“You’re gorgeous,” he said,
“Not anymore,” she said, and turned away from him again. “That was when I — when he cut me and I lost the second gun — that was when I knew I... I’d do... I’d do anything he wanted me to do. I let him rape me, Bert. I let him do it.”
“You’d be dead otherwise,” Kling said.
“So damn helpless,” she said, and shook her head again.
He said nothing.
“So now...” Her voice caught again. “I guess you’ll always wonder whether I was asking for it, huh?”
“Cut it out,” he said.
“Isn’t that what men are supposed to wonder when their wives or their girlfriends get...?”
“You were asking for it,” Kling said. “That’s why you were out there, that was your job. You were doing your job, Eileen, and you got hurt. And that’s...”
“I also got raped!” she said, and turned to him, her eyes flashing.
“That was part of getting hurt,” he said.
“No!” she said. “You’ve been hurt on the job, but nobody ever raped you afterward! There’s a difference, Bert.”
“I understand the difference,” he said.
“I’m not sure you do,” she said. “Because if you did, you wouldn’t be giving me this ‘line of duty’ bullshit!”
“Eileen...”
“He didn’t rape a cop, he raped a woman! He raped me, Bert! Because I’m a woman!”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t know,” she said. “How can you know? You’re a man, and men don’t get raped.”
“Men get raped,” he said softly.
“Where?” she said. “In prison? Only because there aren’t any women handy.”
“Men get raped,” he said again, but did not elaborate.
She looked at him. The pain in his eyes was as deep as the pain she had felt last night when the knife ripped across her face. She kept studying his eyes, searching his face. Her anger dissipated. This was Bert sitting here with her, this was not some vague enemy named Man, this was Bert Kling — and he, after all, was not the man who’d raped her.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“That’s okay.”
“I shouldn’t be taking it out on you.”
“Who else?” he said, and smiled.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Really.”
She searched for his hand. He took her hand in both his own.
“I never thought this could happen to me,” she said, and sighed. “Never in a million years. I’ve been scared out there, you’re always a little scared...”
“Yes,” he said.
“But I never thought this could happen. Remember how I used to kid around about my rape fantasies?”
“Yes.”
“It’s only a fantasy when it isn’t real,” she said. “I used to think... I guess I thought... I mean, I was scared, Bert, even with backups I was scared. But not of being raped. Hurt, maybe, but not raped. I was a cop, how could a cop possibly...?”
“You’re still a cop,” he said.
“You better believe it,” she said. “Remember what I was telling you? About feeling degraded by decoy work? About maybe asking for a transfer?”
“I remember.”
“Well, now they’ll have to blast me out of this job with dynamite.”
“Good,” he said, and kissed her hand.
“’Cause I mean... doesn’t somebody have to be out there? To make sure this doesn’t happen to other women? I mean, there has to be somebody out there, doesn’t there?”
“Sure,” he said. “You.”
“Yeah, me,” she said, and sighed deeply.
He held her hand to his cheek.
They were silent for several moments.
She almost turned her face away again.
Instead, she held his eyes with her own and said, “Will you...?”
Her voice caught again.
“Will you love me as much with a scar?”
Sometimes you got lucky first crack out of the box.
There had not been ten requests for mailing lists, as Eleazar Fitch had surmised, but only eight. Three of them were from out-of-towners who wished to start local pro-life groups of their own, and who were looking for organization support from previous contributors. Five of them were in the city: A group to support the strict surveillance of books on library shelves had requested the mailing list; a group opposed to young girls seeking birth control advice without the consent of their parents had also requested the list of contributors to A.I.M.; a group opposed to euthanasia had contributed a hundred dollars and asked for the list; an organization opposing the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment had similarly requested the list. Only one of the requests had been made by a single individual. His letter to A.I.M. stated that he was preparing an article for a magazine named Our Right, and that he was interested in contacting supporters of A.I.M. with a view toward soliciting their opinions on pro-life.
His name was Arthur Haines.
Today was Saturday. Annie was hopeful that Arthur Haines would be home when she visited him. The address to which the mailing list had been sent was in a complex of garden apartments in a residential section of Majesta. It was still raining lightly when she got there. The walks outside were covered with wet leaves. Lights were showing inside many of the apartments, even though it was not yet 1:00 P.M. She found the address — a first-floor apartment in a red-brick three-story building — and rang the doorbell. The living room drapes were open. From where she stood outside the front door, she could see obliquely into the room. Two little girls — she guessed they were eight and six respectively — were sitting on the floor, watching an animated cartoon on the television screen. The eldest of the two nudged her younger sister the moment she heard the doorbell, obviously prodding her to answer it. The younger girl pulled a face, got to her feet, and came toward the front of the apartment, passing from Annie’s line of sight. From somewhere inside, a woman’s voice yelled, “Will one of you kids get the door, please?”
“I’m here, Mom!” the younger girl answered, just inside the door now. “Who is it?” she said.
“Police officer,” Annie said.
“Just a minute, please,” the girl said.
Annie waited. She could hear voices inside, the little girl telling her mother the police were at the door, the mother telling her daughter to go back and watch television.
Just inside the door now, the woman said, “Yes, who is it, please?”
“Police officer,” Annie said. “Could you open the door, please?”
The woman who opened the door was eminently pregnant, and possibly imminently so. It was almost one in the afternoon, but she was still wearing a bathrobe over a nightgown and she looked as bloated as anyone could possibly look, her huge belly starting somewhere just below her breasts and billowing outward, a giant dirigible of a woman with a doll’s face and a cupid’s bow mouth, no lipstick on it, no makeup on her eyes or face.
“Yes?” she said.
“I’m looking for Arthur Haines,” Annie said. “Is he here?”
“I’m Lois Haines, his wife. What is it, please?”
“I’d like to talk to him,” Annie said.
“What about?” Lois said.
She stood in the doorway like a belligerent elephant, frowning, obviously annoyed by this intrusion on a rainy Saturday.