of quicksilver along the well-honed cutting edge.
As she turned the gleaming knife in her hand, she saw her eyes reflected in the
broad, flat blade. She stared at herself in the polished steel, wondering if she
could possibly use such a horrible weapon against another human being even in
self-defense.
She hoped she would never have to find out.
Upstairs again, she put the butcher’s knife on the nightstand, within easy
reach.
She took off her robe and sat on the edge of the bed, hugging herself and trying
to stop shaking.
“Why me?” she said aloud. “Why does he want to pick on me?”
Streck said that she was pretty, but Nora knew it was not true. Her own mother
had abandoned her to Aunt Violet and had returned only twice in twenty-eight
years, the last time when Nora was six. Her father remained unknown to her, and
no other Devon relatives were willing to take her in, a situation which Violet
frankly attributed to Nora’s uncomely appearance. So although Streck said she
was pretty, it could not possibly be her that he wanted. No, what he wanted was
the thrill of scaring and dominating and hurting her. There were such people.
She read about them in books, newspapers. And Aunt Violet had warned her a
thousand times that if a man ever came on to her with sweet talk and smiles, he
would only want to lift her up so he could later cast her down from a greater
height and hurt her all the Worse.
After a while, the worst of the tremors passed. Nora got into bed again. Her
remaining ice cream had melted, so she put the dish aside, on the nightstand.
She picked up the novel by Dickens and tried to involve herself once more with
Pip’s tale. But her attention repeatedly strayed to the phone, to the butcher’s
knife—and to the open door and the second-floor hail beyond, Where she kept
imagining she saw movement.
3
Travis went into the kitchen, and the dog followed him.
He pointed to the refrigerator and said, “Show me. Do it again. Get me a beer.
Show me how you did it.”
The dog did not move.
Travis squatted. “Listen, fur face, who got you out of those woods, away from
whatever was chasing you? I did. And who bought hamburgers for you? I did. I
bathed you, fed you, gave you a home. Now you owe me. Stop being coy. If you can
open that thing, do it!”
The dog went to the aging Frigidaire, lowered its head to the bottom corner of
the enamel-coated door, gripped the edge in its jaws, and pulled backward,
straining with its entire body. The rubber seal let loose with a barely audible
sucking sound. The door swung open. The dog quickly insinuated itself into the
gap, then jumped up and braced itself with a forepaw on each side of the storage
compartment.
“I’ll be damned,” Travis said, moving closer.
The retriever peered into the second shelf, where Travis had stored cans of
beer, Diet Pepsi, and V-8 vegetable juice. It plucked another Coors from the
supply, dropped to the floor, and let the refrigerator door slip shut again as
it came to Travis.
He took the beer from it. Standing with a Coors in each hand, studying the dog,
he said, more to himself than to the animal, “Okay, so somebody could have
taught you to open a refrigerator door. And he could even have taught you how to
recognize a certain brand of beer, how to distinguish it from other cans, and
how to carry it to him. But we still have some mysteries here. Is it likely that
the brand you were taught to recognize would be the same one I’d have in my
refrigerator? Possible, yes, but not likely. Besides, I didn’t give you any
command. I didn’t ask you to get me a beer. You did it on your own hook, as if
you figured a beer was exactly what I needed at the moment. And it was.”
Travis put one can down on the table. He wiped the other on his shirt, popped it