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By Root 441 0

was tired and in a lot of pain and in the end I didn't. I lay awake for a long time after he left — not even a pain-pill would put me to sleep that night. I thought about the skin-graft operation that was coming up the next day, but probably not as much as you might think. Mostly I was thinking about my rings, and the footprint nobody saw but me, and whether or not he — it — might have come back to put things right. And what I decided just before I finally dropped off, was that there had never been a footprint or a pearl earring. That some cop had spotted my rings lying on the study floor beside the bookcase and just took them. They're probably in the window of some Lewiston hockshop right now, I thought. Maybe the idea should have made me angry, but it didn't. It made me feel the way I did when I woke up behind the wheel of the Mercedes that morning — filled with an incredible sense of peace and well-being. No stranger; no stranger; no stranger anywhere. Just a cop with light fingers taking one quick look over his shoulder to make sure the coast is clear and then whoop, zoop, into the pocket. As for the rings themselves, I didn't care what had happened to them then and I don't now. I've come more and more to believe in these last few months that the only reason a man sticks a ring on your finger is because the law no longer allows him to put one through your nose. Never mind, though; the morning has become the afternoon, the afternoon is moving briskly along, and this is not the time to discuss women's issues. This is the time to talk about Raymond Andrew Joubert.

Jessie sat back in her chair and lit another cigarette, absently aware that the tip of her tongue was stinging from tobacco overload, that her head ached, and that her kidneys were protesting this marathon session in front of the Mac. Protesting vigorously. The house was deathly silent — the sort of silence that could only mean that tough little Megan Landis had taken herself off to the supermarket and the dry-cleaner's. Jessie was amazed that Meggie had left without making at least one more effort to separate her from the computer screen. Then she guessed the housekeeper had known it would be a wasted effort. Best to let her get it out of her system, whatever it is, Meggie would have thought. And it was only a job to her, after all. This last thought sent a little pang through Jessie's heart.

A board creaked upstairs. Jessie's cigarette stopped an inch shy of her lips. He's back! Goody shrieked. Oh, Jessie, he's back!

Except he wasn't. Her eyes drifted to the narrow face looking up at her from the clusters of newsprint dots and she thought: I know exactly where you are, you whoredog. Don't I?

She did, but part of her mind went on insisting it was him just the same — no, not him, it, the space cowboy, the specter of love, back again for a return engagement. It had only been waiting for the house to be empty, and if she picked up the phone on the corner of the desk, she would find it stone dead, just as all the phones in the house by the take had been stone dead that night.

Your friend Brandon can smile all he wants, hut we know the truth, don't we, Jessie?

She suddenly shot out her good hand, snatched the telephone handset from the cradle, and brought it to her ear. Heard the reassuring buzz of the dial-tone. Put it back again. An odd, sunless smile played about the corners of her mouth.

Yes, I know exactly where you are, motherfucker. Whatever Goody and the rest of the ladies inside my head may think, Punkin and I know you're wearing an orange jumpsuit and sitting in a County jail cell the one at the far end of the old wing, Brandon said, so the other inmates can't get to you and fuck you up before the state hauls you in front of a jury of your peers . . . if a thing like you has any peers. We may not he entirely free of you yet, hut we will he. I promise you we will be.

Her eyes drifted back to the VDT, and although the vague sleepiness brought on by the combination of the pill and the sandwich had long since dissipated, she felt a bone-deep weariness