He falls asleep instead and dreams there’s smoke in the kitchen. He can smell burned cookies. He needs to warn Cathy, tell her she needs to take them out of the oven before their mother’s boyfriend comes home, but he can’t speak. This is the past and he’s only a spectator.
5
Billy jerks awake in the dark some time later, convinced he’s overslept his appointment with Joel Allen and screwed up the job he’s spent months waiting to do. Then he hears the girl breathing next to him – breathing, not snoring – and he remembers where he is. Her butt is socked into his basket and he realizes he has an erection, which is totally inappropriate under the circumstances. Downright grotesque, in fact, but so many times the body doesn’t care about the circumstances. It just wants what it wants.
He gets out of bed in the dark and feels his way to the bathroom with one hand cupped over the front of his tented shorts, not wanting to whang his distended cock into the bureau and make this shit carnival of a night complete. The girl, meanwhile, doesn’t stir. Her slow breathing suggests that she’s gone deep, and that’s good.
By the time he’s in the bathroom with the door shut, his erection has deflated and he can piss. The toilet is noisy and has a tendency to keep running if you don’t flap the handle a few times, so he just lowers the lid, turns off the light, and feels his way across back to the bureau, where he fumbles until he feels the elastic waistband of his one pair of workout shorts.
He closes the door to the bedroom and makes his way across the living room with a little more confidence, because the curtain across the periscope window is still pushed back and the nearby streetlight casts enough glow to see by.
He looks out and sees nothing but the deserted street. The rain is still coming down but the wind has let up a little. He pulls the curtain closed and checks his watch, which he never took off. It’s quarter past four in the morning. He puts on the shorts, lies down on the couch, and tries to think what he should do with her when she wakes up, but what’s jamming up the forefront of his mind, ridiculous but true, is that her unwelcome appearance in his life has probably put an end to his writing, and just when it was going well. He has to smile. It’s like worrying if there’s enough toilet paper when you hear the town’s tornado siren go off.
The body wants what it wants, and so does the mind, he thinks, and closes his eyes. He means only to doze but falls fully asleep again instead. When he wakes up the girl is standing over him, wearing the T-shirt he got her into when he put her to bed. And holding a knife.
CHAPTER 14
1
‘Where am I? Who are you? Did you rape me? You did, didn’t you?’
Her eyes are red and her hair is every whichway. Her picture could be next to hangover in the dictionary. She also looks scared to death, and Billy can’t blame her for that.
‘You were raped, but I didn’t rape you.’
The knife is just the little one he used to pry up the splinters in his feet. He left it on the coffee table. He reaches out and takes it from her. He does it gently and she makes no protest.
‘Who are you?’ Alice asks. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Dalton Smith.’
‘Where are my clothes?’
‘Hanging from the shower rod in the bathroom. I undressed you and—’
‘Undressed me!’ She looks down at the shirt.
‘And dried you off. You were soaking wet. Shivering. How’s your head?’
‘Aches. I feel like I drank all night, but I only had one beer … and I think maybe a g-and-t … where are we?’
Billy swings his feet to the floor. She backs away, hands coming up in a warding-off gesture. ‘Would you like a cup of coffee?’
She considers it, but not for long. She lowers her hands. ‘Yes. And do you have aspirin?’
2
He makes coffee. She swallows two aspirin while she waits for it, then slowly goes into the bathroom. He hears the door lock, but that doesn’t concern him. A five-year-old could bust that lock, and a ten-year-old would probably bust the door off the hinges in the bargain.
She comes back to the kitchen. ‘You didn’t flush. Ugh.’
‘I didn’t want to wake you.’
‘Where’s my phone? It was in my jacket.’
‘I don’t know. Do you want some toast?’
She makes a face. ‘No. I’ve got my wallet but not my phone. Did you take it?’
‘No.’
‘Are you lying?’
‘No.’
‘Like I should believe you,’ she says with shaky contempt. She sits down, tugging at the hem of the T-shirt, although it’s long and everything that needs to be covered is covered.