When no corpse was found and no rape reported he’d get curious and look me up. Eventually. I’ll carry a gun in my purse and I’ll kill him. I’d never wanted anything quite so badly. It made my career seem like a girlish whim. Dirt prickled inside my stockings and trickled down my back as I fluffed my hair. I felt as though I’d been dragged across plowed ground against the furrow. I left the sidewalk and called softly, “Hey, George.” A fat Dalmation bounded from beneath a fir shrub and sniffed the hem of my dress. I rubbed his neck. “Don’t give me away, Georgie.” George waddled back and lay down beneath the shrub as I peered through the living-room window. Gwen, the woman daddy married a year after mother died, sprawled in an armchair and watched the late late show. The screen highlighted her pretty oval face as she drank from a beer can, drew on a cigaret, then let the smoke trickle through her nostrils. Gwen was thirteen years older than I. We shared the house like two unfriendly workers assigned to the same bench.
