“Do you cook?”
“Um-hmmm.”
A tiny crease appeared in her forehead. She went into the kitchen. “How about coffee?” she called.
“Uh-huh.”
She made small talk about grocery prices and got no reply. She came back into the living room and sat on the ottoman, her elbows on her knees.
“Let’s talk about something for a minute and get it out of the way, okay?”
Silence.
“You haven’t said anything lately. In fact, you haven’t said anything since I mentioned speech therapy.” Her voice was kind, but firm. It carried no taint of sympathy. “I understand you fine because you speak very well and because I listen. People don’t pay attention. They ask me what? what? all the time. If you don’t want to talk, okay. But I hope you will talk. Because you can, and I’m interested in what you have to say.”
“Ummm. That’s good,” Dolarhyde said softly. Clearly this little speech was very important to her. Was she inviting him into the two-category club with her and the Chinese paraplegic? He wondered what his second category was.
Her next statement was incredible to him.
“May I touch your face? I want to know if you’re smiling or frowning.” Wryly, now. “I want to know whether to just shut up or not.”
She raised her hand and waited.
How well would she get around with her fingers bitten off? Dolarhyde mused. Even in street teeth he could do it as easily as biting off breadsticks. If he braced his heels on the floor, his weight back on the couch, and locked both hands on her wrist, she could never pull away from him in time. Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, maybe leave the thumb. For measuring pies.
He took her wrist between his thumb and forefinger and turned her shapely, hard-used hand in the light. There were many small scars on it, and several new nicks and abrasions. A smooth scar on the back might have been a burn.
Too close to home. Too early in his Becoming. She wouldn’t be there to look at anymore.
To ask this incredible thing, she could know nothing personal about him. She had not gossiped.
“Take my word that I’m smiling,” he said. Okay on the S. It was true that he had a sort of smile which exposed his handsome public teeth.
He held her wrist above her lap and released it. Her hand settled to her thigh and half-closed, fingers trailing on the cloth like an averted glance.
“I think the coffee’s ready,” she said.
“I’m going.” Had to go. Home for relief.
She nodded. “If I offended you, I didn’t mean to.”
“No.”
She stayed on the ottoman, listened to be sure the lock clicked as he left.
Reba McClane made herself another gin and tonic. She put on some Segovia records and curled up on the couch. Dolarhyde had left a warm dent in the cushion. Traces of him remained in the air—shoe polish, a new leather belt, good shaving lotion.
What an intensely private man. She had heard only a few references to him at the office—Dandridge saying “that son of a bitch Dolarhyde” to one of his toadies.
Privacy was important to Reba. As a child, learning to cope after she lost her sight, she had had no privacy at all.
Now, in public, she could never be sure that she was not watched. So Francis Dolarhyde’s sense of privacy appealed to her. She had not felt one ion of sympathy from him, and that was good.
So was this gin.
Suddenly the Segovia sounded busy. She put on her whale songs.
Three tough months in a new town. The winter to face, finding curbs in the snow. Reba McClane, leggy and brave, damned self-pity. She would not have it. She was aware of a deep vein of cripple’s anger in her and, while she could not get rid of it, she made it work for her, fueling her drive for independence, strengthening her