Peril

SARA

The Waverly theater was still in the same location, and Eighth Street had the same feel to it, and their familiarity brought small parts of her former life back to her. These parts were nothing she could put her finger on exactly, only the sense that she’d packed up her youth and now she could unpack at least a little of it. Maybe that was why she’d come back to the city. Because it was the closet where she’d first secreted herself, the hole she’d burrowed into, creating an identity to go with her new name.

For a moment she peered at the coffee shop across the street, watching silently as the patrons came and went. If they only knew, she thought. She felt the ghostly grip of Sheriff Caulfield’s hand on her bare shoulder, then other hands, no less ghostly but also no less palpable, the flesh of grasping fingers pressing into her flesh, sour breath in her face, the smell of drunken sweat, a man pushing her into the corn or down a narrow corridor, upright or weaving, dressed as a cop or barely dressed at all. With each memory she felt her own panic rise like a frenzied animal, trapped and panting, clawing its way out.

To keep it in, she raced to the corner, bought a paper, took it to the coffee shop and turned to the classifieds. The first order of business was to find a job, and so she looked for one among the long columns. As she searched, the paucity of her skills, how little she had to offer, grew ever more distressingly apparent. Finally, one job caught her eye. Receptionist. No experience necessary. She could answer a phone, she thought. She could take a message. She knew that thousands of others could do the same, but she hoped that somehow she’d come through the door at just the right moment, and this hope suggested to her just how depleted she was. Her only resource was now little more than a baseless grab for luck.