sleep most nights: I’m really Rosie ... and I’m Rosie Real ... you better believe me ... I’m a great big deal ...
Then there was darkness, and a night—they were becoming more frequent—when there were no bad dreams.
III
PROVIDENCE
1
When Rosie and Pam Haverford came down in the service elevator after work on the following Wednesday, Pam looked pale and unwell. “It’s my period,” she said when Rosie expressed concern. “I’m having cramps like a bastard.”
“Do you want to stop for a coffee?”
Pam thought about it, then shook her head. “You go on without me. All I want to do right now is go back to D and S and find an empty bedroom before everyone shows up from work and starts yakking. Gobble some Midol and sleep for a couple of hours. If I do that, maybe I’ll feel like a human being again.”
“I’ll come with you,” Rosie said as the elevator doors opened and they stepped out.
Pam shook her head. “No you don’t,” she said, and her face lit in a brief smile. “I can make it on my own just fine, and you’re old enough to have a cup of coffee without a chaperone. Who knows—you might even meet someone interesting.”
Rosie sighed. To Pam, someone interesting always meant a man, usually the kind with muscles that stood out under their form-fitting tee-shirts like geological landmarks, and as far as Rosie was concerned, she could do without that kind of man for the rest of her life.
Besides, she was married.
She glanced down at her wedding band and diamond engagement ring inside it as they stepped out onto the street. How much that glance had to do with what happened a short time later was something of which she was never sure, but it did place the engagement ring, which in the ordinary course of things she hardly ever thought of at all, somewhere toward the front of her mind. It was a little over a carat, by far the most expensive thing her husband had ever given her, and until that day the idea that it belonged to her, and she could dispose of it if she wanted to (and in any way she wanted to), had never crossed her mind.
Rosie waited at the bus stop around the comer from the hotel with Pam in spite of Pam’s protestations that it was totally unnecessary. She really didn’t like the way Pam looked, with all the color gone from her cheeks and dark smudges under her eyes and little pain-lines running down from the comers of her mouth. Besides, it felt good to be looking out for someone else, instead of the other way around. She actually came quite close to getting on the bus with Pam just to make sure she got back all right, but in the end, the call of fresh hot coffee (and maybe a piece of pie) was just too strong.
She stood on the curb and waved at Pam when Pam sat down beside one of the bus windows. Pam waved back as the bus pulled away. Rosie stood where she was for a moment, then turned and started walking down Hitchens Boulevard toward the Hot Pot. Her mind turned, naturally enough, back to her first walk in this city. She couldn’t recall very much of those hours—what she remembered most was being afraid and disoriented—but at least two figures stood out like rocks in a billowing mist: the pregnant woman and the man with the David Crosby moustache. Him, particularly. Leaning in the tavern doorway with a beer-stein in his hand and looking at her. Talking
(hey baby hey baby)
to her. Or at her. These recollections possessed her mind wholly for a little while, as only our worst recollections can—memories of times when we have felt lost and helpless, utterly unable to exert any control over our own lives—and she walked past the Hot Pot without even seeing it, her heedless eyes blank and full of dismay. She was still thinking about the man in the tavern doorway, thinking about how much he had frightened her and how much he had reminded her of Norman. It wasn’t anything in his face; mostly it had been a matter of posture. The way he’d stood there, as if every muscle was ready to flex and leap, and it would take only a single glance of acknowledgement from her to set him off—
A hand seized her upper arm and Rosie nearly shrieked. She looked around, expecting either Norman or