Shakespeares Trollop Page 0,26

argued to myself that I'd been learning to survive - to not go crazy - every single day since I'd been raped and knifed.

Standing in Deedra Dean's living room, listening to her mother working down the hall, I realized that I was no longer in danger of craziness, though I supposed I'd have fits of anxiety the rest of my days. I had made a life, I had earned my living, and I had bought a house of my own. I had insurance. I drove a car and paid taxes. I had mastered survival. For a long moment I stood staring through the hatchway into Deedra's fluorescently bright kitchen, thinking what a strange time and place it was to realize such a large thing.

And since I was in her apartment, I had to think of Deedra again. She'd been slaughtered before she'd had time to come through whatever was making her behave the way she did. Her body had been degraded - displayed naked, and violated. Though I had not let myself think of it before now, I had a mental picture of the Coca-Cola bottle protruding from Deedra's vagina. I wondered if she'd been alive when that had happened. I wondered if she'd had time to know.

I felt dizzy suddenly, almost sick, so I plopped down on the couch and stared at my hands. I'd gotten too wrapped up in my inner depiction of Deedra's last minutes. I was remembering the hours in the shack in the fields, the hours I'd spent chained to an old iron bedstead, waiting to die, almost longing for it. I thought of the sickness of the phone calls Deedra had been getting right before she was killed. There are men who should die, I thought.

"Lily? Are you all right?" Lacey leaned over me, her face concerned.

I yanked myself back to the moment. "Yes," I said stiffly. "Thank you. I'm sorry."

"You're sick?"

"I have an inner ear problem. I just got dizzy for a second," I lied. It made me uncomfortable, lying, but it was easier on Lacey than the truth.

She went back to her task, casting an uneasy look back at me, and I began going through the tapes Deedra had had around the television, making sure there weren't any pornographic ones mixed in with the ones marked ALL MY CHILDREN or SALLY JESSY ON THURSDAY. These tapes were all presumably still usable. I figured I'd make sure there wasn't anything risqu茅 on them, and asked Lacey if I could use the tapes. As I expected, she agreed, and I packed them in a box without finishing my evaluation. If I found anything objectionable in the tapes, I could pitch them at home more easily. Just another little cleanup job to complete.

We can't leave this world without leaving a lot of detritus behind. We never go out as cleanly as we come in; and even when we come in, there's the afterbirth.

I looked forward to karate that night more than I had in weeks. So much reflection, so much unwelcome remembrance needed to be worked out of my system. I liked to do, not reflect: I wanted to kick some butt so badly I ached. That's not the right way to approach the discipline, and that's not the correct mind frame for martial arts. My body twanged with tension as I took my place in line.

Attendance at the Friday-night classes tended to be a bit lighter than at the Monday and Wednesday classes. Tonight there were only ten people stretching at the barres along the wall. Bobo bowed at the doorway and strolled into the room in a white tank top and the pants-half of his gi. His girlfriend, Toni, had tagged along. Bobo kicked off his sandals and got into line two people down from me, pulling Toni in beside him. She was wearing black shorts and a purple T-shirt, and she'd pinned her dark hair back with an elastic band and a million hairpins. She was trying to look comfortable.

As always, Becca was first in line. She'd stretched on her own before class, smiling at Carlton when he wandered over to talk to her, but not saying much herself. Raphael, usually on my left, was at a dance; he and his wife were chaperoning his daughter's Spring Fling at the high school. He'd told me he thought some of the restraining moves Marshall had taught us might come in handy if the boys went out in the parking lot to drink.

"You and