Look at your tits, old girl! And if they arent enough to make you barf a keg, look at your thighs! Such bullshit, she said, trying to make it even stronger, but now she heard a minute shake in her voice, and that wasnt so good. Not so good at all. He knew I was serious ... he knew it. So whose fault does that make it? But was that really true? In a way it wasshe had seen him deciding to reject what he saw in her face and heard in her voice because it would spoil the game. But in another waya much more fundamental wayshe knew it wasnt true at all, because Gerald hadnt taken her seriously about much of anything during the last ten or twelve years of their life together. He had made what almost amounted to a second career out of not hearing what she said unless it was about meals or where they were supposed to be at suchandsuch a time on suchandsuch a night (so dont forget, Gerald). The only other exceptions to the general Rules of Ear were unfriendly remarks about his weight or his drinking. He heard the things she had to say on these subjects, and didnt like them, but they were dismissible as part of some mythic natural order fish gotta swim, bird gotta fly, wife gotta nag. So what, exactly, had she expected from this man? For him to say, Yes, dear, I will free you at once, and by the way, thanks for raising my consciousness? Yes; she suspected some naive part of her, some untouched and dewyeyed littlegirl part, had expected just that. The chainsaw, which had been snarling and ripping away again for quite some time, suddenly fell silent. Dog, loon, and even the wind had also fallen silent, at least temporarily, and the quiet felt as thick and as palpable as ten years of undisturbed dust in an empty house. She could hear no car or truck engine, not even a distant one. And now the voice which spoke belonged to no one but herself. Oh my God, it said. Oh my God, I am all alone out here. I am all alone. 3 Jessie closed her eyes tightly. Six years ago she had spent an abortive fivemonth period in counselling, not telling Gerald because she knew he would be sarcastic ... and probably worried about what beans she might be spilling. She had stated her problem as stress, and Nora Callighan, her therapist, had taught her a simple relaxation technique. Most people associate counting to ten with Donald Duck trying to keep his temper, Nora had said, but what a tencount really does is give you a chance to reset all your emotional dials ... and anybody who doesnt need an emotional reset at least once a day has probably got problems a lot more serious than yours or mine. This voice was also clearclear enough to raise a small, wistful smile on her face. I liked Nora. I liked her a lot. Had she, Jessie, known that at the time? She was moderately astounded to find she couldnt exactly remember, any more than she could exactly remember why she had quit going to see Nora on Tuesday afternoons. She supposed that a bunch of stuffCommunity Chest, the Court Street homeless shelter, maybe the new library fund drivehad just all come up at once. Shit Happens, as another piece of New Age vapidity passing for wisdom pointed out. Quitting had probably been for the best, anyway. If you didnt draw the line somewhere, therapy just went on and on, until you and your therapist doddered off to that great group encounter session in the sky together. Never mindgo ahead and do the count, starting with your toes. Do it just the way she taught you. Yeswhy not? One is for feet, ten little toes, cute little piggies, all in a row. Except that eight were comically croggled and her great toes looked like the heads on a pair of ballpeen hammers. Two is for legs, lovely and long. Well, not that longshe was only fiveseven, after all, and longwaistedbut Gerald had claimed they were still her best feature, at least in the old sexappeal department. She had always been amused by this claim, which seemed to be perfectly sincere on his part. He had somehow missed her knees, which were as ugly as the knobs on an apple tree, and her chubby upper thighs. Three is my sex, whats right cant be wrong. Mildly cutea little too cute, many might saybut not very illuminating. She raised her head a little, as if to look at the object in question, but her eyes remained closed. She didnt need her eyes to see it, anyway; she had been coexisting with that particular accessory for a long time. What lay between her hips was a triangle of gingercolored, crinkly hair surrounding an unassuming slit with all the aesthetic beauty of a badly healed scar. This thingthis organ that was really little more than a deep fold of flesh cradled by crisscrossing belts of muscleseemed to her an unlikely wellspring for myth, but it certainly held mythic status in the collective male mind; it was the magic vale, wasnt it? The corral where even the wildest unicorns were eventually penned? Mother Macree, what bullshit, she said, smiling a little but not opening her eyes. Except it wasnt bullshit, not entirely. That slit was the object of every mans lustthe heterosexual ones, at leastbut it was also frequently an object of their inexplicable scorn,. distrust, and hate. You didnt hear that dark anger in all their jokes, but it was present in enough of them, and in some it was right out front, raw as a sore Whats a woman? A lifiesupport system for a cunt. Stop it, Jessie, Goodwife Burlingame ordered. Her voice was upset and disgusted. Stop it right now. That, Jessie decided, was a damned good idea, and she turned her mind back to Noras tencount. Four was for her hips (too wide), and five her belly (too thick). Six was her breasts, which she thought were her best featureGerald, she suspected, was a bit put off by the vague tracings of blue veins beneath their smoothly sloping curves; the breasts of the gatefold girls in his magazines did not show such hints of the plumbing beneath. The magazine girls didnt have tiny hairs growing out of their areolae, either. Seven was her toowide shoulders, eight was her neck (which used to be goodlooking but had grown decidedly chickeny in the last few years), nine was her receding chin, and ten Wait a minute! Wait just one goddammed minute here! the nobullshit voice broke in furiously. What kind of dumb game is this? Jessie shut her eyes tighter, appalled by the depth of anger in that voice and frightened by its separateness. In its anger it didnt seem like a voice coming from the central taproot of her mind at all, but like a real interloperan alien spirit that wanted to possess her the way the spirit of Pazuzu had possessed the little girl in The Exorcist. Dont want to answer that? Ruth Nearyalias Panzuzuasked. Okay, maybe that ones too complicated. Let me make it really simple for you, Jess who turned Nora Callighans badly rhymed little relaxation litany into a mantra of selfhate? No one, she thought back meekly, and knew at once that the nobullshit voice would never accept that, so she added The Goodwife. It was her. No, it wasnt, Ruths voice returned at once. She sounded disgusted at this halfassed effort to shift the blame. Goodys a little stupid and right now shes a lot scared, but shes a sweet enough thing at the bottom, and her intentions have always been good. The intentions of whoever reedited Noras list were actively evil, Jessie. Dont you see that? Dont you I dont see anything, because my eyes are closed, she said in a trembling, childish voice. She almost opened them, but something told her that was apt to make the situation worse instead of better. Who was the one, Jessie? Who taught you that you were ugly and worthless? Who picked out Gerald Burlingame as your soulmate and Prince Charming, probably years before you actually met him at that Republican Party mixer? Who decided he wasnt only what you needed but exactly what you deserved? With a tremendous effort, Jessie swept this voiceall the voices, she fervently hopedout of her mind. She began the mantra again, this time speaking it aloud. One is my toes, all in a row, two is my legs, lovely and long, three is my sex, whats right cant be wrong, four is my hips, curving and sweet, five is my stomach, where I store what I eat. She couldnt remember the rest of the rhymes (which was probably a mercy; she had a strong suspicion that Nora had whomped them up herself, probably with an eye toward publication in one of the soft and yearning selfhelp magazines which sat on the coffeetable in her waiting room) and so went on without them Six is my breasts, sevens my shoulders, eights my neck ...  She paused to take a breath and was relieved to find her heartbeat had slowed from a gallop to a fast run. ... nine is my chin, and ten is my eyes. Eyes, open wide! . She suited the action to the words and the bedroom jumped into bright existence around her, somehow new andfor the moment, at leastalmost as delightful as it had been to her when she and Gerald had spent their first summer in this house. Back in 1979, a year which once had the ring of science fiction and now seemed impossibly antique. Jessie looked at the gray barnboard walls, the high white ceiling with its reflected shimmers from the lake, and the two big windows, one on either side of the bed. The one to her left looked west, giving a view of the deck, the sloping land beyond it, and the heartbreaking bright blue of the lake. The one on her right provided a less romantic vistathe driveway and her gray dowager of a Mercedes, now eight years old and beginning to show the first small speckles of rust along the rockerpanels. Directly across the room she saw the framed batik butterfly hanging on the wall over the dresser, and remembered with a superstitious lack of surprise that it had been a thirtiethbirthday present from Ruth. She couldnt see the tiny signature stitched in red thread from over here, but she knew it was there Neary, 83. Another sciencefiction year. Not far from the butterfly (and clashing like mad, although she had never quite summoned enough nerve to point this out to her husband), Geralds Alpha Gamma Rho beerstein hung from a chrome peg. Rho wasnt a very bright star in the fraternity universethe other fratrats used to call it Alpha Grab A Hoebut Gerald wore the pin with a perverse sort of pride and kept the stein on the wall and drank the first beer of the summer out of it each year when they came up here in June. It was the sort of ceremony that had sometimes made her wonder, long before todays festivities, if she had been mentally competent when she married Gerald. Somebody should have put a stop to it, she thought drearily. Somebody really should have, because just look how it turned out. In the chair on the other side of the bathroom door, she could see the saucy little culotte skirt and the sleeveless blouse she had worn on this unseasonably warm fall day; her bra hung on the bathroom doorknob. And lying across the bedspread and her legs, turning the tiny soft hairs on her upper thighs to golden wires, was a bright band of afternoon sunlight. Not the square of light that lay almost dead center on the bedspread at one oclock and not the rectangle which lay on it at two; this was a wide band that would soon narrow to a stripe, and although a power outage had buggered the readout of the digital clockradio on the dresser (it flashed 1200 A.M. over and over, as relentless as a neon barsign), the band of light told her it was going on four oclock. Before long, the stripe would start to slide off the bed and she would see shadows in the corners and under the little table over by the wall. And as the stripe became a string, first slipping across the floor and then climbing up the far wall, fading as it went, those shadows would begin to creep out of their places and spread across the room like inkstains, eating the light as they grew. The sun was westering; in another hour, an hour and a half at most, it would be going down; forty minutes or so after that, it would be dark. This thought didnt cause panicat least not yetbut it did lay a membrane of gloom over her mind and a dank atmosphere of dread over her heart. She saw herself lying here, handcuffed to the bed with Gerald dead on the floor beside and below her; saw them lying here in the dark long after the man with the chainsaw had gone back to his wife and kids and welllighted home and the dog had wandered away and there was only that damned loon out there on the lake for companyonly that and nothing more. Mr. and Mrs. Gerald Burlingame, spending one last long night together. Looking at the beerstein and the batik butterfly, unlikely neighbors which could be tolerated only in a oneseasonayear house such as this one, Jessie thought that it was easy to reflect on the past and just as easy (although a lot less pleasant) to go wandering off into possible versions of the future. The really tough job seemed to be staying in the present, but she thought shed better try her best to do it. This nasty situation was probably going to get a lot nastier if she didnt. She couldnt depend on some deus ex machina to get her out of the jam she was in, and that was a bummer, but if she succeeded in doing it herself, there would be a bonus shed be saved the embarrassment of lying here almost starkers while some sheriffs deputy unlocked her, asked what the hell had happened, and got a nice long look at the new widows fair white body, all at the same time. There were two other things going on as well. She would have given a lot to push them away, even temporarily, but she couldnt. She needed to go to the bathroom, and she was thirsty. Right now the need to ship was stronger than the need to receive, but it was her desire for a drink of water that worried her. It wasnt t a big deal yet, but that would change if she wasnt able to shuck the cuffs and get to a faucet. It would change in ways she didnt like to think of. Itd be funny if I died of thirst two hundred yards from the ninthbiggest lake in Maine, she thought, and then she shook her head. This wasnt the ninthbiggest lake in Maine; what had she been thinking of? That was Dark Score Lake, the one where she and her parents and her brother and sister had gone all those years ago. Back before the voices. Back before She cut that off. Hard. It had been a long time since shed thought about Dark Score Lake, and she didnt intend to start now, handcuffs or no handcuffs. Better to think about being thirsty. Whats to think about, toots? Its psychosomatic, thats all. Youre thirsty because you know you cant get up and get a drink. Its as simple as that. But it wasnt. Shed had a fight with her husband, and the two swift kicks shed dealt him had started a chain reaction which finally resulted in his death. She herself was suffering the aftereffects of a major hormonespill. The technical term for it was shock, and one of the commonest symptoms of shock was thirst. She should probably count herself lucky that her mouth was no drier than it was, at least so far, and And maybe thats one thing I can do something about. Gerald was the quintessential creature of habit, and one of his habits was keeping a glass of water on his side of the shelf above the headboard of the bed. She twisted her head up and to the right and yes, there it was, a tall glass of water with a little cluster of melting icecubes floating on top. The glass was no doubt sitting on a coaster so it wouldnt leave a ring on the shelfthat was Gerald, so considerate about the little things. Beads of condensation stood out on the glass like sweat. Looking at these, Jessie felt her first pang of real thirst. It made her lick her lips. She slid to the right as far as the chain on the left handcuff would allow. This was only six inches, but it brought her onto Geralds side of the bed. The movement also exposed several dark spots on the left side of the coverlet. She stared at these vacantly for several moments before remembering how Gerald had voided his bladder in his last agony. Then she quickly turned her eyes back to the glass of water, sitting up there on a round of cardboard which probably advertised some brand of yuppie suds, Becks or Heineken being the most likely. She reached out and up, doing it slowly, willing her reach to be long enough. It wasnt. The tips of her fingers stopped three inches short of the glass. The pang of thirsta slight tightening in the throat, a slight prickle on the tonguecame and went again. If no one comes or I cant think of a way to wiggle free by tomorrow morning, I wont even be able to look at that glass. This idea had about it a cold reasonableness that was terrifying in and of itself. But she wouldnt still be here tomorrow morning, that was the thing. The idea was totally ridiculous. Insane. Loopy. Not worth thinking about. It  Stop, the nobullshit voice said. Just stop. And so she did. The thing she had to face was that the idea wasnt totally ridiculous. She refused to accept or even entertain the possibility that she could die herethat was loopy, of coursebut she could be in for some long, uncomfortable hours if she didnt dust away the cobwebs on the old thinking machine and get it running. Long, uncomfortable... and maybe painful, the Goodwife said nervously. But the pain would be an act of atonement, wouldnt it? After all, you brought this on yourself. I hope Im not being tiresome, but ifyoudjust let him shoot his squirt You are being tiresome, Goody, Jessie said. She couldnt remember if she had ever spoken out loud to one of the interior voices before. She wondered if she was going mad. She decided she didnt give much of a shit one way or the other, at least for the time being. Jessie closed her eyes again. 4 This time it wasnt her body she visualized in the darkness behind her lids but this whole room. Of course she was still the centerpiece, gosh, yesJessie Mahout Burlingame, still a shade under forty, still fairly trim at fiveseven and a hundred and twentyfive pounds, gray eyes, brownishred hair (she covered the gray that had begun to show up about five years ago with a glossy rinse and was fairly sure Geraldhad never known). Jessie Mahout Burlingame, who had gotten herself into this mess without quite knowing how or why. Jessie Mahout Burlingame, now presumably the widow of Gerald, still mother of no one, and tethered to this goddamned bed by two sets of police handcuffs. She made the imaging part of her mind zoom in on these last. A furrow of concentration appeared between her closed eyes. Four cuffs in all, each pair separated by six inches of rubbersleeved steel chain, each with M17a serial number, she assumedstamped into the steel of the lockplate. She remembered Geralds telling her, back when the game was new, that each cuff had a notched takeup arm, which made the cuff adjustable. It was also possible to shorten the chains until a prisoners hands were jammed painfully together, wrist to wrist, but Gerald had allowed her the maximum length of chain. And why the hell xot? she thought now. After all, it was only a game... right, Gerald? Yet now her earlier question occurred to her, and she wondered again if it had ever really been just a game for Gerald. Whats a woman? some other voicea UFO voicewhispered softly from a well of darkness deep inside her. A lifesupport system for a cunt. Go away, Jessie thought. Go away, youre not helping. But the UFO voice declined the order. Why does a woman have a mouth and a cunt? it asked instead. So she can piss and moan at the same time. Any other questions, little lady? No. Given the unsettlingly surreal quality of the answers, she had no other questions. She rotated her hands inside the cuffs. The scant flesh of her wrists dragged against the steel, making her wince, but the pain was minor and her hands turned easily enough. Gerald might or might not have believed that a womans only purpose was to serve as a lifesupport system for a cunt, but he hadnt tightened the cuffs enough to hurt; she would have balked at that even before today, of course (or so she told herself, and none of the interior voices were mean enough to dispute her on the subject). Still, they were too tight to slip out of. Or were they? Jessie gave them an experimental tug. The cuffs slid up her wrists as her hands came down, and then the steel bracelets wedged firmly against the junctions of bone and cartilage where the wrists made their complex and marvellous alliances with her hands. She yanked harder. Now the pain was much more intense. She suddenly remembered the time Daddy had slammed the driversside door of their old Country Squire station wagon on Maddys left hand, not knowing she was sliding out on his side for a change instead of on her own. How she had screamed! It had broken some boneJessie couldnt remember the name of itbut she did remember Maddy proudly showing off her soft cast and saying, I also tore my posterior ligament. That had struck Jess and Will funny, because everyone knew that your posterior was the scientific name for your situpon. They had laughed, more in surprise than in scorn, but Maddy had gone storming off just the same, her face as dark as a thundercloud, to tell Mommy. Posterior ligament, she thought, deliberately applying more pressure in spite of the escalating pain. Posterior ligament and radioulnar somethingorother. Doesnt matter. If you can slip out of these cuffs, I think you better do it, toots, and let some doctor worry about putting Humpty back together again later on. Slowly, steadily, she increased the pressure, willing the handcuffs to slip down and off. If they would just go a little waya quarter of an inch might do it, and a half was almost for sureshe would be past the bulkiest ridges of bone and would have more yielding tissue to deal with. Or so she hoped. There were bones in her thumbs, of course, but she would worry about them when and if the time came. She pulled down harder, her lips parting to show her teeth in a grimace of pain and effort. The muscles on her upper arms now stood out in shallow white arcs. Sweat began to bead her brow, her cheeks, even the slight indentation of her philtrum below her nose. She poked out her tongue and licked off this last without even being aware of it. There was a lot of pain, but the pain wasnt what caused her to stop. What did was the simple realization that she had gotten to the point of maximum pull her muscles would provide and it hadnt moved the cuffs a whit farther down than they were right now. Her brief hope of simply squeezing out of this flickered and died. Are you sure you pulled as hard as you could? Or are you maybe only kidding yourself a little because it hurt so much? No, she said, still not opening her eyes. I pulled as hard as I could. Really. But that other voice remained, actually more glimpsed than heard something like a comicbook questionmark. There were deep white grooves in the flesh of her wristsbelow the pad of the thumb, across the back of the hand, and over the delicate blue tracings of vein belowwhere the steel had bitten in, and her wrists continued to throb painfully even though she had taken off all the pressure of the cuffs by raising her hands until she could grip one of the headboard slats. Oh boy, she said, her voice shaky and uneven. Doesnt this just suck the big one. Had she pulled as hard as she could? Had she really? Doesnt matter, she thought, looking up at the shimmers of reflection on the ceiling. Doesnt matter and Ill tell you whyif I am capable of pulling harder, what happened to Maddys left wrist when the car door slammed on it is going to happen to both of mine bones are going to break, posterior ligaments are going to snap like rubber bands, and radioulnar whojiggies are going to explode like clay pigeons in a shooting gallery. The only thing that would change is that, instead of lying here chained and thirsty, Id be lying here chained, thirsty, and with a pair of broken wrists thrown into the bargain. Theyd swell, too. What I think is this Gerald died before he ever had a chance to climb into the saddle, but he fucked me good and proper just the same. Okay; what other options were there? None, Goodwife Burlingame said in the watery tone of a woman who is just a teardrop away from breaking down completely. Jessie waited to see if the other voiceRuths voice would weigh in with an opinion. It didnt. For all she knew, Ruth was floating around in the office watercooler with the rest of the loons. In any case, Ruths abdication left Jessie to fend for herself. So, okay, fend, she thought. What are you going to do about the handcuffs, now that youve ascertained simply slipping out of them is impossible? What can you do? There are two handcuffs in each setthe young voice, the one she hadnt yet found a name for, spoke up hesitantly. Youve tried to slip out of the ones with your hands inside them and it didnt work... but what about the others? The ones hooked to the bedposts? Have you thought about them? Jessie pressed the back of her head into her pillow and arched her neck so she could look at the headboard and the bedposts. The fact that she was looking at these things upside down barely registered. The bed was smaller than a king or a queen but quite a bit larger than a twin. It had some sort of fancy nameCourt Jester Size, maybe, or Chief LadyinWaitingbut she found it harder and harder to keep track of such things as she got older; she didnt know if you called that good sense or encroaching senility. In any case, the bed on which she now found herself had been just right for screwing but a little too small for the two of them to share comfortably through the night. For her and Gerald that hadnt been a drawback, because they had slept in separate rooms, both here and in the Portland house, for the last five years. It had been her decision, not his; she had gotten tired of his snoring, which seemed to get a little worse every year. On the rare occasions when they had overnight guests down here, she and Gerald had slept togetheruncomfortablyin this room, but otherwise they had shared this bed only when they had sex. And his snoring hadnt been the real reason she had moved out; it had just been the most diplomatic one. The real reason had been olfactory. Jessie had first come to dislike and then actually loathe the aroma of her husbands nightsweat. Even if he showered just before coming to bed, the sour smell of Scotch whisky began to creep out of his pores by two the next morning. Until this year, the pattern had been increasingly perfunctory sex followed by a period of drowsing (this had actually become her favorite part of the whole business), after which he would shower and leave her. Since March, however, there had been some changes. The scarves and the handcuffsparticularly the latterhad seemed to exhaust Gerald in a way plain old missionarystyle sex never had, and he often fell deeply asleep next to her, shoulder to shoulder. She didnt mind this; most of those encounters had been matinees, and Gerald smelled like plain old sweat instead of a weak Scotch and water afterward. He didnt snore much, either, come to think of it. But all those sessionsall those matinees with the scarves and the handcuffswere in the Portland house, she thought. We spent most of July and some of August down here, but on the occasions when we had sexthere werent many, but there were someit was the plain old potroastandmashedpotatoes kind Tarzan on top, Jane on the bottom. We never played the game down here until today. Why was that, I wonder? Probably it had been the windows, which were too tall and oddly cut for drapes. They had never gotten around to replacing the clear glass with reflective sheets, although Gerald had continued to talk about doing that right up to ... well ... Right up until today, Goody finished, and Jessie blessed her tact. And youre rightit probably was the windows, at least mostly. He wouldnt have liked Fred Laglan or Jamie Brooks driving in to ask on the spur of the moment if he wanted to play nine holes of golf and seeing him boffing Mrs. Burlingame, who just happened to be attached to the bedposts with a pair of Kreig handcuffs. Word on something like that would probably get around. Fred and Jamie are good enough fellows, I guess A couple of middleaged pukes, if you ask me, Ruth broke in sourly. but theyre only human, and a story like that would have been too good not to talk about. And theres something else, Jessie ... Jessie didnt let her finish. This wasnt a thought she wanted to hear articulated in the Goodwifes pleasant but hopelessly prissy voice. It was possible that Gerald had never asked her to play the game down here because he had been afraid of some crazy joker popping out of the deck. What joker? Well, she thought, lets just say that there might have been a part of Gerald that really did believe a woman was just a lifesupport system for a cunt ... and that some other part of him, one I could call Geralds better nature, for want of a clearer term, knew it. That part could have been afraid that things might get out of control. After all, isnt that just whats happened? It was a hard idea to argue with. If this didnt fit the definition of out of control, Jessie didnt know what did. She felt a moment of wistful sadness and had to restrain an urge to look back toward the place where Gerald lay. She didnt know if she had grief in her for her late husband or not, but she did know that if it was there, this wasnt the time to deal with it. Still, it was nice to remember something good about the man with whom she had spent so many years, and the memory of the way he had sometimes fallen asleep beside her after sex was a good one. She hadnt liked the scarves and had come to loathe the handcuffs, but she had liked looking at him as he drifted off; had liked the way the lines smoothed out of his large pink face. And, in a way, he was sleeping beside her again right now ... wasnt he? That idea chilled even the flesh of her upper thighs, where the narrowing patch of sun lay. She turned the thought asideor at least tried toand went back to studying the head of the bed. The posts were set in slightly from the sides, leaving her arms spread but not uncomfortably so, particularly with the six inches or so of free play afforded by the handcuff chains. There were four horizontal boards running between the posts. These were also mahogany, and engraved with simple but pleasing waveshapes. Gerald had once suggested that they have their initials carved in the center boardhe knew of a man in Tashmore Glen who would be happy to drive over and do it, he saidbut she had poured cold water on the idea. It seemed both ostentatious and strangely childish to her, like teenybop sweethearts carving hearts on their studyhall desks. The bedshelf was set above the topmost board, just high enough to ensure that no one sitting up suddenly would bump his or her head. It held Geralds glass of water, a couple of paperbacks left over from the summer, and, on her end, a little strew of cosmetics. These were also left over from the summer gone by, and she supposed they were dried out by now. A real shame, toonothing cheered up a handcuffed woman more reliably than a little Country Morning Rose Blusher. All the womens magazines said so. Jessie lifted her hands slowly, holding her arms out at a slight angle so her fists wouldnt fetch up on the underside of the shelf. She kept her head back, wanting to see what happened on the far end of the chains. The other cuffs were clamped to the bedposts between the second and third crossboards. As she lifted her fisted hands, looking like a woman benchpressing an invisible barbell, the cuffs slid along the posts until they reached the next board up. If she could pull that board off, and the one above it, she would be able to simply slip the handcuffs off the ends of the bedposts. Voil. Probably too good to be true, hontoo easy to be true but you might as well give it a shot.


Its a way to pass the time, anyway. She wrapped her hands around the engraved horizontal board currently barring any further upward progress for the cuffs clamped to the bedposts. She took a deep breath, held it, and yanked. One hard tug was enough to tell her that way was also blocked; it was like trying to pull a steel retaining rod out of a concrete wall. She could not feel even a millimeters worth of give. I could yank on that bastard for ten years and not even move it, let alone pull it off the bedposts, she thought, and let her hands fall back to their former slack, chainsupported position above the bed. A despairing little cry escaped her. To her it sounded like the caw of a thirsty crow. What am I going to do? she asked the shimmers on the ceiling, and at last gave way to desperate, frightened tears. Just what in the hell am I going to do? As if in answer, the dog began to bark again, and this time it was so close it scared her into a scream. It sounded, in fact, as if it was right outside the east window, in the driveway. 5 The dog wasnt in the driveway; it was even closer than that. The shadow stretching up the asphalt almost to the front bumper of the Mercedes meant it was on the back porch. That long, trailing shadow looked as if it belonged to some twisted and monstrous freakshow dog, and she hated it on sight. Dont be so damned silly, she scolded herself. The shadow only looks that way because the suns going down. Now open your mouth and make some noise, girlit doesnt have to be a stray, after all. True enough; there might be a master in the picture somewhere, but she didnt hold out much hope for the idea. She guessed that the dog had been drawn to the back deck by the wirecovered garbage bin just outside the door. Gerald had sometimes called this tidy little construction, with its cedar shingles on top and its double latches on the lid, their raccoonmagnet. This time it had drawn a dog instead of a coon, that was alta stray, almost certainly. An illfed, downonitsluck mutt. Still, she had to try. Hey! she screamed. Hey! Is anyone there? I need some help if you are! Is anyone there? The dog stopped barking instantly. Its spidery, distorted shadow jerked, turned, started to move ... and then stopped again. She and Gerald had eaten sub sandwiches on the ride up from Portland, big oily salamiandcheese combos, and the first thing shed done when they arrived was to gather up the scraps and wrappings and dump them into the garbage bin. The rich smell of oil and meat was probably what had drawn the dog in the first place, and it was undoubtedly the smell which kept it from bolting back into the woods at the sound of her voice. That smell was stronger than the impulses of its feral heart. Help! Jessie screamed, and part of her mind tried to warn her that screaming was probably a mistake, that she would only scrape her throat raw and make herself thirstier, but that rational, cautioning voice never had a chance. She had caught the stink of her own fear, it was as strong and compelling to her as the smell of the sandwich leftovers was to the dog, and it quickly carried her into a state that was not just panic but a kind of temporary insanity. HELP ME! SOMEBODY HELP ME! HELP! HELP! HELLLLLLP! Her voice broke at last and she turned her head as far to the right as it would go, her hair plastered to her cheeks and forehead in sweaty licks and tangles, her eyes bulging. The fear of being found chained up naked with her husband lying dead on the floor beside her had ceased to be even a casual factor in her thinking. This new panicattack was like some weird mental eclipseit filtered out the bright light of reason and hope and allowed her to see the most awful possibilities of all starvation, thirstinduced madness, convulsions, death. She was not Heather Locklear or Victoria Principal, and this was not a madeforTV suspense movie on the USA cable network. There were no cameras, no lights, no director to call cut. This was happening, and if help didnt come, it might well go on happening until she ceased to exist as a lifeform. Far from worrying about the circumstances of her detention, she had reached a point where she would have welcomed Maury Povich and the entire film crew of A Current Affair with tears of gratitude. But no one answered her frantic criesno caretaker, down here to check on his places by the lake, no curious local out rambling with his dog (and perhaps trying to discover which of his neighbors might be growing a little marijuana among the whispering pines), and certainly not Maury Povich. There was only that long, queerly unpleasant shadow, which made her think of some weird dogspider balancing on four thin and febrile legs. Jessie took a deep, shuddery breath and tried to reestablish control over her skittish mind. Her throat was hot and dry, her nose uncomfortably wet and plugged with tears. What now? She didnt know. Disappointment throbbed in her head, temporarily too large to allow anything like constructive thought. The only thing of which she was completely sure was that the dog meant nothing; it was only going to stand out there on the back porch for awhile and then go away when it realized that what had drawn it was out of reach. Jessie made a low, unhappy cry and closed her eyes. Tears oozed out from beneath her lashes and spilled slowly down her cheeks. In the lateafternoon sun, they looked like drops of gold. What now? she asked again. The wind gusted outside, making the pines whisper and the loose door bang. What now, Goodwife? What now, Ruth ? What now, all you assorted UFOs and hangerson? Any of youany of us got any ideas? Im thirsty, I need to pee, my husband is dead, and my only company is a woodsdog whose idea of heaven is the leftovers of a ThreeCheese Genoa Salami sub from Amatos in Gorham. Pretty soon its going to decide that the smell is as close to heaven as its going to get, and then it will bug out. So ... what now? No answers. All the interior voices had fallen silent. That was badthey were company, at leastbut the panic had also gone, leaving only its heavymetal aftertaste, and that was good. Ill sleep for awhile, she thought, amazed to find she could actually do just that if she wanted to. Ill sleep for awhile, and when I wake up, maybe Ill have an idea. At the very least, I can get away from the fear for awhile. The tiny strainlines at the corners of her closed eyes and the two more noticeable ones between her brows began to smooth out. She could feel herself beginning to drift. She let herself go toward that refuge from selfregard with feelings of relief and gratitude. When the wind gusted this time, it seemed distant, and the restless sound of the door was even farther away bangbang, bangbang, bang. Her breathing, which had been deepening and slowing as she slipped into a doze, suddenly stopped. Her eyes sprang open. The only emotion she was aware of in that first moment of sleepsnatchedaway disorientation was a kind of puzzled pique she had almost made it, damn it all, and then that damned door What about that damned door? Just what about it? The damned door hadnt finished its usual double bang, that was what about it. As if this thought had brought them into being, Jessie now heard the distinctive click of a dogs toenails on the floor of the entryway. The stray had come in through the unlatched door. It was in the house. Her reaction was instant and unequivocal. You get out! she screamed at it, unaware that her overstrained voice had taken on a hoarse foghorn quality. Get out, motherfucker! Do you hear me? you GET THE HELL OUT OF MY HOUSE! She stopped, breathing fast, eyes wide. Her skin seemed woven through with copper wires carrying a low electrical charge; the top two or three layers buzzed and crawled. She was distantly aware that the hairs on the nape of her neck were standing as erect as porcupine quills. The idea of sleep had disappeared right off the map. She heard the initial startled scrabble of the dogs nails on the entry floor ... then nothing. I must have scared it away. It probably scatted right out the door again. I mean, its got to be afraid of people and houses, a stray like that. I dunno, toots, Ruths voice said. It sounded uncharacteristically doubtful. I dont see its shadow in the driveway. Of course you dont. It probably went right around the other side of the house and back into the woods. Or down by the lake. Scared to death and running like hell. Doesnt that make sense? Ruths voice didnt answer. Neither did Goodys, although at this point Jessie would have welcomed either one of them. I did scare it away, she said. Im sure I did. But still she lay there, listening as hard as she could, hearing nothing but the hushthump of blood in her ears. At least, not yet. 6 She hadnt scared it away. It was afraid of people and houses, Jessie had been right about that, but she had underestimated its desperate condition. Its former namePrincewas hideously ironic now. It had encountered a great many garbage bins just like the Burlingames in its long, starving circuit of Kashwakamak Lake this fall, and it had quickly dismissed the smell of salami, cheese, and olive oil coming from this one. The aroma was tantalizing, but bitter experience had taught the former Prince that the source of it was beyond its reach. There were other smells, however; the dog got a whiff of them each time the wind lazed the back door open. These smells were fainter than the ones coming from the box, and their source was inside the house, but they were too good to ignore. The dog knew it would probably be driven off by shouting masters who chased and kicked with their strange, hard feet, but the smells were stronger than its fear. One thing might have countered its terrible hunger, but it as yet knew nothing of guns. That would change if it lived until deerseason, but that was still two weeks away and the shouting masters with their hard, hurtful feet were the worst things it could imagine for now. It slipped through the door when the wind opened it and trotted into the entryway ... but not too far. It was ready to beat a hasty retreat the instant danger threatened. Its ears told it that the inhabitant of this house was a bitchmaster, and she was clearly aware of the dog because she had shouted at it, but what the stray heard in the bitchmasters raised voice was fear, not anger. After its initial backward jerk of fright, the dog stood its ground. It waited for some other master to join its cries to those of the bitchmaster or to come running, and when this didnt happen, the dog stretched its neck forward, sniffing at the slightly stale air of the house. At first it turned to the right, in the direction of the kitchen. It was from this direction that the puffs of scent dispersed by the flapping door had come. The smells were dry but pleasant peanut butter, RyKrisp crackers, raisins, cereal (this latter smell was drifting from a box of Special K in one of the cupboardsa hungry fieldmouse had gnawed a hole in the bottom of the box). The dog took a step in that direction, then swung its head back the other way to make sure no master was creeping up on itmasters most frequently shouted, but they could be sly, too. There was no one in the hallway leading down to the left, but the dog caught a much stronger scent coming from that direction, one that caused its stomach to cramp with terrible longing. The dog stared down the hall, its eyes sparkling with a mad mixture of fear and desire, its snout wrinkled backward like a rumpled throwrug, its long upper lip rising and falling in a nervous, spasmodic sneer that revealed its teeth in small white winks. A stream of anxious urine squirted from it and pattered on the floor, marking the front halland thus the whole houseas the dogs territory. This sound was too small and too brief for even Jessies straining ears to catch. What it smelled was blood. The scent was both strong and wrong. In the end, the dogs extreme hunger tipped the scales; it must eat soon or die. The former Prince began to walk slowly down the hall toward the bedroom. The smell grew stronger as it went. It was blood, all right, but it was the wrong blood. It was the blood of a master. Nevertheless, that smell, one far too rich and compelling to deny, had gotten into its small, desperate brain. The dog kept walking, and as it neared the bedroom door, it began to growl. 7 Jessie heard the click of the dogs nails and understood it was indeed still in the house, and coming this way. She began to scream. She knew this was probably the worst thing a person could doit went against all the advice shed ever heard about never showing a potentially dangerous animal that you were afraidbut she couldnt help it. She had too good an idea of what was drawing the stray toward the bedroom. She pulled her legs up, using the handcuffs to yank herself back against the headboard at the same time. Her eyes never left the door to the hallway as she did this. Now she could hear the dog growling. The sound made her bowels feel loose and hot and liquid. It halted in the doorway. Here the shadows had already begun to gather, and to Jessie the dog was only a vague shape low to the noornot a big one, but no toy poodle or Chihuahua, either. Two orangeyellow crescents of reflected sunlight marked its eyes. Go away! Jessie screamed at it. Go away! Get out! Youre... youre not welcome here! That was a ridiculous thing to say ... but under the circumstances, what wasnt? Ill be asking it to fetch me the keys from the top of the dresser before you know it, she thought. There was movement from the hindquarters of the shadowy shape in the doorway it had begun to wag its tail. In some sentimental girls novel, this probably would have meant the stray had confused the voice of the woman on the bed with the voice of some beloved but longlost master. Jessie knew better. Dogs didnt just wag their tails when they were happy; theytike catsalso wagged them when they were indecisive, still trying to evaluate a situation. The dog had barely flinched at the sound of her voice, but it didnt quite trust the dim room, either. Not yet, at least. The former Prince had yet to learn about guns, but it had learned a good many other hard lessons in the six weeks or so since the last day of August. That was when Mr. Charles Sutlin, a lawyer from Braintree, Massachusetts, had turned it out in the woods to die rather than take it back home and pay a combined state and town dogtax of seventy dollars. Seventy dollars for a pooch which was nothing but a Heinz Fiftyseven was a pretty tall set of tickets, in Charles Sutlins opinion. A little too tall. He had bought a motorsailer for himself only that June, granted, a purchase that was well up in the, fivefigure range, and you could claim there was some fuckedup thinking going on if you compared the price of the boat and the price of the dogtaxof course you could, anybody could, but that wasnt really the point. The point was that the motorsailer had been a planned purchase. That particular acquisition had been on the old Sutlin drawingboard for two years or more. The dog, on the other hand, was just a spurofthemoment buy at a roadside vegetable stand in Harlow. He never would have bought it if his daughter hadnt been with him and fallen in love with the pup. That one, Daddy! shed said, pointing. The one with the white spot on his nosethe one thats standing all by himself like a little prince. So hed bought her the pupno one ever said he didnt know how to make his little girl happybut seventy bucks (maybe as much as a hundred if Prince was classified as a Class B, Larger Dog) was serious dough when you were talking about a mutt that had come without a single piece of paperwork. Too much dough, Mr. Charles Sutlin had decided as the time to close up the cottage on the lake for another year began to approach. Taking it back to Braintree in the back seat of the Saab would also be a pain in the assit would shed everywhere, might even puke or take a shit on the carpeting. He could buy it a Vari Kennel, he supposed, but those little beauts started at 29.95 and worked up from there. A dog like Prince wouldnt be happy in a kennel, anyway. He would be happier running wild, with the whole north woods for his kingdom. Yes, Sutlin had told himself on that last day of August as he parked on a deserted stretch of Bay Lane and then coaxed the dog out of the back seat. Old Prince had the heart of a happy wandereryou only had to take a good close look at him to see that. Sutlin wasnt a stupid man and part of him knew this was selfserving bullshit, but part of him was also exalted by the idea of it, and as he got back into his car and drove off, leaving Prince standing at the side of the road and looking after him, he was whistling the theme from Born Free, occasionally bursting into a snatch of the lyrics Booorn freeee ... to follow your heaaaart! He had slept well that night, not sparing a thought for Prince (soon to be the former Prince), who spent the same night curled up beneath a fallen tree, shivering and wakeful and hungry, whining with fear each time an owl hooted or an animal moved in the woods. Now the dog Charles Sutlin had turned out to the theme of Born Free stood in the doorway of the master bedroom of the Burlingame summer home (the Sutlin cottage was on the far side of the lake and the two families had never met, although they had exchanged casual nods at the town boatdock over the last three or four summers). Its head was down, its eyes were wide, and its hackles were up. It was unaware of its own steady growl; all of its concentration was focused on the room. It understood in some deep, instinctual way that the bloodsmell would soon overwhelm all caution. Before that happened, it must assure itself as completely as it could that this was not a trap. It didnt want to be caught by masters with hard, hurtful feet, or by those who picked up hard pieces of the ground and threw them. Go away! Jessie tried to shout, but her voice came out sounding weak and trembly. She wasnt going to make the dog go away by shouting at it; the bastard somehow knew she couldnt get up off the bed and hurt it. This cant be happening, she thought. How could it be, when just three hours ago I was in the passenger seat of the Mercedes with my seatbelt around me, listening to the Rainmakers on the tape player and reminding myself to see what was playing at the Mountain Valley Cinemas, just in case we did decide to spend the night? How can my husband be dead when we were singing along with Bob Walkenhorst? One more summer, we sang, one more chance, one more stab at romance.  We both know all the words to that one, because its a great one, and that being the case, how can Gerald possibly be dead? How can things have possibly gotten from there to here? Sorry, folks, but this just has to be a dream. Its much too absurd for reality. The stray began to advance slowly into the room, legs stiff with caution, tail drooping, eyes wide and black, lips peeled back to reveal a full complement of teeth. About such concepts as absurdity it knew from nothing. The former Prince, with whom the eightyearold Catherine Sutlin had once romped joyfully (at least until shed gotten a Cabbage Patch doll named Marnie for her birthday and temporarily lost some of her interest), was part Lab and part collie ... a mixed breed, but a long way from being a mongrel. When Sutlin had turned it out on Bay Lane at the end of August, it had weighed eighty pounds and its coat had been glossy and sleek with health, a not unattractive mixture of brown and black (with a distinctive white collie bib on the chest and undersnout). It now weighed a bare forty pounds, and a hand passed down its side would have felt each straining rib, not to mention the rapid, feverish beat of its heart. One ear had been badly gashed. Its coat was dull and bedraggled and full of burdocks. A halfhealed pink scar, souvenir of a panicky scramble under a barbed wire fence, zigzagged down one haunch, and a few porcupine quills stuck out of its muzzle like crooked whiskers. It had found the porker lying dead under a log about ten days ago, but had given up on it after the first noseful of quills. It had been hungry but not yet desperate. Now it was both. Its last meal had been a few maggoty scraps nosed out of a discarded garbage bag in a ditch running beside Route 117, and that had been two days ago. The dog which had quickly learned to bring Catherine Sutlin a red rubber ball when she rolled it across the livingroom floor or into the hall was now quite literally starving on its feet. Yes, but hereright here, on the floor, within sight!were pounds and pounds of fresh meat, and fat, and bones filled with sweet marrow. It was like a gift from the God of Strays. The onetime darling of Catherine Sutlin continued to advance on the corpse of Gerald Burlingame. 8 This isnt going to happen, Jessie told herself. No way it can, so just relax. She went on telling herself this right up to the moment when the upper half of the strays body was cut off from her view by the left side of the bed. Its tail began to wag harder than ever, and then there was a sound she recognizedthe sound of a dog drinking from a puddle on a hot summer day. Except it wasnt quite like that. This sound was rougher, somehow, not so much the sound of lapping as of licking. Jessie stared at the rapidly wagging tail, and her mind suddenly showed her what was hidden from her eyes by the angle of the bed. This homeless stray with its burdocktangled fur and its weary, wary eyes was licking the blood out of her husbands thinning hair. NO! She lifted her buttocks off the bed and swung her legs around to the left. GET AWAY FROM HIM! JUST GET AWAY! She kicked out, and one of her heels brushed across the raised knobs of the dogs spine. It pulled back instantly and raised its muzzle, its eyes so wide they showed delicate rings of white. Its teeth parted, and in the fading afternoon light the cobwebthin strands of saliva stretched between its upper and lower incisors looked like threads of spun gold. It lunged forward at her bare foot. Jessie yanked it back with a scream, feeling the hot mist of the dogs breath on her skin but saving her toes. She curled her legs under her again without being aware that she was doing it, without hearing the cries of outrage from the muscles in her overstrained shoulders, without feeling her joints roll reluctantly in their bony beds. The dog looked at her a moment longer, continuing to snarl, threatening her with its eyes. Lets have an understanding, lady, the eyes said. You do your thing and Ill do mine. Thats the understanding. Sound okay to you? It better, because if you get in my way, Im going to fuck you up. Besides, hes deadyou know it as well as I do, and why should he go to waste when Im starving? Youd do the same. I doubt if you see that now, but I believe you may come around to my way of thinking on the subject, and sooner than you think. GET OUT! she screamed. Now she sat on her heels with her arms stretched out to either side, looking more like Fay Wray on the sacrificial jungle altar than ever. Her posturehead up, breasts thrust outward, shoulders thrown so far back they were white with strain at their farthest points, deep triangular hollows of shadow at the base of her neckwas that of an exceptionally hot pinup in a girlie magazine. The obligatory pout of sultry invitation was missing, however; the expression on her face was that of a woman who stands very near the borderline between the country of the sane and that of the mad. GET OUT OF HERE! The dog continued to look up at her and snarl for a few moments. Then, when it had apparently assured itself that the kick wouldnt be repeated, it dismissed her and lowered its head again. There was no lapping or licking this time. Jessie heard a loud smacking sound instead. It reminded her of the enthusiastic kisses her brother Will used to place on Gramma Joans cheek when they went to visit. The growling continued for a few seconds, but it was now oddly muffled, as if someone had slipped a pillowcase over the strays head. From her new sitting position, with her hair almost brushing the bottom of the shelf over her head, Jessie could see one of Geralds plump feet as well as his right arm and hand. The foot was shaking back and forth, as if Gerald were bopping a little to some jivey piece of musicOne More Summer by the Rainmakers, for instance. She could see the dog better from her new vantage point; its body was now visible all the way up to the place where its neck started. She would have been able to see its head, too, if it had been up. It wasnt, though. The strays head was down, and its rear legs were stiffly braced. Suddenly there was a thick ripping sounda snotty sound, like someone with a bad cold trying to clear his throat. She moaned. Stop ... oh please, cant you stop? The dog paid no attention. Once it had sat up and begged for table scraps, its eyes appearing to laugh, its mouth appearing to grin, but those days, like its former name, were long gone and hard to find. This was now, and things were what they were. Survival was not a matter for politeness or apology. It hadnt eaten for two days, there was food here, and although there was also a master here who didnt want it to take the food (the days when there had been masters who laughed and patted its head and called it GOOD DOG and gave it scraps for doing its small repertoire of tricks were all gone), this masters feet were small and soft instead of hard and hurtful, and its voice said it was powerless. The former Princes growls changed to muffled pants of effort, and as Jessie watched, the rest of Geralds body began to bop along with his foot, first just jiving back and forth and then actually starting to slide, as if he had gotten all the way into the groove, dead or not. Get down, Disco Gerald! Jessie thought wildly. Never mind the Chicken or the Shagdo the Dog! The stray couldnt have moved him if the rug had still been down, but Jessie had made arrangements to have the floor waxed the week after Labor Day. Bill Dunn, their caretaker, had let the men from Skips Floors n More in and they had done a hell of a job. They had wanted the missus to fully appreciate their work the next time she happened to stop down, so they had left the bedroom rug rolled up in the entry closet, and once the stray got Disco Gerald moving on the glossy floor, he moved almost as easily as John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. The only real problem the dog had was keeping its own traction. Its long, dirty claws helped in this regard, digging in and inscribing short, jagged marks into the glossy wax as it backed up with its teeth buried to the gumlines in Geralds flabby upper arm. Im not seeing this, you know. None of this is really happening. Just a little while ago we were listening to the Rainmakers, and Gerald turned down the volume long enough to tell me that he was thinking about going up to Orono for the football game this Saturday. U. of M. against B. U. I remember him scratching the lobe of his right ear while he talked. So how can he be dead with a dog dragging him across our bedroom floor by the arm? Geralds widows peak was in disarrayprobably as a result of the dogs licking the blood out of itbut his glasses were still firmly in place. She could see his eyes, halfopen and glazed, glaring up from their puffy sockets at the fading sunripples on the ceiling. His face was still a mask of ugly red and purple blotches, as if even death had not been able to assuage his anger at her sudden capricious (Had he seen it as capricious? Of course he had) change of mind. Let go of him, she told the dog, but her voice was now meek and sad and strengthless. The dog barely twitched its ears at the sound of it and didnt pause at all. It merely went on pulling the thing with the disarrayed widows peak and the blotchy complexion. This thing no longer looked like Disco Geraldnot a bit. Now it was only Dead Gerald, sliding across the bedroom floor with a dogs teeth buried in its flabby biceps. A frayed flap of skin hung over the dogs snout. Jessie tried to tell herself it looked like wallpaper, but wallpaper did notat least as far as she knewcome with moles and a vaccination scar. Now she could see Geralds pink, fleshy belly, marked only by the smallcaliber bullethole that was his navel. His penis flopped and dangled in its nest of black pubic hair. His buttocks whispered along the hardwood boards with ghastly, frictionless ease. Abruptly the suffocating atmosphere of her terror was pierced by a shaft of anger so bright it was like a stroke of heatlightning inside her head. She did more than accept this new emotion; she welcomed it. Rage might not help her get out of this nightmarish situation, but she sensed that it would serve as an antidote to her growing sense of shocked unreality. You bastard, she said in a low, trembling voice. You cowardly, slinking bastard.  Although she couldnt reach anything on Geralds side of the bedshelf, Jessie found that, by rotating her left wrist inside the handcuff so that her hand was pointing back over her shoulder, she could walk her fingers over a short stretch of the shelf on her own side. She couldnt turn her head enough to see the things she was touchingthey were just beyond that hazy spot people call the corner of their eyebut it didnt really matter. She had a pretty good idea of what was up there. She pattered her fingers back and forth, running their tips lightly over tubes of makeup, pushing a few farther back on the shelf and knocking others off it. Some of these latter landed on the coverlet; others bounced off the bed or her left thigh and landed on the floor. None of them were even close to the sort of thing she was looking for. Her fingers closed on a jar of Nivea face cream, and for a moment she allowed herself to think it might do the trick, but it was only a samplesized jar, too small and light to hurt the dog even if it had been made of glass instead of plastic. She dropped it back onto the shelf and resumed her blind search. At their farthest stretch, her exploring fingers encountered the rounded edge of a glass object that was by far the biggest thing she had touched. For a moment she couldnt place it, and then it came to her. The stein hanging on the wall was only one souvenir of Geralds Alpha Grab A Hoe days; she was touching another one. It was an ashtray, and the only reason she hadnt placed it immediately was because it belonged on Geralds end of the shelf, next to his glass of icewater. Someonepossibly Mrs. Dahl, the cleaning lady, possibly Gerald himselfhad moved it over to her side of the bed, maybe in the course of dusting the shelf, or maybe to make room for something else. The reason didnt matter, anyway. It was there, and right now that was enough. Jessie closed her fingers over its rounded edge, feeling two notches in itcigarette parkingspaces. She gripped the ashtray, drew her hand back as far as she could, then brought it forward again. Her luck was in and she snapped her wrist down at the instant the handcuff chain snubbed tight, like a bigleague pitcher breaking off a curve. All of this was an act of pure impulse, the missile sought for, found, and thrown before she had time to ensure the failure of the shot by reflecting on how unlikely it was that a woman who had gotten a D in the archery mode of her twoyear college phys ed requirement could possibly hit a dog with an ashtray, especially when the dog was fifteen feet away and the hand she was throwing with happened to be handcuffed to a bedpost. Nevertheless, she did hit it. The ashtray flipped over once in its flight, briefly revealing the Alpha Gamma Rho motto.


She couldnt read it from where she lay and didnt have to; the Latin words for service, growth, and courage were inscribed around a torch. The ashtray started to flip again but crashed into the dogs straining, bony shoulders before it could roll all the way over. The stray gave a yip of surprise and pain, and Jessie felt a moment of violent, primitive triumph. Her mouth pulled wide in an expression that felt like a grin and looked like a screech. She howled deliriously, arching her back and straightening her legs as she did. She was once again unaware of the pain in her shoulders as cartilage stretched and joints which had long since forgotten the limberness of twentyone were pressed almost to the point of dislocation. She would feel it all laterevery move, jerk, and twist she had madebut for now she was transported with savage delight at the success of her shot, and felt that if she did not somehow express her. triumphant delirium she might explode. She drummed her feet on the coverlet and rocked her body from side to side, her sweaty hair flailing her cheeks and temples, the tendons in her throat standing out like fat wires. HAH! she cried. I... GOT... YOUUUU! HAH! The dog jerked backward when the ashtray struck it, and jerked again when it bounced away and shattered on the floor. Its ears flattened at the change in the bitchmasters voice. What it heard now was not fear but triumph. Soon it would get off the bed and begin to deal out kicks with its strange feet, which would not be soft but hard after all. The dog knew it would be hurt again as it had been hurt before if it stayed here; it must run. It turned its head to make sure its path of retreat was still open, and the entrancing smell of fresh blood and meat struck it once more as it did so. The dogs stomach cramped, sour and imperative with hunger, and it whined uneasily. It was caught, perfectly balanced between two opposing directives, and it squirted out a fresh trickle of anxious urine. The smell of its own wateran odor that spoke of sickness and weakness instead of strength and conndenceadded to its frustration and confusion, and it began to bark again. Jessie winced back from that splintery, unpleasant soundshe would have covered her ears if she could and the dog sensed another change in the room. Something in the bitchmasters scent had changed. Her alphasmell was fading while it was still new and fresh, and the dog began to sense that perhaps the blow it had taken across its shoulders did not mean that other blows were coming, after all. The first blow had been more startling than painful, anyway. The dog took a tentative step toward the trailing arm it had dropped ... toward the entrancingly thick reek of mingled blood and meat. It watched the bitchmaster carefully as it moved. Its initial assessment of the bitchmaster as either harmless, helpless, or both might have been wrong. It would have to be very careful. Jessie lay on the bed, now faintly aware of the throbbing in her own shoulders, more aware that her throat really hurt now, most aware of all that, ashtray or no ashtray, the dog was still here. In the first hot rush of her triumph it had seemed a foregone conclusion to her that it must flee, but it had somehow stood its ground. Worse, it was advancing again. Cautiously and warily, true, but advancing. She felt a swollen green sac of poison pulsing somewhere inside herbitter stuff, hateful as hemlock. She was afraid that if that sac burst, she would choke on her own frustrated rage. Get out, shithead, she told the dog in a hoarse voice that had begun to crumble about the edges. Get out or Ill kill you. I dont know how, but I promise to God I will.  The dog stopped again, looking at her with a deeply uneasy eye. Thats right, you better pay attention to me, Jessie said. You just better, because I mean it. I mean every word. Then her voice rose to a shout again, although it bled off into whispers in places as her overstrained voice began to short out. Ill kill you, I will, I swear I will, SO GET OUT! The dog which had once been little Catherine Sutlins Prince looked from the bitchmaster to the meat; from the meat to the bitchmaster; from the bitchmaster to the meat once more. It came to the sort of decision Catherines father would have called a compromise. It leaned forward, eyes rolling up to watch Jessie carefully at the same time, and seized the torn flap of tendon, fat, and gristle that had once been Gerald Burlingames right bicep. Growling, it yanked backward. Geralds arm came up; his limp fingers seemed to point through the east window at the Mercedes in the driveway. Stop it! Jessie shrieked. Her wounded voice now broke more frequently into that upper register where shrieks become gaspy falsetto whispers. Havent you done enough? Just leave him alone! The stray paid no heed. It shook its head rapidly from side to side, as it had often done when it and Cathy Sutlin played tugowar with one of its rubber toys. This, however, was no game. Curds of foam flew from the strays jaws as it worked, shaking the meat off the bone. Geralds carefully manicured hand swooped wildly back and forth in the air. Now he looked like a bandconductor urging his musicians to pick up their tempo. Jessie heard that thick throatclearing sound again and suddenly realized she had to vomit. No, Jessie! It was Ruths voice, and it was full of alarm. No, you cant do that! The smell might bring it to you ... bring it on you! Jessies face knotted into a stressful grimace as she struggled to bring her gorge under control. The ripping sound came again and she caught just a glimpse of the dogits forepaws were once again stiff and braced, and it seemed to stand at the end of a thick dark strip of elastic the color of a Ball jar gasketbefore she closed her eyes. She tried to put her hands over her face, temporarily forgetting in her distress that she was cuffed. Her hands stopped still at least two feet apart from each other and the chains jingled. Jessie moaned. It was a sound that went beyond desperation and into despair. It sounded like giving up. She heard that wet, snotty ripping sound once more. It ended with another bighappykiss smack. Jessie did not open her eyes. The stray began to back toward the hall door, its eyes never leaving the bitchmaster on the bed. In its jaws was a large, glistening chunk of Gerald Burlingame. If the master on the bed meant to try and take it back, it would make its move now. The dog could not thinkat least not as human beings understand that wordbut its complex network of instincts provided a very effective alternative to thought, and it knew that what it had doneand what it was about to doconstituted a kind of damnation. But it had been hungry for a long time. It had been left in the woods by a man who had gone back home whistling the theme from Born Free, and now it was starving. If the bitchmaster tried to take away its meal now, it would fight. It shot one final glance at her, saw she was making no move to get off her bed, and turned away. It carried the meat into the entry and settled down with it caught firmly between its paws. The wind gusted briefly, first breezing the door open and then banging it shut. The stray glanced briefly in that direction and ascertained in its doggy, notquitethinking way that it could push the door open with its muzzle and escape quickly if the need arose. With this last piece of business taken care of, it began to eat. 9 The urge to vomit passed slowly, but it did pass. Jessie lay on her back with her eyes pressed tightly shut, now beginning to really feel the painful throbbing in her shoulders. It came in slow, peristaltic waves, and she had a dismaying idea that this was only the beginning. I want to go to sleep, she thought. It was the childs voice again. Now it sounded shocked and frightened. It had no interest in logic, no patience for cans and cants. I was almost asleep when the bad dog came, and thats what I want nowto go to sleep. She sympathized wholeheartedly. The problem was, she didnt really feel sleepy anymore. She had just seen a dog tear a chunk out of her husband, and she didnt feel sleepy at all. What she felt was thirsty. Jessie opened her eyes and the first thing she saw was Gerald, lying on his own reflection in the highly polished bedroom floor like some grotesque human atoll. His eyes were still open, still staring furiously up at the ceiling, but his glasses now hung askew with one bow sticking into his ear instead of going over it. His head was cocked at such an extreme angle that his plump left cheek lay almost against his left shoulder. Between his right shoulder and right elbow there was nothing but a dark red smile with ragged white edges. Dear Jesus, Jessie muttered. She looked quickly away, out the west window. Golden lightit was almost sunset light nowdazzled her, and she shut her eyes again, watching the ebb and flow of red and black as her heart pushed membranes of blood through her closed lids. After a few moments of this, she noticed that the same darting patterns repeated themselves over and over again. It was almost like looking at protozoa under a microscope, protozoa on a slide which had been tinted with a red stain. She found this repeating pattern both interesting and soothing. She supposed you didnt have to be a genius to understand the appeal such simple repeating shapes held, given the circumstances. When all the normal patterns and routines of a persons life fell apartand with such shocking suddennessyou had to find something you could hold onto, something that was both sane and predictable. If the organized swirl of blood in the thin sheaths of skin between your eyeballs and the last sunlight of an October day was all you could find, then you took it and said thank you very much. Because if you couldnt find something to hold onto, something that made at least some sort of sense, the alien elements of the new world order were apt to drive you quite mad. Elements like the sounds now coming from the entry, for instance. The sounds that were a filthy, starving stray eating part of the man who had taken you to see your first Bergman film, the man who had taken you to the amusement park at Old Orchard Beach, coaxed you aboard that big Viking ship that swung back and forth in the air like a pendulum, then laughed until tears squirted out of his eyes when you said you wanted to go again. The man who had once made love to you in the bathtub until you were literally screaming with pleasure. The man who was now sliding down that dogs gullet in gobs and chunks. Alien elements like that. Strange days, pretty mamma, she said. Strange days indeed. Her speaking voice had become a dusty, painful croak. She supposed she would do well to just shut up and give it a rest, but when it was quiet in the bedroom she could hear the panic, still there, still creeping around on the big soft pads of its feet, looking for an opening, waiting for her to let down her guard. Besides, there was no real quiet. The chainsaw guy had packed it in for the day, but the loon still voiced its occasional cry and the wind was rising as night approached, banging the door more loudlyand more frequentlythan ever. Plus, of course, the sound of the dog dining on her husband. While Gerald had been waiting to collect and pay for their sub sandwiches in Amatos, Jessie had stepped next door to Michauds Market. The fish at Michauds was always goodalmost fresh enough to flop, as her grandmother would have said. She had bought some lovely fillet of sole, thinking she would panbroil it if they decided to stay overnight. Sole was good because Gerald, who would live on a diet of nothing but roast beef and fried chicken if left to his own devices (with the occasional order of deepfried mushrooms thrown in for nutritional purposes), actually claimed to like sole. She had bought it without the slightest premonition that he would be eaten before he could eat. Its a jungle out there, baby, Jessie said in her dusty, croaky voice, and realized she was now doing more than just thinking in Ruth Nearys voice; she actually sounded like Ruth, who in their college days would have lived on a diet of nothing but Dewars and Marlboros, if left to her own devices. That tough nobullshit voice spoke up then, as if Jessie had rubbed a magic lamp. Remember that Nick Lowe song you heard on IWBLM when you were coming home from your pottery class one day last winter? The one that made you laugh? She did. She didnt want to, but she did. It had been a Nick Lowe tune she believed had been titled She Used to Be a Winner (Now Shes Just the Doggys Dinner), a cynically amusing pop meditation on loneliness set to an incongruously sunny beat. Amusing as hell last winter, yes, Ruth was right about that, but not so amusing now. Stop it, Ruth, she croaked. If youre going to freeload in my head, at least have the decency to quit teasing me.  Teasing you? Jesus, tootsie, Im not teasing you ; Im trying to wake you up! . I am awake! she said querulously. On the lake the loon cried out again, as if to back her up on that. Partly thanks to you! No, youre not. You havent been awakereally awakefor a long time. When something bad happens, Jess, do you know what you do? You tell yourself, Oh, this is nothing to worry about, this is just a bad dream. I get them every now and then, theyre no big deal, and as soon as I roll over on my back again Ill be fine. And thats what you do, you poor sap. Thats just what you do. Jessie opened her mouth to replysuch canards should not go unanswered, dry mouth and sore throat or notbut Goodwife Burlingame had mounted the ramparts before Jessie herself could do more than begin to organize her thoughts. How can you say such awful things? Youre horrible! Go away! Ruths nobullshit voice uttered its cynical bark of laughter again, and Jessie thought how disquietinghow horribly disquietingit was to hear part of your mind laughing in the makebelieve voice of an old acquaintance who was long gone to God knew where. Go away? Youd like that, wouldnt you? TootsieWootsie, Puddin n Pie, Daddys little girl. Any time the truth gets too close, any time you start to suspect the dream is maybe not just a dream, you run away. Thats ridiculous. Is it? Then what happened to Nora Callighan? For a moment that shocked Goodys voiceand her own, the one that usually spoke both aloud and in her mind as Ito silence, but in that silence a strange, familiar image formed a circle of laughing, pointing peoplemostly womenstanding around a young girl with her head and hands in stocks. She was hard to see because it was very darkit should still have been full daylight but was for some reason very dark, just the samebut the girls face would have been hidden even if the day had been bright. Her hair hung over it like a penitents shroud, although it was hard to believe she could have done anything too horrible; she was clearly no more than twelve or so. Whatever it was she was being punished for, it couldnt be for hurting her husband. This particular daughter of Eve was too young to have even begun her monthly courses, let alone have a husband. No, thats not true, a voice from the deeper ranges of her mind suddenly spoke up. This voice was both musical yet frighteningly powerful, like the cry of a whale. She started when she was only ten and a half. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe he smelled blood, just like that dog out in the entry. Maybe it made him frantic. Shut up! Jessie cried. She felt suddenly frantic herself. Shut up, we dont talk about that! And speaking of smells, whats that other one? Ruth asked. Now the mental voice was harsh and eager ... the voice of a prospector who has finally stumbled onto a vein of ore he has long suspected but has never been able to find. That mineral smell, like salt and old pennies We dont talk about that, I said! She lay on the coverlet, her muscles tense beneath her cold skin, both her captivity and her husbands death forgottenat least for the time beingin the face of this new threat. She could feel Ruth, or some cutoff part of her for which Ruth spoke, debating whether or not to pursue the matter. When it decided not to (not directly, at least), both Jessie and Goodwife Burlingame breathed a sigh of relief. All rightlets talk about Nora instead, Ruth said. Nora, your therapist? Nora, your counsellor? The one you started to go see around the time you stopped painting because some of the paintings were scaring you? Which was also the time, coincidentally or not, when Geralds sexual interest in you seemed to evaporate and you started sniffing the collars of his shirts for perfume? You remember Nora, dont you? Nora Callighan was a prying bitch! the Goodwife snarled. No, Jessie muttered. She was wellintentioned, I dont doubt that a bit, she just always wanted to go one step too far. Ask one question too many. You said you liked her a lot. Didnt I hear you say that? I want to stop thinking, Jessie said. Her voice was wavery and uncertain. I especially want to stop hearing voices, and talking back to them, too. Its nuts. Well, you better listen just the same, Ruth said grimly, because you cant run away from this the way you ran away from Nora ... the way you ran away from me, for that matter. I never ran away from you, Ruth! Shocked denial, and not very convincing. She had done just that, of course. Had simply packed her bags and moved out of the cheesy but cheerful dorm suite she and Ruth shared. She hadnt done it because Ruth had started asking her too many of the wrong questionsquestions about Jessies childhood, questions about Dark Score Lake, questions about what might have happened there during the summer just after Jessie started to menstruate. No, only a bad friend would have moved out for such reasons. Jessie hadnt moved out because Ruth started asking questions; she moved out because Ruth wouldnt stop asking them when Jessie asked her to do so. That, in Jessies opinion, made Ruth a bad friend. Ruth had seen the lines Jessie had drawn in the dust ... and had then deliberately stepped over them anyway. As Nora Callighan had done, years later. Besides, the idea of running away under these conditions was pretty ludicrous, wasnt it? She was, after all, handcuffed to the bed. Dont insult my intelligence, cutiepie, Ruth said. Your mind isnt handcuffed to the bed, and we both know it. You can still run if you want to, but my advicemy strong adviceis dont you do it, because Im the only chance youve got. If you just lie there pretending this is a bad dream you got from sleeping on your left side, youre going to die in handcuffs. Is that what you want? Is that your prize for living your whole life in handcuffs, ever since I will not think about that! Jessie screamed at the empty room. For a moment Ruth was silent, but before Jessie could do more than begin to hope that shed gone away, Ruth was back ... and back at her, worrying her like a terrier worrying a rag. Come on, Jessyoud probably like to believe youre crazy rather than dig around in that old grave, but youre really not, you know. Im you, the Goodwifes you ... were all you, as a matter of fact. I have a pretty good idea of what happened that day at Dark Score when the rest of the family was gone, and the thing Im really curious about doesnt have a lot to do with the events per se. What Im really curious about is this is there a part of youone I dont know aboutthat wants to be sharing space with Gerald in that dogs guts come this time tomorrow? I only ask because that doesnt sound like loyalty to me; it sounds like lunacy. Tears were trickling down her cheeks again, but she didnt know if she was crying because of the possibilityfinally articulatedthat she actually could die here or because for the first time in at least four years she had come close to thinking about that other summer place, the one on Dark Score Lake, and about what happened there on the day when the sun went out. Once upon a time she had almost spilled that secret at a womens consciousness group ... back in the early seventies that had been, and of course attending that meeting had been her roomies idea, but Jessie had gone along willingly, at least to begin with; it had seemed harmless enough, just another act in the amazing tiedyed carnival that was college back then. For Jessie, those first two years of collegeparticularly with someone like Ruth Neary to tour her through the games, rides, and exhibitshad been for the most part quite wonderful, a time when fearlessness seemed usual and achievement inevitable. Those were the days when no dorm room was complete without a Peter Max poster and if you were tired of the Beatlesnot that anybody wasyou could slap on a little Hot Tuna or MC5. It had all been a little too bright to be real, like things seen through a fever which is not quite high enough to be lifethreatening. In fact, those first two years had been a blast. The blast had ended with that first meeting of the womens consciousness group. In there, Jessie had discovered a ghastly gray world which seemed simultaneously to preview the adult future that lay ahead for her in the eighties and to whisper of gloomy childhood secrets that had been buried alive in the sixties ... but did not lie quiet there. There had been twenty women in the living room of the cottage attached to the Neuworth Interdenominational Chapel, some perched on the old sofa, others peering out of the shadows thrown by the wings of the vast and lumpy parsonage chairs, most sitting crosslegged on the floor in a rough circle twenty women between the ages of eighteen and fortysomething. They had joined hands and shared a moment of silence at the beginning of the session. When that was over, Jessie had been assaulted by ghastly stories of rape, of incest, of physical torture. If she lived to be a hundred she would never forget the calm, pretty blonde girl who had pulled up her sweater to show the old scars of cigarette burns on the undersides of her breasts. That was when the carnival ended for Jessie Mahout. Ended? No, that wasnt right. It was as if she had been afforded a momentary glimpse behind the carnival; had been allowed to see the gray and empty fields of autumn that were the real truth nothing but empty cigarette wrappers and used condoms and a few cheap broken prizes caught in the tall grass, waiting to either blow away or be covered by the winter snows. She saw that silent stupid sterile world waiting beyond the thin layer of patched canvas which was all that separated it from the razzledazzle brightness of the midway, the patter of the hucksters, and the glimmerglamour of the rides, and it terrified her. To think that only this lay ahead for her, only this and nothing more, was awful; to think that it lay behind her as well, imperfectly hidden by the patched and tawdry canvas of her own doctored memories, was insupportable. After showing them the bottoms of her breasts, the pretty blonde girl had pulled her sweater back down and explained that she could say nothing to her parents about what her brothers friends had done to her on the weekend her parents had gone to Montreal because it might mean that what her brother had been doing to her off and on all during the last year would come out, and her parents would never have believed that. The blonde girls voice was as calm as her face, her tone perfectly rational. When she finished there was a thunderstruck pausea moment during which Jessie had felt something tearing loose inside her and had heard a hundred ghostly interior voices screaming in mingled hope and terrorand then Ruth had spoken. Why wouldnt they believe you? shed demanded. Jesus, Livthey burned you with live cigarettes! I mean, you had the burns as evidence! Why wouldnt they believe you? Didnt they love you? Yes, Jessie thought. Yes, they loved her. But Yes, the blonde girl said. They loved me. They still do. But they idolized my brother Barry. Sitting beside Ruth, the heel of one notquitesteady hand resting against her forehead, Jessie remembered whispering, Besides, it would have killed her. Ruth turned to her, began, What? and the blonde girl, still not crying, still eerily calm, said Besides, finding out something like that would have killed my mother. And then Jessie had known she was going to explode if she didnt get out of there. So she had gotten up, springing out of her chair so fast she had almost knocked the ugly, bulky thing over. She had sprinted from the room, knowing they were all looking at her, not caring. What they thought didnt matter. What mattered was that the sun had gone out, the very sun itself, and if she told, her story would be disbelieved only if God was good. If God was in a bad mood, Jessie would be believed ... and even if it didnt kill her mother, it would blow the family apart like a stick of dynamite in a rotten pumpkin. So she had run out of the room and through the kitchen and would have belted right on through the back door, except the back door was locked. Ruth chased after her, calling for her to stop, Jessie, stop. She had, but only because that damned locked door made her. Shed put her face against the cold dark glass, actually consideringyes, for just a moment she hadslamming her head right through it and cutting her throat, anything to blot out that awful gray vision of the future ahead and the past behind, but in the end she had simply turned around and slid down to the floor, clasping her bare legs below the hem of the short skirt shed been wearing and putting her forehead against her upraised knees and closing her eyes. Ruth sat down beside her and put an arm around her, rocking her back and forth, crooning to her, stroking her hair, encouraging her to give it up, get rid of it, sick it up, let it go. Now, lying here in the house on the shore of Kashwakamak Lake, she wondered what had happened to the tearless, eerily calm blonde girl who had told them about her brother Barry and Barrys friendsyoung men who had clearly felt a woman was just a lifesupport system for a cunt and that branding was a perfectly just punishment for a young woman who felt more or less okay about fucking her brother but not her brothers goodbuddies. More to the point, Jessie wondered what she had said to Ruth as they sat with their backs against the locked kitchen door and their arms around each other. The only thing she could remember for sure was something like He never burned me, he never burned me, he never hurt me at all. But there must have been more to it than that, because the questions Ruth had refused to stop asking had all pointed clearly in just one direction toward Dark Score Lake and the day the sun had gone out. She had finally left Ruth rather than tell ... just as she had left Nora rather than tell. She had run just as fast as her legs could carry herJessie Mahout Burlingame, also known as The Amazing Gingerbread Girl, the last wonder of a dubious age, survivor of the day the sun had gone out, now handcuffed to the bed and able to run no more. Help me, she said to the empty bedroom. Now that she had remembered the blonde girl with the eerily calm face and voice and the stipple of old circular scars on her otherwise lovely breasts, Jessie could not get her out of her mind, nor the knowledge that it hadnt been calmness, not at all, but some fundamental disconnection from the terrible thing that had happened to her. Somehow the blonde girls face became her face, and when Jessie spoke, she did so in the shaking, humbled voice of an atheist who has been stripped of everything but one final longshot prayer. Please help me. It wasnt God who answered but the part of her which apparently could speak only while masquerading as Ruth Neary. The voice now sounded gentle ... but not very hopeful. Ill try, but you have to help me. I know youre willing to do painful things, but you may have to think painful thoughts, too. Are you ready for that? This isnt about thinking, Jessie said shakily, and thought So thats what Goodwife Burlingame sounds like out loud. Its about ... well ... escaping. And you may have to muzzle her, Ruth said. Shes a valid part of you, Jessieof usand not really a bad person, but shes been left to run the whole show for far too long, and in a situation like this, her way of dealing with the world is not much good. Do you want to argue the point? Jessie didnt want to argue that point or any other. She was too tired. The light falling through the west window was growing steadily hotter and redder as sunset approached. The wind gusted, sending leaves rattling along the lakeside deck, which was empty now; all the deck furniture had been stacked in the living room. The pines soughed; the back door banged; the dog paused, then resumed its noisome smacking and ripping and chewing. Im so thirsty, she said mournfully. Okay, thenthats where we ought to start. She turned her head the other way until she felt the last warmth of the sun on the left side of her neck and the damp hair stuck to her cheek, and then she opened her eyes again. She found herself staring directly at Geralds glass of water, and her throat immediately sent out a parched, imperative cry. Lets begin this phase of operations by forgetting about the dog, Ruth said. The dog is just doing what it has to do to get along, and youve got to do the same. I dont know if I can forget it, Jessie said. I think you can, tootsI really do. If you could sweep what happened on the day the sun went out under the rug, I guess you can sweep anything under the rug. For a moment she almost had it all, and understood she could have it all, if she really wanted to. The secret of that day had never been completely sunk in her subconscious, as such secrets were in the TV soapoperas and the movie melodramas; it had been buried in a shallow grave, at best. There had been some selective amnesia, but of a completely voluntary sort. If she wanted to remember what had happened on the day the sun had gone out, she thought she probably could. As if this idea had been an invitation, her minds eye suddenly saw a vision of heartbreaking clarity a pane of glass held in a pair of barbecue tongs. A hand wearing an ovenmitt was turning it this way and that in the smoke of a small sod fire. Jessie stiffened on the bed and willed the image away. Lets get one thing straight, she thought. She supposed it was the Ruthvoice she was speaking to, but wasnt completely sure; she wasnt really sure of anything anymore. I dont want to remember. Got it? The events of that day have nothing to do with the events of this one. Theyre apples and oranges. Its easy enough to understand the connectionstwo lakes, two summer houses, two cases of (secrets silence hurt harm) sexual hankypankybut remembering what happened in 1963 cant do a thing for me now except add to my general misery. So lets just drop that whole subject, okay? Lets forget Dark Score Lake. What do you say, Ruth? she asked in a low voice, and her gaze shifted to the batik butterfly across the room. For just a moment there was another imagea little girl, somebodys sweet little Punkin, smelling the sweet aroma of aftershave and looking up into the sky through a piece of smoked glassand then it was mercifully gone. She looked at the butterfly for a few moments longer, wanting to make sure those old memories were going to stay gone, and then she looked back at Geralds glass of water. Incredibly, there were still a few slivers of ice floating on top, although the darkening room continued to hold the heat of the afternoon sun and would for awhile longer. Jessie let her gaze drift down the glass, let it embrace those chilly bubbles of condensation standing on it.