some loophole or secret passage denied to the rest of the family. Sally believes with some justificationthat their middle child has always been Toms favorite and Tom has fooled himself into believing none of the others know. Maddy and Will see it in simpler terms they believe that Jessie sucks up to their father and that he in turn spoils her rotten. If Daddy caught Jessie smoking, Will told his older sister the year before, after Maddy had been grounded for that very offense, hed probably buy her a lighter. Maddy laughed, agreed, and hugged her brother. Neither they nor their mother has the slightest idea of the secret which lies between Tom Mahout and his younger daughter like a heap of rotting meat. Jessie herself believes she is just going along with her baby brothers requestthat shes sticking up for him. She has no idea, not on the surface of her mind, anyway, how much she has come to hate Sunset Trails and how eager she is to get away.


She has also come to hate the lake she once passionately lovedespecially its faint, flat mineral smell. By 1965 she can hardly bear to go swimming there, even on the hottest of days. She knows her mother thinks its her shapeJessie began to bud early, as Sally did herself, and at the age of twelve she has most of her womans figurebut its not her shape. Shes gotten used to that, and knows that shes a long way from being a Playboy pinup in either of her old, faded Jantzen tank suits. No, its not her breasts, not her hips, not her can. Its that smell. Whatever reasons and motives may be swirling around beneath, Will Mahouts request is finally approved by the Mahout familys head honcho. They made the trip back to the coast yesterday, leaving early enough for Sally (eagerly assisted by both daughters) to prepare for the party. And now its August 14th, and August 14th is surely the apotheosis of summer in Maine, a day of fadedbluedenim skies and fat white clouds, all of it freshened by a salttangy breeze. Inlandand that includes the Lakes District, where Sunset Trails has stood on the shore of Dark Score Lake since Tom Mahouts grandfather built the original cabin in 1923the woods and lakes and ponds and bogs lie sweltering under temperatures in the midnineties and humidity just below the saturation point, but here on the seacoast its only eighty. The seabreeze is an extra bonus, rendering the humidity negligible and sweeping away the mosquitoes and sandflies. The lawn is filled with children, mostly Wills friends but girls who chum with Maddy and Jessie as well, and for once, mirabile dictu, they all seem to be getting along. There hasnt been a single argument, and around five oclock, as Tom raises the first martini of the day to his lips, he glances at Jessie, who is standing nearby with her croquet mallet propped on her shoulder like a sentrys rifle (and who is clearly within earshot of what sounds like a casual husbandandwife conversation but which may actually be a shrewd bankshot compliment aimed at his daughter), then back at his wife. I guess it was actually a pretty good idea, after all, he says. Better than good, Jessie thinks. Absolutely great and totally monster, if you want to know the truth. Even that isnt what she really means, really thinks, but it would be dangerous to say the rest out loud; it would tempt the gods. What she really thinks is that the day is flawlessa sweet and perfect peach of a day. Even the song blasting out of Maddys portable record player (which Jessies big sister has cheerfully carted out to the patio for this occasion, although it is ordinarily the Great Untouchable Icon) is okay. Jessie is never really going to like Marvin Gayeno more than she is ever going to like that faint mineral smell which rises from the lake on hot summer afternoonsbut this song is okay. Ill be doggone if you aint a pretty thing... baybee silly, but not dangerous. It is August 14th, 1965, a day that was, a day that still is in the mind of a dreaming woman handcuffed to a bed in a house on the shore of a lake forty miles south of Dark Score (but with the same mineral smell, that nasty, evocative smell, on hot, still summer days), and although the twelveyearold girl she was doesnt see Will creeping up behind her as she bends over to address her croquet ball, turning her bottom into a target simply too tempting for a boy who has only lived one year for each inning in a baseball game to ignore, part of her mind knows he is there, and that this is the seam where the dream has been basted to the nightmare. She lines up her shot, concentrating on the wicket six feet away. A hard shot but not an impossible one, and if she drives the ball through, she may well catch Caroline after all. That would be nice, because Caroline almost always wins at croquet. Then, just as she draws her mallet back, the music coming from the recordplayer changes. Oww, listen everybody, Marvin Gaye sings, sounding a lot more than just mockthreatening to Jessie this time, especially you girls ... Chills of gooseflesh run up Jessies tanned arms. ... is it right to be left alone when the one you love is never home? . . . I love too hard, my friends sometimes say ... Her fingers go numb and she loses any sense of the mallet in her hands. Her wrists are tingling, as if bound by (stocks Goodys in the stocks come and see Goody in the stocks come and laugh at Goody in the stocks) unseen clamps, and her heart is suddenly full of dismay. It is the other song, the wrong song, the bad song. ... but I believe ... I believe ... that a woman should be loved that way ... She looks up at the little group of girls waiting for her to make her shot and sees that Caroline is gone. Standing there in her place is Nora Callighan. Her hair is in braids, theres a dab of white zinc on the tip of her nose, shes wearing Carolines yellow sneakers and Carolines locketthe one with the tiny picture of Paul McCartney inside itbut those are Noras green eyes, and they are looking at her with a deep adult compassion. Jessie suddenly remembers that Willundoubtedly egged on by his buddies, who are as jazzed up on Cokes and German chocolate cake as Will himselfis creeping up behind her, that he is preparing to goose her. She will overreact wildly when he does, swinging around and punching him in the mouth, perhaps not spoiling the party completely but certainly putting a ding in its sweet perfection. She tries to let go of the mallet, wanting to straighten and turn around before any of this can happen. She wants to change the past, but the past is heavytrying to do that, she discovers, is like trying to pick up the house by one corner so you can look under it for things that have been lost, or forgotten, or hidden. Behind her, someone has cranked the volume on Maddys little recordplayer and that terrible song blares louder than ever, triumphant and glittery and sadistic IT HURTS ME SO INSIDE... TO BE TREATED SO UNKIND... SOMEBODY, SOMEWHERE... TELL HER IT AINT FAIR ... She tries again to get rid of the malletto throw it awaybut she cant do it; its as if someone has handcuffed her to it. Nora! she cries. Nora, you have to help me! Stop him! (It was at this point in the dream that Jessie moaned for the first time, momentarily startling the dog back from Geralds body.) Nora shakes her head, slowly and gravely. I cant help you, Jessie. Youre on your ownwe all are. I generally dont tell my patients that, but I think in your case its best to be honest. You dont understand! I cant go through this again! I CANT! Oh, dont be so silly, Nora says, suddenly impatient. She begins to turn away, as if she can no longer bear the sight of Jessies upturned, frantic face. You will not die; its not poison. Jessie looks around wildly (although she remains unable to straighten up, to stop presenting that tempting target to her impending brother) and sees that her friend Tammy Hough is gone; standing there in Tammys white shorts and yellow halter is Ruth Neary. Shes holding Tammys redstriped croquet mallet in one hand and a Marlboro in the other. Her mouth is hooked up at the corners in her usual sardonic grin, but her eyes are grave and full of sorrow. Ruth, help me! Jessie shouts. You have to help me! Ruth takes a big drag on her cigarette, then grinds it into the grass with one of Tammy Houghs corksoled sandals. Jeeperscreepers, tootsiehes going to goose you, not stick a cattleprod up your ass. You know that as well as I do ; youve been through all this before. So whats the big deal? It isnt just a goose! It isnt, and you know it! The old hootyowl hootyhoos to the goose, Ruth says. What? What does that m It means how can I know anything about ANYTHING? Ruth shoots back. There is anger on the surface of her voice, deep hurt beneath. You wouldnt tell meyou wouldnt tell anybody. You ran away. You ran like a rabbit that sees the shadow of some old hootyowl on the grass. I COULDNT tell! Jessie shrieks. Now she can see a shadow on the grass beside her, as if Ruths words have conjured it up. It is not the shadow of an owl, however; it is the shadow of her brother. She can hear the stifled giggles of his friends, knows he is reaching out to do it, and still she cannot even straighten up, let alone move away. She is helpless to change what is going to happen, and she understands that this is the very essence of both nightmare and tragedy. I COULDNT! she shrieks at Ruth again. I couldnt, not ever! It would have killed my Mom ... or destroyed the family ... or both! He said! Daddy said! I hate to be the one to send you this particular newsflash, tootsiewootsie, but your dear old Dad will have been dead twelve years come December. Also, cant we dispense with at least a little of this melodrama? Its not as if he hung you from the clothesline by the nipples and then set you on fire, you know. But she doesnt want to hear this, doesnt want to considereven in a dreamany reappraisal of her buried past; once the dominos start to fall, who knows where it will all end? So she blocks her ears to what Ruth is saying and continues to fix her old college roommate with that deep, pleading stare that so often caused Ruth (whose toughcookie veneer was never more than frostingdeep, anyway) to laugh and give in, to do whatever it was Jessie wanted her to do. Ruth, you have to help me! You have to! But this time the pleading stare doesnt work. I dont think so, toots. The Sorority Susies are all gone, the time for shutting up is over, running away is out of the question, and waking up is not an option. This is the mystery train, Jessie. Youre the pussycat; Im the owl. Here we goall aboard. Fasten your seatbelt, and fasten it tight. This is an Eticket ride. No! But now, to Jessies horror, the day begins to darken. It could just be the sun going behind a cloud, but she knows it isnt. The sun is going out. Soon the stars will shine in a summer afternoon sky and the old hootyowl will hootyhoo to the dove. The time of the eclipse has come. No! she screams again. That was two years ago! Youre wrong on that one, toots, Ruth Neary says. For you it never ended. For you the sun never came back out. She opens her mouth to deny that, to tell Ruth shes as guilty of wild overdramatization as Nora, who kept shoving her toward doors she didnt want to open, who kept assuring her that the present can be improved by examining the pastas if one could improve the taste of todays dinner by slathering it with the maggoty remains of yesterdays. She wants to tell Ruth, as she told Nora on the day she walked out of Noras office for good, that there is a big difference between living with something and being kept prisoner by it. Dont you two goofs understand that the Cult of Self is just another cult? she wants to say, but before she can do more than open her mouth, the invasion comes a hand between her slightly spread legs, the thumb shoving rudely at the cleft of her buttocks, the fingers pressed against the material of her shorts just above her vagina, and it is not her brothers innocent little hand this time; the hand between her legs is much bigger than Wills and not a bit innocent. The bad song is on the radio, the stars are out at three oclock in the afternoon, and this (you will not die its not poison) is how the big people goose each other. She whirls, expecting to see her father. He did something like this to her during the eclipse, a thing she supposes the whining CultofSelfers, the LiveinthePasters like Ruth and Nora, would call child abuse. Whatever it was, it will be himshes sure of that muchand she is afraid she will exact a terrible punishment for the thing he did, no matter how serious or trivial that thing was she will raise the croquet mallet and drive it into his face, smashing his nose and knocking out his teeth, and when he falls down on the grass the dogs will come and eat him up. Except it isnt Tom Mahout standing there; its Gerald. Hes naked. The Penis of an Attorney pokes out at her from below the soft pink bowl of his belly. He has a set of Kreig police handcuffs in each hand. He holds them out to her in the weird afternoon darkness. Unnatural starlight gleams on the cocked jaws which are stamped M17 because his source could not provide him with any F23s. Come on, Jess, he says, grinning. It isnt as though you dont know the score. Besides, you liked it. That first time you came so hard you almost blew up. I dont mind telling you that was the best piece of ass I ever had in my life, so good I sometimes dream about it. And do you know why it was so good? Because you didnt have to take any of the responsibility. Almost all women like it better when the man takes over completelyits a proven fact of female psychology. Did you come when your father molested you, Jessie? I bet you did. I bet you came so hard you almost blew up. The CultofSelfers may want to argue about these things, but we know the truth, dont we? Some women can say they want it, but some need a man to tell them they want it. Youre one of the latter. But thats okay, Jessie; thats what the cuffs are for. Only they were never really handcuffs at all. Theyre bracelets of love. So put them on, sweetheart. Put them on. She backs up, shaking her head, not knowing if she wants to laugh or cry. The subject itself is new, but the rhetoric is all too familiar. The lawyers tricks dont work on me, GeraldIve been married to one too long. What we both know is that the business with the handcuffs was never about me at all. It was about you ... about waking up your old boozestunned John Thomas a little, to be blunt. So you can just save your fuckedup version of female psychology, okay? Gerald is smiling in a knowing, disconcerting way. Good try, babe. It doesnt wash, but it was still a damned good shot. The best defense is a good offense, right? I think I taught you that. Never mind, though. Right now youve got a choice to make. Either put the bracelets on or swing that mallet and kill me again. She looks around and realizes with dawning panic and dismay that everyone at Wills party is watching her confrontation with this naked (except for his glasses, that is), overweight, sexually aroused man ... and its not just her family and her childhood friends, either. Mrs. Henderson, who will be her Freshman Advisor at college, is standing by the punchbowl; Bobby Hagen, who will take her to the Senior Promand fuck her afterward in the back seat of his fathers Oldsmobile 88is standing on the patio next to the blonde girl from the Neuworth Parsonage, the one whose parents loved her but idolized her brother. Barry, Jessie thinks. Shes Olivia and her brothers Barry. The blonde girl is listening to Bobby Hagen but looking at Jessie, her face calm but somehow haggard. She is wearing a sweatshirt which shows R. Crumbs Mr. Natural hurrying down a city street. The words in the balloon coming out of Mr. Naturals mouth say, Vice is nice, but incest is best. Behind Olivia, Kendall Wilson, who will hire Jessie for her first teaching job, is cutting a piece of chocolate birthday cake for Mrs. Paige, her childhood piano teacher. Mrs. Paige is looking remarkably lively for a woman who died of a stroke two years ago while picking apples at Corrits Orchards in Alfred. Jessie thinks, This isnt like dreaming; its like drowning. Everyone Ive ever known seems to be standing here under this weird starlit afternoon sky, watching my naked husband try to put me in handcuffs while Marvin Gaye sings Can I Get a Witness.  If theres any comfort to be had, its this things cant possibly get any worse. Then they do. Mrs. Wertz, her firstgrade teacher, starts to laugh. Old Mr. Cobb, their gardener until he retired in 1964, laughs with her. Maddy joins in, and Ruth, and Olivia of the scarred breasts. Kendall Wilson and Bobby Hagen are bent almost double, and they are clapping each other on the back like men who have heard the granddaddy of all dirty jokes in the local barbershop. Perhaps the one whose punchline is A lifesupport system for a cunt. Jessie looks down at herself and sees that now she is naked, too. Written across her breasts in a shade of lipstick known as Peppermint YumYum are three damning words DADDYS LITTLE GIRL. I have to wake up, she thinks. Ill die of shame if I dont. But she doesnt, at least not right away. She looks up and sees that Geralds knowing, disconcerting smile has turned into a gaping wound. Suddenly the stray dogs bloodsoaked snout pokes out between his teeth. The dog is also grinning, and the head that comes shoving out between its fangs like the onset of some obscene birth belongs to her father. His eyes, always a bright blue, are now gray and haggard above his grin. They are Olivias eyes, she realizes, and then she realizes something else, as well the flat mineral smell of lakewater, so bland and yet so horrible, is everywhere. I love too hard, my friends sometimes say, her father sings from inside the mouth of the dog which is inside the mouth of the husband, But I believe, I believe, that a woman should be loved that way ... She casts the mallet aside and runs, screaming, As she passes the horrible creature with its bizarre chain of nested heads, Gerald snaps one of the handcuffs around her wrist. Got you! he yells triumphantly. Got you, me proud beauty! At first she thinks the eclipse must not have been total yet after all, because the day has begun to grow still darker. Then it occurs to her that she is probably fainting. This thought is accompanied by feelings of deep relief and gratitude. Dont be silly, Jessyou cant faint in a dream. But she thinks she may be doing just that, and in the end it doesnt matter much whether it is a faint or only a deeper cave of sleep toward which she is fleeing like the survivor of some cataclysm. What matters is that she is finally escaping the dream which has assaulted her in a much more fundamental way than her fathers act on the deck that day, she is finally escaping, and gratitude seems like a beautifully normal response to these circumstances. She has almost made it into that comforting cave of darkness when a sound intrudes a splintery, ugly sound like a loud spasm of coughing. She tries to flee the sound and finds she cannot. It has her like a hook, and like a hook it begins to pull her up toward the vast but fragile silver sky that separates sleep from consciousness. 12 The former Prince, who had once been the pride and joy of young Catherine Sutlin, sat in the kitchen entryway for about ten minutes after its latest foray into the bedroom. It sat with its head up, its eyes wide and unblinking. It had been existing on very short commons over the last two months, it had fed well this evening gorged, in factand it should have been feeling logy and sleepy. It had been both for awhile, but now all sleepiness had departed. What replaced it was a feeling of nervousness which grew steadily worse. Something had snapped several of the hairthin tripwires posted in that mystical zone where the dogs senses and its intuition overlapped. The bitchmaster continued to moan in the other room, and to make occasional talking noises, but her sounds were not the source of the strays jitters; they were not what had caused it to sit up when it had been on the verge of drifting placidly off to sleep, and not the reason why its good ear was now cocked alertly forward and its muzzle had wrinkled back far enough to show the tips of its teeth. It was something else ... something not right ... something which was possibly dangerous. As Jessies dream peaked and then began to spiral down into darkness, the dog suddenly scrambled to its feet, unable to bear the steady sizzle in its nerves any longer. It turned, pushed open the loose back door with its snout, and jumped out into the windy dark. As it did, some strange and unidentifiable scent came to it. There was danger in that scent ... almost certainly danger. The dog raced for the woods as fast as its swollen, overloaded belly would allow. When it had gained the safety of the undergrowth, it turned and squirmed a little way back toward the house. It had retreated, true enough, but a great many more alarmbells would have to go off inside before it would consider completely abandoning the wonderful supply of food it had found. Safely hidden, its thin, weary, intelligent face crisscrossed with overlapping ideograms of moonshadow, the stray began to bark, and it was this sound which eventually drew Jessie back to consciousness. 13 During their summers on the lake in the early sixties, before William was able to do much more than paddle in the shallows with a pair of bright orange waterwings attached to his back, Maddy and Jessie, always good friends despite the difference in their ages, often went down to swim at the Neidermeyers. The Neidermeyers had a float equipped with a diving platform, and it was there that Jessie began to develop the form which won her a place first on her high school swimteam and then on the AllState team in 1971. What she remembered secondbest about diving from the board on the Neidermeyers float (firstfor then and for alwayswas the swoop through the hot summer air toward the blue glitter of the waiting water) was how it felt to come up from the depths, through conflicting layers of warm and cold. Coming up from her troubled sleep was like that. First there was a black, roaring confusion that was like being inside a thundercloud. She bumped and yawed her way through it, not having the slightest idea of who she was or when she was, let alone where she was. Then a warmer, calmer layer she had been caught in the most awful nightmare in all of recorded history (at least in her recorded history), but a nightmare was all it had been, and now it was over. As the surface neared, however, she encountered another chilly layer an idea that the reality waiting ahead was almost as bad as the nightmare. Maybe worse. What is it? she asked herself. What could possibly be worse than what Ive just been through? She refused to think about that. The answer was within reach, but if it occurred to her, she might decide to flip over and start finning her way back down into the depths again. To do that would be to drown, and while drowning might not be the worst way to step outnot as bad as running your Harley into a rock wall or parachuting into a cats cradle of highvoltage wires, for instancethe idea of opening her body to that flat mineral smell, which reminded her simultaneously of copper and oysters, was insupportable. Jessie kept stroking grimly upward, telling herself that she would worry about reality when and if she actually broke the surface. The last layer she passed through was as warm and fearful as freshly spilled blood her arms were probably going to be deader than stumps. She just hoped she would be able to command enough movement in them to get the blood flowing again. Jessie gasped, jerked, and opened her eyes. She hadnt the slightest idea of how long she had been asleep, and the clockradio on the dresser, stuck in its own hell of obsessive repetition (twelvetwelvetwelve, it flashed into the darkness, as if time had stopped forever at midnight), was no help. All she knew for sure was that it was full dark and the moon was now shining through the skylight instead of the east window. Her arms were jumping with a nervous jitterjive of pins and needles. She usually disliked that feeling intensely, but not now; it was a thousand times better than the muscle cramps she had expected as the price of waking her dead extremities back up. A moment or two later she noticed a spreading dampness beneath her legs and bottom and realized that her previous need to urinate was gone. Her body had taken care of the problem while she slept. She doubled her fists and cautiously pulled herself up a little, wincing at the pain in her wrists and the deep, sobbing ache the movement caused in the backs of her hands. Most of that pains a result of trying to slip out of the cuffs, she thought. You got nobody to blame but yourself, sweetheart. The dog had begun to bark again. Each shrill cry was like a splinter pounded into her eardrum, and she realized that sound was what had pulled her up and out of her sleep just as she had been about to dive below the nightmare. The location of the sounds told her the dog was back outside. She was glad it had left the house, but a little puzzled, as well. Maybe it just hadnt been comfortable under a roof after spending such a long time outside. That idea made a certain amount of sense ... as much as anything else in this situation, anyway. Get it together, Jess, she advised herself in a solemn, sleepfoggy voice, and maybejust maybeshe was doing that. The panic and the unreasoning shame shed felt in the dream were departing. The dream itself seemed to be drying out, taking on the curiously desiccated quality of an overexposed photograph. Soon, she realized, it would be gone entirely. Dreams on waking were like the empty cocoons of moths or the splitopen husks of milkweed pods, dead shells where life had briefly swirled in furious but fragile stormsystems. There had been times when this amnesiaif that was what it washad struck her as sad. Not now. She had never in her life equated forgetting with mercy so quickly and completely. And it doesnt matter, she thought. It was just a dream after all. I mean, all those heads sticking out of heads? Dreams are supposed to be symbolic, of courseyes, I knowand I suppose there might have been some symbolism in this one ... maybe even some truth. If nothing else, I think that now I understand why I hit Will when he goosed me that day. Nora Callighan would undoubtedly be thrilledshed call it a breakthrough. Probably it is. It doesnt do a thing about getting me out of this fucking jailhouse jewelry, though, and thats still my top priority. Does anyone disagree with that? Neither Ruth nor Goody replied; the UFO voices were likewise silent. The only response, in fact, came from her stomach, which was sorry as hell all this had happened but still felt compelled to protest the cancellation of supper with a long, low rumble. Funny, in a way ... but apt to be less so come tomorrow. By then her thirst would have come raging back, too, and she was under no illusions about how long those last two sips of water would stave it off. Ive got to center my concentrationIve just got to. The problem isnt food, and it isnt water, either. Right now those things matter as little as why I punched Will in the mouth at his ninthbirthday party. The problem is how Im Her thoughts broke off with the clean snap of a knot exploding in a hot fire. Her eyes, which had been wandering aimlessly across the darkened room, locked on the far corner, where the winddriven shadows of the pines danced wildly in the nacreous light falling through the skylight. There was a man standing there. Terror greater than any she had ever known crept over her. Her bladder, which had in fact relieved only the worst of its discomfort, now voided itself in a painless gush of heat. Jessie hadnt the slightest idea of that or anything else. Her terror had blown her mind temporarily clean from wall to wall and ceiling to floor. No sound escaped her, not even the smallest squeak; she was as incapable of sound as she was of thought. The muscles of her neck, shoulders, and arms turned to something that felt like warm water and she slid down the headboard until she hung from the handcuffs in a kind of slack swoon. She didnt black outdidnt even come close to itbut that mental emptiness and the total physical incapacity which accompanied it were worse than a blackout. When thought did attempt to return, it was at first blocked by a dark, featureless wall of fear. A man. A man in the corner. She could see his dark eyes gazing at her with fixed, idiotic attention. She could see the waxy whiteness of his narrow cheeks and high forehead, although the in . truders actual features were blurred by the diorama of shadows which went flying across them. She could see slumped shoulders and dangling apelike arms which ended in long hands; she sensed feet somewhere in the black triangle of shadow thrown by the bureau, but that was all. She had no idea how long she lay in that horrible semiswoon, paralyzed but aware, like a beetle stung by a trapdoor spider. It seemed like a very long time. The seconds dripped by, and she found herself unable to even close her eyes, let alone avert them from her strange guest. Her first terror of him began to abate a little, but what replaced it was somehow worse horror and an unreasoning, atavistic revulsion. Jessie later thought that the wellspring of these feelingsthe most powerful negative emotions she had ever experienced in her life, including those which had swept her only a short time before, as she had watched the stray dog preparing to dine on Geraldwas the creatures utter stillness. It had crept in here while she slept and now merely stood in the corner, camouflaged by the ceaseless ebb and flow of shadows over its face and body, staring at her with its strangely avid black eyes, eyes so large and rapt they reminded her of the sockets in a skull. Her visitor only stood there in the corner; merely that and nothing more. She lay in the handcuffs with her arms stretched above her, feeling like a woman at the bottom of a deep well. Time passed, marked only by the idiot blink of the clock proclaiming it was twelve, twelve, twelve, and at last a coherent thought stole back into her brain, one which seemed both dangerous and vastly comforting. Theres no one here but you, Jessie. The man you see in the corner is a combination of shadows and imaginationno more than that. She fought her way back to a sitting position, pulling with her arms, grimacing at the pain in her overtaxed shoulders, pushing with her feet, trying to dig her bare heels into the coverlet, breathing in harsh little blurts of effort ... and while doing these things, her eyes never left the hideously elongated shape in the corner. Its too tall and too thin to be a real man, Jessyou see that, dont you? Its nothing but wind, shadows, a soupon of moonlight... and a few leftovers from your nightmare, I imagine. Okay? It almost was. She started to relax. Then, from outside, the dog voiced another hysterical volley of barks. And didnt the figure in the cornerthe figure that was nothing but wind, shadows, and a soupon of moonlightdidn t that nonexistent figure turn its head slightly in that direction? No, surely not. Surely that was just another trick of the wind and the dark and the shadows. That might well be; in fact she was almost sure that partthe headturning parthad been an illusion. But the rest of it? The figure itself? She could not quite convince herself that it was all imagination. Surely no figure which looked that much like a man could be just an illusion ... could it? Goodwife Burlingame spoke up suddenly, and although her voice was fearful, there was no hysteria in it, at least not yet; oddly, it was the Ruth part of her which had suffered the most extreme horror at the idea she might not be alone in the room, and it was the Ruth part that was still close to gibbering. If that things not real, Goody said, why did the dog leave in the first place? I dont think it would have done that without a very good reason, do you? Yet she understood that Goody was deeply frightened just the same, and yearning for some explanation of the dogs departure that didnt include the shape Jessie either saw or thought she saw standing in the corner. Goody was begging her to say that her original idea, that the dog had left simply because it no longer felt comfortable in the house, was much more likely. Or maybe, she thought, it had left for the oldest reason of all it had smelled another stray, this one. a bitch in heat.