from herself, and that her mind had opened like a flower (a rose, of course), opened as it does only when one is in neither one place nor the other.
I’m really Rosie ...
Carole King’s voice, singing Maurice Sendak’s words. They came floating up the corridor she was in from some distant chamber, echoing, accompanied by the glassy, ghostly notes of a piano.
... and I’m Rosie Real ...
I’m going to sleep after all, she thought. I think I really am. Imagine that!
You better believe me ... I’m a great big deal ...
She was no longer in the gray corridor but in some dark open space. Her nose, her entire head, was filled with smells of summer so sweet and so strong that they were almost overwhelming. Chief among them was the smell of honey-suckle, drifts of it. She could hear crickets, and when she looked up she saw the polished bone face of the moon, riding high overhead. Its white glow was everywhere, turning the mist rising from the tangled grasses around her bare legs to smoke.
I’m really Rosie ... and I’m Rosie Real ...
She raised her hands with the fingers splayed and the thumbs almost touching; she framed the moon like a picture and as the night wind stroked her bare arms she felt her heart first swell with happiness and then contract with fright. She sensed a dozing savagery in this place, as if there might be animals with big teeth loose in the perfumed undergrowth.
Rose. Come over here, sweetheart. I want to talk to you up close.
She turned her head and saw his fist rushing out of the dark. Icy strokes of moonlight gleamed on the raised letters of his Police Academy ring. She saw the stressful grimace of his lips, pulled back in something like a smile—
—and jerked awake in her seat, gasping, her forehead damp with sweat. She must have been breathing hard for some time, because her window was humid with her condensed breath, almost completely fogged in. She swiped a clear path on the glass with the side of her hand and looked out. The city was almost gone now; they were passing an exurban litter of gas stations and fast-food franchises, but behind them she could see stretches of open field.
I’ve gotten away from him, she thought. No matter what happens to me now, I’ve gotten away from him. Even if I have to sleep in doorways, or under bridges, I’ve gotten away from him. He’ll never hit me again, because I’ve gotten away from him.
But she discovered she did not entirely believe it. He would be furious with her, and he would try to find her. She was sure of it.
But how can he? I’ve covered my trail; I didn’t even have to write down my old school chum’s name in order to get my ticket. I threw away the bank card, that’s the biggest thing. So how can he find me?
She didn’t know, exactly ... but finding people was what he did, and she would have to be very, very careful.
I’m really Rosie... and I’m Rosie Real ...
Yes, she supposed both sides of that were the truth, but she had never felt less like a great big deal in her whole life. What she felt like was a tiny speck of flotsam in the middle of a trackless ocean. The terror which had filled her near the end of her brief dream was still with her, but so were traces of the exhilaration and happiness; a sense of being, if not powerful, at least free.
She leaned against the high-backed bus seat and watched the last of the fast-food restaurants and muffler shops fall away. Now it was just the countryside—newly opened fields and belts of trees that were turning that fabulous cloudy green that belongs only to April. She watched them roll past with her hands clasped loosely in her lap and let the big silver bus take her on toward whatever lay ahead.
II
THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS
1
She had a great many bad moments during the first weeks of her new life, but even at what was very nearly the worst of them all—getting off the bus at three in the morning and entering a terminal four times the size of Portside—she did not regret her decision.
She was, however, terrified.
Rosie stood just inside the doorway of Gate 62, clutching her purse tightly in both hands and looking around with wide eyes as people rushed past in riptides, some dragging suitcases, some balancing