Lifting her hand from his thigh, putting it on his bare chest, Streck said, “Having a nice stroll today? Did you like the mission? Hmmm? And weren’t the yucca blossoms pretty at the courthouse?”
He rambled on in that cool, smug voice, asking her how she had liked other things she’d seen, and she realized he had been following her all morning, either in his car or on foot. She hadn’t seen him, but there was no doubt he bad been there because he knew every move she had made since leaving the house, which frightened and infuriated her more than anything else he had done.
She was breathing hard and fast, yet she felt as if she could not get her breath. Her ears were ringing, yet she could hear every word he said too clearly. Though she thought she might strike him and claw at his eyes, she was also paralyzed, on the verge of striking but unable to strike, simultaneously strong with rage and weak with fear. She wanted to scream, not for help but in frustration.
“Now,” he said, “you’ve had a real nice stroll, a nice lunch in the park, and you’re in a relaxed mood. So you know what would be nice now? You know what would make this a terrific day, prettiness? A really special day? What we’ll do is get in my car, go back to your place, up to your yellow room, get in that four-poster bed-”
He’d been in her bedroom! He must have done it yesterday. When he was supposed to have been in the living room fixing the TV, he must have sneaked upstairs, the bastard, prowling through her most private place, invading her sanctuary, poking through her belongings.
“-that big old bed, and I’m going to strip you down, honey, strip you down and fuck you-”
Nora would never be able to decide whether her sudden courage arose from the horrible realization that he’d violated her sanctuary, whether it was that he had spoken an obscenity in her presence for the first time, or whether both, but she snapped her head up and glared at him and spat the wad of uneaten cookie in his face. Flecks of spittle and damp spatters of food stuck on his right cheek, right eye, and on the side of his nose. Bits of oatmeal Clung in his hair and speckled his forehead. When she saw anger flash into Streck’s eyes and contort his face, Nora felt a surge of terror at what she’d done: But she was also elated that she had been able to break the bonds of emotional paralysis that had immobilized her, even if her actions brought her grief, even if Streck retaliated.
And he did retaliate swiftly, brutally. He still held her left hand, and she was unable to wrench free. He squeezed hard, as he had done before, grinding her bones. It hurt, Jesus, it hurt. But she did not want to give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry, and she was determined not to whimper or beg, so she clenched her teeth and endured. Sweat prickled her scalp, and she thought she might pass out. But the pain was not the worst of it; the worst was looking into Streck’s disturbing ice-blue eyes. As he crushed her fingers, he held her not merely with his hand but with his gaze, which was cold and infinitely strange. He was trying to intimidate and cow her, and it was working- by God, it was-because she saw in him a madness with which she would never be able to cope.
When he saw her despair, which evidently pleased him more than a cry of pain could have done, he stopped grinding her hand, but he did not let go. He said, “You’ll pay for that, for spitting in my face. And you’ll enjoy paying for it.”
Without conviction, she said, “I’ll complain to your boss, and you’ll lose your job.”
Streck only smiled. Nora wondered why he did not bother to wipe the bits of oatmeal cookie from his face, but even as she wondered about it she knew the reason: he was going to make her do it for him. First, he said, “Lose my job? Oh, I already quit working for Wadlow TV. Walked out yesterday afternoon. So I’d have time for you, Nora.”
She lowered her eyes. She could not conceal her fear, was shaken by it until she thought her teeth would chatter.
“I never do stay too long in a job. Man like me, full of so much energy, gets bored easy. I need to move around. Besides, life’s too short to waste all of it working, don’t you think? So I keep a job for a while, till I’ve got some money saved, then I coast as long as I can. And once in a while I run into a lady like you, someone who has a powerful need for me, someone who’s just crying out for a man like me, and so I help her along.”
Kick him, bite him, go for his eyes, she told herself.
She did nothing.
Her hand ached dully. She remembered how hot and intense the pain had been.
His voice changed, became softer, soothing, reassuring, but that frightened her even more. “And I’m going to help you, Nora. I’ll be moving in for a while. It’s going to be fun. You’re a little nervous about me, sure, I understand that, I really do. But believe me, this is what you need, girl, this is going to turn your life upside down, nothing’s ever going to be the same again, and that’s the best thing could happen to you.”
2
Einstein loved the park.
When Travis slipped off the leash, the retriever trotted to the nearest bed of flowers-big yellow marigolds surrounded by a border of purple polyanthuses-and walked slowly around it, obviously fascinated. He went to a blazing bed of late-blooming ranunculuses, to another of impatiens, and his tail wagged faster with each discovery. They said dogs could see in only black and white, but Travis would not have bet against the proposition that Einstein possessed full-color vision. Einstein sniffed everything-flowers, shrubbery, trees, rocks, trash cans, crumpled litter, the base of the drinking fountain, and every foot of ground he covered-no doubt turning up olfactory “pictures” of people and dogs that had passed this way before, images as clear to him as photographs would have been to Travis.
Throughout the morning and early afternoon, the retriever had done nothing amazing. In fact, his I’m-just-an-ordinary-dumb-dog behavior was so convincing that Travis wondered if the animal’s nearly human intelligence came only in brief flashes, sort of the beneficial equivalent of epileptic seizures. But after all that had happened yesterday, Einstein’s extraordinary nature, though seldom revealed, was no longer open to debate.
As they were strolling around the pond, Einstein suddenly went rigid, lifted his head, raised his floppy ears a bit, and stared at a couple sitting on a park bench about sixty feet away. The man was in running shorts, and the woman wore a rather baggy gray dress; he was holding her hand, and they appeared to be deep in conversation.
Travis started to turn away from them, heading out toward the open green of the park to give them privacy.
But Einstein barked once and raced straight toward the couple.
“Einstein! Here! Come back here!”
The dog ignored him and, nearing the pair on the bench, began to bark furiously.
By the time Travis reached the bench, the guy in running shorts was standing. His arms were raised defensively, and his hands were fisted as he warily moved back a step from the retriever.
“Einstein!”
The retriever stopped barking, turned away from Travis before the leash Could be clipped to the collar again, went to the woman on the bench, and Put his head in her lap. The change from snarling dog to affectionate pet was so sudden that everyone was startled.
Travis said, “I’m sorry. He never-”
“For Christ’s sake,” said the guy in running shorts, “you can’t let a vicious dog run loose in a park!”
“Not vicious,” Travis said. “He-”
“Bullshit,” the runner said, spraying spittle. “The damn thing tried to bite me. You enjoy lawsuits or something?”