what was up there. She pattered her fingers back and forth, running their tips lightly over tubes of make-up, pushing a few farther back on the shelf and knocking others off it. Some of these latter landed on the coverlet; others bounced off the bed or her left thigh and landed on the floor. None of them were even close to the sort of thing she was looking for. Her fingers closed on a jar of Nivea face cream, and for a moment she allowed herself to think it might do the trick, but it was only a sample-sized jar, too small and light to hurt the dog even if it had been made of glass instead of plastic. She dropped it back onto the shelf and resumed her blind search.
At their farthest stretch, her exploring fingers encountered the rounded edge of a glass object that was by far the biggest thing she had touched. For a moment she couldn't place it, and then it came to her. The stein hanging on the wall was only one souvenir of Gerald's Alpha Grab A Hoe days; she was touching another one. It was an ashtray, and the only reason she hadn't placed it immediately was because it belonged on Gerald's end of the shelf, next to his glass of icewater. Someone-possibly Mrs Dahl, the cleaning lady, possibly Gerald himself-had moved it over to her side of the bed, maybe in the course of dusting the shelf, or maybe to make room for something else. The reason didn't matter, anyway. It was there, and right now that was enough.
Jessie closed her fingers over its rounded edge, feeling two notches in it-cigarette parking-spaces. She gripped the ashtray, drew her hand back as far as she could, then brought it forward again. Her luck was in and she snapped her wrist down at the instant the handcuff chain snubbed tight, like a big-league pitcher breaking off a curve. All of this was an act of pure impulse, the missile sought for, found, and thrown before she had time to ensure the failure of the shot by reflecting on how unlikely it was that a woman who had gotten a D in the archery mod of her two-year college phys ed requirement could possibly hit a dog with an ashtray, especially when the dog was fifteen feet away and the hand she was throwing with happened to be handcuffed to a bedpost.
Nevertheless, she did hit it. The ashtray flipped over once in its flight, briefly revealing that Alpha Gamma Rho motto. She couldn't read it from where she lay and didn't have to; the Latin words for service, growth, and courage were inscribed around a torch. The ashtray started to flip again but crashed into the dog's straining, bony shoulders before it could roll all the way over.
The stray gave a yip of surprise and pain, and Jessie felt a moment of violent, primitive triumph. Her mouth pulled wide in an expression that felt like a grin and looked like a screech. She howled deliriously, arching her back and straightening her legs as she did. She was once again unaware of the pain in her shoulders as cartilage stretched and joints which had long since forgotten the limberness of twenty-one were pressed almost to the point of dislocation. She would feel it all later-every move, jerk, and twist she had made-but for now she was transported with savage delight at the success of her shot, and felt that if she did not somehow express her triumphant delirium she might explode. She drummed her feet on the coverlet and rocked her body from side to side, her sweaty hair flailing her cheeks and temples, the tendons in her throat standing out like fat wires.
"HAH!" she cried. "I... GOT... YOUUUU! HAH!" The dog jerked backward when the ashtray struck it, and jerked again when it bounced away and shattered on the floor. Its cars flattened at the change in the bitchmaster's voice. What it heard now was not fear but triumph. Soon it would get off the bed and begin to deal out kicks with its strange feet, which would not be soft but hard after all. The dog knew it would be hurt again as it had been hurt before if it stayed here; it must run.
It turned its head to make sure its path of retreat was still open, and the entrancing smell of fresh blood and meat struck it once more as it did