An End to Housework

An End to Housework

Chapters: 7
Updated: 19 Dec 2024
Author: A.L. Sirois
4.9

Synopsis

Newly divorced 32-year-old Violet crashes her motorcycle into a pickup truck and ends up the captive of cunning and reclusive survivalist Alex Finn. She must convince Finn’s nephew Bay to help her escape, or she'll never see her young son again.

Thriller Suspense Kidnapping Coming Of Age Single Mother Strong Female Lead

An End to Housework Free Chapters

CHAPTER I: BEFORE THE ACCIDENT | An End to Housework

“I don't want to play hide and seek anymore,” said Jessie.

Violet looked up, startled. Her son could be so quiet. She had been intent on not thinking about Calder packing things in the house that she hadn't heard Jessie creep up through the bushes behind the garage.

“You're too good for me, anyway,” she said, standing up and brushing off the seat or her pants. “What do you want to do?”

“Push me on the swing,” said Jessie. He put his hand in hers. “Okay?”

“Sure, Jess.” They walked together across the yard to the swing, which hung from a tree near the back door of the small white house—more of a cottage, really, or so she'd always thought.

“The swings in the park where Daddy lives aren't as nice as this,” said Jessie.

Violet let go of his hand. “I'll give you a real good push, then,” she said. Her son gravely sat himself on the swing, looking over his shoulder at her. She smiled and ruffled his hair, thinking How come this kid never smiles? Bending to grasp the edge of the seat, Violet could smell Jessie. He had that little kid odor, not unpleasant, but proof that he hadn't bathed recently. “When's the last time you got in the tub, Jess?” she asked, pulling back on the seat then pushing forward.

“I dunno…couple days ago. Harder, Mommy! Last week, I guess.”

She made a mental note to speak to Calder, not caring if he became annoyed with her opinion of how he was looking after their son.

Jessie’s baggy chinos emphasized his thinness as he swung his legs, adding impetus to his motion. Up and down, back and forth…she lost herself in their shared motion. Everything about this little scene is almost normal, she thought. Almost…except that this was the last time they would ever play together in this yard. The house, a few yards away, looked normal, too, aside from the BANK FORECLOSURE sign, of course. Its inside was empty of belongings except for a last few boxes. Everything else had been sold, moved out into Calder's new Boston apartment, or put in storage.

Calder came stalking around the corner of the house, looking, as always these days, preoccupied and worried. His hair, untidily long when they’d met, was now cut and styled. Seeing Violet and Jessie, he halted and nodded toward the house.

“Can you swing by yourself for a couple minutes, Jess?” asked Violet. “I have to talk to Daddy.”

“Okay.”

Violet walked slowly across the lawn, thinking that Calder looked as if he had aged two or three years in the past one. Gray had sprouted in his hair; one reason he’d cut it, she was sure. His ulcer was bothering him again—his face bore the telltale pinched look and there was a vertical line between his eyes.

“The truck’s all loaded up,” he said.

“Thanks for coming down to supervise.”

“No problem. I knew that I could get it done faster than you,” he said in a typical display of unconscious condescension. “I'm surprised you didn't want me to call the rental place. I know how you are about talking to people on the phone.”

Her face grew warm. “Are you trying to pick a fight, or—?”

“No, no,” he said, holding up his hands, palms toward her. “Uh, how's the bike running?”

Violet glanced at the Kawasaki Vulcan 88SE parked at the head of the dirt driveway. “Fine,” she said, still annoyed at him. “I appreciate you lending it to me for the trip.”

“Yeah…well, there's no place to park it near my new place where it wouldn't get stolen or vandalized, so it's okay for you to hang on to it as long as you like.”

“Uh-huh.” Glancing at the foreclosure sign, she repressed a surge of anger. This wasn’t the time or place for a confrontation. They’d had enough of those, anyway. He’d been without a job through much of their marriage, but she’d trusted him to look after their finances because of his background as an accountant. By the time his ineptitude and gambling habits came to light, most of their savings were gone.

“I’m going to miss this house.” He paused. “Listen, you know—I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “Sure.” He’d gotten the help he needed, through therapy. His demons were under control, he had a new job and a new lover, and the disruption of divorce was behind them now. The silence grew awkward.

Finally, he smiled. “What are you going to get me for my birthday?”

“Your birthday?” She snorted. “A box full of tears.” At the angry look on his face, she said quickly, “I'm sorry, that wasn't fair.”

“Yeah.” He paused again and turned to go, then added, “Vi, do you think we’ll ever be friends? I'd like to be your friend.”

“I don't know. Ask me again in five years.”

He nodded slowly. “Yeah. Right.”

She walked back to the swings. I've got to get out of here, she thought. She didn't even want to be around her son.

“How long you donna be gone, Mommy?” asked Jessie as she started to push him. At four and a half, he was still getting his g’s and d’s sorted out. Tests for dyslexia were inconclusive but it was, as the doctors said, something to watch out for.

“A week or so Jess,” she replied, pushing him again on his way down. “I'll see you soon's I get back…I'll come up for a weekend.” Her leather jacket creaked and sighed. “Promise. And we’ll be together for Thanksgiving.”

“I wish I could go,” he said the next time he came level with her head.

“You'd have a tough time, walking down trails with forty pounds of pack on your back. That's how much I'll be carrying.”

“I'm not so little. I'm nearly five!”

“No, not so little.” But he was. In a way, it was good…he was a very adaptable child. His parents’ split had been hard for him, but he was adjusting well. He liked Boston and got along well with his father. He liked Calder’s girlfriend Maureen, too. Violet supposed that was for the best. Until she found herself a better job than waitressing, there was no way she could afford to keep Jessie. Two months alone in the small house had convinced her that it would be prudent to move back in with her folks for a while, even if it meant returning to Connecticut. The house had been too depressing an environment at any rate.

Calder, carrying a box, came walking around the corner of the house again. He had acquired a smudge of dust down the side of his nose in the past few minutes. Maureen, Violet knew, a compact, dark little woman who worked with horses, was a real Type-A and would have made him stop while she wiped it off with a tissue. Maureen’s presence made Violet uncomfortable. She was glad that Calder hadn't brought her along.

“Everything's all set, Vi,” he said, putting the box down. He stood with arms folded as he watched her push Jessie on the swing. “We can leave any time you're ready, Jester,” he added to his son.

“In a minute, Daddy, please? I wanna swing some more.”

“Okay, but only for a minute. Huh—” He’d been about to say hon, Violet knew, and she all but flinched. “Vi, I’m going to lock up the house now. You need to use the bathroom before I do?”

She shook her head. He turned and stalked away. “Your dad looks like he's losing some weight,” she said to Jessie. “Is he getting along with Maureen?”

“Yeah…they don't argue so much anymore.”

“Well, that's good, anyway.” She remembered Jessie telling her, almost tearfully, about the shouting matches Calder and Maureen had had during the early weeks of their live-in relationship. At the time she had wondered if she had been wise in granting custody to Calder. Not that she’d had much choice; though his lies, evasions and (she’d learned) infidelities led to their divorce, he’d hired a vulpine lawyer who because of her past painted her as drug-addled and a religious cultist. Calder, with his new haircut and his new high-paying job, was awarded custody of Jessie. The lonely nights spent worrying about Jessie had been very bad for Violet; had, in fact, convinced her to leave Rhode Island. Back with the “rents” at the ripe old age of thirty-two…

She sighed. “Does Daddy take you to the park much?”

“I guess so,” said Jessie.

“Do you have some friends there?”

“Couple. Mommy, will you come to live in Boston?”

“I don't know, Jess. I don't think so. Your Gram and Gramp have my old room for me in Danbury till I get a job…that's the best bet, for now. Then you can come stay with me.”

As if her answer had robbed him of energy, Jessie stopped pumping his legs. The length of his arcs lessened. “I wish you and Daddy didn't have to be duh-vorced.”

There was nothing she could find to say. He was still too young to understand how love worked—or didn't work. Love was love, to five-year-old: it was there, it didn't fade, it didn't turn bitter or painful. “Come on,” she said after a moment. “We better be on our way. Your dad wants to get back.”

“'Kay.” He slid off the swing, leaving it rattling and shaking on its chains. He walked a few paces then broke into a run. Violet followed more slowly, listening to the chains jangle coldly behind her.

Red-faced, Calder slid the tailgate ramp of the rented truck into its slot, banging it into place. Sweat dripped in his eyes. Violet knew better than to offer her assistance. Ignoring him, she went over to the motorcycle and inspected the saddlebags and her backpack, which was strapped to the sissy bar on back. Everything was perfectly secure.

Given copasetic traffic patterns, she would be in Bridgeport in about three hours.

“All set?” called Calder from the rear of the truck. She turned, seeing him wipe the perspiration from his forehead.

“Yeah,” she responded.

“Us, too.” In his Ned Flanders voice, he added, “You about ready, Jesteroonie?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Okely dokely then, up you go.” Jessie obediently climbed into the front of the cab. Violet went over to him and put her arms around him through the window.

“I love you, Mommy,” Jessie said softly.

Oh, don’t you dare cry! she admonished herself. “I love you, too,” she whispered, kissing him, then let him go before she began to weep. “You behave yourself and listen to your dad.”

“I will.”

Calder was standing next to her. He put a hand on her arm, squeezed, and said, “You be careful driving that thing on the highway. I don't want to have to come picking you up from some rural emergency room.”

His tone was light enough, but the words stung her anyway. “You won't get any calls from me,” she said. “Thanks for the help. I’ll see you.” She turned around and walked to the motorcycle.

She zipped up her leather jacket and took the helmet from atop the gas tank. It buckled under her chin. Calder started the truck as she swung a leg up and over the tank to mount the bike.

Key in the ignition. Twist it on. Engine fires right up. Right hand: throttle. The motorcycle idling beneath her felt good. Right foot, now on the rear brake pedal. Soon a step forward, for balance, thrusting the bike ahead as the left foot tapped down into a higher gear. Foot-tap, kickoff, as simple as that, before she was quite ready. “Bye-bye!” she called to Jessie, surprised, as she bumped past the truck creeping down the driveway. In the rearview mirror she saw Jessie's hand wave out through the window.

Down the short drive, dusty orange dirt rattling with crisp fallen leaves of yellow and deep red. At the base of the incline the driveway opened diagonally into the intersection of Routes 116 and 7. South along 7 a dozen or so miles was Providence. There she would pick up the I-95 heading south.

There was no traffic on the two-lane road in the afternoon. People were at work on this Friday, or cleaning house, cooking supper for their kids and husbands.

Behind her were her kid and her husband. Well, no, she reminded herself—ex-husband. Behind her on the bike, strapped and wrapped, were also the things of her life that she had chosen to take with her. Inside her, the things she didn't want to take along accompanied her as well.

I would like to lose them on the road as easily as I'll leave Calder and Jess behind in the truck. I need the road. Such a strange thought…homebody me, I never needed it before. It was always just a way to get to a place. Now it's a place of its own.

Just south of the intersection stretched a region of old farmhouses and desolate fields, the northernmost last gasp of the city's grasp for land. She twisted speed into the Kawasaki, accelerating into the farmland. The sun burned through the edge of a cloud and sent a beam off the gas cap in front of her into her eyes.

This was like a slap: she would never see the small white house with the charming red trim again. The sunbeam photographed the image of the house in her mental camera. She had been happiest in that house; she had been saddest in that house. Never would she have believed that she could be so relieved to leave it.

Topping a ridge, she saw a glitter of sun off water near the horizon: the Providence River, separating East Providence from Providence itself; a city sandwich of water.

The influence of the urban region ahead increased almost as soon as the city came into view. Traffic grew heavier. The shabby homes along the road morphed into more expensive ones, many with small signs proclaiming the residents’ preference for one presidential candidate or the other. Other signs read FOR SALE. There had been more of these of late. A mile or so after she sighted the city the road threaded between two ponds near a golf course. Just beyond was the restaurant where she and Calder had celebrated their sixth month of marriage. She sped past without looking at it. Then came a section of condominiums (clowndomniums, Calder always called them) crouching at the outskirts of the city's sprawl. Past the condos a hill dropped the road into a junction with Route 15, along which she and Calder would usually go to shop for groceries at the Almac's and grab a bite at the Pizza Hut, which Jessie loved and both parents execrated as Lovecraftily demon-haunted, appropriate for Providence but certainly not for dining.

Got to stop thinking about all that old stuff, she said to herself, looking up the road at the stores and traffic. Think about Bridgeport, Deb and Paul, it’ll be good to see them, spend the night before heading up to Danbury tomorrow morning.

Deb and Paul had been at the wedding. They were part of the past, too—Violet was not sure that she could relax with them now. They had not changed; she had.

Two years ago, she would never have so much as dreamed of riding a motorcycle, let alone taking a five- or six-hundred-mile trip on one. Calder bought the bike for recreation (back before she learned to question his spending habits) and forced her to learn how to drive it. She discovered that it was really a lot of fun, and easier to care for than a car. Being good with her hands, it didn't take her long to get interested in maintaining the vehicle in good running condition. She didn't let Calder's faintly condescending attitude toward her interest bother her.

The light at the foot of the hill turned red and she slowed to a stop. She stood there, straddling the bike, looking around. It was good to feel isolated behind the faceplate of the crash helmet. The light changed.

It was easier than she had hoped to keep her mind on her driving. The memories weren't going away, but they were easier to ignore while she was concentrating on something else. She turned on the Kawasaki’s radio and let NPR distract her further with segments on Obama and McCain.

Around her the city was now in full blast. Liquor stores, corner delis and mom-and-pop groceries, florist shops, kids on skateboards on the sidewalks—it all condensed into the North End. Music pounded out of passing cars. As she drove further in toward the center of the city the homes became nicer, but the people drained away and the neighborhoods seemed peculiarly empty. No one moved on the streets; the cars were too clean. Then, as if the city blinked and shook itself, Violet found herself driving between gray warehouses among glass-littered parking lots. Dilapidated apartment houses leaned against one another, crowding hungrily around a McDonalds. A sign reminded her of the interstate entrance, three blocks away.

She saw an old black man pause shakily on a street corner to light a cigarette.

Remembering that she needed to buy some smokes for herself, she pulled over in front of a small bodega. No one was in sight; she decided she could leave the bike unattended for a few moments.

She dismounted and stretched, feeling her muscles complain briefly as she knit her fingers and flexed them. Then she bent her arms abruptly to crack her elbows.

The store’s facade was of corrugated green metal, as sad as an abandoned Army barracks. Unbuckling her chinstrap, she entered.

Dim daylight filtered in through the dusty front window. Round metal racks filled much of the available floor space between crowded shelves and glass-front freezer cases. The floor was dark stained wood, almost oily in appearance. To Violet's immediate left as she entered sat a high glass counter filled with cigars and candies and hair beads and batteries and thread.

Behind the counter reading a worn paperback sat a woman, fiftyish, plump, with very dark skin and a wide corners-down mouth. She peered through horn-rimmed spectacles at the stocky young white woman standing before her.

“Good morning,” said Violet quietly. “Do you sell cigarettes?”

The woman blinked. She said, “We got some, machine down tha’ third aisle. It's outta some things. Don't smoke myself, so's I don't know what-all's missin'.”

“Thanks.” Violet walked down the indicated aisle. Her favored brand, Marlboro, was among the missing ones. She fed coins to the machine and chose Old Golds. Back outside she lit up standing next to the motorcycle and looked around at the threadbare buildings all around. Providence had nothing more for her. She felt the city was pushing her out of itself like a splinter from damaged flesh.

She ground the half-finished smoke out under a boot heel and got back on the bike. Up the ramp, then, and onto the highway through city center. She guided the bike to the far-right lane, keeping alert in the stream of mid-day traffic.

She gave a glance to a favorite landmark as she passed the large building that housed New England Pest Control. Atop their headquarters, the company had erected Nibbles the Big Blue Bug, an enormous locust-like insect larger than a semi-truck. Nibbles was dressed appropriately for holidays: a stars-and-stripes top hat (and white goatee) for July 4th, witch’s hat and mask for Halloween, and so on. Even in her low mood this silly statue made Violet smile a little. Then it was behind her. The buildings thinned out. She was truly away, now, out of the city forever.

Ahead, the multiple lanes were rapid with cars and trucks of all descriptions. Her ears filled with the endless rush of wind around her helmet. The sound pressed her jacket back, rattled and batted at the windshield. Along the horizon, below the westering sun, lay a long line of comma-shaped clouds, looking like the results of a stuck key in some celestial computer, but for the most part the sky was clear.

Lane lines flashed by beneath her feet, paled by the slanting light.

Countryside replaced city along the highway. After a while she began feeling hungry. About twenty miles south of Providence she exited the highway along a circular ramp. Not far away was a small strip mall she had visited once or twice in the past.

Then she remembered that the only restaurants there were a pizza place and a Chinese take-out. She wasn't in the mood for either. She realized that she wasn't in the mood for a strip mall, either, but her stomach required food, so she kept on.

A quarter mile or so before the shopping center, parked next to a boarded-up gas station a small red-and-white striped trailer bore a hand-lettered sign reading HOT DOGS. Violet pulled in.

She dismounted from the bike, took off her helmet and rummaged for a cigarette, enjoying the quiet after the steady rush of wind on the turnpike. Through the screened window along the counter in front of the food wagon she saw yellow plastic squeeze bottles with red printing on them. The odor of grease and frankfurters stained the air. Walking to the wagon she lit her cigarette with a plastic lighter.

The window slid back with a loud rasp. A young woman of about 16 looked up at her, arms folded on the counter, peering along a blunt nose.

“Hi, what have you got?” asked Violet, looking for a printed menu on the walls. She saw nothing but old fly-specked wooden shelves sparsely stocked with bags of buns, large cans of mustard, and boxes of coffee for an automatic coffee maker.

“Hot dogs,” said the attendant softly, eyeing Violet's leather jacket. Her eyes flicked to the motorcycle and the bulging saddlebags, then back to Violet.

“Just…hot dogs?”

The young woman nodded. Her long thick hair seemed to be dragging her facial muscles down. Her eyes were red. Hungover? “Yeah. Hot dogs, with relish or bacon or mustard. We're out of bacon. Can’t get more till the fridge is fixed.”

“Well, how about a couple of hot dogs.”

“Yes, ma’am. Coffee?”

“If you haven't got any soda…”

“No. Just coffee…and hot dogs.”

Violet sighed. “No 7-Up or ginger ale? Okay, coffee. The caffeine will do me some good. Got any milk or cream?”

The young woman threw a disgusted look around at the inside of the wagon. “Not with the fridge out, I guess. Artificial creamer.”

“That'll do.”

“Or condensed milk,” she finished, holding up a maroon and white can.

Violet had never seen the thick glistening liquid before. “I'll try some of that, please.”

The girl busied herself with the grill. Violet noticed a curl of flypaper hanging in one corner of the wagon. Turning her back to the window, she leaned against the counter and studied the road.

It would have been a good time to have a profound insight about her failed marriage or the reality of having to remake herself at the age of thirty-two—but nothing would come. Instead, she blankly watched cars slide past and smoked her cigarette, without so much as one intelligent syllable forming in her mind.

Presently the screen slid back. The attendant placed a Styrofoam cup of steaming coffee on the linoleum counter. Violet picked it up and sipped. The coffee was very hot. The condensed milk added a thick pleasant sweetness that surprised her. She liked it.

We'll have to get some of this. Calder might like it—

Then she remembered. Calder was living in Boston with his new love, Maureen.

The hot dogs were hardly worth waiting for. Blistered black along one side, they lay curled painfully in their soggy rolls. She munched them unenthusiastically, losing more appetite with every bite.

Her attention wandered across the street to a café set back about twenty feet from the road. The food probably would have been better over there but there was no point now in such speculation. The building had the façade of a log cabin, painted dark green. Three TV antennae sprouted from its high peaked roof. Several cars sat in the lot including a state police cruiser parked next to a blue pickup with a (empty) gun rack in the rear of the cab.

A high buzzing roar grew from her left in the direction of the highway. She turned to mark it, swallowing the last of the hot dog. Under the turnpike bridge came a motorcycle ridden by a helmetless man. He seemed to be heading for the café, but apparently caught sight of Violet’s bike because at the last minute he jazzed his machine a little and swept into the abandoned gas station's lot in front of the snack trailer. He parked his bike, an old red and silver Indian road eater, next to hers. Her Kawasaki suddenly looked like a glittering toy.

He was not tall, not fat, not young, with the graying, receding hairline of a man in his fifties. His face was seamed, mobile, smiling, and dark red. He shut off his machine and swung his leg easily over the tank.

“That yours?” he asked her, angling a thumb at her shiny, undented bike. His voice was a long dry creak. It sounded familiar somehow.

She nodded, feeling nothing other than some impatience. There was no time for come-ons.

“If you're passing through,” he said, turning to look at the cafe across the road, “and I guess you are because I never seen you around, you should take it slow between here and the Connecticut border.”

“Speed traps,” she said and sighed. “I know.” Then she placed the voice: he sounded like the actor George C. Scott.

“Oh, so you do? Okay.” He grinned broadly. “Sorry to have disturbed you.”

“You didn't,” she said—a little too tartly, she realized. To cover her discomfort, she swirled her coffee in its cup and drank.

“That fellow over there,” he said, nodding at the state police cruiser across the street, “is on his lunch break, but there are three others between here and the truck stop at the state line. Hi, Janie!” he added to the young attendant. “How about a coffee?”

“Okay,” said the teenager, without smiling.

“My sister-in-law,” he said to Violet in a confidential tone. Violet glanced at him, beginning to relax. This was no come-on. His eyes were very blue in his dark face. “She thinks I'm a little crazy, you know, because I’m the only one in the family with a motorcycle.” He laughed.

Violet finished her coffee and threw the cup away but made no move to get back on her bike, feeling that she owed the guy some civility. “Thanks for the tip about the speed traps,” she said. “Sorry I snapped at you.”

“No problem! You know,” he said, grimacing, “I like to beat these cops out of their quota if I can. Last day of the month, you know what I mean? The last-minute push, for billing purposes…pain in the ass, they are.” He paused to lift his coffee from the counter without replacing it with any money. “Most places, along the big highways like this, they got the radar out where you can see it if you know where to look. Not that most folks do.”

“Yeah?”

“Sure! Come on, you seen 'em…the radar guns are supposed to be where you can see 'em, law says so. Even in their cars. But around here, they stick 'em behind bridges, in bushes…sneaky.” He sipped at the coffee. “Aaaa. Never enough sugar, that girl. Anyway. First time I hit this trap, coming up here to spend some time with my brother and his family, I went sailing past this cop. He was behind a bridge, waiting. Sneaky. Ah, ha, I said. I pulled off the next exit, went up the ramp and came back around.

“So there I was, in front of the speed trap again and I slowed down to forty miles per. Traffic backed up behind me, oh, about ten cars. So the cop sees me, races out, and pulls me over. He gets out of his car and swaggers up to me…they can’t help that swagger, it’s from all that goddam hardware they wear round their waist and hips…I say, what’s your problem, officer?”

His raspy voice gave the rendering of the question a razor edge of sarcasm. Violet smiled.

“‘What's my problem,’ he says. ‘What's your problem, fella?’ ‘Oh,’ I says, ‘I don't have a problem. You pulled me over, what's on your mind?’

“Well,” he said pausing after a sip of coffee to look in Violet s eyes, “he said I was goin’ too slow.”

Violet smiled again.

“Too slow! And he wanted to give me a ticket for it. Ha! I says. I got dozens of tickets, all for goin’ too fast. No way will judge believe me goin’ too slow.” He paused to drink again. “I knew what he was after…he wasn't going to catch any speeders with me blocking the lane like that.”

“So did you get the ticket?”

“A written warning,” the man said, and laughed. “For goin’ slow, sure enough. They'd never believe it. Too slow.

“Well look, I gotta head out. Take care and watch out for the traps.”

“Thanks, I will,” Violet said, shaking his big, rough hand. “Nice talking with you.”

“Likewise, likewise,” he said, matching her slight pressure. “No one to talk to around this little town except my brother, and he’s usually at work.” He sat down on his machine as she started hers up.

Back on the turnpike, in the late afternoon, reddening light filled the rush of chill air, sliding off cars and giving the roadway’s concrete and asphalt an illusion of warmth. The colors of the day were so beautiful that she got lost in them for a while. The clouds above were edged in intense gold, shading to the hue of French vanilla ice cream.

Not long after crossing the border into Connecticut she saw the exit sign for Westbrook, where she and Calder had vacationed a few times, in small, rented beach houses.

Jessie had been little more than a toddler. She remembered one perfect twilight in particular, a warm evening in late June. A vivid image: Calder ambling down the cement walk onto the sand verging Long Island Sound, holding Jessie's hand in one of his and Jessie's pail in the other, while Violet watched from the porch.

She shook the image loose and concentrated on the road, allowing herself to feel the cold wind. Sighing heavily, she blew breath out between stiff lips.

Arriving in Bridgeport an hour later, she exited I-95 onto a feeder road that took her down into the city along North Avenue.

She was growing tired. The buildings and businesses crowding the road were like those in Providence. She had an odd impression of having traveled nowhere despite the miles ticked off on the odometer. The same fast-food places, carpet stores, liquor stores, cell phone stores…A few people pointed and stared at the unusual sight of a woman on a motorcycle, and a scrawny Hispanic kid called out something in Spanish.

Heading north she entered residential neighborhoods. Here the nucleic confusion of Bridgeport's center was not evident as the city shaded off into suburbia. Several blocks up East Main she approached a busy intersection bracketed by two large gas stations crowded with cars. Just prior to entering the intersection she turned right into Louisiana Avenue, a street lined with multiple-family semi-detached dwellings. The first building on the left, however, was the oldest one on the street and the only single-family wood home. Its number was 5. She pulled into the driveway.

The house was small, peeling, shingled with gray asphalt tiles. She got off the bike and stretched, noticing that the lawn hadn't been mowed recently. Knowing Paul, come the first week of October he’d put the lawnmower in the garage and said, “That’s it until April.”

She clumped up the sagging wood steps and twisted the bell handle in the center of the front door. It rang sharply. Waiting, she peered into the window on her left. The living room was empty. Violet folded her arms.

She thought that her reflection in the glass of the door looked pale. Helmet-head, she thought, squinting critically at herself, and fussed at her hair to restore some sort of life to the heavy curls that had been flattened inside her crash helmet.

The motorcycle ticked and pinged behind her as it cooled. She remembered Calder jogging alongside her as she took her first solo ride, calling encouragement to her.

The bike wasn’t really meant for long distances. Calder had bought it to use on short hops into and out of Providence. As a newspaper reporter, he spent a lot of time running around the narrow up-and-down streets of the hilly city.

A minute and a half at the door…no answer. She checked her watch: after six. Deb and Paul should have been out of work. They'd probably gone food shopping and were stuck in Friday traffic.

She lit a cigarette and sat down on the steps to smoke it. By the time she was done, she was feeling restless, so she got up and walked around to the back of the house.

The back yard wasn't mown, either, and the small flower garden that an earlier tenant had planted had been since allowed freedom from cultivation. A thick net of rosebushes had all but digested the garage, a sagging structure, like a floral Blob engulfing a diner. The wildness of the back yard, underscored by the white noise of nearby traffic, made her feel lonely. It was her nerves, she decided, walking aimlessly through the grass. The long ride down from Rhode Island had jangled them.

Taking a deep final drag on her cigarette she walked over to the garage and peered in through a grimy window. There was nothing inside on the dirt floor save for some sticks and a few bits of miscellaneous flotsam. She tried lifting the door, found it unlocked, and raised it all the way. Dust and pieces of trash fell on her hair as the door groaned upward. She went back for her bike and rolled it slowly into the garage. No point in leaving it out in the open for people to see, not with all her camping gear and clothing strapped to it.

Closing the garage door, she walked to the front of the house and turned right, heading for the intersection. Although she was tired, anything was better than sitting around by herself, and a little walk, she felt, would do her good. Going for a quick visit to the zoo where Paul worked would at least give her something to look at besides overgrown lawns. When the light changed, she jogged across the road despite the weight of her boots and leather jacket, anxious to get as far away as possible from the fumes and noise of the cars. Without pausing or slowing she chugged on up the park’s asphalt drive past a large wooden sign. Gold letters against an unpainted background read BEARDSLEY ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS. At the top of the small rise, she slowed to a walk, not wanting to appear conspicuous.

Though it was nearly closing time a few people were still there, mostly couples with children.

She walked into the main area of the zoo. Seals rollicked in an enclosure to her right, splashing in the honey-colored sunset. Jessie loved seals and penguins…A young mother strolled by, holding the hand of a boy about Jessie's age. With every step he took, LEDs in the soles of his sneakers flashed. Violet frowned and turned away. Maybe coming to the zoo hadn't been such a good idea after all.

In front of her was a brick building that housed monkeys and some other animals. On impulse she decided to take a quick look.

Inside, the one-story brick building was warm and echoing. Raucous squawks reminded Violet of Paul’s mention, in a recent e-mail, that several new exhibits had been added. These included some tropical birds, one of which was now shrieking, as well as some tarsiers, a pair of gibbons, and Paul's favorites: two young leopards. In his more than five years at the zoo, she couldn’t remember Paul ever sounding more excited. Violet had not visited Bridgeport since before the arrival of the big cats.

She remembered the building as smelling differently. The new animals here would certainly add their own scents to the mixture, she knew. The odor was odd but not unpleasant. In the center of the building, where there had been no enclosure in years past, a new one had been built, lit by a bank of spotlights. Violet approached slowly, her hands deeply thrust into the pockets of her jeans.

A large cage, perhaps twenty by fifty feet, took up most of the available space. Surrounded by a high barrier of plastic, it held two leopards. One, the female, lay on a rock warmed by the floodlights. The other, a bobtailed male, paced restlessly, ignoring the thirty or so people clustered in small groups around the cage. Almost no one paid any attention to the other exhibits in the building; the monkeys sat in boredom, and the birds, except for the agitated toucan, emitted listless cries. Clearly, the beautiful big cats were the draw.

Magnificent creatures, Violet thought, particularly the male. She moved up to the handrail, staring. His rich coat shone brilliant white, glossy black, hot yellow orange. Beneath it his muscles rippled with easy power. The emeralds of his eyes glittered from a head like a block of ivory. He paced ceaselessly, panting, lower jaw ajar revealing teeth and fangs.

A few feet to Violet's left a small child asked her mother, “How come they puts plastic ‘roun’ the big kitties?”

“Dat I don’ know,” was the reply. “I guess so’s people won’t feed ‘em things that ain't good for ‘em.”

A few moments later the leopard stopped pacing. It swung around so that its hindquarters faced the Plexiglas shield. With surprising accuracy and force, the animal squirted a bullet of urine at the onlookers. The stream splashed against the plastic.

The person directly in line of this attack, a small olive-skinned man with large mustaches and calloused hands, recoiled, blinking. Then he laughed, sheepishly. Others joined in, but several people looked curiously at him.

Violet raised her eyebrows and, nodding, leaned on the railing, viewing the cat with new respect, thinking, I know how you feel. Must be frustrating, stuck in there all day, smelling monkeys and birds and being hungry for something other than a pan of stuff or a cold haunch or whatever, and not being able to get out for a hot meal. She was a little surprised at herself; not so long ago she would have felt sorrier for the monkeys cooped up in their small cages, not allowed to swing through jungle trees.

The leopard seemed more pitiable now than the monkeys. She was glad that she had been in to see the animal, but ultimately, she felt, he would be better off uncaged.

The huge feline resumed pacing.

She left the building and walked back down the drive toward the intersection. Across the way, she saw her friends’ Honda Civic parked in number 5’s driveway.

As she approached the house’s front porch she heard, faintly from inside, a tune that she recognized as “Pop Party” by the Poodle Boys. Paul was a devoted fan of punk and indie rock, and had played the record for her on her previous visit. She twisted the bell on the door. Within a few seconds, Paul was in the doorway.

“Hey, Violet, I didn't hear you drive up.” He was only a couple of inches taller than she, slight of build, with coarse, gray-shot hair and a beard to match. His eyes, lively blue, moved as quickly as his long-fingered hands. He threw his arms around her for a hug and gave her a quick kiss on her mouth. Standing aside for her to enter, he kicked the door shut behind her.

“I parked my bike in your garage,” she explained, shucking her jacket and tossing it over the dilapidated chair that was the only piece of furniture in the small foyer between living room and kitchen. “All my stuff's on it. You weren't home so I went over to zoo for a while.”

“Hi!” called Deb from the kitchen. She appeared momentarily in the doorway, holding a large green pepper. “How was the trip down?”

Violet followed her into the kitchen as Paul turned down the Poodle Boys in the living room. Deb, as small and slender as her husband, was aproned behind a large cutting board, expertly chopping vegetables with a large shiny knife.

“Looks like Chinese to me,” remarked Violet, lowering herself into a chair by the table. As always, proximity to Deb made Violet feel ungainly. “The trip…it was…okay. I’m kind of tired. And hungry.” Deb, smiling, put down the knife and went to give her a hug. Violet was surprised by an impulse to cry against her friend's breasts. The women released one another. Deb went back to the cutting board.

“Chinese it is,” she said lightly. “Vi, you look like you could use a drink. Hey, P.K.?” she called into the living room.

“Yo?”

“Why not take Violet over to the Penthouse for a drink? I've got to get this cutting and spicing done and it'll take me twenty minutes anyway before I can start cooking. Besides, if you play that fucking album one more time I am going to spin around and spit nickels.” To Violet she added, “The band is having another reunion gig in New Haven on Saturday. He’s played fucking ‘Pot Party’ a million time this past week. I told him to put it on his iPod and stick it in his fucking ear.”

“‘Pop Party,’” he said, entering the room holding an album cover. “Not ‘Pot Party.’ It’s meant to be heard on speakers, not earbuds. Christ. But yeah, they’re gonna be at Toad’s on Saturday. Up for a show, Vile? Deb refuses to go.”

“I don’t think I could handle a whole concert of that,” Violet said with a grin at his old nickname for her. “Besides, I’m only staying the night.”

“P.K, go buy the woman a drink,” said Deb. “We have sake and beer for tonight, but I bet she could do some damage to a vodka Collins.”

“God,” said Violet, “that sounds good. I haven't had a decent one in ages.” And it was true; she hadn’t had any alcohol aside from an occasional glass of Merlot in nearly six months. Her lawyer had warned her against drinking during the divorce proceedings, given her past. But it was the drug use they’d really nailed her on.

“In that case, let 's get on over to the Penthouse before the place fills up too much for Happy Hour,” Paul said.

“Just let me change out of these boots…help me get my stuff off the bike?”

“Sure,” he said, placing the album cover down on the table. They went out the back door, across the shaggy lawn to the garage.

#

The Penthouse Bar comprised the second story of a two-floor edifice butted up against one of the gas stations at the intersection. With its attendant parking lot, the building's first floor functioned during the day as a low-rent Italian restaurant named Festa, which Deb and Paul referred to as the Fester. During the noon hours, the Fester provided food for the Penthouse bar, which was open to serve lunch to patrons who might prefer something stronger than orange soda with their cheeseburger or Reuben.

Violet followed Paul into the Fester’s foyer and up the stairs to the Penthouse. The tavern was dimly lit, yet there seemed to be a lot of twilight inside due to a huge mirror running the length of the bar, and from the waxed wooden booths and the glossy surface of the bar itself. All of these gave back colors from the neon beer signs hung here and there on the walls. The arrangement of the three tiers of bottles in front of the mirror—or behind it, depending on one’s point of view—was punctuated at three regular intervals by thick-walled five-gallon jugs containing high-humidity plants. Most of the ambient light, however, was an almost garish mixture of colors from the old ill-tuned TV above the cash register and from a brace of video games against the far wall that occasionally booped and beeped to themselves like senile robots.

Several middle-aged men sat at the bar, leaning on it or against each other to share mumbled comments. There was one other woman in the place besides Violet, a heavy-set black woman sitting with friends at the far end of the bar near the restrooms.

“She's a regular,” Paul remarked as they took a seat away from the others.

“Huh?”

“I saw you looking at her. That's Judy. That guy, the one she just put her hand on his shoulder? He’s her boyfriend, Gerry.”

Judy, who looked to be in her late twenties, was as boisterous as a lottery winner. She laughed often while exchanging jokes with the men at the bar. Her oval face was plain but strong, dominated by glasses. She wore a plain gray skirt and a long-sleeved sweater emphasizing her large breasts.

There was an ESPN yack-fest about the upcoming World Series on the TV and Judy's attention was mostly on this as she joked with the white, unathletic-looking men.

“It’s Friday night again,” Paul observed, and shrugged. “Attitude adjustment time.”

The bartender, a small man with a close-cropped black beard, bustled over to take their orders. “The Phillies, huh? Can you believe that? Fifteen years it takes them to get back into the Series.”

“It’s the damnedest thing,” Paul said. “I thought the Dodgers would nail them, but no such thing.”

“Yeah,” said the bartender, wiping his neatly manicured hands on a clean linen cloth. “Well, goes to show ya.” He smiled broadly at Violet. “I haven't got your name. Seen you in here a few times with this jack-off and Deb, though, I think.”

“Yeah,” she said quietly. “I'm Violet Meldon.” She took his proffered hand lightly. His grip was firm and quick.

“She's visiting from Providence,” said Paul, leaning over the bar.

“I'm Bobby Landau,” said the bartender. “Call you Vi?”

“Sure.”

“Okay, Vi, what are you drinking?”

“Vodka Collins, please,” she said.

“We can do that,” said Bobby. “What’ll it be? Goose, Ketel One, Beefeater…?”

Judy smacked one of the men on the shoulder as he made some comment to her.

“Gray Goose will do,” she replied. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” said Bobby, scanning the customers. “Coming up.” He swiftly prepared her drink, set it down in front of her, and moved off down the bar toward a middle-aged man waving an empty shot glass in the air. Looking back over his shoulder, Bobby said, “Let me know when you need another.”

Violet sipped her drink. It was a good one. She quickly finished half of it, then sighed and stared up at the TV. The talking heads bored her; she cared little for sports other than baseball, and even then, only if the Red Sox were playing. Calder had been the sports fan. Left undisturbed, he could watch these shows for hours. “What?” she asked, startled to hear Paul say something.

“I said, are you all right? You sort of drifted away there.”

“I'm fine…you know.” She shrugged. “I'm all right.”

“You look tired.”

Violet sighed, wishing she were back in the house with Deb. The idea of a drink had been appealing, but she didn't want to talk about personal matters in a bar full of strangers. She wished Paul would talk to Bobby instead. “I am tired,” she said. “Don’t feel like talking.” She finished her drink. “Tell me about the leopards or something.”

His eyes brightened. “Well,” he began, “you’ve probably—”

“No!” shouted Judy. Violet, having forgotten about her, turned at the sound of her voice.

Judy’s boyfriend slouched on his bar stool, his head drooping, one arm raised in a weak gesture of defense, defiance, or dismissal.

Judy stood beside him, legs wide apart, fists clenched, her face angry.

“Don't you ever say that!” she shouted at him. Violet thought that Judy might reach out and shake him.

“What the hell?” Paul exclaimed.

Bobby, calmly polishing a glass, wandered over to stand opposite. “They've been in here drinking since ten this morning,” he said, unhurriedly placing the glass down and picking up another. “He works nights at Walmart, so he drinks during the day and sobers up for his shift later. Kind of late for that now, so he must have the night off. She’s an actress, so she’d usually unemployed. This happens all the time…they get drunk, they get into a fight. Mostly just on weekends, though.”

“Oh yeah?” asked Violet, casting a contemptuous glance at the couple.

“She just does it to show off her chest,” Bobby said, while rapidly and expertly creating another vodka Collins for her. “Typical behavior.”

“What are they fighting about?” Violet asked, feeling obligated to converse in payment for the drink; Bobby had waved away her cash.

Before the small barkeep could answer, the dispute escalated. In her peripheral vision, Violet saw movement: Judy's arm swinging. Layered with her dark, solid mass, the arm was large and muscular. Her hand smacked into the side of Gerry’s face, knocking his glasses spinning to the floor. He reeled from the impact, almost toppling from the stool.

He said something indistinct, but Violet caught its whining tone. She snapped, “Now you stop that. Don't you go saying that! I hate it when you say that!” She feinted at Gerry, and he flinched. He mumbled something that Violet couldn't hear, in the babble now rising to distract the embattled couple. Several patrons gathered around them, obscuring Violet's view.

“He's always saying how no-good he is, how he's never gonna be anything at all!” yelled Judy, turning to one person after another, taking steps this way and that. Tears were running down her face. “It's not true, it's not true!” She was almost wailing.

“I'm clueless, here,” remarked Violet. Somehow half her second drink had disappeared.

“Hah?” said Paul, glancing at her. Bobby leaned on the bar in front of her. He spoke confidentially. “Very high drama content there,” he said. “They live together, and they come in here almost every day. Aside from working at Walmart Gerry writes poetry on the side; publishes some every so often. She's an actress, like I said, gets the occasional part at Long Wharf, community theater, what have you. Very high emotional levels between the two of ’em, see? And the fact is—” Here, Bobby leaned even closer to her. His teeth came together in an even line, and he said, “They love to fight, to do this in public. I think it's childish, myself, but I'm a bartender, and I'm supposed to be able to relate in one way or another to everyone’s emotional outbursts.”

“And a bar is a good place for an emotional outburst,” Paul observed.

Bobby laughed, an explosive syllable of hilarity. “I'll have to see if I can calm them down a bit before they really get into it. They're pretty well primed.” He moved off down the bar, ostensibly to service an elderly customer who was ignoring the histrionics directly behind him.

As Bobby filled the old man's mug with frothing beer, expertly cutting off the tap stream before it could overflow, he spoke quickly and quietly to Judy and Gerry. Judy listened and nodded, wiping her eyes every so often. Gerry, a thin academic type with a sparse goatee and long lank hair, ignored Bobby, concentrating instead on his drink.

“Why not take it outside, then, if you're gonna get physical?” Violet heard Bobby say. To Paul she said, “I'll bet that Judy can throw a good punch. She's no small person.”

“Yeah, I'd hate to—”

The smack of fist meeting flesh echoed off the mirror. Violet turned in time to see Gerry fold up and slowly collapse onto the floor, one clawed hand still hanging onto the seat of the stool. Judy was cocking her fist to deliver another blow, hollering, “No no no no!” Gerry clambered to his hands and knees as she stood there with her legs spread far apart. She leaned over him, her big breasts swinging inside her sweater. Gerry mumbled something at the top of his voice.

She aimed a kick at him. “Aw, she isn't…” began Violet as three patrons grabbed Judy, preventing her from further assaulting Gerry.

“That's it!” shouted Bobby, standing on tiptoe behind the bar. “Outside!” he added, flinging his arm in the direction of the door. “Dammit, you two get out of here until you learn how to behave!” Judy tearfully stalked out. Two bored-looking barflies assisted the staggering Gerry. The sound of Judy's voice trailed behind her as she descended the steps and grew flat as she exited into the deepening evening. Bobby came out from behind the bar and followed the group down a few stairs to make sure that they were indeed going to stay out on the sidewalk. Then he went back inside. After freshening a drink or two and exchanging comments with the patrons, he came over to Paul and Violet.

“Really,” he said, clearly annoyed, “those two are too much. I think that they're together 'cause they’re the only ones who can stand each other.” He sighed deeply. “She swears that she's gonna press charges on him…says he hit her. He's so drunk he doesn't know what's happening. The fact is, they'll keep this up outside, till someone around here calls the cops.” He shook his head. “It's a real traffic-stopper. They love screwing up this intersection.”

“And they live together,” Violet stated. She was feeling a little better after two drinks and didn't refuse Paul's offer to buy her a third. “Why wouldn't, why doesn't she just leave him alone, or try to help him?” she asked Bobby.

“It's the way they show each other that they care. If they didn't fight all the time, they'd go crazy. Or at least that's what Gerry told me, once,” Bobby said. “He says that it keeps their nerves at peak performance, keeps them alive and vital.”

“Vital, no less,” supplied Paul. His voice was a little slurred, after three beers.

“Well, I don't know, right? Poets, actresses…who knows?” asked Bobby. “Rhetorically speaking, that is.”

“I don’t know,” said Violet, whose head had begun buzzing from the alcohol. The familiar feeling had once formed an extensive backdrop to her life; dimly she understood that she was approaching dangerous territory by drinking. “I don’t understand what some people see in each other.”

“I hear that,” said Paul. “That was sort of how we felt about you and Cal.” He never called Calder anything other than Cal.

Violet frowned. “You never liked him,” she said, somewhat accusingly.

Paul didn’t bother to deny it. “We just thought he was always bossing you around, telling you what to do. You hardly ever seemed to have an opinion of your own when you were with him. Plus, he always knew everything about whatever we were talking about. Even when he didn’t know a damn thing.” He shrugged and drained his mug. “People like that annoy me.”

Violet smiled to herself. Calder, who hated being called Cal, hadn’t liked Paul any better than Paul liked him. It was one reason why Violet’s friendship with the couple had been somewhat in remission during her marriage. Also—she hated to admit this to herself—Calder’s interest in Deb had never seemed entirely motivated by mere friendship, not that anything had ever come of it.

A longhaired young man standing at one of the bar’s windows said, “Oop. He slapped her.” Several people turned, at this remark. “Christ,” added the fellow with some delight in his voice. “He’ll pay for that!”

Other patrons got up to watch. “Now he'll get himself killed if he doesn't get out of the street,” one said to the longhaired guy.

“What's she doing?” asked someone else watching the dispute. “That's the police call box!”

“Jesus. She’s calling it in!”

“Oh no,” said Bobby. He hurriedly dried his hands, asked one of the customers to tend bar, and trotted downstairs.

As Violet methodically drank her vodka Collins, she heard an approaching siren. Flickers of red light scattered across the dimness of the bar's interior, catching interesting reflections from the ranked bottles. After a moment or two a flickering blue light joined the red one. The siren died suddenly.

Paul got up and walked to the head of the stairs, saying, “We might as well be getting back. Supper should be just about ready.” She stood, a little surprised at the blurriness of her vision, and followed him down the length of rubber-treaded stairs, holding on to the handrail.

Parked at the side of the building, their lights sparkling brightly amid the twinkle of cars at the intersection, stood a police cruiser and an emergency vehicle. Several men in varying uniforms stood around in a small group looking alternately bored and aggravated. At the approximate center of this group stood the soused lovers. Gerry seemed more sober than he had in the bar, but Judy was no less distraught. A cop patiently took down her statement. She stood with her head thrust aggressively forward, talking loudly in a voice thorny with righteous indignation. Violet heard her demand to be taken to the hospital emergency room for an examination.

The EMTs were trying to talk her out of it as Violet and Paul passed by.

“Are they both actors?” Violet asked him as they stood waiting to cross the street.

He laughed. “Only when they've got an audience.” He took her arm as the light changed. “Let's get out of here before they start asking for witnesses. You ever have any fights like that with Cal?”

“No…nothing. We’ve fought a lot more since we split up. You think maybe fights define love? I mean, how low you go…does that tell you how high you can go in the, you know the other way?”

“Did you say something?” he asked her as they made the opposite curb. “I was watching the traffic—didn't hear you.”

“Talking to myself,” she said. “Mumbled, actually. You know, I’m sort of drunk.”

“I'm not surprised, with all that vodka in you. Let's get a little food in there, too, huh?”

“Yeah.” They walked a few steps in silence. She said, “That fight…those two…they're always like that?”

“Never changes,” Paul said. “You think I got animals in the zoo to deal with.” He laughed. “They're actually fun to be around when they're sober.”

“When's that?”

“Periodically.”

At least there isn’t anything hidden about that relationship, Violet thought. The whole thing is on display. From the outside, everything about her marriage had looked healthy. Even from the inside it was generally quite good, if unexciting after a point. The point, and she knew this, had known it for years, was Jessie. After his birth, sex went out the door for a walk and got lost. She was still pondering this when she entered the kitchen where Deb was finishing up dinner. In addition to sweet and sour pork and egg rolls, she had made egg-drop soup. Violet stared at the tray of egg rolls and the wok full of steaming pork and vegetables. “You amaze me,” she said to Deb.

“Oh?” Deb, in long skirt and apron, gray eyes soft behind her glasses, was physically everything Violet would have liked, at times, to be: slender, graceful, attractive. Deb, always at ease with herself, took her good looks for granted, never wore much make-up, and had no pretensions toward glamour. Men liked her, and at 35 she still attracted admiring glances in stores and on the street.

Deb laughed while putting the egg rolls into a shallow serving bowl. “Here's the gal taking a solo motorcycle trip down to Virginia telling me that I amaze her,” she said to Paul.

They ate in the kitchen. The good food and the warmth combined with the alcohol in her blood made Violet sleepy. She found herself staring at the spice rack Calder had made for Deb's Christmas present two years previously. Paul and Deb did most of the talking. Violet resisted being drawn into conversation, although she knew that she was being antisocial.

“You're not adding much,” Paul said after a while.

“Don't have much to add,” she responded. “I’m just fried after the ride.”

“Well, I can understand that.”

“Listen, you know, I never knew you didn’t like Calder,” Violet said.

Deb gave Paula a sharp glance. He held up both hands, palms toward her. “Hey, we were just talking,” he said to his wife, a trifle defensively. “I figured I could say it now, them being divorced and all.”

Violet looked at Deb. “He never came on to you or anything, did he?”

Deb looked uncomfortable. She shifted in her chair. “Well, no…”

“That doesn’t sound definitive,” Violet said.

“He sort of accidentally copped a feel off her once,” Paul said, frowning.

“That was just an accident,” said Deb. “Three summers ago, when we stopped by to visit you on our way up to Maine, I was coming down from the bathroom when I stumbled over that loose stair tread.”

“Yeah, it took him forever to fix it, such a small job.”

“Anyway, he was at the bottom of the stairs and when I tripped he more or less caught me. You know, it was suddenly, and you can’t choose your grip when an accident happens.”

Paul snorted. “You said it took him longer than necessary to let you go.”

“It wasn’t that big a deal,” Deb said. “It wasn’t like he groped me or hit on me or anything.”

“Anyway, it’s old business,” said Paul, a little shortly, grasping a morsel of pork with his chopsticks. They ate in silence for a few moments.

“I suppose Calder took all his plants,” Deb said at last.

“He wouldn’t have left them with me, that’s for sure,” Violet said. “I would have let the damn things die. My black thumb, you know.” She snorted. “What's-her-name has a bunch of plants, too.”

“Who, Maureen?”

“Yeah, her. So he and Maureen can start their own stupid jungle,” Violet said. She knew that she was losing control but was too drunk to care. “I sound pretty bitter don't I. Well, I don't mean to. No, I do mean to.” She blinked. “Oh…” Suddenly ashamed of herself, she got up and went into the living room. Paul and Deb stayed behind to clear away the dishes. Violet heard them talking in low voices. Not wanting to hear their words, she turned on the TV.

As it came on, she glanced up at the painting on the wall above the set. It was a Christmas present from Paul's sister, an artist living in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Violet had never liked it. It was large, almost two feet by three feet. Its subject matter was a matter of conjecture, in Violet’s view: a yellow squiggle winding among simple geometric shapes: squares, triangles, rhomboids. Other shapes in cool greens and blues were more organic in that they had no regular boundaries or patterns to their order.

To Violet, the painting looked like something done by a five-year-old. Her own taste in pictures ran to Impressionist landscapes or Andrew Wyeth.

Violet picked up the remote control and began channel surfing. The many political offerings reflected the upcoming presidential election. One state, two state, red state, blue state, she thought, and smiled. The pundits were out in force, spinning, opining, and holding forth. Who’s better for the country? Who’s better for the world? Who would lead the nation out of economic chaos?

Violet worried about unemployment. When so many experienced people were losing their jobs, how was a former housewife who had only ever worked as a waitress supposed to function in the marketplace? She hadn’t used a computer for anything other than netsurfing in years, knew no word processing or how to manipulate spreadsheets, had messed around with Calder’s copy of Photoshop but still didn’t know the difference between a jpeg or a gif, couldn’t write HTML or any real programming language, didn’t know what the hell Ruby on Rails was or Joomla or JavaScript or CSS or PHP, couldn’t edit video…A prospective employer would take one look at her pitiful resume and move on to more qualified applicants.

And these days, even over-qualified ones weren’t getting in the door anymore.

She switched channels, not wanting to see more bad news. She found an old Peter Sellers film and sat down to watch for a while. Feeling warm, she pulled off her heavy sweater and settled back in the chair, ignoring the painting over the TV set.

“You want something to drink?” Paul asked, sticking his head into the room.

“I better not,” Violet said after considering the offer for a moment. “I would actually like one, but you might end up having to prevent me from running out to smash car windows or something.”

“Ummm. Sex is better than violence,” he said, grinning.

“I wouldn't know.” She stared at the TV. A few minutes later Deb came out of the kitchen and sat down on the couch next to her.

“Hi,” said the small woman. “You feeling okay?”

“Loaded, exhausted, otherwise…meh!” said Violet.

“Want to talk at all?”

“I'm sort of talked out. I say stuff over and over and the words get pretty thin and even I can’t hear any meaning in them…so how could you?”

“I've never heard you sound this way,” said Deb. “You’re worrying me a little.”

“You just never saw me this drunk.”

“Oh, I don’t know…I can remember a few times…”

Violet smiled. “Yeah, well, I’ve toned that down a bit.” She cast a rueful grin at her friend. “Though maybe not today, so much. First time in quite a while. What with the divorce and all.”

“I think you've changed, some,” said Deb quietly.

“I'm entitled. But I don't think I have. I mean, everything else has changed, but I’m still the same. Maybe that's the problem.”

“You're not being fair to yourself.”

“Fair? I don’t know what’s fair. Is it fair that I should lose my husband, my son, my house? Is it fair that I don’t feel happy anymore?”

“That will come, you know. There are other men in the world.”

“I don't know if I want any. I don't know if any want me. You know, Calder and I hadn't had any sex for almost six months before he told me he wanted to separate.”

“You never told me that,” said Deb after a pause.

“I wouldn't tell you now if I wasn't drunk. I didn't want to face it. He didn't want me, and I didn't want him. I thought it was just a lull, or something…then he tells me that he's fallen in love with this Maureen.” She couldn’t have injected more scorn into the name.

“He was attracted to you, though, wasn't he?”

“In the beginning, yeah, sure. Three, four times a week or more. But you know what he said to me? After we were divorced? He said he loved me when we were married, but he wasn't in love with me. The infatuation thing, I guess. And sex. That’s what sex does, it blinds you to reality. Everything’s glowing. Wow, let’s do it! Oh, I love you! Then, wait a minute—who the hell is this I’ve been screwing for six months? Then he falls in love, but with Maureen, and couldn't keep our marriage going.”

“I'm sorry, Vi,” said Deb, putting her hand on Violet's arm.

“Thanks. I do appreciate you. But I don't know what I'm going to do. I haven't got a career or anything. I can't keep Jessie because I can't afford to.

“See,” she said, sitting up, “the one thing is, I've never been alone, really. There's always been someone to talk to. But now, I really need to be alone to talk to myself for once. And I don’t know how to do it, not really. Which is why I'm taking this backpacking trek into the Shenandoah National Park.”

“It rains a lot in the mountains this time of year,” said Paul, who entered the room while she was speaking. “You could get soaked. I mean, how much camping have you done?”

“Enough,” she said, avoiding his gaze. “In any case, it’ll be warm enough in the hollows, no wind down there. There’ll be plenty of shelter if I stay off ridges during storms.” Suddenly she belched. “Oh, excuse me!”

“You can stay here for a couple of days, if you like.”

“Thanks, Paul,” Violet said. “And no offense to you guys but it's not what I need. It would be easy…but I have to do the hard thing now.” She stifled another belch. “Ooh, the hard thing will be to get to bed without killing myself. I'm going to say goodnight.” She stood and, after hugging her friends, walked carefully out of the room and upstairs to the second floor, where her bags were, in the spare room at the front of the house.

The open curtains let in illumination from a lamppost across the street, enough that she didn’t need to put on the overhead light as she pulled her nightgown out of her backpack. Then she drew the curtains shut and undressed. After slipping her crucifix over her head Violet sat down on the edge of the bed.

The room spun slowly around her. She knew she'd be sick if she closed her eyes, so she lay down and resolutely stared at the windows until she lost consciousness.

Voices from outside woke her. Morning light filled the room. She rolled over onto her back, staring blearily at the ceiling while checking for hangover symptoms. Her stomach felt all right, but her head—!

The voices outside were those of children, pitched high with excitement. She rose slowly, letting the cool air of the room wake her. Scratching her chest between her breasts, she headed for the bathroom down the hall. The house was quiet, with no odor of breakfast. On her way to the john, she passed Deb and Paul’s room. Through the open door she saw the room was empty.

After a long hot shower, she slowly dried herself off, listening to the persistent cries of the children from the street. She looked at herself in the misted mirror. Eyes a bit bloodshot, eyelids swollen and puffy.

The reality of the day had been slowly filtering in. Today she would visit her parents, then head out on the last leg of her trip down to Virginia. Vague excitement tried to shoulder past her headache but needed tea to fully push into her awareness. Donning a tee shirt and jeans she went downstairs to see about fetching some.

On the kitchen table was a hand-written note from Deb saying that she and Paul had gone out to purchase some things for breakfast. Violet turned drew a kettle of water and set about preparing a cup of tea.

As she sat at the kitchen table drinking it, willing her headache to recede, her friends came in the front door.

“Good morning,” said Deb, entering the kitchen. “How are you?”

“Slightly hungover,” Violet said, attempting a mild grin.

“Want something, aspirin, maybe?” Deb asked.

“No, just some breakfast. I can make it myself.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Deb told her. “You’re a guest, and a hungover one at that.” She placed a large white paper bag on the table. “Croissants, Danish, bagels…you name it.”

“Ooh, this works,” said Violet, pawing an “everything” bagel out of the bag.

“You’re a better man than I am,” Paul said, retrieving a can of coffee from a cabinet.

“That was never in question,” Violet replied with a grin. She watched Paul pour water into the coffee maker. “The best thing for a hangover,” she said, “is a hot shower and a big meal, and maybe a little exercise. Calder taught me that.”

“Calder is a dipshit. It wouldn't have helped any hangover I ever had,” Paul said. He sat down across the table from her and leaned back to watch coffee dripping into the carafe.

“Eggs?” asked Deb, holding up a carton.

“Over easy,” replied Violet. “It wasn’t that he drank a lot,” she went on, “like all the time. But once or twice a year he would get dah-runk at a party or something. The next morning he’d do some push-ups, take a hot shower, and have some bacon and eggs.”

“Craziness,” Paul said. His eyes followed Deb as she made coffee. Violet watched his gaze stray down Deb's slim back and over her ass. She sighed.

“I used to think so, too,” Violet said, “until I actually saw him do it. And an hour or so after eating, maybe after taking a walk, he'd be more or less human again. Quieter than usual, but functional.”

“I guess it's a method that runs in the family,” Paul said, then winced. “Uh, sorry—I didn’t, uh, that is…” He bit his lips. “Balls.”

Violet waved a hand. “Forget it,” she said. “I’m not feeling well enough to feel bad about references to my ex.” She sipped at her tea. “I’ll have a cup of coffee, too, Deb, if there’s enough.”

“Sure. That’s right; you always have a cup of tea first, then coffee for the rest of the day.”

“Yeah. Listen, sorry about the rant, last night.”

“It was hardly a rant,” Deb said, smiling at her. She cracked an egg into the large cast-iron frying pan in which butter sizzled.

Paul had pulled a small portion of his beard into his mouth and was chewing on it. There was a small but noticeable gap amid the hair on the left side of his chin.

“You know, you can still stay here for a few days if you like,” he said. “We've got the room up there, and there are movies in town, places to go…Bridgeport’s actually got a couple of good museums these days. The old mall was converted into a community college, and they always have a good art show there.”

But Violet was shaking her head. “I can’t stay here and be a depression-sink,” she said. “I’m going to be depressed anywhere in a town, or a city. Trees and air would do me good.”

“Is it that a moving target is harder to hit?” asked Paul, cocking his head to one side.

“PK,” began Deb, a warning note in her voice.

“It’s okay,” said Violet. “It’s okay. That's what I need…no breaks. Just treat me the same as any other time. I know you feel sorry for me. I feel sorry for me. I'm sick of it. I want to start feeling good about things again, and this is the only way I can think of to do that.”

There was silence in the kitchen as Deb poured coffee for the three of them.

Deb sat down next to her and said, “You're right. What I want to do is put my arms around you and hug the hell out of you, and cry with you.”

“Oh, I'm cried out,” Violet said, looking down into the cup. “Mostly.” She reached absently into the right breast pocket of her shirt and pulled out a cigarette, then laid it on the table after remembering her hosts did not smoke. “Crying empties me, and I need to be filled. I just don't know what with, yet.”

“Not alcohol,” said Deb quietly.

“It helps.” Violet couldn't look her friend in the eyes.

“Damn, I'm really on the spot here, aren't I?” Deb asked Paul. She reached out touched Violet's arm. “I care about you; I care what you feel and what you think. And you can't drink all this—'” she waved her arm around in a vague, all-inclusive gesture, “—away, out of your life. If you think you can, you're kidding yourself.”

“You sound like my mother,” Violet mumbled. “She always tells me I refuse to face issues squarely. I do the best I can!” She stared angrily at her friends. “What I want, more than anything, is to be by myself. I need to know what's inside me. I have to get loose in there somehow.”

“I remember when you came back from California,” Deb said. “As a Jesus freak.”

Violet smiled as she automatically raised a hand to touch the crucifix under her shirt. She turned the movement into a scratch at her neck. “Maybe I overdid it, but still, religion helped me through a bad time. It was better than taking all those drugs, wasn't it?”

“Maybe you should go back to the church, then,” said Paul.

“No,” said Violet. “Back then I did have the faith that Someone was listening to me. I don't really believe that anymore. No one is listening, no one cares.”

“That's not true,” said Deb.

“I just mean there's no God out there. If there's anything, it’s inside. And inside me there’s nothing right now.”

“How can you say that?” Deb asked.

“Maybe you don't know me as well as you think you do,” Violet said, and stood up. She drained her coffee cup while her friends sat in silence. She knew she’d hurt them and was ashamed of herself but couldn’t think what to say to retract the barb. Instead, she went upstairs to gather her things.

Paul helped her bring her bags out to the motorcycle and strap them on. “Thanks,” Violet said, hugging him. “I'll send you a raccoon or something from the Great Woods.”

“No need. I get enough of that at the zoo,” said Paul. “Kids hauling dead budgies in, or sick chameleons or some such.”

“Shop talk,” said Deb, standing next to her husband. She hugged Violet as well, then they watched as she wheeled the motorcycle out of the garage. “Say hi to your folks for me,” said Deb.

“I'll do that,” Violet replied, putting on her helmet. She knocked the kickstand back into place and straddled the machine before pulling on her gloves. “Look,” she said from inside the helmet, groping for an apology, “I would rather just cry, because it's easier. But I'm afraid. It's like…well, it's like, here I am, thinking I was all done with growing up. But now I have to keep on with it. It isn’t fair, you know?” The tears were coming…she blinked them back. Knock it off, frigging crybaby, she told herself angrily.

“It works out,” said Paul.

“Maybe. Maybe not,” Violet replied. “I'll call you when I get back from Virginia. Enjoy the Poodle Boys.” She started the bike, jazzed the throttle and, with a wave to her friends, engaged the clutch. The bike crunched slowly down the drive and into the street.

Weekend traffic buzzed through the intersection, but she didn't care. Her mind was dull and gray. The residual effects of the hangover made her head feel like a lump of lead.

The day, on the other hand, was fine for traveling, a beautiful Saturday morning in Indian Summer. North of the intersection she picked up speed.

Violet was used to being stared at when she rode the motorcycle. On familiar roads, in and around Providence, she used less concentration while driving, so she usually didn’t notice if other motorists reacted to the sight of a woman riding a big bike. While threading her way through the streets of Bridgeport, however, she had to be more alert and observant. She saw drivers in oncoming cars. Some smiled, or waved, some pointed or made remarks to their passengers. One youth flipped her the bird, scowling, when she pulled around him at a traffic light. She ignored all distractions, aware that she felt hidden behind her crash helmet mask and leather jacket costume.

Concentrating on the unfamiliar roads north of Bridgeport she had not been able to enjoy the weather. Once she left the urban crush behind, she tried to think less of her anger and frustration and more of the trees.

The countryside reminded her of her home outside of Providence. The autumn foliage was lovely, but the memory brought pain…she would never see that home again.

Concentrate! she told herself angrily. Colors were okay; she let them fill her mind with smears and blurs in a sort of self-hypnotic process. The further north she rode toward Danbury, where her parents lived, the fewer—and older—were the houses along Route 25. Shopping centers, large and modern near Bridgeport, dwindled to storefronts and occasional drive-in restaurants, some of which she remembered from her pre-teen years. It seemed to her that at any minute she would see the cars owned by her high school friends pull into the lots, full of shouting, laughing teens. As always when she returned home, she was surprised to see these small establishments still in business. Some, indeed, now bore FOR SALE signs or were boarded up: clear indications of the faltering national economy.

In the drone of the motorcycle's engine and the racing of the wind she heard nothing save for a tune running through her head, an old song by Carly Simon, about moving in together because there wasn’t anything else to do. Wasn’t there a Stones song like that, too; something from Flowers, maybe, or Between the Buttons? She’d always been a Stones fan. She pulled over, slid a compilation CD Calder burned for her into the bike’s player, and rode on with the music blasting up at her from the speaker. Fine as it was, it couldn’t dispel her blues.

Both Mick and Carly had sung about being lost, hoping to find some fulfillment in marriage. Well, that was the way it was supposed to be.

But marriage, maybe, wasn't right for high school kids in hotdog stands.

Go on, go on, she said to herself and the road. Yes, but why? Can I be married again?

And children? She had Jessie—but he lived in Boston with Calder and Maureen.

Violet was free again, and there were a lot of hotdog stands in the world.

By the time she arrived at the outskirts of Danbury, her melancholy had softened into sullenness. She tried to shake it off by letting the dreamlike quality of her hometown pervade her, but it didn't work. Danbury looked smaller, and the new stores and other alterations made the place seem at once familiar as well as disorienting. Streets were wider than she remembered from her childhood, though she had seen them since their widening. The childhood memories were strongest, of course. The small town where she had grown up so years ago was gone. This new town wasn't exactly home any longer, but it was the only one she had, now.

In the center of town, she stopped for a light and looked around, trying to get the feel of the place. Like Calder, and like herself, it was still part of her. She wasn't certain that she was still a part of it, however, or that she ever could be.

A horn behind her brought her attention back to her driving. She entered town and drove slowly along the streets up into the hilly outskirts of town. In this older residential neighborhood, the homes sat on lots, none larger than an acre or so. The many trees obscured the view between houses. The ground, the streets, the sidewalks; all littered with fallen leaves. Porches were large. Neatly raked piles of leaves sat burning in front of some driveways, tended by bored young girls and elderly men. Violet waved to one or two of these people. They were neighbors of her parents or the children of friends.

She pulled into the dirt driveway of a smallish white saltbox residence. The front door had recently received a fresh coat of pink paint. Violet couldn't remember a time when the door had been any other color.

The name KARRAS on the battered mailbox still needed repainting. Her parents were both home; their cars were in the drive: her dad’s old Impala, clean but no longer shiny, and her mother's beat-up Saab. Violet turned off the bike and stood up to stretch, feeling the road slowly drain out of her. Taking her knapsack off the rear rack and leaving the fender bags for later, she climbed the wooden steps and went inside.

Don Karras, as usual for a Saturday afternoon, sat in the living room drinking a beer, reading the newspaper with the TV tuned to a baseball game. His silvering beard was as neat as always. Violet smiled as she dropped her knapsack. “Hi, Daddy,” she said, leaning down to kiss him. He smelled of tobacco and beer. He took a sip out of the can he was holding, his blue eyes bright behind the rim.

“How was your trip, Big Girl?” he asked. His customary surprised expression filled out into a grin.

“Okay, but I'm glad to be home,” she said. “I mean—here. Well, I guess this is always going to be home in one way or another.” She sighed. “I have to get some aspirin for this head, Daddy. Hey, how's your foot?”

It was propped up on the hassock. “Pretty good,” said Don. He spoke slowly most of the time, as though testing each word for content before uttering it. Violet was sure that this was exactly what her father was doing and had been sure of it since before she was ten. “The doctor says that I go back to work Wednesday night.”

“That's good,” said Violet, standing.

“Hi, honey!” called Eve Karras from the kitchen. “How was your ride?”

“Uneventful,” said Violet. She loosened her jacket, pulled her shirttails out of her jeans, and headed for the shelf above the kitchen sink where the aspirin was kept.

On her way she caught sight of Mrs. Karras and stopped dead. “Mauve,” she said, using her pet name for her mother, “what are you doing?”

Eve Karras was a chubby woman with a round face and dark straight hair cut short, with bangs across her forehead. She stood at the kitchen table, her arms shiny with oil. “Greasing the chicken,” she said, and laughed explosively. “I was pouring the oil into a frypan when I heard you pull in. I put down the oil but I was in such a hurry that I knocked over the bottle. Then I grabbed for it, and—” She gestured with her dripping hands.

“You're getting it all over the rug!” said Violet, ripping a few paper towels from the roll over the counter. “Chicken for supper, eh, mother?”

Eve smiled up at her, eyes closed, eyebrows raised. “Now, how could you guess?” she asked quickly. Then she took the towels and scrubbed them around between her pale hands.

Violet looked at the dishes in the sink. “Can I do some of these for you?”

“No, no. You must be tired. Why don’t you just relax, I’m almost done here. I’ll make you a cup of tea of you like.”

Violet gratefully plopped down at the kitchen table. “I’d like,” she said.

“I’m still amazed that you’d take Calder’s motorcycle,” her mother said. “Or that he’d let you,” she added, a note of scorn in her voice.

“He’s not as big a bastard as you think he is, Mauve,” said Violet. Eve simply sniffed. The bike was complicated, but it operated in a logical manner. Unlike many of her female friends throughout her school years, Violet felt no awe in the company of machinery. She and her brother Ed “fixed” alarm clocks and radios and record players for years, on up into high school and past that. Ed was now an auto mechanic across town. She liked him, and they'd discussed the motorcycle many times together, both and without Calder. “And the bike runs better than I do,” Violet added.

Her mother said nothing. She reached out and stroked Violet's left arm. Seeing her daughter glance at her hand, she said, “Oh, it's okay, I got all the oil off that one.” She tossed the wad of wet towels into the yellow plastic trash basket by the back door. “Dad?” she called out to her husband. “You ready for a refill on that?”

Don Karras came in from the living room, a solid man with a pleasant square face and eyes that were half closed most or the time. He wore faded jeans and an old lumberjack shirt. “I was just on my way to the bar,” he said to his daughter, opening his eyes wide. He opened the refrigerator and took out a can of beer. “What time are you planning on leaving for Virginia?”

“I don't know, Dad. I was around eight in the morning, but I'm flexible. It might be later, or earlier. No firm plans.”

He nodded and made his way back to his easy chair.

“I'll be glad when he goes back to work,” said Eve Karras softly. “He drinks too much beer, and always has something to say about what I'm doing.”

“He's got cabin fever.” They've been married for thirty-two years, Violet thought. I made it through six. “When's supper?”

“About two and a half hours.” Eve smiled. She placed a cup of tea down in front of her daughter, who noticed that the breakfast crumbs had not been swept off the table.

“Then I’m going to take this upstairs with me and maybe take a cat-nap,” Violet said, standing.

“You do that. Sleep well, honey.”

Violet knew that her mother was using her old bedroom as a study when it wasn't in use as a guestroom. “Did you leave a mess for me up there?”

“Just some papers on the desk. Nothing that'll be in your way.”

Violet went upstairs after taking off her boots by the front door and leaving them with the pile of shoes there. She paused at the door to her room. Like Danbury, it was strange yet comforting. The same furniture was there, the small hat rack, the vanity, but there were now several years' worth of put-here-for-now things on top of the vanity and on a small shelf next to the bed.

It was no longer a lived-in room.

She sat down on the bed, which gave out a creak she hadn't heard before. It's older, she thought, and I'm heavier. Next to the bed on the vanity she noticed two old shoeboxes. These, she knew, were full of family photos. She stretched out on the comforter. Her feet, sweaty in her thick white socks, cooled in the room's slightly stuffy air. Without thinking she reached for the boxes and started shuffling through the photos. Most were in color, but a few older ones, with serrated edges, were black and white.

She saw herself standing with the Scholastic Achievement Society of Danbury High, helping to hold a banner reading “1994.” She stared at her younger self’s image. Her chubby high school self had hated that face. Adult Violet remembered with some pity how that girl would read movie magazines and long for high cheekbones and a brilliant smile.

She put the photo down and picked up one showing two girls dressed in new Brownie uniforms. Violet Karras and Sarah Allard were best friends in the fourth grade and did everything together. They stood in the driveway of the Karras home, squinting into the sun, looking as if they were about to cry. They had been hard put to keep still long enough for that picture to be taken, Violet remembered.

The next picture was a more recent one, less than two years old. Fourth of July in the back yard…Violet and Calder were in the photo, stretched out in lawn chairs holding paper plates laden with food. Calder had just asked her, What's Irish and stays out all night? She didn't know. Paddy O'Furniture, he said. She had laughed just as her mother snapped the picture.

Calder grinned as he glanced at the camera. His hair was long and straight, and he looked deceptively youthful for a man in his mid-thirties. His old acne scars were not visible in the photo. Nor was the antipathy between him and Violet’s parents.

She put the photos away and placed the shoeboxes on the floor, unwilling to rummage through the memories any longer. She heard water running in the kitchen sink downstairs. Violet closed her eyes and stretched. It was strange to be back home again, stranger still to be there without Calder and Jessie…

#

She jerked awake, caught back from the edge of sleep, blinking in the darkness of her room. Suddenly she yawned. A delicious scent of fried chicken permeated the air; supper must be ready. Stretching and yawning again, she decided it was time to get up.

“You haven't got much to say,” said her mother during the meal.

Violet shrugged, eating mechanically, looking at each forkful of food before putting it into her mouth.

“I don't remember those circles under your eyes,” said Don Karras. “You look like you need more sleep. Any problems with Calder?”

“None,” said Violet, hoping to discourage further remarks by putting an edge in her voice. These days, more than ever, it seemed that no one had ever really liked her ex.

“When you get back, Big Girl,” said her father, “you and I need to sit down and discuss what you want to do about the custody case.”

“Yeah, sure, Dad,” she muttered.

“I mean it,” said Don. “Calder did nothing but lie about you in those hearings. He’s the one who gambled away the house.”

“Yes, but he has a job and no background as druggie,” she said.

“That’s all in the past,” said Don. “I’ve got a line on a good lawyer, and we’ll get all that straightened out.”

“When I get back, Dad.” Were they never going to stop treating her like a little girl? Even now they were making decisions for her. They meant well, but still…

“You’ve never been camping by yourself, has she, Dad?” asked her mother.

“I've got protection,” said Violet. “Little spray can of Mace in my knapsack. Besides, I’m not a teenager.”

“I remember that you never spent much time alone,” said Eve. “This house was full of kids when you were in high school, your friends and your brother's. In and out at all hours.”

“Because you baked bread for them,” Don said. He smiled. “There were a lot of people around to talk to.”

“But now here you are, going camping all by yourself in Virginia, no less,” Mrs. Karras went on, looking sad.

The sad look put Violet over the edge. “Look, Mauve,” she said, “you know what I have to do?” She waited.

Her mother looked uncertain. “Well, no, honey.”

“Neither do I! What I know is, I’ve lost my house, my husband, my kid—I don’t have any income to speak of, and no direction in life right now. I’m adrift. What I am doing by going off by myself like this is to figure out what the hell my next steps need to be. I was just talking to Deb about this. I am not trying to run away from anything, or to, to drink things away.” Even though I fell off the fucking wagon last night. “I don’t do that anymore. I’m going down there because I need some time to think and get my head straight about where I am and who I am and all of that counterculture crap.”

Both parents looked surprised at her outburst. She understood that: outbursts like that were not a part of her character. Or had not been. This new Violet was not someone who the old Violet knew very well yet. Another reason, she told herself, to get away for a while.

“Look, let me help you with the dishes,” Violet said, in a mollifying tone. “Then I’ll hang with you for a while, Dad.”

“Okay,” said Eve Karras, somewhat uncertainly.

Afterward, Violet, as promised, sat for a while with her father watching TV news. The national report was almost uniformly political. Everything not having to do with the election was clearly taking a back seat to the latest announcements, proclamations, or barbs promulgated by one side or the other. The only piece of news that was really penetrating the rhetoric was the massive seven hundred billion dollar “bailout” being promoted by the Treasury Secretary, a former Goldman-Sachs CEO.

Don listened to the news report, scowling the while. To Violet it all sounded like the End of Days, and if she were still in that life, she knew she’d probably be down on her knees in some church somewhere, praying for the Rapture.

But it was hard to be objective when the price of gas was stratospheric, when people were losing their homes through foreclosure, and when there was so much strife and hatred around the world.

“It’ll be a hard winter for a lot of people,” Don murmured, to himself.

Violet knew him well enough to understand that he was edging into a political discussion, and she had no heart for it. He was a lifelong Democrat and they had argued many times over political issues. He never spoke derogatorily to her about her own views, laced as they were with her religious groundings and rejection of her troubled youth. All he insisted on was that she had facts at her disposal when they disagreed.

What with all the troubles she’d been through this year, she had fewer than usual of these, not having kept up with national events as much as she would have liked. She was thrilled with the idea of a woman running for vice president and had even had a grudging admiration for Senator Clinton for the same reason, though she probably would not have voted for her. There was no escaping a sense of history in this election, much more so than she could remember ever having felt in her life.

Now, sitting in the living room, Violet felt alert and even edgy. She found herself chain smoking as she watched the news. She decided that she had sufficient energy to leave on the next leg of her trip. There was no point in trying to get more sleep because she'd just had a good nap and would have a hard time dozing off again. If she hung around the house until after midnight, she'd be more inclined to travel a shorter distance before resting. Wordlessly she got up from the chair and went to get her father's road atlas. He didn’t seem to notice her absence.

On the way back from the bookcase near the kitchen she went into the bathroom. In the medicine cabinet was a small bottle of diet pills that her mother occasionally used. Violet swallowed two of these, washed them down with a glass of water, and put several more pills in the pocket of her jeans. I’m just using them to stay awake while driving, she told her reflection.

In the living room, her father glanced at the road atlas in her hands, his eyebrows raised, but he said nothing.

She knew that he was questioning her departure time. “Pennsylvania is boring to travel through,” she said in answer to his unspoken question. “At least, the part where I’m going. Just trees, trees, trees, and an occasional rock. I’d rather not see it, so I'll leave tonight.”

Her mother came into the room. “It's cold,” Eve said, a concerned look on her moon face. “You could end up with hypothermia if you aren’t careful.”

“It won’t be a problem,” said Violet. She closed the book with a snap. “I dress warmly.”

Her parents exchanged a troubled look. Violet bridled, ready to defend her position, but as if sensing her truculence, they said nothing.

Violet stood. “Well, I'm going to head out. Thanks for the meal and all.”

There was no more to be said. Her conscience bothered her a little, as she wasn't used to being anything other than a dutiful daughter, and she was acting out of character. That was my old character, maybe this is a new one I am building for myself. It didn’t feel all that comfortable, but maybe it was like a new pair of shoes that needed to be broken in.

A solo motorcycle trip, back country hiking and camping…She was, she knew, taking risks—not something she usually did. But it all felt right, now.

Soon the bike was packed, and farewells quickly made. Violet, a little disgusted with herself and angry for feeling disgusted, clumped hurriedly down the front steps and buckled on her helmet in the yellow glow of the porch light. A waxing moon, two or three days from full, seemed caught in the branches of the trees lining the street.

Without looking back, she drove down the street toward the main road. Presently she was back on Route 84. The time, she saw by her watch, was several minutes past nine. With luck the trip would take ten hours, being highway driving all the way until she hit Front Royal, Virginia.

She concentrated on her driving, preferring not to think. Her left foot tapped the gears higher until there were no more, and her cruising speed leveled off somewhere north of 70 mph. Leaning over the handlebars to streamline herself, she drove through the night.

Traffic thinned as she left the settled regions around Danbury behind. By the time she crossed the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge into New York, most of the vehicles on the road were semi-trailers.

Her headlight, and those of the trucks, seemed of little use in illuminating the roadway because of the rising moon’s brilliance. The amphetamines in her bloodstream kept her cooking with a chemical euphoria that she welcomed over her recent feelings of anger and self-pity. She felt detached, incorporeal.

She picked up the 87, and by the time she got down to Sloatsburg she wanted a cigarette and a break from the road, so she pulled off the turnpike into a rest area and parked her bike near a darkened semi. After switching off the bike's ignition, she realized that although its running lights were off, the truck's engine was idling. She swung stiffly off the motorcycle, feeling the coldness of the night air as she moved. While driving her motions had been minimal, and as a result she hadn't felt the cold sinking deeply into her over the miles.

Standing by the bike, she began to shiver. She smoked a cigarette quickly, not enjoying it, sucking at it until its tip grew long and red between her cupped hands.

Shortly she was back on the highway. Somewhere in the scrub forest along the roadway in New Jersey she passed by midnight. A couple of hours later she noticed a large sign telling of a truck stop some twenty miles ahead. Her bladder felt full. Time to stop for a pee and a snack.

Several minutes later she rounded a bend, and the truck stop came into view. In the middle of the night, it stood with its glow washing out the moonlight: a low stone restaurant surrounded by a couple of taller structures bearing VACANCY signs. To one side were several open-sided sheds full of intertwining pipes. Half-seen tanks loomed in the semi-darkness beyond. All of these sat amid what seemed to be several acres of asphalt parking area. Mercury vapor and sodium lamps lit various portions of the parking lot, which was likewise a-twinkle with the running lights of dozens of trucks, parked or slowly moving among the gas islands, looking to her speed-glazed brain like huge electric caterpillars.

Immediately inside the restaurant’s double glass front doors was a small antechamber containing several video games. As she entered the main part of the building, she saw, to her right, a section given over to glass-fronted cases and shelves displaying various articles of clothing, gifts, and magazines. To her left were the rest rooms. After relieving herself there, she entered the restaurant section.

All the patrons were men. They sat at the counter and in the booths. Most of them looked at her. Some stared. She ignored them all as she flopped down into an empty booth and unzipped her leather jacket.

Loud alt country music played over the PA system. A young overly made-up waitress, blonde but with a lick of cherry-red hair over her forehead and a pierced eyebrow, came to the booth bearing a menu and a glass of water. “Would you like some coffee or tea?”

“Coffee would be great, thanks,” said Violet. She drank the entire glass of water as the waitress walked away. Her hips, Violet noted idly, swung too much. The men probably liked that.

The menu was full of oddly named “specials” such as a “Johnny Cash Plate” and a “Dolly Parton Salad.” Probably that last consisted of two peach halves, Violet mused. What the devil was a “Johnny Paycheck Burger?” Given the context he must be some country musician, but she’d never heard of him. The menu elaborated on each entry. For the Paycheck, it said “Take this meal and shove it—into your gullet!” That's very rude, she said to herself, grinning.

Overhead, the music twanged itself off into a newscast. The waitress came back with coffee and took Violet's order of a tuna melt with coleslaw and home fries.

The news was no less full of bullshit and election cant than could be expected, but the general tone of response here among the guys at the counter was more toward the conservative side than among most of her friends. She didn’t care for the one or two racist remarks she heard, but as a woman on her own she wasn’t about to get into a dispute with anyone in a rest area.

The waitress returned with Violet's food. She ate slowly, listening for a weather report. When it came, it was ambiguous. There were scattered showers moving into the vicinity, but there was no way to tell if these would affect the Shenandoah National Park region.

She looked around at the truckers as she finished her meal. Now and then, one would glance at her from under the brim of his hat. Why do they all wear hats? If it isn't a baseball cap it's a Stetson. Hats and checked shirts. And I haven't heard so many fake Western accents outside of a John Wayne movie.

The waitress returned with the check. “Anything else?”

“No, thanks,” replied Violet, going for her wallet. She dug out a wrinkled ten and placed it on top of the check.

Back outside, Violet saw that the sky had become partly overcast. Judging by the speed of the clouds scudding across the moon, however, there wouldn’t be any precipitation.

After gassing up at the pumps, she was off on the next leg of her journey.

She barely noticed crossing the line into Maryland around four in the morning, being just alert enough to realize that she should stop for a while. At the next rest area, which was half visible in the gray false dawn, she pulled off the highway. No restaurant here, just a small building containing restrooms. Inside, she slowly washed her face, and changed her clothes. She spent some time brushing and combing her hair, looking at her bloodshot eyes in the mirror. After rubbing some moisturizing cream into her wind-chapped face, she brushed her teeth. Somewhat refreshed, she went back outside. There were still clouds above although rain still didn't seem to be threatening. She considered spreading her sleeping bag out on the grass for a few hours' sleep but thought better of it. If she could hump it for another three or four hours she’d be in Front Royal, where a motel room could be had.

Gulping down a couple more diet pills, she got back on the motorcycle. Even in the gray-green light of dawn the land and vegetation along the highway looked fresher than in Rhode Island or Connecticut. It was as if summer lasted longer here or was more tenacious in the face of autumn and winter. As the light burgeoned, the colors of fall ignited in the leaves and fields. Occasionally her view was obscured by mist slowly pouring out of a hollow or valley and cascading across the road. Ground haze curled like ghostly cattle in the meadows.

By the time she crossed into Virginia, the day’s early clouds had burned away, revealing an amazingly blue sky, of a color to rival the sky above Cape Cod or Martha's Vineyard. The fields around the road glowed ochre and yellow and orange, rolling away into the distance toward the mountains…the Blue Ridge Mountains, she realized. They were blue, she knew, because of the haze of hydrocarbons exhaled by the numberless trees that grew on their slopes. Pollution is not caused by trees, Mr. President, she said in admonishment to the ghost of Ronald Reagan. Glancing at the small clock set in the bike’s instrument panel, she estimated arriving in Front Royal, site of the northernmost entrance to the park, within two hours.

#

As she rounded a curve some ten miles outside of Front Royal, amid old farmland, she saw two things almost simultaneously. The first was a group of denim-clad men, strong of physique, laboring beside the road, overseen by even larger men in tan uniforms carrying rifles or shotguns. The workers were all black, the guards white. Just after spotting the work gang, she saw a wall of water a mile or so ahead, slicing across the road like a digital movie effect. This localized rainstorm extended some miles to her left, and barely any distance to her right, ending in the middle of a barren field, as if the FX house had run out of money.

“Jesus!” she said in her helmet, the first word she had spoken since being in the truck stop. She braked slightly, aware that there was no way to avoid the shower. She winced as she entered the curtain of rain. It was heavy, and she hunched over the handlebars giving full attention to the road. Fully awake now for the first time in a long while, she drove carefully. Within three minutes she was out of the storm, speeding along in the autumn sunshine. Drops of rain beaded the smooth surface of the gas tank between her thighs.

A sign ahead announced the exit for Front Royal.

The exit led down a ramp around a steep hill. In the shallow valley between this hill and the next crouched a tall old wooden grain elevator, seemingly sheltering from the elements. A rusty pickup truck parked at its base had obviously been there for years. Across the road sat a small, peeling house with a collection of tumbled gravestones like a discarded poker hand in front of it.

Violet didn't like the look of this shoddy little locale. She wondered how many other first-time visitors felt the same dismay.

After crossing over a narrow metal bridge, the road led her into Front Royal proper. It looked like many other road towns she had seen. There were no signs indicating where the entrance to the Shenandoah National Park might be.

It was at this point, she knew, that Calder would have stopped to ask directions at the first gas station he saw. Unlike most men, that never seemed to bother him. For her, though, it was different. Now she felt the uncertainty she had not wanted to reveal to her parents. To go this far on a motorcycle by myself is a strong thing to do. Unless, as her mother intimated, she had done it because she was running away from the failures of her life. Violet frowned, telling herself that her self-doubt was only simple exhaustion, the result of sleeplessness and diet pill abuse. Sleep she needed, and nourishment as well. There was a restaurant ahead on her left. She pulled into its parking lot.

It was silly to be fearful, she thought. The autumn weather was wonderful, and the colors beautiful. There would be fewer tourists around at this time of year, so there would be fewer hikers in the backcountry. The solitude she craved would be hers.

Dismounting from the bike, she realized that she could go no further without sleep. Her body had been humming with the bike's vibration for so long that in the engineless silence she felt a bit nauseated. She entered the restaurant dreamily, eyes half closed.

Deciding to eat lightly, she ordered toast and tea.

As she ate, she became sleepier. To enter the park now and drive perhaps another twenty miles and then walk down narrow, backcountry trails to an unimproved campsite would be foolishness. She was experienced enough as a camper to know that she needed to be reasonably alert while backpacking in unfamiliar territory, ranger-patrolled or not.

There was a small hotel behind the restaurant, so she engaged a room. She slept until a wake-up call from the desk woke her at four o'clock that afternoon. She dressed, still feeling groggy from her long ride, then walked several blocks to an old IGA store that the desk-clerk told her about. After picking out some powdered soups and other lightweight comestibles, enough for four days, she trudged back to her room.

She turned on the TV and watched with half an eye while she went over her gear. The big local news seemed to be Front Royal’s town attorneys blaming Warren County officials for starting a dispute over possible illegal dumping. She paid no attention until the weather came on. The weather girl said that it was unusually warm for the time of year, being in the mid-sixties. “It’ll stay this way for the next three days,” she said. “Perfect for hiking and camping.”

“Exactly what I have in mind,” Violet said out loud.

Before going to bed she called her parents and told them that she'd be out of touch in the back country for at least three days.

#

The next morning, while she dressed, she scanned the skies through the small window at the front of the room. As forecast, the weather was clear, sunny, and warm, promising good traveling, and excellent conditions at the campsite. She ate a light breakfast at the restaurant and got directions to the park entrance. Afterwards, feeling considerably more awake and cheerful than she had in many days, she fired up her motorcycle, gunning the engine for the sheer joy of it.

A wrong turn took her into a residential neighborhood full of small, neat houses. No two were alike in style or material of construction, giving them an odd appearance in concert. Narrow sidewalks linked them. She retraced her trail until she was again headed for the park.

At the north entrance, a large sign with old-fashioned lettering proclaimed SHENANDOAH NATIONAL PARK. On impulse she decided to drive on a way to see some of the countryside before entering the park.

Past Front Royal the road entered a region of hills spread with small farms or homesteads. Mist overhung the hills. To her left, the Blue Ridge heights of the Skyline Drive blocked out the morning sunlight. Enchanted by the serene beauty of the region, she kept on. Worse came to worst, she thought, she’d enter the park further south, at Browntown, or even at the park’s midpoint in Luray. For now, it was good to see land unknown, to be constantly looking around, to be distracted from her memories.

To her left along the roadway, the huge folds of the Blue Ridge Mountains spread out. Here she was in the heart of one of the oldest areas of the planet. A sort of ancient peace suffused the area, obscured by the towns and roads of human beings. Occasional cloud shadows and rainstorms ghosted along the mountain slopes to her right. Off to the west, hazy peaks rolled into the distance beyond the Shenandoah Valley and the river wandering through it. She passed fields like green ponds holding to the torn skirts of summer. Quite happy for the moment to be who and where she was, she drove on.

Some miles before Luray, she noticed that the bike needed gas. She exited the Skyline Drive at Luray. She soon spotted a gas station, and pulled in. Two men lounged inside the station, while one in work clothes came out to see what she wanted. There were two motorcycles, old, battered Harleys, parked in the open doorway of the garage. The dirt floor beneath them was stained with grease and oil.

The unshaven man at the pump was likewise stained and smelled of hydrocarbons. He was curt and unceremonious as he tended the cycle. She stretched, standing off the bike and taking off her crash helmet. Looking into the gray-brown building next to the pumps, she saw that the men inside had stood up and were looking at her. They were both lanky, with narrow faces, sharp noses, and large hands. One was saying something to the other.

The man at the pumps, done filling her tank, scraped a straight lock of hair out of his eyes, and looked at her.

“Y’not fum around here,” he said in a drawl pitched lower than she would have expected.

“No,” she said, automatically. “I’m not, no.” She held out five dollars to him.

“Thanks. Y’all hev a good trip, Missy,” he said, grinning. His teeth were surprisingly even and white, stark, bright against his dirty face. He creeped her out, him and his buddies inside.

“Thanks.” She got back on the bike and drove off.

Some miles down the road as she passed through an area of many fields with cornhusks in the dirt rows sparkling in the sun, she noticed two motorcyclists in her rearview mirror. The undulation of the road cut off her view; then, around a curve, they again became visible.

Coming up quickly, the drivers were bent over their machines, anonymous behind goggles, under helmets, inside old brown leather jackets.

Clouds flowed together overhead; sunlight guttered.

Violet's attention had to be on the road ahead, although the bikers behind her were interesting, riding, as they were, in formation as though locked together by some principle of gravity. Her speed dropped a little as she went around a curve, but the other bikes didn't seem to slow. In fact, they accelerated out of the curve, coming up a couple of bike-lengths behind her, one to her left and one to her right, almost before she knew it.

They sped along in an equilateral triangle, Violet at the apex. Neither of the others looked at her as she glanced back and forth between them in her handlebar mirrors, puzzled. The bikes were Indians; so these bozos, she guessed, were from the gas station she'd stopped at. Their helmets were old, beaten. Their leather was dusty brick in color, raw at elbows and cuffs.

Their machines were old and noisy, powerful, well used, mud-splashed, clearly not limited to paved roads, though Indians weren’t really designed for off-road excursions.

Uneasy now, she tried to focus on her driving. Ahead the road arrowed across farmland for what looked like a mile or so. There was no other traffic, no nearby buildings, no sign of life at all apart from a few hawks circling overhead, hunting from the heights.

Her attention came back to her pacers, as they began to slowly close in from the sides to bracket her. “Whoa-ho!” said Violet, alarmed, and carefully applied her brakes. The two machines beside her drifted ahead then back, matching deceleration with her. Slowly, they closed in.

Her eyes narrowed. What, do you guys think, you’re going to slam into me? We playing ‘Chicken’ here? Judging the shoulder to be grass and soft dirt sloping into a wet ditch, she tried to calculate the distance of a skid should she have to brake hard and dump it, but it was impossible: her speed was now about forty, fast enough to be adequately fatal.

Then they were out of the straightaway and around a curve. Ahead she saw a rainstorm stretched across the road.

All right, assholes, I’m game if you are, she thought.

She twisted the throttle, speeding up. Her escort did likewise. Ten feet in front of the wall of water, she applied her brakes, hard, releasing them as she entered the rain so she wouldn’t be skidding on wet pavement.

She had managed to slow quite a bit, and had caught the other two bikers unaware, so that they had to hit their brakes in the rain.

They could be no fools, though, about how to drive their machines. The best she could hope for from her ploy was to end up twenty or so feet behind them.

That was how it was, too, she saw as they all burst out of the shower. They closed ranks in front of her, slowing. They meant to stop, she realized, trying to blockade her.

She braked as she approached them, putting her feet out as if to stand. They straddled their machines, turned and faced her, smiling, relaxing. A yard or so from them, she gunned her bike, bouncing down hard on the rear to give traction and using the impetus from this movement to thrust her legs up and out.

Kicking as hard as she could, heels first, she strove to knock the two motorcycles off balance and away from her. The men shouted and grabbed at the bikes but could not keep their centers of gravity and had to backstep to keep their machines upright as she roared through the opening.

With something of an advantage now, she settled down to drive hard for the first time in her life. She didn't wonder why she was being pursued; there was no time. She could think of nothing but to get away. Her biggest worry was that she didn't know the road and had no clear idea of what sort of country was ahead. Hilly, twisty, she figured, farmhouses perched here and there on the ribs of foothills to the left, separated by fields and stands of trees. The older bikes, though slower in terms of top speed, could probably catch up with her without much difficulty.

At least, she told herself wryly, she had plenty of gas.

The only destination she could think of was Roanoke, which she knew was at least fifty miles to the south. That was crazy, though; these idiots wouldn't chase her that far, would they?

They were crazy enough to chase her in the first place, though. Violet began feeling fear in her chest. What was going on?

During the next ten minutes she gained distance on the straightaways and lost it again on the curves. Sometimes she and the two pursuers would be out of each other's sight, hidden by a hill or trees, but there was never any chance for her to get off the road, nor anywhere to go. She was sure that by now the men were out of their home territory, on routes they weren't totally familiar with. If she could get off the main drag, then, she could probably lose them.

Ahead of her a narrow secondary road opened onto the highway, its upper reaches curving up behind a tree-lined ridge. Violet accelerated, judging that the men behind her would be out of sight for four or five seconds. She took the curve onto the converging road as fast as she dared, praying for balance. She almost lost it; then she was roaring up to the ridge, braking fast to stop. Straddling the bike, she heard the two on the road below her. Immediately past the junction the highway cricked to the left; she hoped the two bikers would assume she'd kept going.

It was flimsy. One of them looked up to the ridge as they passed. He saw her.

She bit her lips, hard. Her tires squealed as she accelerated up the unknown road.

Trees, cedar and hemlocks, blurred past her. The road went ever up. Engines roared behind her.

These guys knew about hills. Afraid now, still unable to believe what was happening, she blasted ahead as fast as she dared. In the mile climb up the ridge she passed two houses, tumbledown, small, with cluttered yards and various outbuildings. She saw no people; only a few dogs to bark as she sped by.

Atop the ridge a clear area by the road gave a view across the valley to the west. Clouds filled the sky, drifting southwest. The road here was wet from recent storms. It became narrower and more twisting as she followed it higher. Time and again she was forced to slow drastically to negotiate sharp curves.

Then she was driving along another ridge, one that sloped downward.

Behind her, the pursuing bikes closed the gap. In her mirrors she saw them swooping down the top of the incline. Desperation filled her, and she twisted the Kawasaki’s throttle for more speed.

The road curved sharply left into woods ahead. Braking, she shot under the branches, leaning into the curve as she flew around the bend. The back of a yellow pickup truck loomed directly ahead. She hit the horn button and braked spasmodically.

The bike squirmed out of her balance as she tried to avoid the collision. Rider and motorcycle went down; she saw the road change places with the sky as she and the bike skidded into the undercarriage of the truck.

Blackness swallowed all sensation.

CHAPTER II: FIRST INTERLUDE | An End to Housework

A shattering, drenching yellow burst forth in, around and through her, tasting of sun-heated pebbles sucked in the mouth. Violet felt jarring impact but no pain as her collision with the truck reverberated, rippling the yellow blur in her mind. A powerful sensation of constriction brought red and blue gasps from her laboring lungs. She fought to draw in air to power a scream: then her vision cleared, and the scream choked in her throat.

She was not crumpled on an unknown mountain road in Virginia. What her eyes reported made so little sense that she instantly forgot the truck and her pursuers. Everything had changed; reality had been scraped off her sensory grid and replaced by—something that wasn’t reality as she understood it.

She sprawled on a level surface, but planarity was the only road-like quality it possessed, being firm, smooth, yielding, and slightly warm to the touch. It reminded her of Naugahyde, with a pattern of arabesques and curlicues arranged in a reticular system of individual squarish areas, each about the size of a trade-edition paperback, extending as far as she could see. The ground (if that's what it was…it was clearly where ground should be, but it bore no dirt, no grass, no stones) was generally colored a salmon that reminded her of sunsets in Vermont, with the palette varying, in the overall design, from solid navy blue to an iridescent color closer to gold than anything else. It was as if someone had covered the ground with an immense sheet of linoleum patterned like a quilt or a Persian carpet.

Surrounding her, arranged in a loose ring about twenty-five feet in diameter, were several lumpish bushes or stubby trees, like enlarged cauliflower. These grew from the ground (or floor, as she was beginning to think of it) to a height of a yard or two, though some rose higher.

Their stems were a translucent turquoise, with an opalescent and semi-transparent floret cluster on top of each stalk. Towering into the air beyond these vegetable forms were huge stalagmites, tall as trees. As her gaze traveled up these columns, she realized that an odor similar to eucalyptus filled her nostrils. The sky above was a depthless lavender shade, warm and comforting, so soothing that she accepted it as perfectly natural.

“A dream,” she thought automatically. “I'm knocked cold. I'm bleeding on a road, bones could be broken—” The shriek began rising in her throat again as she realized what a return to consciousness must bring her: injuries, great pain, helplessness.

Through the confusion slashed a hiss, a distant crackling strain. She whirled, in a crouch, her hands raised defensively. The noise emanated from the air above one of the nearby bubble stalks. Seeing nothing, her fear phased into anxious alertness. The hissing grew louder, becoming visible as a cobweb of stress lines in space. Alarmed but curious, she squinted at the apparition. The lines originated from a point, radiating out in an annulated circle. Like the flaws in the cooling crust of a lava flow, the lines widened. Something was behind them, on the other side as it were of the air, materializing as the disc vanished. Cloudy at first behind the warped area, it abruptly materialized.

It was clearly a being of some sort, and intelligent, but utterly weird. For an instant she thought Angel, being of light, because it seemed to be glowing but there wasn’t anything the least bit numinous about this creature, with its huge idiot grin and empty orange eyes.

Her next thought was, It’s an electric snake. Wait, it has hands. Salamander?

It spread its fingers in a gesture of theatrical surprise. “You, are, none other, than,” it said, in a high enthusiastic tone, “the conscious mind! Well, tickle my tibias!” It clasped its hands in great satisfaction and sighed. “I told them this would happen,” it added, rather smugly, to itself.

A talking electric salamander. Why am I dreaming this? The thing’s head was ablaze. No: it was a cloud of light, a clinging nimbus. The head was lumpish, like clay, with two dinner-plate eyes lacking pupils and colored the orange of waxy grade school crayons. A large mouth took up most of the rest of its skull, stretched in a wide smile displaying lots of big square teeth. It stared at her—at least, its head was aimed at her—with great interest, its expression madly gleeful. Its aura flared soundlessly. She flinched, but the nimbus gave off no heat. A thicker clot of pale blue light hid the neck and part of the narrow shoulders immediately behind the being’s head. Arms, two, short and thin, jagged back into the air, with spatulate hands splayed in a knuckly row along the cauliflower plant upon which it had materialized. From the shoulders on back, the body was apparently that of a snake, curled around out of sight behind the plant. No rear legs were visible.

Had her surroundings been less bizarre, Violet would have fled the monstrosity. As things were, she felt too unsure of herself. “What is this?” she asked, half to herself. “Where am I? Who, what are you?”

The creature hunkered down on top of the plant, apparently making itself comfortable, and a blue lowlight crept along the underside of its orange eyeballs. “You is this,” it said. It tried to gesture sweepingly but its arms were too short, and the attempt became an awkward shrug. “This is you. The inner self! You are inside your own mind.”

Violet started to speak but could find no words with which to respond to such absurdity. Staring at the weird creature, a realization struck her. “I'm dead,” she said, sitting down heavily on the arabesque ground. “The Kawasaki; I hit a truck, and…” She swallowed. “I died.”

“Oh lord, no,” said the being. It smiled, its teeth shining.

“The only thing is…” Her tongue pushed against her molars, seeking words. “This…is nothing like the after…death, experiences I've read about, in the Church or not…Are you supposed to be the Being of Light?” She felt her stomach expand as she stared at the creature. Of course: what else could this thing be? “You’re supposed to appear to deceased people, to guide them…aren't I supposed to be, uh joyful?”

Warm, she was warm, too warm: It was the ground, like flesh. It radiated heat.

The nimbus-headed creature laughed, a high giggle.

Nervously, she rummaged in her shirt pocket for her cigarettes, found them, and with a shaking hand placed one between her lips. It took her three tries to strike a match. The sting of smoke in her lungs seemed to clear her head a trifle. “I still,” she realized aloud, “have all my clothes on. So, this has got to be a dream, right. No spiritual body or robes or whatever. And I'm sure they don't smoke in Heaven.” She inhaled again, the scent of mint in her nostrils ruining, somewhat, the taste of the tobacco.

The creature had been (as far as she could tell from its blank eyes) regarding her with complete absorption. Now it shook its irregular head. “Wro-ong,” it said. “You are in your own thought space. If you were dead, this entire area would not be, and since it is, you are.”

“Crazy, crazy.” She shook her head. Crazy!

“Not at all. You've projected your ego, or your spiritual body, to use your phrase—you haven't got the linguistic equipment to understand the true definition—use 'ego' if you like—into your own mind-space, Ms. Conscious Mind. You are turned inside, and outside you are lying on a wet road in rural Virginia.”

Once more she dragged deeply on the cigarette. “No way,” she said. Her right foot began to tap, a gentle sound, against the ground. “If I'm all here, I can't be inside my own brain, walking around in boots. There wouldn't be the room, and brains don't look like this, or have talking electric snakes in them. It's all just jelly, gray jelly.”

“Perhaps, physically,” agreed the creature, in an offhand manner. “Your brain is a slosh of organics, stung constantly by electric impulses. However, I said nothing about your brain. I said 'mind-space', and I meant it. Non-physical…you see. If you died, your brain would remain, until it rotted, but we would all vanish.”

We? She looked around at the peculiar landscape and the glittering sky flowing overhead. “I need to wake up. This is some fantasy, it doesn't exist. I haven’t seen anything like this since I stopped doing drugs.”

“Existence is relative,” was the reply. “To you, the almighty” (it sneered) “conscious mind, this Inside does not exist, most of the time…although you showed up here in a somewhat staccato fashion, occasionally, while you were taking blotter acid in California, as you say. That's when I got my nimbus.”

“I had my reasons for that,” she said. “And what do you know about it, anyway?” The acid sessions…she'd told no one, back East. The opening-up, the slithering Flow past words and their meanings into a Taoist Sufi oneness. A warm glow of flux…What in God's Name is happening here, anyway? One does not customarily argue with one's dreams.

“I know more than you do. I prompted you to take that stuff!”

“What are you talking about?” she demanded.

“I'm an impulse,” said the being smugly. “You know; impulses seek satisfaction in accordance with the pleasure principle. Drugs felt good, you had fun—that’s my doing. The id sends us out all the time.”

“The…id,” she said. “Wait a minute,” she said, remembering her college psychology courses. “That’s Freudian psychology you’re talking, here.” She waved her hand at the impulse. “Okay, okay; impulses supposedly come from the id, right, and get modified by the ego and the superego so that they don’t swamp the personality with involuntary behavior.” She cast a narrow glance at the snake-headed thing. “But all this Freudian stuff is outmoded, isn’t it? The field was trending toward biopsychosocial approaches when I was in school. God, I haven’t thought of this stuff in years.”

The impulse made a rude noise. “Those cognitive people, what a bunch of goobers! They still think they can figure out artificial intelligence, some of them.” It giggled again. “As if!”

“So…is the id around here somewhere too? I mean, I don’t recognize this place; I never read anything about a landscape like this inside my head.”

“You don’t want to meet the id, trust me,” said the impulse. “You ever hear of H.P. Lovecraft?”

“I haven’t lived in Providence ten years for nothing.”

“Well, in some of his crummy stories old Howard talks about Azathoth, a sort of brainless monstrosity bubbling at the center of all infinity?”

“Yeah. And that’s the id?”

“That’s the id.”

“And you’re an impulse.”

“At your service,” it said, proudly, and bowed—or tried to. “I am what urges you to try, to aspire, to seek enlightenment. I am a messenger of the Higher Functions.”

“You said you’re what got me to take drugs.”

“I’m also what got you into church.”

“Hmmm.” It was true that one day she had just decided that she’d had enough of her addictive lifestyle and walked into a worship service looking for…something.

So, did that make this “impulse” a spiritual being of some sort? It seemed to be saying that it was analogous to an angel. What a dream of marvels! Sad, of course…so sad. Years ago, such a dream would have initiated a sweet tension in her muscles, tension straining for release, like a years-long orgasm. The intensity would be at its peak when she was alone, no coupled man necessary. Milder than sex, behind the day's activities and responsibilities. Bearing her up. Supplying answers to her semi-articulated questions about existence, this Faith (?) could also supply guns to Hare Krishna people and tuna fishing monopoly to the children of Reverend Moon. Well, now, that sort of materialistic stuff didn't seem like God-like virtues and had eventually prompted her to abandon religion. Fish, maybe, but the guns…?

It had taken years for her to work her way through that metaphysical knot, but Calder had been there to help: Calder, who would certainly be more than a bit suspicious of this blur-head beastie. “How can anyone see an impulse?” she asked.

“Pretty goddam interesting, isn't it?” it said. “I've had a lot of fun with you…you never come in here, so we have the place pretty much to ourselves most of the time. You know if you bothered to meditate more this wouldn’t be such a mystery to you. Times like this…well, it's uncommon, I must admit. Your husband gone, this accident, now, you are one hurting little buckaroo!”

Could a dream be so cruel? She prayed for forgetfulness upon awakening.

Upon awakening…well, that was it; all this craziness was simply an unusually vivid dream. She compressed her lips. “Go away,” she said flatly. “I'll dream about something else.”

It snapped its fingers at her.

She stared at the nameless being, too indignant to speak. The impulse said, quickly, “This is the only way that you, O Conscious Mind, can visualize the way your mind works. The rap on the head, combined with your emotional stress, has brought you into your own mind space.” It chuckled, obviously pleased with itself. “This is all absolutely real. Call it, oh, self-hypnosis. If you, the conscious ‘you,' want to maintain control over the physical you, you must survive in here and prevail! Otherwise…”

“Otherwise, what?”

It shrugged. “Otherwise, someone else gets to work the controls.”

“Why do you repeat yourself so much?” Violet asked because she couldn't think of anything else to say.

“Haven't you ever tried to talk yourself into something?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“Then there you are,” it said, drawing itself up.

“Yes, but where?” She looked down at the patterned ground, up at the rippling sky, and took a deep breath of aromatic air. “I do not have stuff like this in my mind,” she said, softly, to herself. All of it pressed in on her senses, suffocating her in insanity…the impulse laughed once, explosively.

“You don't know, you conscious, you, what goes on down here, down in the mind! You don't know what a hell it can be!” It paused, suddenly angry. “You load yourself up with neuroses, guilt, repressed desires…and you expect to function normally while we slug it out amongst ourselves. You expect us to fight your battles for you. This place is a squawking madhouse most of the time! If you knew how crazy you really were, you'd gladly aspire to suicide. Out there, it's wars and starvation, and disease…people killing people, hurting people, degrading them and forcing them to live in filth and poverty, subservience and oppression. And that isn’t enough for you…oh, no, you have to do it to your own self!” The creature seemed almost frenzied. “Just because you, the almighty conscious mind, have control over the cognitive functions, you think you can just turn us on and off whenever you want! Your existence out there is futile, you've got to see that! No one cares about you—they've all got problems of their own! You've seen it: the gas lines, hostages, sex murders, chemical waste dumps, starvation, foreclosures, unemployment, the economy heading into the toilet…”

Violet, shocked at the intensity of the impulse’s ravings, began edging away from it.

“What do you think you're doing?” It demanded in a high, almost hysterical tone.

“Nothing! I 'm—” she turned and bolted.

“You can’t go out there!” it shouted. “You'll get lost! This isn't your living room!”

She refused to answer or look back, dashing between the stubby ground growths toward the towering stalagmites beyond. The impulse's voice grew shriller. “And what if you did get out? Regaining your senses…as if you'd know what to do with them! What's out there, huh? Answer me! What's out there? You, smashed up on a road, alone and lost, with two murderous bastards on motorcycles after you! What about Calder…why face life without him? Why bother? Come back! I won't hurt you!”

“Sure, sure,” she muttered between her teeth, tears springing up in her eyes, obscuring her vision. She could not remember a nightmare worse than this. It was terrifying and confusing, and she wanted nothing now save utter oblivion, a place where she could curl up and go to sleep. The sky darkened as she stumbled on, away from the maddening voice of the impulse, which got no fainter. Was the thing following her?

As this thought occurred to her, she passed beyond the stalagmites, and came to an abrupt halt on the lip of an abyss.

Before and below her a depthless lavender void opened out, apparently into infinity. Tears trickled down her face as she stared in vertiginous horror into the emptiness. The color became oddly denser out there, though no more intense in the distance, as though the air itself thickened.

And the space wasn’t empty: she now saw distant specks floating out there, too far off to be distinct. Birds? No, she saw no motion of wings.

In her dizzy astonishment she’d forgotten the approaching impulse. “I won't harm you,” it called soothingly, as yet unseen through the undergrowth behind her. It was certainly getting nearer, she knew, and she turned her back on the weird infinity to face the more palpable menace. A hint of sticky blue light stained the air beyond the stalagmites in the direction of the voice. “I merely want to talk to you. I'm very sorry I got so upset, but you must realize that you're as new and strange to me as I suppose I am to you. I can help you, while you're here…you want to do the right thing, don't you? You can trust me. After all, I'm you, Violet, aren't I?”

She looked down at her clenched fists, wanting to run. An impulse! An impulse to run! she thought almost hysterically. Nervously she edged along the precipice, away from the voice, with fear knotting her stomach.

This is all just a nightmare!

But it didn’t feel like one. She slipped—gasping, she threw herself away from the verge, twisting, falling hard. Stunned, she levered herself up slowly, dislodging a small bit of the ground-stuff. Instead of plunging into the un-reverberate pastel blankness, the piece slowly floated away like a chunk of driftwood in a calm inlet.

“Ah, there you are,” said the whim in a cordial tone. She looked up to see the snaky creature slithering toward her out of the undergrowth. “There’s so much we have to talk about!” Before she could move, a stream of sparkling stars shot from its empty eyes, catching Violet full in the face. The sparks did not burn, and she felt herself float up a few inches into the air. The impulse's nimbus glowed more brightly, pulsating, expanding toward her. “You can't resist me,” it said gently, its hands flexing slowly.

“You can't resist yourself. You have made this place, and me…we are one, you and me. It’s best this way…”

Don’t let its aura touch you!

She swam in the air on the brink of nothing, facing the advancing impulse, her mind frozen. The image of the impulse’s nimbus touching her, fired her imagination. Control. The thing, the “impulse” or “whim,” or whatever, had a purpose, and whatever that purpose was, it wasn't anything beneficial to Violet Meldon. Suddenly she knew that she hated the thing with all her body and soul, far more than she feared it. The hatred became a sun in her brain. From freeze to thaw to broiling rage, in seconds: she felt that her blood vessels would burst, exploding out of her face like popcorn.

She brushed against a slender outgrowth of ground-stuff on the edge on the pale purple gulf. Galvanized by the burst of raw emotion, Violet thrust her left leg out at the spar and shoved herself out into naked space. If the pieces of ground float, I will, too. Her action somehow broke the impulse’s hypnotic spell. Giddy and sick with dizziness and relief, she did not fall, but drifted slowly away from the land.

The impulse gasped in rage. “The white hiss in your ears!” it shouted. “Haven't you ever heard that? The deafening electronic whine, comes to you at night in your bed? That's it! It's the no-thing, you’ll discorporate in there! It's the Cognitive Void!” It was nearly dancing with frustration on the edge of the abyss, obviously unwilling to launch itself after her.

Why?

No time to wonder about that, now…Seeing the impulse’s frantic reaction, Violet took a little heart. So I’m flying…I've flown before in my dreams, right?

“You've got to come back!” the impulse panted.

“How?” she asked, pointedly. “Forget it…I'm better off out here, away from you, until I wake up.” The shore—or the land, whichever—receded more quickly. Apparently, she’d been snagged by a current in the aether. Now she saw that the mass below the actual ground had no real shape to it, despite the regularity of the margin itself. The body of the cliff, or island in space, didn't look solid at all…squinting, she saw it as something like an enormous compilation of snowflakes, an insubstantial glisten like the glow of a rotting log. This bizarre fractal surface marched off into the violet distance, a headland of geometric peculiarity standing, monolithic, above misty nothingness. Away and to all sides, below and above, stretched the color of eternity. Immense half-seen shadows writhed in the gloaming at vast distances; but perhaps her eyes were playing tricks on her, as when one sees shapes in clouds or faces in flames.

The impulse shouted imprecations and entreaties and threats, but its voice became fainter in the distance. After a while it gave up and turned, vanishing into the growths surrounding the cliff's edge. She was now completely alone.

At first, she amused herself by trying various swimming strokes in the air, but this pastime palled quickly. In any event nothing she did affected her progress or direction; she just kept drifting away from the land at a steady rate. Her body configuration became, upon relaxation, spread-eagled. Presently she grew bored and began feeling sorry for herself. Her loneliness in the unfamiliar surroundings depressed her. After a while she saw that she was approaching some of the specks she had noticed earlier. There were some dozens of them, like nothing she had ever seen. Soon she found herself gliding willy-nilly into their midst. Most were spherical, variously colored and ranging in diameter from a foot or so to several yards, but there were a few cubes and the occasional more complicated geometrical solid: dodecahedrons, other things she had no names for.

Violet frowned, amazed, as she saw that most of the nearby forms had faces: large saucer eyes, and wide lipless mouths. They looked similar in some ways to the impulse. Several of the spheres smiled broadly upon catching sight of her, but none said a word.

Her velocity lessened and, again using swimming motions, she tried to orient herself facing the spheres. This time she had more success and she coasted to a stop near the middle of the flock or school or convocation. She examined the closest sphere. It was about three feet in diameter and seemed to be made of a highly polished seamless substance, banded with alternating red and turquoise stripes. Just beyond this ball, almost nudging it in fact, was another of similar size, brilliant crimson in color, patterned with small white stars.

Violet, intensely curious, sensed no menace radiating from the balls. While trying to decide what to say, she found her orientation changing, and made water-treading motions. Accidentally, she touched the sphere. It was as warm as flesh.

“Ah ah ah!” it said, in a high buzzing voice. “Do you want to reverse my polarity? No touching!”

“Sorry!” exclaimed Violet, flustered. “Pardon me! I wasn't sure you could talk.”

“I would object to being manhandled even if I could not.”

“Ah, yeah…look uh, excuse me, but—”

“Don't make excuses for yourself.” It looked her up and down. “You must be a complex being. Only complex beings make excuses for themselves, because their very complexity tends to trip them up at inopportune moments.”

“Uh, okay, whatever. Who are you?” Violet demanded, beginning to feel very confused.

“The very idea.”

“I beg your pardon; I didn't mean to offend you.”

“No, no, no! I am the very idea. You are in the region of Ideas, and we—” It rolled its eyes, indicating the floating shapes in the vicinity, “—are the Association of Ideas.”

“Pleased to meet you,” she said, automatically. To herself, but aloud, she added, “I don't understand any of this!”

“No need to sound so plaintive!” chided the Idea. “Obviously you are the Conscious Mind, that net of neural nonsense suspended between the ego and the id.”

“I am? I mean, I am.” Everyone is very Freudian in here, she thought. I must’ve had more of an affinity for ol’ Sigmund than I thought.

“Very well, then, you can't have gotten this far, Conscious, without realizing that you aren't in your usual frame of reference.”

“I—well, I was assuming that this is a dream.”

“Dream?” It seemed puzzled. “Dream? That's another region entirely. The Wood of Dreams is beyond the Introspection Station, way at the other end of the Void.”

Violet bit her lip. “Look, maybe you can help me. I met this thing, an impulse or something? back where I came into this place, and it called me ‘conscious,’ too. So, if I am, then what am I doing inside my own, what, mind-space? It’s like being trapped inside Myst! Do you have any idea how I can get out of here, or find someone who can help me?”

“Do I have any ideas?” demanded the sphere. “What do you think (no pun intended) we have here, sundry daisies?”

Several nearby Ideas added their agreement, but Violet noted that none sounded angry. “So these are all ideas,” she stated, trying to grasp the concept. It was very slippery. She looked around at the other Ideas, floating like jellyfish in the Cognitive Void. A small star called “Hi!” but she ignored it. Desperation conquered her reticence. “Ideas or daisies, I just want to wake up, to get out of here!” The purplish infinity beyond the Ideas seemed to darken as she spoke, but she took little note of this. “I've got to get back to reality!”

“That's what this is,” insisted the Idea, vigorously. “What did you think, all that external crap is reality? Houses and missiles and nebulae and electrons and things? God, you incorporate types will do anything to distract yourselves from what’s really important. Well, now you’ve got yourself turned inward to the Cognitive Void. This is the base of your perceptions. True reality!” It sounded smug. “The left brain, you would say. The place you get to when you meditate…which you never do anymore. Which is why you don’t know where you are. Imagination, Intuition…The righties like Logic and Planning never come down here unless they're slumming…they don't go in for feelings, up there.” It tsked. “A shame. Not a very good attitude. You’re not even too good at that stuff, either. You’ve managed to get to your age without really using anything much of your brain. You stuffed it full of facts all through school, then when you got out and the real world looked too confusing and weird, you tried taking drugs to dull your panic. That didn’t work, so you got into religion, just for a fucking eschatological framework.” It looked around, and Violet noticed that the void was getting very dark indeed. “So, when that didn’t work—”

“What?” asked Violet, who was getting very confused. The Idea was part of her, inside her own head, but it was railing at her as if she were some irresponsible kid. “What do you mean, it didn’t work? I found Truth.”

“Oh, please. What you found was dogma. The stuff they build polemics out of. Didactics, and all that. Hah! Next thing, you’ll try to say that Truth and Facts are the same!”

“But they are.”

The Idea snorted. “That’s like saying that Curley is the same as Shemp.” It glanced around at the deepening gloom. “Look here,” it said, in an urgent tone, “I think that you should be at some pains to remove yourself.”

“Why?” She was alarmed. “What's happening? Why is it getting so dark?”

“You need to get to the Introspection Station. I have a feeling that they’re goofing off there, otherwise you wouldn't be in here.”

“What are you talking about?” A twilit gloom now pervaded the space around her. Small spots of light began to appear, twinkling weakly. Out beyond these starlettes a vast shadowy shape curdled the gloaming. “There's something…something out there,” she said, twisting her head around to judge the size and shape of the coalescing darkness.

“It’s really nothing!” said the sphere, rotating its eyes in clear alarm.

Violet swung around to face it, arms outstretched. “I'll reverse your polarity if you don't tell me the truth!” She wriggled her fingers menacingly at it.

“Don’t touch me! Sometimes ideas vanish if you examine them too closely!” The orb cringed away, although Violet could not tell whether her threat or the strange nightfall truly bothered it, or whether it was in fact shamming. The Impulse had proven false; why not the Idea?

“What is that thing out there!” Violet gestured at the nebular form taking shape beyond the starlettes.

“The main thing is, don't be afraid!”

“You’re the one who’s afraid; I'm angry!” she replied. “I can't get a straight answer out of you, or that Impulse-thing…how am I supposed to figure out what’s going on if you guys keep bullshitting me?”

“All right. All right, you want to know what this darkness is? It's Guilt. It knows you're here…It's the strongest of us all. It's huge, sort of teardrop shaped, with red glowing eyes and big blunt claws on the ends of its paws!”

“Eyes and claws on its paws? What?”

Sound became indistinct, as if the air around them were turning to cotton candy. Violet felt a prickling on her exposed skin. She sensed something immense, vast, and coldly alive, coming closer from a place less of physical distance than of emotional intensity.

Guilt!

“It’s just a shadow!”

The idea laughed nervously. “Yes, you never see it clearly. Hints, an idea of veins or eyes somewhere in the shadows. It knows you're in here, it knows you’re afraid. It's attracted by fear more than anything.”

“Is that the wind rising? There's no wind here…what's that? Afraid? This is just a dream, and dreams can't hurt you.” She stared at the idea, seeing her floating figure mirrored, through a glaze of eye colors, a convex reflection in its oculars. Not till now!

“Don't ask me what it'll do to you,” the idea babbled, not listening to her. It glanced wildly around, looking at the distance, its neighbors, and, occasionally, Violet. “It's never really come this close before, I don't understand. But it's you, yes, it must know just where you are…not just that you're in here, but that you're right here with me…” It stared for a long, frozen moment at her.

The darkness intensified. The twinkling starlettes' light slowly grew redder, as if an obscuring crimson gas was pouring among them. Violet felt a heavy chill, and saw the idea shudder, its body wobbling like water balloon. The chill—the chill was part of a buzzing sound, a cold noise, a melting hiss in her ears. It made her jaws ache.

“My god, what's it doing?” she shouted, but her voice was muffled, thickened by the gas and the hiss and it seemed to take minutes to get the words out. The freezing rumble shook a pristine horror out or her mind and loosed it into her bones. Something snapped in her head. Sudden relief slid a sob from her throat. This was the only fear there had ever been, present in all other fears, and somehow this knowledge made a difference. Having recognized the singular nature of the dread, however, she could not break her conviction that she was helpless and in extreme danger. She shouted again, a long syllable of desperation. The wail was sucked into the frigid, deafening hiss.

She squeezed her eyes closed, falling back into the familiar inner night behind her eyelids, seeing the sparkle of gray light: It was going to touch her, it was going to rend her—

It seized her—