“I am the lock,” she said.
“Keep your voice low.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What’s your name?”
“Alice.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-six.”
“You’re lovely,” he said.
She said nothing.
“Smile for me, Alice.”
She smiled. She didn’t look the least bit dazed. Even her big, dark eyes held no hint of a trance. Yet she was unhesitatingly obedient.
He said, “You’ve got a nice body.”
“Thank you.”
“Do you like sex?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you like it very much?”
“Yeah, I like it.”
“When you’re in bed with a man, is there anything you won’t let him do to you?”
“Yeah. Greek.”
“You won’t let him take you in the ass?”
She blushed and said, “Yeah. I don’t like that.”
“If I wanted you, I could have you.”
She stared at him.
“Couldn’t I?”
“Yeah.”
“If I wanted you, I could have your right now, right here, on top of this table.”
“Yeah.”
“If I wanted to take you Greek-style, I could.”
She resisted the idea but finally said, “Is that what you want?”
“If I did want it, I could have it. You’d let me.”
“Yeah.”
It was his turn to smile. He glanced around the cafe. No one was looking at them; no one had heard. “Are you married, Alice?”
“No. Divorced.”
“Why did you get a divorce?”
“He couldn’t hold a job.”
“Your husband couldn’t?”
“Yeah, him.”
“Was he good in bed?”
“Not very.”
She was even more like Miriam than he had thought.
After all these years he could still remember what Miriam had said to him the day she left. You’re not just bad in bed, Ogden. You’re terrible. And you’ve no inclination to learn. But you know, I could live with that if there were compensations. If you had money and could buy me things, maybe I could live with your fumbling sex. When I said I’d marry you, I thought you were going to make lots of money. Jesus Christ, you were at the top of your class at Harvard! When you completed your doctorate, everyone wanted to hire you. If you had any ambition whatsoever, you’d have already gotten your hands on a decent piece of money. You know what, Ogden? I think you’re as inept and unimaginative in your research as you are in bed. You’re never going to get anywhere, but I am. I’m getting out. What a bitch she had been. Just thinking about her, he began to tremble and perspire.
Alice was still smiling at him.
“Stop smiling,” he said softly. “I don’t like it.”
She did as she was told.
“What am I, Alice?”
“You’re the key.”
“And what are you?”
“The lock.”
“Now that I’ve opened you, you’ll do whatever I tell you to do. Isn’t that true?”
“Yeah.”
He took three one-dollar bills from his wallet and put them on top of the lunch check. “I’m going to test you, Alice. I’m going to see just how obedient you are.”
She waited docilely.
“When you leave this table,” he said, “you’ll take the check and money to the cash register. You’ll ring up the sale and take your tip from whatever’s left of the three dollars. Is that clear?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you will go to the kitchen. Is there anyone back there?”
“No. Randy went to the bank.”
“Randy Ultman?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s good,” Salsbury said. “Now, when you go to the kitchen, you’ll pick up a meat fork, a cook’s fork. One of those big, two-pronged forks. Is there one of those in the kitchen?”
“Yeah. Several.”
“You’ll pick one of them up and stab yourself with it, run it all the way through your left hand.”
She didn’t even blink.
“Is that understood, Alice?”
“Yeah. I understand.”
“When you turn away from this table, you’ll forget everything we’ve said to each other. Understood?”
“Yeah.”
“When you run the fork through your hand, you’ll think it was an accident. A freak accident. Won’t you, Alice?”
“Sure. An accident.”
“Go away, then.”
She turned and walked to the half-door at the end of the lunch counter, her smooth hips rolling provocatively.
When she reached the cash register and began to ring up the sale, Salsbury slid out of the booth and started toward the door.
She dropped her tip into a pocket of her uniform, closed the cash register drawer, and went into the kitchen.
At the entrance Salsbury stopped and put a quarter in the newspaper vending machine.
Bob Thorp laughed loudly at some joke, and the waitress named Bess giggled like a young girl.
Salsbury took a copy of the Black River Bulletin from the wire rack, folded it, put it under his arm, and opened the door to the foyer. He stepped across the sill and began to pull the door shut behind him, thinking all the while: Come on, you bitch, come on! His heart was pounding, and he felt slightly dizzy.
Alice began to scream.
Grinning, Salsbury closed the front door, pushed through the outer door, went down the steps, and walked east on Main Street, as if he were unaware of the uproar in the cafe.
The day was bright and warm. The sky was cloudless.
He had never been happier.
Paul shouldered past Bob Thorp and stepped into the kitchen.
The young waitress was standing at the counter that lay between two upright food freezers. Her left hand was palm down on a wooden cutting board. With her right hand she gripped an eighteen-inch-long meat fork. The two wickedly sharp prongs appeared to have been driven all the way through her left hand and into the wood beneath. Blood spotted her light blue uniform, glistened on the cutting board, and dripped from the edge of the Formica-topped counter. She was screaming and gasping for breath between the screams and shaking and trying to wrench the fork loose.
Turning back to Bob Thorp, who stood transfixed in the doorway, Paul said, “Get Doc Troutman.”
Thorp didn’t have to be told again. He hurried away.
Taking hold of the woman’s right hand, Paul said, “Let go of the fork. I want you to let go of the fork. You’re doing more harm than good.”
She raised her head and seemed to look straight through him. Her face was chalky beneath her dark complexion; she was obviously in shock. She couldn’t stop screaming — an ululating wail more animal than human — and she probably didn’t even know that he had spoken to her.
He had to pry her fingers from the handle of the fork.
At his side Jenny said, “Oh, my God!”
“Hold her for me,” he said. “Don’t let her grab the fork.”
Jenny gripped the woman’s right wrist. She said, “I think I’m going to be sick.”
Paul wouldn’t have blamed her if she had been just that. In the tiny restaurant kitchen, with the ceiling only a few inches above their heads, the screams were deafening. The sight of that slender hand with the fork embedded in it was horrifying, the stuff of nightmares. The air was thick with the stale odors of baked ham, roast beef, fried onions, grease — and the fresh, metallic tang of blood. It was enough to nauseate anyone. But he said, “You won’t be sick. You’re a tough lady.”
She bit her lower lip and nodded.
Quickly, as if he had been prepared and waiting for exactly this emergency, Paul took a dishcloth from the towel rack and tore it into two strips. He threw one of these aside. With the other length of cloth and a long wooden tasting spoon, he fashioned a tourniquet for the waitress’s left arm. He twisted the wooden spoon with his right hand and covered the handle of the meat fork with his left. To Jenny he said, “Come around here and take the tourniquet.”