That was a bad street to go down, though. He took the handkerchief out of his back pocket and wrapped it around his bleeding finger. Then he raised his head and looked around. He was surprised to see it was well on the way to being dark; there were lights on in some of the houses. How far had he come? Where, exactly, was he?
He squinted at the street-sign on the corner of the next intersection and read the words Dearborn Avenue. On his right was a little mom-and-pop store with a bike rack in front and a sign reading OVEN-FRESH ROLLS in the window. Norman’s stomach growled. He realized that he was really hungry for the first time since getting off the Continental Express bus and eating cold cereal in the terminal cafeteria, eating it because it was what she would have eaten.
A few rolls were suddenly just what he wanted, the only thing in the world he wanted . . .
but not just rolls. He wanted oven-fresh rolls, like the kind his mother used to make. She was a fat slob who never stopped yelling, but she could cook, all right. No doubt about that. And she had been her own best customer.
They better be fresh, Norman thought as he mounted the steps. Inside, he could see an old man pottering around behind the counter. They better be fresh, pal, or God help you.
He was reaching for the doorhandle when one of the posters in the window caught his eye.
It was bright yellow, and although he had no way of knowing that Rosie had placed this particular flier herself, he felt something stir inside him even before he saw the words Daughters and Sisters.
He bent forward to read it, eyes suddenly very small and very intent, his heart picking up speed in his chest.
COME OUT AND PLAY WITH US
AT BEAUTIFUL ETTINGER’S PIER
AS WE CELEBRATE
CLEAR SKIES AND WARM DAYS WITH
THE 9TH ANNUAL DAUGHTERS AND SISTERS
‘SWING INTO SUMMER’ PICNIC AND CONCERT
SATURDAY, JUNE 4th
BOOTHS*CRAFTS*GAMES OF CHANCE*
GAMES OF SKILL*RAP DJ FOR THE KIDDIES
!!!PLUS!!!
THE INDIGO GIRLS, LIVE AND IN CONCERT, 8 P.M.
SINGLE PARENTS, THERE WILL BE CHILD-MINDING!
‘COME ONE, COME ALL!’
ALL PROCEEDS BENEFIT DAUGHTERS AND SISTERS,
WHO REMIND YOU THAT VIOLENCE AGAINST ONE WOMAN
IS A CRIME AGAINST ALL WOMEN
Saturday the fourth. This Saturday. And would she be there, his rambling Rose? Of course she would be, she and all her new lesbo friends. Cunts of a feather flocked together.
Norman traced the fifth line up from the bottom of the poster with the finger he had bitten.
Bright poppies of blood were already soaking through the handkerchief wrapped around it.
Come one, come all.
That was what it said, and Norman thought he just might take them up on it.
8
Thursday morning, almost eleven-thirty. Rosie took a sip of Evian, rolled it around in her mouth, swallowed, and picked up the sides again.
‘She was coming, all right; this time his ears weren’t just playing tricks on him. Peterson could hear the staccato rap of her high heels moving up the hallway. He could imagine her with her bag already open, rummaging in there for her key, worrying about the devil who might be coming along behind when she should have been worried about the one lying in wait. He checked quickly to make sure he still had his knife, then pulled the nylon stroking down over his head. As her key rattled in the lock, Peterson pulled the knife out and — ‘
‘Cut-cut- cut!’ Rhoda cried impatiently through the speakers.
Rosie looked up and through the glass wall. She didn’t like the way Curt Hamilton was just sitting there by his DAT deck and looking at her with his earphones resting on his collarbones, but what alarmed her was the fact that Rhoda was smoking one of her slim cigarettes right in the control room, ignoring the NO PUFFIN sign on the wall. Rhoda looked like she was having a terrible morning, but she wasn’t the only one.
‘Rhoda? Did I do something wrong?’
‘Not if you wear nylon strokings, I guess,’ Rhoda said, and tapped ash into a styrofoam cup sitting on the control panel in front of her. ‘I’ve had a few guys stroke mine over the years, now that I think about it, but mostly I call them nylon stockings.’
For a moment Rosie didn’t have the slightest idea what she was talking about, then she mentally replayed the last few sentences she’d read and groaned. ‘Jeepers, Rhoda, I’m sorry.’
Curt slipped his cans back over his ears and pushed a button. ‘Kill All My Tomorrows, take seventy-thr — ‘
Rhoda put a hand on his arm and said something which filled Rosie’s stomach with icewater: ‘Don’t bother.’ Then she glanced through the window, saw Rosie’s stricken face, and offered her a smile which was wan but game. ‘All’s cool, Rosie, I’m just calling lunch half an hour early, that’s all. Come on out.’
Rosie got up too fast, bumping her left thigh a good one on the bottom of the table and almost overturning the plastic bottle of Evian water. She hurried out of the booth.
Rhoda and Curt were standing just outside, and for a moment Rosie was sure — no, she knew — that they had been talking about her.
If you really believe that, Rosie, you probably ought to go see a doctor, Practical-Sensible spoke up sharply. The kind that shows you inkblots and asks about your potty training. Rosie usually had very little use for that voice, but this time she welcomed it.
‘I can do better,’ she told Rhoda. ‘And I will, this afternoon. Honest to God.’
Was that true? The hell of it was, she just didn’t know. She had tried all morning to submerge herself in Kill All My Tomorrows as she had in The Manta Ray, but with small success. She would begin to slip into that world where Alma St George was being pursued by her psychotic admirer, Peterson, and then be hauled out of it by one of the voices from last night: Anna’s, telling her that her ex-husband, the man who had sent her to Daughters and Sisters, had been murdered, or Bill’s, sounding panicky and bewildered as he asked her what was wrong, or, worst of all, her own, telling him to stay away. To just stay away.
Curt patted her on the shoulder. ‘You’re having a bad voice day,’ he said. ‘It’s like a bad hair day, only worse. We see a lot of it here in the Audio Chamber of Horrors, don’t we, Rho?’
‘You bet,’ Rhoda said, but her eyes never paused in their inspection of Rosie’s face, and Rosie had a pretty good idea of what Rhoda was seeing. She’d gotten only two or three hours’
worth of sleep last night, and she didn’t have the sort of high-powered cosmetics that would hide that kind of damage.
And wouldn’t know how to use them if I did, she thought.
She’d had a few of the basic makeup items in high school (the time of life, ironically, when she had needed such helps the least), but since marrying Norman she’d gotten along with nothing but a little powder and two or three lipsticks in the most natural shades. If I’d wanted to look at a hooker I would have married one, Norman had told her once.
She thought it was probably her eyes that Rhoda was studying the most carefully: the red lids, the bloodshot whites, the dark circles underneath. After she’d turned out the light she had cried helplessly for over an hour, but she hadn’t cried herself to sleep — that would actually have been a blessing. The tears had dried up and she had simply lain there in the darkness, trying not to think and thinking anyway. As midnight passed and slowly receded, a really terrible idea had come to her: that she had been wrong to call Bill, that she had been wrong to deny herself his comfort — and possibly his protection — when she most desperately needed it.
Protection? she thought. Oh boy, that’s a laugh. I know you like him, sweetie, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but let’s face it: Norman would eat him for lunch.
Except she had no way of knowing that Norman was in town — that was what Anna had kept emphasizing over and over again. Peter Slowik had espoused a number of causes, not all of them popular. Something else might have gotten him in trouble . . . gotten him killed.
Except Rosie knew. Her heart knew. It was Norman.
Still that voice had continued to whisper as the long hours passed. Did her heart know? Or was the part of her that was not Practical and Sensible but only Shaky and Terrified just hiding behind that idea? Had it perhaps seized on Anna’s call as an excuse to choke off her friendship with Bill before it could develop any further?