hotter than ever. At last she got it under control, but by then she had to wipe her eyes with the comer of her napkin.
“Okay?” he asked.
“Yes. I think so.”
“Want to tell me about it?”
An image suddenly arose in her mind, one with all the clarity of something seen in a vivid nightmare. It was Norman’s old tennis racket, the Prince with the black tape wound around the handle. It was still hanging by the foot of the cellar stairs back home, as far as she knew. He had spanked her with it several times during the first years of their marriage. Then, about six months after her miscarriage, he had anally raped her with it. She had shared a lot of things about her marriage (that was what they called it, sharing, a word she found simultaneously hideous and apt) in Therapy Circle at D & S, but that was one little nugget she’d kept to herself—how it felt to have the taped handle of a Prince tennis racket jammed up your ass by a man who sat straddling you, with his knees on the outsides of your thighs; how it felt to have him lean over and tell you that if you fought, he would break the water-glass on the table beside the bed and cut your throat with it. How it felt to lie there, smelling the Dentyne on his breath and wondering how bad he was ripping you up.
“No,” she said, and was grateful that her voice didn’t tremble. “I don’t want to talk about Norman. He was abusive and I left him. End of story.”
“Fair enough,” Bill said. “And he’s out of your life for good?”
“For good.”
“Does he know that? I only ask because of, you know, the way you came to the door. You sure weren’t expecting a representative from the Church of Latter-Day Saints.”
“I don’t know if he knows it or not,” she said, after a moment or two to think it over—certainly it was a fair enough question.
“Are you afraid of him?”
“Oh, yes. You bet. But that doesn’t necessarily mean a lot. I’m afraid of everything. It’s all new to me. My friends at ... my friends say I’ll grow out of it, but I don’t know.”
“You weren’t afraid to come out to dinner with me.”
“Oh yes I was. I was terrified.”
“Why did you, then?”
She opened her mouth to say what she had been thinking earlier—that he had surprised her into it—and then closed it again. That was the truth, but it wasn’t the truth inside the truth, and this was an area where she didn’t want to do any sidestepping. She had no idea if the two of them had any sort of future beyond this one meal in Pop’s Kitchen, but if they did, fancy footwork would be a bad way to begin the trip.
“Because I wanted to,” she said. Her voice was low but clear.
“All right. No more about that.”
“And no more about Norman, either.”
“That’s his for-real no-fooling name?”
“Yes.”
“As in Bates.”
“As in Bates.”
“Can I ask you about something else, Rosie?”
She smiled a little. “As long as I don’t have to promise to answer.”
“Fair enough. You thought you were older than me, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I did. How old are you, Bill?”
“Thirty. Which has got to make us something like next-door neighbors in the age sweepstakes ... same street, anyway. But you made an almost automatic assumption that you weren’t just older, you were a lot older. So here comes the question. Are you ready?”
Rosie shrugged uneasily.
He leaned toward her, those eyes with their fascinating greenish undertint fixed on hers. “Do you know you’re beautiful?” he asked. “That’s not a come-on or a line, it’s plain old curiosity. Do you know you’re beautiful? You don’t, do you?”
She opened her mouth. Nothing emerged but one tiny breath-noise from the back of her throat. It was closer to a whistle than a sigh.
He put his hand over hers and squeezed it gently. His touch was brief, but it still lit up her nerves like an electric shock, and for a moment he was the only thing she could see—his hair, his mouth, and most of all his eyes. The rest of the world was gone, as if the two of them were on a stage where all the lights except for one bright, burning spot had been turned out.
“Don’t make fun of me,” she said. Her voice trembled. “Please don’t make fun. I can’t stand it if you do.”
“No, I’d