Full Dark, No Stars

She pushed this thought away. She was too tired to consider what might or might not be her moral responsibility. She’d work on that part later, if God meant to grant her a later… and it seemed He

might. But not on this deserted road where any set of approaching lights might have her rapist behind it.

Hers. He was hers now.

- 13 -

A mile or so after passing the Colewich sign, Tess began to hear a low, rhythmic thudding that seemed to come up from the road through her feet. Her first thought was of H. G. Wel s’s mutant

Morlocks, tending their machinery deep in the bowels of the earth, but another five minutes clarified the sound. It was coming through the air, not from the ground, and it was one she knew: the heartbeat of a bass guitar. The rest of the band coalesced around it as she walked. She began to see light on the horizon, not headlights but the white of arc sodiums and the red gleam of neon. The band was playing

“Mustang Sal y,” and she could hear laughter. It was drunken and beautiful, punctuated by happy party-down whoops. The sound made her feel like crying some more.

The roadhouse, a big old honkytonk barn with a huge dirt parking lot that looked ful to capacity, was cal ed The Stagger Inn. She stood at the edge of the glare cast by the parking lot lights, frowning.

Why so many cars? Then she remembered it was Friday night. Apparently The Stagger Inn was the place to go on Friday nights if you were from Colewich or any of the surrounding towns. They would

have a phone, but there were too many people. They would see her bruised face and leaning nose. They would want to know what had happened to her, and she was in no shape to make up a story. At

least not yet. Even a pay phone outside was no good, because she could see people out there, too. Lots of them. Of course. These days you had to go outside if you wanted to smoke a cigarette. Also…

He could be there. Hadn’t he been capering around her at one point, singing a Rol ing Stones song in his awful tuneless voice? Tess supposed she might have dreamed that part—or hal ucinated it—

but she didn’t think so. Wasn’t it possible that after hiding her car, he’d come right here to The Stagger Inn, pipes al cleaned and ready to party the night away?

The band launched into a perfectly adequate cover of an old Cramps song: “Can Your Pussy Do the Dog.” No, Tess thought, but today a dog certainly did my pussy. The Old Tess would not have approved of such a joke, but the New Tess thought it was pretty goddam funny. She barked a hoarse laugh and got walking again, moving to the other side of the road, where the lights from the roadhouse

parking lot did not quite reach.

As she passed the far side of the building, she saw an old white van backed up to the loading dock. There were no arc sodiums on this side of The Stagger Inn, but the moonlight was enough to show

her the skeleton pounding its cupcake drums. No wonder the van hadn’t stopped to pick up the nail-studded road litter. The Zombie Bakers had been late for the load-in, and that wasn’t good, because on

Friday nights, The Stagger Inn was hopping with the bopping, rol ing with the strol ing, and reeling with the feeling.

“Can your pussy do the dog?” Tess asked, and pul ed the filthy carpet remnant a little tighter around her neck. It was no mink stole, but on a cool October night, it was better than nothing.

- 14 -

When Tess got to the intersection of Stagg Road and Route 47, she saw something beautiful: a Gas & Dash with two pay telephones on the cinder-block wal between the restrooms.

She used the Women’s first, and had to put a hand over her mouth to stifle a cry when her urine started to flow; it was as if someone had lit a book of matches in there. When she got up from the toilet, fresh tears were rol ing down her cheeks. The water in the bowl was a pastel pink. She blotted herself—very gently—with a pad of toilet paper, then flushed. She would have taken another wad to fold into the crotch of her underwear, but of course she couldn’t do that. The giant had taken her underpants as a souvenir.

“You bastard,” she said.

She paused with her hand on the doorknob, looking at the bruised, wide-eyed woman in the water-spotted metal mirror over the washbasin. Then she went out.

- 15 -

She discovered that using a pay telephone in this modern age had grown strangely difficult, even if you had your cal ing-card number memorized. The first phone she tried worked only one-way: she

could hear the directory assistance operator, but the directory assistance operator couldn’t hear her, and broke such connection as there was. The other phone was tilted askew on the cinder-block wal —

not encouraging—but it worked. There was a steady annoying under-whine, but at least she and the operator could communicate. Only Tess had no pen or pencil. There were several writing implements in

her purse, but of course her purse was gone.

“Can’t you just connect me?” she asked the operator.