Shakespeare’s Landlord

Chapter Eight

I’d almost forgotten my sedentary neighbor’s participation in the Wednesday-night class. It sure hadn’t looked like he was having a good time, so I was surprised to see Carlton warming up when I bowed in the doorway. He was trying to touch his toes. I could tell from the way his mouth twisted that movement was painful.

“The full soreness has set in, huh?” I said as I sat on the floor to pull off my shoes.

“Even my hair hurts,” he said through clenched teeth as he strained downward. His fingers just managed to touch the tops of his feet.

“This is your worst day,” I told him.

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“I thought maybe it would help to know that tomorrow won’t be so bad.” I rolled my socks in a neat ball and stuck them in my right shoe. I stood, rotated my neck gently, then bent from my waist and put my hands flat on the floor. I gave a sigh of pleasure as my back stretched and the tension of the day flowed out.

“Show-off,” Carlton said bitterly.

I straightened and looked him over. Carlton was wearing shorts and a T-shirt. To the untrained eye, he would have looked pretty good, but I could see the lack of definition and development in his arms and thighs. Overweight, he wasn’t; in shape, he wasn’t.

Marshall came in and gave me a private smile before one of the other students approached him with a question. I followed him with my eyes for a moment and then considered Carlton, who was on the floor, his legs spraddled to either side, trying to touch his chest to the right leg, then the left. Carlton’s thick black hair, normally gelled and swept behind his ears, was getting wild as he straightened and bent, straightened and bent. I pulled the top of my gi out of my gym bag and slid into it, then tended to the tying of the belt.

“So, Carlton. Remember the subduing hold we practiced last time?” I asked. Carlton scrambled to his feet.

“Ah… no. I had so much to learn that one night.”

Marshall was laughing with a knot of the younger men in the class.

“Okay. Reach out to grab my gi with your right hand… That’s right. Now, grip hard.” Apparently scared he’d pull me off balance, Carlton barely took hold of the loose material. “No, Carlton. You really have to hold on, or you’ll think I was able to do this because you weren’t exerting full strength.”

Carlton, while increasing the force of his grip, looked distinctly anxious. “Oh, I wouldn’t think that!” he protested.

“Now, remember? I reach up with my right hand, like so… I sink my thumb into the pit between your thumb and forefinger, to hit the pressure point-I got it, I see-and then I twist your hand so that the outside of it, the side of your little finger, is pointed toward the ceiling… Of course that rotates your whole arm, right?”

I could tell Carlton was remembering.

“Now I press your knuckles to my chest, being careful to keep your arm rotated. My fingers are wrapped around your hand, to keep the tension on… My thumb’s still applying pressure… and now I-”

“Nooooo,” moaned Carlton, dropping to his knees as I applied counterpressure with my left hand on his upper arm and then bent over from the waist.

“Remember the distress signal Marshall showed you last time?” I asked.

Carlton shook his head, deeply involved with his pain.

“Slap your thigh with your free hand.”

He lost no time slapping, and I let go instantly.

He looked up at me, his brown eyes wide in a pleading spaniel look that I suppose had been very effective on other women.

“That really hurt,” he said after a significant pause.

“We don’t apologize, Carlton,” I said gently. “I taught you something. We all get hurt.”

Carlton stood up, shook himself. He was having a little struggle with pride; his sensible side won.

“Well, here I am, learning,” he said ruefully. “So I assume, to show you I learned it correctly, I get to do it to you?”

I reached out and grabbed his T-shirt.

I had to talk Carlton through the steps of hurting me enough for it to count. “Sorry, I don’t have to go down… Twist my hand a little more… Now go slow. You really don’t want to break my arm. Wait for a real fight for that… Raphael, what is Carlton doing wrong?”

“He’s not keeping you close enough,” diagnosed Raphael.

“Okay, Carlton, you’re backing off, which means I can get free, or I can at least kick you and make you let go…” To demonstrate, I lashed out with my foot suddenly, but I pulled back in time just to tap Carlton’s groin.

With a gasp, Carlton let go.

“We’ll practice later,” I said. “You might feel better doing this with Raphael or one of the other guys, because most men get so anxious about hurting a woman partner that they don’t give it their best shot.”

“That bother you?” he asked.

“It used to. Now I think that in the real world, it would work to my advantage, and since women don’t have men’s upper-body strength, I need all the edge I can get.” I eyed Carlton with my own curiosity. “Why’d you really start coming?”

“I wanted to see what you were so gung ho about. Three nights a week, for years… never missing, always on time. I thought it must be something that was a lot of fun.”

“It is,” I said, surprised that it could be seen differently.

“The fun is not apparent yet,” Carlton said. I hadn’t known his voice could be so dry.

“Oh, it will be. You just have to learn a little, and it won’t be so confusing.” Marshall was about to begin class, so I went to my place in line. I wasn’t convinced that Carlton found me of such overwhelming interest that he felt like following my schedule, especially after our little exchange at my house earlier in the week.

“Kiotske!” Marshall called, and the class came to attention.

At water-break time, after calisthenics, Marshall drifted over to me. I could tell he was aiming for me, I was aware every minute of what he was doing as he said a word to this student or that. I was excited by his nearness, but I had not the slightest idea what to say to him.

“Did you hear anything else about what happened to Thea?” I asked after we’d given each other a little nod of greeting.

“No. The police said fingerprinting the doors didn’t bring up anything unusual, and none of her neighbors saw anything. That little house has a grown-up backyard, so that’s not too surprising. At least the rat was probably just caught in a trap, not tortured or anything.”

“Was she very shook-up?”

Marshall’s expression was peculiar. “Thea’s pretty emotional,” he said.

I wondered if Thea had pleaded with him to come home for her protection, a thought I found distasteful. I didn’t want to set foot in the situation between Marshall and Thea. But of course if you have sex with a man, I told myself wryly, you’re part of the situation between him and his wife automatically.

As I practiced buntai with Janet Shook, the only other woman who consistently came to class, it occurred to me that the hideous practical joke played on me at the Drinkwaters’ might be related to the equally hideous prank played on Thea. Was someone else so enamored of Marshall that she was doing horrible things to women she perceived as being involved with him?

As much as the thought made my skin crawl, it at least made some kind of sense out of an otherwise-bewildering incident.

“Lily!” Marshall called. Janet and I stopped our striking-and-blocking practice, and I bowed to Janet briefly before running over to Marshall. He was standing with Carlton, and he looked a little exasperated. “You’re a good teacher, Lily. Carlton and I are not-we’re not meshing gears on star drill, and I need to help Davis on his kata. Could you…”

“Sure,” I said. Marshall patted my shoulder and moved on to Davis, a weedy twentyish man who sold insurance.

“Sorry you’re stuck with me,” Carlton said, though he didn’t look particularly sorry.

“What part of this exercise are you having trouble with?”

“The whole thing.”

I sighed, not too quietly.

“Okay, specifically, I’m having trouble remembering the sequence.”

“All right. Get in shiko dachi… No, turn your feet out… Now squat some more.”

Carlton moaned.

I dropped into position facing him. “Now, you face that way,” I told him, pointing to my right, “and I’ll face this way… No, keep your hips in position; just turn the upper torso…”

“Explain to me again why we’re whacking our arm bones together,” Carlton said pathetically.

“To make them tougher. So we don’t feel as much pain when we fight.”

“We go through it now so we don’t feel it later?”

“Ah… right. Now, forearms down, up… switch sides! Forearms down, up, switch!”

“So,” he puffed after a few more seconds, “what would you do right now if I leaned over and kissed you on the neck?”

“Well, you’re standing in a position that leaves your genitals wide open. So I’d probably strike you seiken-that is, with a powerful jab, in the groin, and then when you doubled over, I’d get you with an elbow to the back of the neck, and when you were all the way on the floor, I’d kick you repeatedly.”

“Better not do that, then.”

“Better not.”

“Just wanted to find out.”

“There is something else I want from you.”

“Name it.”

“I want to know who’s inheriting the apartments and all Pardon’s other land holdings, if he has any.”

Carlton grunted as I accidentally elbowed him. “A niece of Pardon’s, the daughter of Pardon’s dead sister. She called Pardon’s lawyer yesterday, who called me, since she’s going to be coming to town day after tomorrow to arrange for Pardon’s burial. Ow, Lily! Not so hard! And go over his books with me. This gal lives in Austin, Texas. I’m sure you’re gonna love her. She’s a tae kwon do instructor. Pardon had mentioned her to me one time.”

“Could that be why you’re suddenly interested in coming here, rather than curiosity about my schedule?”

“Fifty-fifty, I’d say.”

“I’d better warn you, goju is really different from tae kwan do. Philosophy, fighting technique, stances.”

I shut up and accelerated the star drill until Carlton suddenly gave out. I’d been picking up the signals (shaking legs, increased sweating, a desperately determined set to his mouth) but had ignored them ruthlessly.

“Give me a break!” Carlton said, and I felt a little shame at driving him so hard.

“Don’t scare him away, Lily,” Marshall said behind me.

“No, sir.” I tried to look repentant.

“Back in line,” Marshall called to the paired students, and we scampered (or hobbled) back into place.

“Kiotske!” We came to attention. “Rai!” We bowed. “Class dismissed!”

“My favorite words,” Carlton murmured to Janet, who laughed-too much for such a feeble joke, I thought.

Marshall came up to me and said very quietly, “I’ll pick you up at your house,” which answered all my questions.

I sat on the floor to pull on my shoes. After I tied them, it was an effort to get up smoothly, but it was also a point of pride. Carlton was sitting in one of the folding chairs that lined the room, his head cocked. He was looking at me as if he was examining a suspect hundred-dollar bill.

“Good night,” I said briefly.

“Good night,” he answered, and bent to tie his sneakers, a scowl on his handsome face.

I shrugged and went through the double doors, passing Marshall’s office and waving to him. He was looking at employee time sheets. The main room was empty except for Stephanie Miller, one of Marshall’s hired hands who teaches some of the aerobic classes. Stephanie was running the big industrial vacuum cleaner over the worn green carpet. I gave her a casual nod and passed through the front door and over to my Skylark, one of four cars left in the parking lot. There was something on the hood of my car.

I wouldn’t let myself stop, but I slowed down to get a better look. It was a… doll?

Then I was standing a foot away and I dropped my gym bag. It was a doll, a Ken doll.

The eye had been defaced with red nail polish. It was fresh. I could smell it from where I stood. It had been used to create artistic drops of blood down the doll’s face. Someone had made the doll look as if it had been shot in the left eye, the eye I had hit when I shot Nap.

I remembered exactly how it had looked, the sound the man had made, the way he’d hit the floor. He hadn’t looked anything like a Ken doll…

“What’s wrong?” Carlton asked. “Car trouble?”

I was glad to be dragged back from the edge of the nightmare. I stood back so Carlton could see.

“Was this on your car?”

“Yes. I left the car locked, so someone put it on the hood.”

I shivered at the malignancy of the “gift.”

“What’s up?” Marshall asked. He’d just locked the front doors of the gym. Across the parking lot, Stephanie got in her car and pulled out to go home.

I pointed to the doll. I couldn’t bring myself to touch it.

“Oh, Lily, I’m sorry,” he said after a moment.

“I get the feeling there’s something about this I don’t know?” Carlton asked.

I puffed out my cheeks with a gust of air. I was so tired. “I guess I ought to take this by the police station,” I said.

“Lily, let it wait until tomorrow,” Marshall said. “Go on home now. I’ll see you in a little while.”

“No. I want to get rid of it. I’ll call you when I get home.”

“Lily, do you want me to go to the police station with you?” Carlton asked.

I’d had almost forgotten Carlton was still there. I found myself feeling the unaccustomed emotions of warmth and gratitude toward my neighbor.

“That’s very kind of you,” I said stiffly, wishing I could sound more gracious. “But I think I better go by myself. Thank you for offering.”

“Okay. If you need me, call me.” Carlton hobbled over to his Audi and went home, doubtless anticipating a hot bath and a welcoming bed.

I watched him go because I didn’t want to turn to meet Marshall’s eyes.

“I’m wondering,” I said, still looking into the night, “whether you have a secret admirer-someone who could find out my history and leave these little gifts for me, someone who could kill a rat and leave it on Thea’s table.”

“So, it’s scaring you off, and we should forget about us?” Marshall leaped to the thought. He was upset and angry.

Well, I’m not exactly happy, either, I fumed to myself.

“No, that’s not what I’m saying.”

“Are you saying you don’t want to see me tonight?”

“I don’t know. No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’ve been looking forward to it as much as you have.” I raised my hands, palms upward, in a gesture of frustration. “But this is bad, isn’t it? To think someone’s watching me? Sneaking around with things like this?” I waved my hand toward the doll. “Thinking about what to do to me next?”

“So you’ll let that person make your life even more miserable?”

I swung around to face Marshall so suddenly that his shoulders tensed. I had so many thoughts, it was a struggle as to which one would be voiced first. “I think I gave that up a good many years ago,” I said. I was stiff with fury, felt like hurting him. “And while I looked forward to screwing you tonight, missing it would not make me miserable.”

“I wanted to sleep with you, too,” Marshall said, equally angry now. “But I also wanted just to be with you. Just talk to you. Have a normal conversation with you-if that’s possible.”

I struck, aiming for his diaphragm. Like a senseless person who didn’t want teeth anymore, I told myself later. Quicker than I could block with my left arm, Marshall’s hand shot out and gripped the wrist of my striking right arm when my knuckles were within an inch of his abdomen. His other hand had formed the knife, and was starting for my neck. For a long moment, we stared at each other, eyes wide and angry, before coming to our senses. His hand relaxed and he placed his fingers gently against my throat, feeling my pulse racing. My fist uncurled and fell to my side.

“Almost got you,” I said, embarrassed to find my voice was shaking.

“Almost,” he admitted. “But you would’ve been down first.”

“Not so,” I argued. “The diaphragm blow would’ve doubled you over and you would’ve missed my neck.”

“But the blow would’ve landed somewhere,” he argued back, “and the force would have knocked you backward. Admittedly, after you had already hit me…” His voice trailed off and we looked at each other sheepishly.

“Maybe,” I said, “I’m not the only person who has trouble carrying on a ‘normal’ conversation?”

“You’re right. This is probably pretty weird.”

Very carefully, as though we were covered with thorns, we eased into each other’s arms.

“Relax,” whispered Marshall. “Your neck muscles are like wires.”

I tentatively laid my head on his shoulder. I turned my mouth into his neck. “What I’m going to do,” I said gently, “is take the doll to the police department, tell them where I found it, and go home. When I get there, I’ll call you. You’ll come get me. We’ll eat at your place, and then we’ll do good things together.”

His hand massaged my neck. “I can’t get you to reverse the order?”

“I’ll see you soon,” I promised, then slid from his arms and got in the car, stowing the grotesque doll on the seat beside me. I drove to the police department, which is housed in a former drugstore a couple of blocks from the center of town. There was only one police car in the parking lot, a dark blue city of Shakespeare car with a big number 3 on the side.

Tom David Meiklejohn was sitting inside, his feet propped up on a desk. He had an RC Cola in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Tom David, whom I know by sight, is good-looking in what I think of as a honky-tonk way. He has short, curly hair, bright, mean eyes flanking a sharp nose, and thin lips, and he dresses western on his days off. He’d been sleeping with Deedra around last Christmas, and during that month or two I’d seen him go in and out of the Garden Apartments regularly.

Tom David had been married at the time to a woman as hard-edged as he was, or so one travel agent had told another as I was cleaning their office. A few months later, I had seen the Meiklejohns’ divorce notice in the local paper.

Now, Tom David, whom I’d observed patrolling many times during my night prowls, was slowly looking me up and down, making a show of trying to figure out my all-white outfit.

“Going to a pajama party?” he asked.

So much for courtesy to the public he serves, I reflected, though I’d anticipated as much. Not every policeman was a Claude Friedrich. Friedrich might make mistakes, but he didn’t mind admitting them.

“This was left on my car outside of Body Time,” I said briefly, and deposited the doll on the desk in front of his feet. I’d wrapped it in a paper towel from a roll in my housekeeping kit. Now I spread the towel open.

Tom David gradually uprighted himself and put the RC Cola down. He stubbed out his cigarette, staring at the Ken doll.

“That’s ugly,” he said. “That’s real ugly. Did you see anyone around your car?”

“No. I was in Body Time for over an hour. Anyone could have pulled into the parking lot, put the doll on my car, and pulled out without anyone seeing them. Not many people there tonight-most people don’t work out on Friday evenings.”

“You were at that martial arts class that Marshall Sedaka runs?”

There was something about the way he said Marshall’s name… not just distaste but also personal dislike. I went on full alert.

“Right.”

“He thinks he’s tough,” Tom David remarked. There was a cold light in his mean, bright eyes. “Orientals think they can order women around like they was sheep or something.”

I raised my eyebrows. If anyone thought of women as interchangeable parts, it was Tom David Meiklejohn.

“Sedaka see this?”

“Yes,” I said.

“He have a chance to put it on your car? You two have any personal relationship?”

“He didn’t have a chance to put it on my car. He was inside Body Time when I got there, and he left after I did.”

“Listen, I’m the only one here right now, and when Lottie comes back with her McNuggets, I gotta go on patrol. You want to come back in tomorrow and make a statement?”

“Okay.”

“I’ll try fingerprinting this, and we’ll see what happens.”

I nodded and turned to go. As my hand touched the door, Tom David said abruptly, “I guess you would be interested in self-defense.”

I could feel the color draining from my face.

I looked out through the glass door into the darkness.

“Any woman should be interested in self-defense,” I said, and walked out into the night.

I drove home tense with rage and fear, thinking of the bloody-eyed Ken doll, thinking of Tom David Meiklejohn mulling over what had happened to me with his buddies over a few beers. I had found the source of the leak in the police department, I was pretty sure.

I parked the car where it belonged, unlocked the back door, and threw everything but my keys and my driver’s license into the house. Those I stuck in my T-shirt pocket, where they made a strange bulge over my breast. I had to walk. It was the only thing that would help.

The street was deserted at the moment. It was about 9:00 p.m. The night was much warmer than it had been the last time I walked, the humidity high, a precursor of the dreadful hot evenings of summer. It was fully dark, and I drifted into the shadows of the street, padding silently along to pass through the arboretum. Marshall’s house on Farraday was not far. I didn’t know the number, but I would see his car.

It relaxed me, moving through the night invisibly. I felt more like the Lily who had had a stable existence before the murder of Pardon Albee. Then, my only problem had been the sleepless nights, which came maybe twice a week; other than that, I’d had things under control.

Standing concealed in the undergrowth of the arboretum, I waited for a car to pass on Jamaica Street, so I could steal across.

I hadn’t considered my route at all, but now sheer curiosity led me to drift toward the house Marshall had up until recently called home. There is very little cover on Celia Street, which is one of modest but spruce white houses with meticulously kept yards. I planned my approach. It was earlier than I usually walked, and there were more people on the move, which in Shakespeare isn’t saying a hell of a lot-a car would pass occasionally, or I would see someone come out of his house, retrieve something from a pickup or jeep, and hurry back inside.

In the summer, children would be playing outside till late, but on this spring night, they all seemed to be inside.

I worked my way down the street, trying to be unobtrusive but not suspicious, since there were people still up and active. It was not a workable compromise. I’d rather be seen than reported, so I moved at a steady pace rather than drifting from one cover to another. After all, I was wearing white, hardly a camouflage color. Still, no one seemed to notice me, and curtains up and down the little street were uniformly drawn against the dark.

I only saw the police car when I was directly opposite Marshall’s former home. It was parked up against Thea’s next-door neighbor’s hedge, which divides their yards from the street to the back of the lot. The cruiser was pulled right up behind a car that I assumed must be Thea’s, which looked dark red or brown in the dim light of the streetlamp. So it didn’t exactly seem the driver was paying an official visit; in fact, I concluded, Tom David Meiklejohn, whose car number 3 was parked in the driveway, was inside chitchatting with the rat-plagued Mrs. Sedaka, while he was supposed to be patrolling the streets of Shakespeare to keep them safe for widows and orphans.

Instead, it seemed Tom David Meiklejohn was personal bodyguard to one about-to-be-divorcee.

I had a fleeting desire to make yet one more anonymous phone call to Claude Friedrich, before I reflected that not only would that be sneaky and dishonorable but also that a possible relationship between Thea and Tom David was none of my business.

I began moving again, ghosting silently down the dark, quiet street, thinking hard as I passed from shadow to shadow.

In five minutes, I was on Farraday. Marshall’s car was parked in the gravel driveway of the house on the corner, a little house smack in the middle of a small lot needing a great deal of yard work. The rental was definitely a step down from Celia Street.

I wondered if it had been hard for Marshall to leave the Sedaka house in Thea’s possession.

The porch light was glowing yellow, but I continued on through the yard and around to the back door, my eyes adapting quickly to the darkness. I rapped three times, hard, and heard Marshall’s quick footsteps.

“Who’s there?” he asked. He’s not a man who likes surprises, either.

“Lily.” He opened the door quickly. I went up the step and into the house. And despite what he had said about having an evening of conversation, the minute the door shut, his arms went around me and his mouth found mine. My hands snaked underneath his T-shirt, eager to touch his body again.

I did not have time to marvel at my ability to have sex without fear; I did not have time to wonder if what I was doing was wise, since I carried burdens enough for two, and Marshall was not exactly an unencumbered man. But we did take a moment for protection this time, and I hoped we wouldn’t pay for our previous stupidity.

Afterward, it was hard to feel the limitations of my own skin, to feel myself shrinking back into the mold in which I’d cast myself before I’d come to Shakespeare. For the first time in years, it felt confining rather than comfortable.

And yet, as I looked around Marshall’s Spartan bedroom-the queen-size mattress and box spring on a frame, no headboard or footboard; a dresser clearly retrieved from someone’s attic; a thrift store night table-I felt uneasy at being out of my own home. In many months, I hadn’t been in anyone’s house except to clean it.

We’d been lying together quietly since making love, my back to his front, his arm around me. Every now and then, Marshall would kiss my neck or stroke my side. The intimacy of the moment both excited and threatened me.

“You know Thea is seeing someone else,” I said quietly.

If he wanted to get divorced, he needed to know that. If he wanted to reconcile with Thea, he needed to know that.

“I thought so,” he said after a long moment. “Do you know who it is?”

“What will you do if I tell you a name?” I turned over to face him, automatically reaching down for the sheet to cover my scars. Before he answered, he took the sheet, pulled it back down, and kissed my chest.

“Don’t hide from me, Lily,” he whispered.

My hands twitched with the effort I was making not to grab the sheet. Marshall moved even closer to me so that his body covered the scars, and I gradually relaxed against him.

“Are you thinking I might track him down and beat him up for Thea’s honor?” he asked after letting enough time pass to let me know he didn’t consider Thea’s affair a personal thing.

“I don’t know you well enough to know what you would do.”

“Thea is a hometown sweetheart, because she’s pretty and she was born and bred here. She knows when to act charming and sunny. She’s good with children. But the people you won’t find talking about Thea with this exaggerated awe are the men she’s dated for a while-the men she’s dated long enough to go to bed with.”

I pulled back a little to look at Marshall’s face. He looked as if he had a bad taste in his mouth.

“Lily, by the time I came to town, Thea had run through the few locals she felt were worthy of her. She could tell, I think, that people were starting to wonder why pretty, sweet Thea couldn’t seem to form a lasting relationship with anyone, so she dated me and married me quickly. I didn’t go to bed with Thea before I married her. She said she wanted to wait and I respected that, but I found out after maybe a month, that was just because she didn’t want me to back out like other men had.”

“She doesn’t like sex?” I asked hesitantly. I should be the last one to criticize a woman who had problems dealing with men.

Marshall laughed in an unamused way. “Oh, no. She likes it. But she doesn’t like it like we do it,” and his hand ran down my back, caressed my hips. “She likes to do… sick things, things that hurt. Because I loved her, I tried to oblige, but it ended up making me feel bad. Sad.”

Degraded, I thought.

“Then she decided she wanted a baby, and I wondered if that might save our marriage, so I tried to oblige. But I’d lost my interest by then, and… I couldn’t.” This cost Marshall a great deal to say. “So she called me names and taunted me, only in private, only when no one else could hear. Not because she cared about me, but because she didn’t want anyone else to know she was capable of saying those things. Going home was like going to hell. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I haven’t had sex in six months, Lily, but that wasn’t the worst of it, not by a long shot. So here I am, in this dump, wondering how to file for divorce without Thea taking my business away from me.”

I had no response to his money worries. I have very little available cash myself because I am saving strenuously against the day when I have to have a new car, or a new roof, or any of the sudden catastrophic expenses that can wipe out a one-income household. But at least all my finances, good or bad, are dependent on me and me only. I can’t imagine how I’d feel if I had to give half of my business away to someone who had found pleasure in degrading and humiliating me.

“Tom David Meiklejohn.”

His eyes had been focused far away, staring past my shoulder at a bleak vista. Now he looked at me.

“The cop.” His dark eyes stared into mine. I gave a tiny nod. “I’ll bet she loves the handcuffs,” he said.

I tried not to shrink at the thought of a woman handcuffed, but my breath came out in a little whine that drew Marshall’s attention to me instantly. “Don’t think of it, Lily,” he said quietly. “Don’t think of it; think of this.” And his hand slid gently between my legs, his mouth found my breast, and I did indeed think of other things.

“Marshall,” I said afterward, “if you hadn’t noticed, I wanted to tell you I have absolutely no complaints about your virility.” He laughed a little, breathlessly, and for a while we dozed together.

But I woke soon, anxious and ill at ease. Moving as quietly as I could, I got up and began pulling on my clothes. Marshall’s breathing was still heavy and even and he shifted position, taking up more of the bed now that I wasn’t in it. For a moment, I bent over the bed, my hand an inch from his shoulder. Then I drew back. I hated to wake him: I felt compelled to leave.

I eased out of the back door, punching in the button on the knob so it would lock behind me.

I’d begun thinking, as Marshall talked about Thea, of the dead rat someone had left on Thea’s kitchen table in that neat white house on Celia. When I’d woken, the rat had worried me more and more.

The Ken doll, the toy handcuffs, the dead rat. Obviously, the tokens left for me referred to my past. The dead rat seemed cut from an entirely different pattern. A thought trailed through my mind like a slug: Had Thea perhaps tortured animals in her childhood? Was the rat also from Thea’s past? I grimaced as I moved through the darkness. I could not bear cruelty to a helpless thing.

At this time of night, the streets were deserted, the town deep in sleep. I wasn’t being as careful as I usually was. The only people likely to see me at this hour were the two patrolling policemen, and I knew where one of the two was; I’d checked on my way home, and Tom David was still at Thea’s. Surely he’d gone off duty; wouldn’t the dispatcher be trying to raise him otherwise?

I was yawning widely as I walked up my driveway. I’d pulled my keys from my pocket and was about to step off the drive to go to my front door when the attack came. Tired and inattentive as I’d been, I had trained for this moment for three years.

When I heard the rush of feet, I whirled to face the attacker, the keys clenched in my fist to reinforce my blow. But the man in the ski mask had a staff, maybe a mop or broom handle, and he swung it under my guard and whacked my ribs. I kept myself upright by a supreme effort, and when my assailant tried to swing the staff again, I let the keys fall, grabbed the staff with both hands, swung up my leg, and kicked him hard in the chest-not a very effective kick, but it was the best I could do under the circumstances. He did have to let go of the staff, which was good, but I staggered when he released it and dropped it myself, which was bad.

My kick had made him fall back, too, though, and that gave me time to recover my footing before he launched himself at me with a savage growl, like a dog out of control.

I was close to that point myself. When I saw the face coming toward me, shrouded in a ski mask but otherwise unguarded, I inhaled deeply, then struck as hard as I could with my fist, exhaling and locking into position automatically. The man screamed and began falling, his hands going up to clutch his nose, and on his way down, my knee came up, striking him sharply under the chin.

And that was the end of it.

Though I stood in a fighting stance in the dim light, the man was rolling and gurgling in a whipped way on my grass. Lights were coming on in the apartments-the man’s scream had been piercing, if not long-and Claude Friedrich, the man used to dealing with emergencies, dashed around the dividing fence with speed rather amazing for a man of his age. His gun was drawn. I took him in at a glance, then resumed guarding the man on the grass.

Friedrich stopped short.

“What the hell are you doing, Lily Bard?” he asked rather breathlessly. I glanced at him again, long enough to notice that he was clad only in khaki slacks. He looked pretty good.

“This son of a bitch attacked me,” I said, very pleased to hear my voice come out even.

“I would think it was the other way around, Miss Lily, if he didn’t have a mask on and you weren’t in your own yard.”

I saw no point in responding. I kept my attention focused on the writhing, whimpering figure.

“I think he’s pretty much whipped,” Friedrich said, and I thought I detected a note of sarcasm. “What I really wish you would do, Lily, is go inside your little house there and call the police station and tell them I need some backup here.”

What I longed to do was jump on my attacker and hit him a few more times, because the adrenaline was still pumping through my system, and by God, he had startled me. But Friedrich was making sense; there was no point in my getting into trouble. I stood straight, dropping my hands, and took a cleansing breath to relax. I took a step toward my house and felt a stab of pain, sharp enough to cause me to stop dead.

“You all right?” Friedrich said sharply, anxiously.

I found I was aching from more than the wish to punish my attacker. His first blow had been a good one, and he’d managed to rake my face with his fingers, though I couldn’t remember how or when. As the rage ebbed away, the pain seeped in to take its place.

“I’ll make it,” I told him grimly, and reached out to pull my keys from the grass. To my dismay, the little chain had snapped and the keys had scattered under our feet. I could find only one, but at least that one was my house key. I hobbled into the house, making my way to my bedroom. I called the police station first. After I hung up, my hand stayed wrapped around the receiver. I had no idea what I’d said to the dispatcher, the unseen Lottie. It was now 1:30 in the morning.

Marshall had made me promise to call him if I had trouble.

I checked the little piece of paper he’d scrawled his new phone number on, and I punched it in.

“Yes?” Marshall asked, a little groggy but conscious.

“I’m at home, Marshall,” I said.

“I knew you’d left,” he said curtly.

“I had a fight.”

“Are you all right?”

“Not entirely. But not as bad off as he is.”

“I’m out the door.”

And suddenly, I was talking to a dial tone.

I wanted more than anything else to lie down on the bed. But I knew I could not. I forced myself to get to my feet again, to move slowly back out to where Claude Friedrich was still holding a gun on “the whiner,” who had covered his now-blood-soaked ski mask with both hands.

I still didn’t know the identity of my attacker.

“I guess you get to pull off his mask, Lily,” Friedrich said. “He can’t seem to manage.”

I bent painfully over, said, “Put your damn hands down,” and was instantly obeyed. I grasped the edge of the ski mask with my right hand and pulled it up. It couldn’t come off entirely because the back of his head pinned it down, but enough of the knit front slid up for me to recognize its wearer.

Blood slid from Norvel Whitbread’s nostrils. “You done broke my nose, you bitch,” he said hoarsely, and my hand snapped back to strike. Norvel cringed.

“Cut it out!” barked the chief of police, no trace of comforting rumble in his official voice, and with an effort of will, I relaxed and stepped away.

“I can smell the bourbon from here,” Friedrich said disgustedly. “What were you doing when he came at you, Lily?”

“I was walking up to my own house in my own yard, minding my own business,” I said pointedly.

“Oh. Like that, huh?”

“Like that,” I agreed.

“Norvel, you are the stupidest son of a bitch who ever drew breath,” the chief of police said conversationally.

Norvel did some moaning and groaning and then he vomited.

“Good God Almighty, man!” exclaimed Friedrich. He looked over at me. “Why you think he did this, Lily?”

“He gave me some trouble at the church the other day when I was working there, so I thumped him,” I said flatly. “This is his idea of revenge, I guess.” Norvel seemed to stick to tools of his trade when he planned an assault. I was willing to bet the staff was the same broom he’d tried to hit me with at the church, with the straw sawed off.

A city police car came around the corner, lights rotating but siren silent, which was something to be thankful for.

A thought struck me and I squatted a few feet away from Norvel, who now smelled of many unpleasant things. “Listen, Norvel, did you leave that doll on my car tonight?” I asked.

Norvel Whitbread responded with a stream of abuse and obscenity, the burden of which was that he didn’t know what I meant.

“What’s that about?” asked Friedrich.

“Okay, let’s try again, Norvel,” I said, struck by a sudden inspiration. I held up a wait-a-minute hand to Friedrich. “Why did Tom O’Hagen go upstairs to see you the day Pardon was killed?”

“Because he couldn’t keep his dick in his pants,” snarled Norvel, in no mood to keep anyone else’s potentially lucrative secret any longer. “He gave me sixty lousy bucks not to tell his wife he’s been screwing Deedra.”

Claude Friedrich was standing closer now. He’d moved in imperceptibly when he heard my question. Now he exploded in a cold kind of anger. “Little something you forgot to mention to me, Norvel?” he asked furiously. “When we get you into a cell after a side trip to the hospital, we’re going to have a serious conversation.” He nodded to the deputy who’d trotted over from the patrol car, a young man I mentally classified as a boy.

While the deputy handcuffed Norvel and inserted him into the patrol car, Claude Friedrich stood by my side and stared down at me. I was still squatting, just because I knew getting up was going to hurt pretty bad. Tucking his gun in his waistband, Friedrich extended a hand. After a moment’s hesitation, I reached up to grasp it, and he pulled hard. I rose with a gasp.

“No point asking you where you’ve been-well, maybe I don’t need to,” he said, eyeing Marshall’s car as it pulled in behind the patrol car. He let go of my hand, which he’d retained.

Marshall launched himself out of his car with gratifying speed. He did not grab me or hug me; he looked me over carefully, as if he was scrutinizing a piece of sale furniture for scratches and dents.

“We need to go inside,” he muttered. “I can’t see well enough out here.”

Claude Friedrich stirred. “Mr. Sedaka, good evenin‘,” he said.

Marshall looked at him for the first time. “Chief,” he acknowledged, with a brief nod, before going back to his scrutiny of my facial scratches. “Her face is bleeding,” he informed Friedrich, “and I need to take her in and clean the cuts up so I can see their depth.”

I felt a sudden urge to giggle. I hadn’t been examined this carefully since my mother had gotten a letter from the school about head lice.

“Norvel Whitbread attacked Lily,” observed the older man, who was beginning to feel the cool air against his bare chest, judging from the goose pimples I could see popping up. Friedrich seemed determined to push Marshall into acting like a proper boyfriend, perhaps consoling me on my ordeal and threatening death to Norvel.

“I’m assuming you whipped his butt,” Marshall told me.

“Yes, sensei,” I said, and suddenly the giggle burst out.

Both men stared at me in such complete amazement that I giggled all the harder, and then shook with laughter.

“Maybe she should go to the hospital along with Norvel?”

“Oh, he has to go to the hospital?” Marshall was as proud as if his much-coached Little Leaguer had hit a home run.

“Broke his nose,” I confirmed between the sporadic giggles that marked the wind-down of my fit.

“He armed?”

“Broomstick, I think,” I said. “It’s over there.” The staff had landed in the low shrubs around my front porch.

Friedrich went over to retrieve it. Evidence, I assumed.

“Lily,” he rumbled, carrying the wood gingerly by one end, “you’re gonna have to come in tomorrow and make a statement. I won’t make you come in tonight. It’s late and you need some attention. I’m prepared to take you to the hospital if you want.”

“No thank you,” I said soberly, completely over my mirth. “I really want to go into my house.” More than anything, I was realizing, I wanted a shower. I’d had my usual workday, then karate class, two longish walks, sex, and a fight. I felt, and surely was, pretty gamy.

“Then I’ll leave you to it,” Friedrich said quietly. “I’m glad you came out on the good side. And I’m assuming when I go into the station I’ll find out what this is about a doll left on your car?”

I could not forbear raising my eyebrows significantly in Marshall’s direction. It was lucky my good sense had propelled me to the police station earlier in the evening. Marshall glared at me. I smiled back. “Yes, sir,” I said, trying not to sound smug. “I reported it earlier, to Tom David Meiklejohn. He wanted me to come in tomorrow and make a statement, too.”

“You got jobs on Saturday morning?”

“Yes, I do, but I’ll be in at noon, anyway.”

“I’ll see you then. Good night to you both.” And the policeman strode off, carrying the broom handle.

With his departure, my exhaustion hit me in the face.

“Let’s go in,” I said. I scanned the grass, dimly lit by the streetlights at the corners of the arboretum. My key ring had broken. Luckily, the broken key ring was my personal one, with only my house, car, and lockbox key on it. I spotted a gleam of metal in the grass-my car key. Without thinking, I bent to retrieve it and felt a ripple of pain in the side that had taken the brunt of the first blow. I gave a little hiss of shock, and Marshall, who’d been staring after the departing lawman, helped me straighten.

I spotted my lockbox key on the way to the porch, and Marshall retrieved it for me. He helped me up the steps and into the house. Until I saw him look around, I had forgotten he’d never been in it.

He said, “We need the bathroom,” and waved me into preceding him. Marshall undressed me quite… clinically. First, he cleaned the scratches on my face, put antibiotic ointment on them, and then he turned his attention to my ribs. He ran his fingers over each rib, gently but firmly, asking me questions as his fingers evaluated my injury.

“Take two aspirin and call me in the morning,” he said finally. “I don’t think anything’s broken. But you’ll have a bad bruise and you’ll be sore. I’ll tape you. It’s lucky he’s a sedentary alcoholic, or you’d be in the hospital now. How much warning did you have?”

“Not as much as I should have,” I admitted. “He was waiting for me in the carport, with the mask and dark clothes on. But still…” and my voice trailed off, as I found I could not put one coherent thought together. He got my first-aid kit from the little linen closet and worked on me for a while.

“I have to shower,” I said. “Out.”

“Keep the tape dry. Turn that side away from the water.”

“Yes, sensei.”

“I’m sleeping on your couch tonight.”

“It’s a love seat. You’ll get cramped.”

“Sleeping bag?”

“Nope. Don’t like camping.”

“Floor.”

“You can sleep with me. It’s queen-sized.”

I could tell he wanted to ask me why I’d left his bed earlier in the night. I was glad he was too decent to badger me when I was so exhausted. He helped me off with the rest of my clothes and then just left, without saying a word. I felt immense gratitude and relief. I turned on the shower and as soon as the water ran warm enough, I stepped in, pulled the curtain closed, and just let the water run over me. After a few seconds, I got the soap and shampoo and made as thorough a job of it as I could with Marshall’s strictures. I even shaved under my arms, though bending over for my legs was too difficult.

When I stepped out into the steamy room and brushed my teeth, I felt much more like myself. My nightgown was hanging on the hook on the back of the door, and I pulled it over my head after my automatic deodorant, skin cream, and cuticle remover routine. I’d almost forgotten Marshall was there until I went in my bedroom. It was a shock to see the black hair on the pillow next to mine. He’d civilly taken the inside of the bed and left me the outside by the night table, and he’d left the bedside lamp switched on. He was sound asleep, on his left side, turned away from me.

Moving as silently as I could, I checked the front and back doors and all the windows-my nightly routine-and turned off the lamp. I slid into bed cautiously, turned on my right side, my unbandaged side, so my back was to his, and despite the strangeness of having someone in my house and bed, I was sucked down into sleep like water circling around the drain in my sink.

My eyes flew open at eight o’clock. The digital clock on the bedside table was right in front of me. I tried to think what was so different… Then I remembered the night before. My back felt very warm; it was pressed against Marshall’s. Then I felt him move behind me, and his arm wrapped around my chest. My nightgown was thin and I could feel him pressing against me.

“How are you?” he asked quietly.

“Haven’t moved yet,” I murmured back.

“Want to move some?”

“You have something specific in mind?” I asked as I felt his body respond to contact with me.

“Only if it won’t hurt you…”

I arched harder against him and felt him press against me fiercely in response.

“We’ll just have to try it out, see if it hurts,” I whispered.

“You sure?”

I turned over to face him. “Sure,” I said.

His strength enabled him to hold his weight off me, and his eyes showed nothing but pleasure. In view of my scratched face and the black bruises on my side, I found this touching and amazing. I realized I’d already gotten used to his acceptance of the scars. So it was doubly dismaying to me, after we had finished lovemaking and were lying side by side holding hands, when he said, “Lily, I’ve got to talk to you about something.” His voice was serious, too serious.

I felt my heart shrivel.

“What?” I asked, trying to sound casual. I pulled the sheet up.

“It’s your quads, Lily.”

“My… quadriceps?” I said incredulously.

“You really need to work on them,” Marshall told me.

I turned to stare at him. “I have scars all over my abdomen, I have scratches across my face, I have a huge bruise on my ribs, and your only remark about my body is that I need to work on my quads?”

“You’re perfect except for your quads.”

“You… jerk!” Torn between amusement and disbelief, I pulled the pillow from under my head and hit him with it, which immediately activated the pain. I couldn’t hold back my exclamation of dismay, and clapped my hand to my side.

“Lean back,” Marshall urged me, sitting up to help. “Lean back, slowly… there. Raise your head a little.” He slid my pillow back under my head.

“Lily,” he said when he could tell the worst had passed. “Lily, I was teasing.”

“Oh.” I felt abruptly and totally like a fool.

“Well, I guess I’m hardly social anymore,” I said after a moment.

“Lily. Why’d you leave last night?”

“I just felt restless. I’m not used to sharing time, or space, with anyone. I’m not used to visiting people’s homes as a guest. You’re still married. You’re used to having someone else around. Probably you and Thea were invited places, right? But I’m not. I don’t date. I’m just…” I hesitated, not sure how to characterize my life of the past few years.

“Coasting?”

I considered. “Existing,” I said. “Going from day to day safely. Doing my work, paying my way, not attracting any attention. Left alone.”

“Not lonely?”

“Not often,” I admitted. “There are not that many people I like or have respect for, so I hardly want their company.”

Marshall was propped up on one elbow, his muscular chest a treat for my eyes. And I thought of it that way, as a treat: a seldom-achieved, rare thing that might not happen again. “Who do you like?” he asked me.

I thought about it. “I like Mrs. Hofstettler. I like Claude Friedrich, I think, in spite of everything. I like you. I like most of the people in the karate class, though I’m not partial to Janet Shook. I like the new doctor, the woman. But I don’t know any of those people that well.”

“Do you have any friends you don’t know through work or karate class, anyone your own age that you… go shopping with, go to eat in Little Rock with?”

“No,” I said, my voice flat and verging on anger.

“Okay, okay.” He raised a placating hand. “I’m just asking. I want to know how uphill this is going to be.”

“Pretty uphill, I’m afraid.” I relaxed with an effort.

I glanced at the clock again. “Marshall, I don’t want to leave, but I have to work.”

“Are you just having a flash of anti socializing, or do you really have to work this morning?”

“I really have to work. I have to clean the doctor’s office this morning, visit Mrs. Hofstettler, go to the police station, and do my own shopping this afternoon.” I keep grocery expenses down by making a careful list and following it to the letter on my one visit to the grocery store a week.

“How are you going to manage with your ribs?”

“I’ll just do what I have to do,” I said with some surprise. “It’s my job. If I don’t work, I don’t get paid. If I don’t get paid, I go down the drain.”

“I have to open up the gym, too,” he said reluctantly. “At least it opens late on Saturday, but I don’t have anyone to work until one today, so I do have to get there.”

“We have to start moving,” I suggested, but I was suddenly reluctant to crawl out of the warm bed with its odor of him and sex.

“Can I take you out to supper tonight?”

I had that pressed feeling again. I almost balked, said no. But I told myself sternly that I’d be cutting my own throat. Marshall was throwing out a lifeline and I was refusing to grasp it.

“Sure,” I said, aware that I sounded stiff and anxious.

Marshall studied me.

“You pick the place,” he suggested. “What do you like?”

I had not eaten in a restaurant in longer than I cared to add up. On nights I decide I don’t want to cook, which isn’t that often, since I enjoy cooking and it is cheaper than eating out, I pick up food and bring it home.

“Um,” I said, drawing on an old memory, “I like Mexican food.”

“Great, so do I. We’ll go to El Paso Grande in Montrose.”

Montrose was the nearest large town to Shakespeare, and the one where Shakespeare residents did most of their shopping when they didn’t want to drive the hour and a half to Little Rock.

“All right.” I carefully sat up and swung my legs over the side of the bed. I bit my lip and I stayed there, trying to feel like getting up and brushing my teeth. I wanted Marshall to ignore my struggle, and miraculously he did, letting me take my time and rise on my own, then walk stiffly to the bathroom for a quick sponge bath and a meticulous brushing of my teeth and hair. I applied makeup quickly and thoroughly, hoping the scratches would be less conspicuous. I turned my face from side to side, checking it in the mirror, and decided I looked much better.

But I still looked just like a woman who’d been in a fight.

I walked out, still holding myself stiffly upright, to let Marshall have his turn.

By the time he emerged, having showered and used a toothbrush in a plastic wrapper I’d put out for him on my sink (the dentist gives me a new one every time he cleans my teeth, but it is a brand I don’t like), I’d managed to dress myself in the cheap clothes I wore to work: loose-leg blue jeans and an old dark red college sweatshirt with lopped-off arms. I hadn’t been able to cope with pulling on socks, so I’d slid my feet into loafers instead of my usual cross-trainers.

Marshall started to speak, stopped, thought the better of it, and finally settled with saying, “Pick you up at six?”

I approved of his skipping all the “Are you sure you can do it? Why don’t you call in sick today? Let me help you” stuff I’d been afraid he was going to put us through.

“Sure,” I said, showing him gratitude with my smile.

“See you then,” he said briefly, and went out to his car, which was still parked rather crookedly in front of the house.

Moving slowly but keeping going, I gathered together what I needed for the day and drove over to the doctor’s office. As usual, I parked in the paved area behind the building, intended for the doctor and staff. I noticed without much interest that Dr. Thrush’s car was there, too. Dr. Thrush is new in town and I had just started cleaning for her three weeks ago.

I used my key and stepped uncomfortably over the high threshold. Carrie Thrush was sticking her head out of her office, her brows drawn together with anxiety.

“Oh, thank goodness it’s you, Lily!” the doctor exclaimed. “I forgot it was time for you to come.”

Then, as I moved down the hall, the relieved smile gave way to concern. “Good God, woman, what happened to you?”

“I had a fight last night,” I said.

“In a bar?” The young doctor looked amazed, her dark brown eyebrows raised above eyes just as dark and brown.

“No, a guy jumped me in my yard,” I said briefly, explaining only because she’d asked with so much concern.

I didn’t have much energy to spare today, so I had to focus on the job at hand. I opened the door of the patients’ bathroom in the hall. That was the worst place, so that was where I always started. I had a strong feeling that between my own scheduled cleaning times, Dr. Thrush came in every morning and gave it a light going-over herself. That bathroom would be even dirtier otherwise. I pulled on my gloves and started in.

I cleaned the little double-doored space where patients put their urine samples, then wiped off the knob of the little door into the lab. I laid a fresh paper towel down for the next patient’s sample. I remembered I hadn’t tested this pair of rubber gloves for leaks, and reminded myself to do that when I got home. The last thing I needed was to catch a bug here.

I became aware that Dr. Thrush was standing in the bathroom doorway staring at me.

“You surely can’t work in that condition!” Carrie Thrush said.

She has a firm voice that I believe she assumes to keep people mindful she is indeed a doctor. Carrie Thrush is shorter than I am and pigeon-plump. She has a round face with a determined jaw, unplucked eyebrows, and acne scars. She wears her chin-length black hair parted and brushed back behind her ears. Her dark brown eyes are round and clear, all that saves the doctor from plainness. I set her age at about my own, early thirties.

“Well, yes I can,” I said, since she was waiting for a response. I was not in the mood for arguing. I sprinkled powdered cleanser in the sink and wet the sponge to scour it. I compressed my lips in what I hoped was a determined line.

“Could I just look at your ribs? That’s your problem, right? Listen, you’re in a doctor’s office.”

I kept on scrubbing, but my good sense conquered my pride. I laid down the sponge, pulled off my gloves, and pulled up my shirt.

“Oh, someone taped you, I see. Well, let me just take this off…” I had to endure all the probing again, to hear a bona fide doctor tell me just as Marshall had that none of my ribs were broken but that the bruise and pain would last for a while. Of course Carrie Thrush saw the scars, and her lips pursed, but she didn’t ask any questions.

“You shouldn’t be working,” the doctor said. “But I can tell that nothing I could say would stop you, so work away.”

I blinked. That was refreshing. I began to like Carrie Thrush more and more.

Cleaning the Shakespeare Clinic was an exasperating task because of paper. Paper was the curse of the doctor’s office. Forms in triplicate, billing forms, patient health histories, reports from labs, insurance forms, Medicare, Medicaid-they were stacked everywhere. I had to respect each stack as an entity, lift it to dust and put it down in the same spot; so the office shared by the receptionist and the clerk was in and of itself a land mine. Compared with the office, the waiting room and examining rooms were cakewalks.

For the first time, it struck me that someone must also be cleaning those more often than once a week. As I vacuumed, I mulled this thought over. Nita Tyree, the receptionist? I couldn’t picture Nita agreeing to that as part of her job. I barely know Nita, but I do know she has four children, two of whom are young enough to be in day care at SCC. So Nita leaves when the last patient walks out the front door, no matter what is sitting on her desk.

Gennette Jinks, the nurse, was out of the picture. I’d been behind the fiftyish Gennette in line at the Superette Food Mart only the week before and had heard (as had everyone else in a five-foot radius) about how hard it was to work for a woman, how young Dr. Thrush wasn’t accepting the wisdom she (Gennette) had attained with years of experience, at which point I had tuned out and read the headlines on the tabloids instead, since they had more entertainment value.

So the surreptitious weekday cleaner had to be the good doctor herself. I had stacked up the bills. Without wanting to, I knew how much Carrie Thrush still owed for her education, and I had a feeling that some weeks it was hard for Carrie to pay even me, much less Gennette and Nita.

I chewed this over as I mopped, having dusted and vacuumed around the doctor as she sat at her desk, a stack of the omnipresent paper on every available inch of surface.

When I had everything gleaming and smelling at least clean, if not sweet, I stuck my head in the office door and said, “Good-bye.”

“Oh, let me write you a check,” said Dr. Thrush.

“No.”

“What?” Carrie Thrush paused, her pen touching her checkbook.

“No. You examined me. Call it bartering.”

I was sure that was against some doctors’ rules, but I was also sure the offer would appeal to my employer. And I was right. Carrie Thrush smiled broadly, then said, “Thank God! No paper to fill out.”

“Thank God, no insurance to file,” I answered, and left, feeling that Carrie Thrush and I, cleaning woman and doctor, had, if not a relationship, at least the beginning of good feelings between us.