She opened the driver’s door and started to get into the truck. The next thing
she knew, the man in the-blue sweater was coming in after her, shoving her
across the seat and clambering behind the wheel. He said, “If you yell, bitch,
I’ll blow your guts out,” and she realized that he was jamming a revolver into
her side.
She almost yelled anyway, involuntarily, almost tried to keep on going across
the front seat and out the door on the passenger’s side. But something in his
voice, brutal and dark, made her hesitate. He sounded as if he would shoot her
in the back rather than let her escape.
He slammed the driver’s door, and now they were alone in the truck, beyond help,
virtually concealed from the world by the rain that streamed down the Windows
and made the glass opaque. It didn’t matter: the doctor’s parking lot was
deserted, and it could not be seen from the street, so even out of the truck she
would have had no one to whom to turn.
He was a very big man, and muscular, but it was not his size that was most
frightening. His broad face was placid, virtually expressionless; that serenity,
completely unsuited to these circumstances, scared Nora. His eyes were worse.
Green eyes—and cold.
“Who are you?” she demanded, trying to conceal her fear, sure that visible
terror would excite him. He seemed to be balanced on a thin line. “What do you
want with me?”
“I want the dog.”
She had thought: robber. She had thought: rapist. She had thought: psychopathic
thrill killer. But she had not for a moment thought that he might be a
government agent. Yet who else would be looking for Einstein? No one else even
knew the dog existed.
“What’re you talking about?” she said.
He pushed the muzzle of the revolver deeper into her side, until it hurt.
She thought of the baby growing within her. “All right, okay, obviously you know
about the dog, so there’s no point playing games.”
“No point.” He spoke so quietly that she could hardly hear him above the roar of
the rain that drummed on the roof of the cab and snapped against the windshield.
He reached over and pulled down the hood of her jacket, opened the zipper, and
slid his hand down her breasts, over her belly. For a moment she was terrified
that he was, after all, intent on rape.
Instead, he said, “This Weingold is a gynecologist-obstetrician. So what’s your
problem? You have some damn social disease or are you pregnant?” He almost spit
out the words “social disease,” as if merely pronouncing those syllables made
him sick with disgust.
“You’re no government agent.” She spoke entirely from instinct.
“I asked you a question, bitch,” he said in a voice barely louder than a
whisper. He leaned close, digging the gun into her side again. The air in the
truck was humid. The all-enveloping sound of rain combined with the stuffiness
to create a claustrophobic atmosphere that was nearly intolerable. He said,
“Which is it? You got herpes, syphilis, clap, some other crotch rot? Or are you
pregnant?”
Thinking that pregnancy might gain her a dispensation from the violence of which
he seemed so capable, she said, “I’m going to have a baby. I’m three months
pregnant.”
Something happened in his eyes. A shifting. Like movement in a subtle
kaleidoscopic pattern that was composed of bits of glass all the same shade of
green.
Nora knew that admitting pregnancy was the worst thing she could have done, but
she did not know why.
She thought about the .38 pistol in the glove compartment. She could not
possibly open the glove box, grab the gun, and shoot him before he pulled the
trigger of the revolver. Still, she’d have to remain constantly on the lookout
for an opportunity, for a laxness on his part, that would give her a chance to
go for her own weapon.
Suddenly he was climbing on top of her, and again she thought he was going to
rape her in broad daylight, in the veiling curtains of rain but still daylight.
Then she realized he was just changing places with her, urging her