Full Dark, No Stars

gave several more light taps around the edges of the blow. When she thought it looked like something she might have done with the side of her face—where the worst bruise was—she went slowly up the

stairs and down the hal , holding her gun in one hand.

For a moment she hesitated outside her bedroom door, which was standing ajar. What if he was in there? If he had her purse, he had her address. The burglar alarm had not been set until she got back (so sloppy). He could have parked his old F-150 around the corner. He could have forced the kitchen door lock. It probably wouldn’t have taken much more than a chisel.

If he was here, I’d smell him. That mansweat. And I’d shoot him. No “Lie down on the floor,” no “Keep your hands up while I dial 911,” no horror-movie bullshit. I’d just shoot him. But you know whatI’d say first?

“You like it, it likes you,” she said in her low rasp of a voice. Yes. That was it exactly. He wouldn’t understand, but she would.

She discovered she sort of wanted him in her room. That probably meant the New Woman was more than a little crazy, but so what? If it al came out then, it would be worth it. Shooting him would make public humiliation bearable. And look at the bright side! It would probably help sales!

I’d like to see the terror in his eyes when he realized I really meant to do it. That might make at least some of this right.

It seemed to take her groping hand an age to find the bedroom light-switch, and of course she kept expecting her fingers to be grabbed while she fumbled. She took off her clothes slowly, uttering one

watery, miserable sob when she unzipped her pants and saw dried blood in her pubic hair.

She ran the shower as hot as she could stand it, washing the places that could bear to be washed, letting the water rinse the rest. The clean hot water. She wanted his smel off her, and the mildewy

smel of the carpet remnant, too. Afterward, she sat on the toilet. This time peeing hurt less, but the bolt of pain that went through her head when she tried—very tentatively—to straighten her leaning nose made her cry out. Wel , so what? Nel Gwyn, the famous Elizabethan actress, had had a bent nose. Tess was sure she had read that somewhere.

She put on flannel pajamas and shuffled to bed, where she lay with al the lights on and the Lemon Squeezer .38 on the night table, thinking she would never sleep, that her inflamed imagination would

turn every sound from the street into the approach of the giant. But then Fritzy jumped up on the bed, curled himself beside her, and began to purr. That was better.

I’m home, she thought. I’m home, I’m home, I’m home.

- 19 -

When she woke up, the inarguably sane light of six AM was streaming through the windows. There were things that needed to be done and decisions that needed to be made, but for the moment it

was enough to be alive and in her own bed instead of stuffed into a culvert.

This time peeing felt almost normal, and there was no blood. She got into the shower again, once more running the water as hot as she could stand it, closing her eyes and letting it beat on her

throbbing face. When she’d had al of that she could take, she worked shampoo into her hair, doing it slowly and methodical y, using her fingers to massage her scalp, skipping the painful spot where he must have hit her. At first the deep scratch on her back stung, but that passed and she felt a kind of bliss. She hardly thought of the shower scene in Psycho at al .

The shower was always where she had done her best thinking, a womblike environment, and if she had ever needed to think both hard and wel , it was now.

I don’t want to see Dr. Hedstrom, and I don’t need to see Dr. Hedstrom. That decision’s been made, although later—a couple of weeks from now, maybe, when my face looks more or less normal

again—I’ll have to get checked out for STDs…

“Don’t forget the AIDS test,” she said, and the thought made her grimace hard enough to hurt her mouth. It was a scary thought. Nevertheless, the test would have to be taken. For her own peace of

mind. And none of that addressed what she now recognized as this morning’s central issue. What she did or didn’t do about her own violation was her own business, but that was not true of the women in