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  He wondered if he'd seen the last of Arthur Danse. Probably. The boy was going to college in the fall. He couldn't say he'd be one bit sorry.

  Boston University. The school had a fine reputation, even Duggan knew that. He was impressed by that much about Harry's kid, anyway:

  A punk's a punk, he thought.

  Probably Arthur was Boston's problem now.

  Three

  Crossed Paths

  Boston, Massachusetts

  September 1974

  "I thought you ought to hear this personally," the girl said to him. "Go fuck yourself."

  She turned to leave.

  Oh, yeah, he thought. You're very tough. Sure. Play it that way.

  But he'd made a hell of a mistake on this one. He had to admit it.

  "I didn't know, Annie! I swear I didn't. Come on in, will you? Just listen to my side."

  "To hell with your side, Arthur."

  "Just give me a minute, will you? Hear me out."

  He stepped to the side. He looked at her. She hesitated for a moment and then marched into his apartment. He could see she was seriously pissed. No act. He liked her mad. In fact he felt more turned on by her right now than he'd been when he was fucking her two nights ago.

  "You realize how humiliating this is? I let you make love to me Friday, and then Saturday night you're screwing my roommate?"

  He closed the door behind her.

  "I didn't know that. Look, Annie. Why would I do a thing like that? Do I look stupid? Do I look like I have the urge to self-destruct here? You were just two attractive women, that's all—two very attractive women. Denise and I danced at the freshman party. You didn't go, you weren't there. Then later on, after the dance, I asked her out. That was last weekend, Annie. I didn't even know her. I barely knew you. You and I hadn't gone out yet, we'd only made the date to go out. So who could tell how you and I were going to ... get along? I sure didn't know we'd be making love the night before last, now did I?"

  "But you knew it last night, didn't you, you bastard. And you fucked her anyway! What are you, the goddamn junior class Romeo or something? God's gift to the little freshman girls? Well FUCK YOU, Art! FUCK YOU!"

  "I've got neighbors, Annie."

  "Yes and I've got a dormitory full of women who think I'm a goddamned joke! Well, probably Denise can handle that—Denise's a fucking doormat—but don't you think you can pull that shit on me!"

  "I'm sorry, Annie. Honest I am."

  Her face was tight with scorn. She was beginning to piss him off.

  "And don't you call me Annie, you son of a bitch! My friends call me Annie. NOT YOU!"

  "Look, take off your coat. Sit down, relax a minute. Let me get you a drink or something."

  He turned away from her toward the narrow cluttered counter that separated the tiny kitchen space from the living room. There was a bottle of cheap red wine in the corner. For her it would do.

  "No thanks."

  "Just one."

  "I don't want a thing from you."

  "Look, do you think this is pleasant for me? Do you think I like this? Believe me, honest, it's ... I feel terrible ..."

  "No, I do not think this is pleasant for you, you selfish little shit, and you know why? Because you just screwed yourself out of a damn good lay and a damn good woman! Oh, and you also fucked yourself out of Denise too, by the way. You might care to know that, Mr. Class Secretary Big Shot. Because even doormats get humiliated. You know? And if you think she's going to ..."

  "Fuck you," he said. He'd done his best but enough was enough. "Fucking whore. You come here, to my home ..."

  "What? What did you say to me?"

  "I called you a fucking whore."

  "WHAT?"

  He whirled and punched her.

  In the stomach. Where it wouldn't show.

  She doubled over and gasped for breath and he had no trouble just pushing her over. She fell to the side by his ratty old couch still clutching her stomach and rolling. He got down on his knees and let her have it again. Lower this time. Harder.

  She attempted a sort of half scream but he could see she could barely breathe. He straddled her. Saw her face go red with pain. Pain was what she'd asked for, pain was what she got. He put both hands to her throat.

  "Whores get fucked," he said. "They get fucked quietly. If you say another word to me or you fight me in any way I'm going to kill you, you dumb bitch. Because you have said enough to me! Got that?"

  He tightened his grip, making sure she understood. And oh yes, it definitely got her attention.

  He released her throat and grabbed the zipper of her jacket and ripped it open. She was coughing now and crying. He unbuttoned her blouse carefully and saw that she wore nothing underneath it and shifted further down on her legs so that he could unzip her jeans and then pulled them down over her hips so that the panties came off with them. She started to try to get up then but he gave her a straight-arm to the chest and her head slammed back against the floorboards.

  Down you go, bitch.

  He got off her and grabbed her legs and flipped her over, moved around and took her arms and dragged her to the couch and flung the top half of her over the couch and she was really sobbing now and she was kneeling on the floor with her face pressed down into the backrest muffling the sounds while he unzipped his own jeans and got it out—hard, real hard—and knelt and grabbed her around the belly and lifted and parted the cheeks of her ass with his other hand and stuck it in up her ass so that she emitted a single stunned shriek but he shut that up fast, smacking her head with his fist, another place it wasn't going to show, thinking she's never gonna tell after getting fucked this way, not up the butt, no way, she's gonna take it and shut the fuck up and go the hell on home.

  His bonus was her roommate Denise would never know.

  Despite what she'd said he still had hopes for Denise.

  She might forgive him after all.

  She did sort of strike him as the doormat type.

  She might. If not, there were plenty of others.

  Ann had cleaned up in total silence in the bathroom of his apartment but walking back to the dormitory she found that she could not stop crying. He'd handed her tissues at the doorway.

  Knowing she'd need them.

  And she did.

  Her father was the Reverend Richard Fletcher of the Ames, Iowa, First Methodist Church. He would never have understood this in a million years. Why she would even go to his apartment. Let alone allow him to do ... this to her.

  Without dying first.

  Her father had no idea that she even knew what the word "fuck" meant. He hadn't a clue. He would have fully expected her to resist him with all her might.

  But her father hadn't seen the look in Arthur Danse's eyes the moment he turned and hit her.

  She thought she was going to die in there.

  She peered at her reflection in the glass double doors to the dormitory and saw how bad she looked. She'd have to make up some story. Though probably half the dorm already knew about her sordid little triangle with him and Denise and probably that would do to cover any questions.

  The girl on desk duty noticed right away.

  The girl was a freshman like Ann and her name was Lydia McCloud, from Maine or New Hampshire or something. She got out of her chair and asked if she could help, if there was anything she could do. Asked what happened. The girl seemed sincere, considerate, very nice really—but Ann was going to go to the grave with this one.

  She could do that.

  Her family had always had grit.

  She might not have been tough enough to fight him back but she was tough enough to do this.

  No regrets, Annie, she thought. You did what you thought was right going to his apartment and it turns out you messed up bad. So you lie in your tub for a while and hope he didn't hurt you too badly inside. And then go on with your life.

  Like he never fucking existed.

  You warn people that he's bad news if you can but you d
on't go into particulars. You warn Denise.

  If you see him, he's invisible.

  She went up the stairs to her empty room and sat on the bed and permitted herself to cry.

  Boston, Massachusetts

  March 1978

  Lydia smoothed the skin tight across the old man's withered arm and neatly found the vein on the first try. She released the ligature and drew the blood and then withdrew the needle.

  Beside her, Gloria Leonard, RN, nodded approval. The clinicals called Leonard "Pressure Cuff" behind her back, which had less to do with mercury sphygmomanometers than with the way she made them sweat. A nod from her was heaven.

  "Nothing to it, right?" Lydia smiled at the man.

  "Nah." The old man smiled back. You could tell the man liked pretty girls even if all they were doing was poking him with needles and stuffing thermometers under his tongue and waking him at five in the morning to hand him medication and change his sheets.

  She patted his mottled hand. "I'll see you again tomorrow, Mr. Fischer, all right?"

  "Oh yeah? You goin' off now?"

  "Yep."

  He glanced at Nurse Leonard, then at her. "You sure she's keepin' you busy enough?"

  Lydia laughed. "Oh, I'm pretty sure. Yes."

  In fact between her study load and the hours spent here at the hospital with her preceptor Lydia was running herself ragged. It was a happy sort of ragged though. She knew that her work was ranging from good to really excellent and that Leonard, her supervisor and teacher, appreciated that fact.

  Finally. Something she was honestly good at.

  She took the stethoscope and blood pressure gauge off the bed. She smoothed his sheets.

  "You have a good night now," she said. "Is your wife coming back later?"

  "Oh, sure. She'll be in."

  "Well, say hi for me and tell her I'll bring her those clothes tomorrow."

  "Will do."

  They walked back to the nurse's station. She began the process of checking out, going through the paperwork. "Clothes?" Nurse Leonard said.

  "Mrs. Fischer's temple has a used-clothes drive. I've got some old sweaters, blouses."

  "Ah."

  "That's all right, isn't it?"

  "Sure. Got some myself. I'll bring them around."

  She said good night and pulled on her sweater and headed for the elevator.

  It hadn't been too bad today, actually. The ward she was working was mostly old people—heart, mostly—and during her shift the closest they'd had to a crisis was the remarkable efficacy of Mrs. Bragonier's stool softener, the result of which was a truly massive bowel movement and screams of outrage from her room.

  It was time to go home. Grab some supper and then hit the books. But first ...

  There was a doctor she kind of liked working the emergency room. An intern. And she thought the attraction might be mutual. His name was Kelly. Jim Kelly. Blond and slim and, she thought, very bright.

  She liked his hands.

  The hands looked very gentle. Gentle was important to her.

  She took the elevator down to one.

  She walked the corridor past the treatment rooms and gazed into each of the rooms but he wasn't there. Marie Khurana was at the nurse's station.

  "Seen Kelly?"

  "You just missed him. He went off at five."

  "Oh."

  Marie grinned. "Is this a kind of a thing you've got here, Liddy?"

  "You mean a thing like you and Daniels, Marie?"

  "Hey. You're not supposed to know about that."

  "Know about what?"

  She laughed and walked away.

  She passed Admitting and the row of patients waiting to see a doctor. She gave them a once-over.

  Nothing really desperate for a change. No gunshot wounds. No stabbings. A young, good-looking guy holding a badly swollen hand. He looked vaguely familiar, but she couldn't place him. Probably broke a bone or two judging by the color and the swelling. She walked on past him out the door.

  Arthur Danse watched her and thought she had a very good ass and that he had seen her somewhere. She was attractive. Too bad about the hand. It prevented him from following her, giving her some line, buying her a drink or something.

  But the hand was priority.

  He'd broken it against his own bedroom wall when he'd learned that they were not going to give him the scholarship for the Masters program. Now he'd have to find the money somewhere. Beg it. Borrow it. Steal it.

  He'd figure something.

  Meanwhile the hand hurt like a bitch.

  He'd have to try to control that shit.

  One of these days a guy's temper could get him into some real trouble.

  Four

  Separate Lives

  Cambridge, Massachusetts April 1982

  "It's just work, Jim. What in god's name is wrong with my wanting to work?"

  "We've been through this."

  "My little sister Barbara works and she's just a sophomore in college!"

  "Barb needs the money. We don't."

  "But it's not about money."

  "My practice is fine, Lyd. You know that. Hell, I'm turning people away. We don't need it."

  He wasn't hearing her. It was happening more and more these days—happening on many subjects but on two subjects in particular. Her getting back into nursing was one. The other was having children. And Lydia thought that Jim's patients weren't the only people he was turning away these days.

  But she thought there was nothing to do but try again. She couldn't go on like this.

  At least here in the restaurant he couldn't just walk away from her into the next room and turn on the TV or go to bed. They couldn't get into one of their shouting matches either.

  "Jim, I'm bored to death here. Do you understand that? I'm twenty-seven years old. And you don't want children."

  "Yet."

  "... yet, and you don't want me working. So what's left? We have an apartment, Jim. A big, beautiful apartment, but that's all it is—an apartment! I clean it. Fine. It doesn't take much. I pick up the groceries and do the laundry and then what? Do you know how much time there is between breakfast and dinner?"

  "You have aerobics classes. You have the gym."

  "Oh, for chrissakes, Jim. That's not a life."

  "You have a life. You have friends."

  "I have acquaintances. Casual friends. Mostly the wives of your friends. And even if I were close to them, that's no life either."

  The waiter brought coffee and her slice of pecan pie. She was going to have to move this faster.

  Jim looked disgusted with her. She'd seen the look before.

  "Friends isn't a life," he said. "Having a good home and a husband isn't a life. What the hell is it you want, Lyd?"

  "You know what I want!"

  "I don't want you working."

  "Because it's not going to fly over at the Club? That's no good reason."

  "The Club has nothing to do with it."

  "Of course it does. Be honest, for godsakes. None of their wives work. If I work, then you figure that you lose face. But you keep forgetting—their wives all have kids to raise."

  "That again."

  "Look, there's only one other reason I can think of. And that I like even less."

  He looked at her. She took a deep breath.

  "That you need to have total control over the purse strings. Control over me."

  "That's bullshit."

  "Is it? I hope so. I honestly do. But it's got to be one thing or the other. Or both. This business of 'we don't need to' just doesn't make the slightest bit of sense. I'm talking about me having a full life here, something in my life that's really mine. Not about what we need or don't need. I want kids or I want work."

  "You're giving me some sort of ultimatum now, is that it?"

  "Call it whatever you want. All I know is I just can't do this anymore."

  She paused and then told him what, for her, was the simple but deepest truth of the matter.
>
  "It isn't fair."

  He looked at her for a moment over the coffee cup, then slammed it down. Lydia jumped. Coffee filled the dish.

  "Damn you!"

  He pushed up from the table and walked away. She turned and saw him hand his credit card to the waiter. The waiter moved fast to oblige him.

  He was leaving her sitting there.

  Just like that.

  She guessed she was wrong. She guessed that there was always another room for him to hide in even if the room was Harvard Square.

  That's that, she thought. For three long years she'd tried. At first to understand him. Then to cope with him. And then finally to survive him—to somehow exhume her own life from the empty crypt of her empty days.

  They had a Picasso drawing, small but authentic.

  They had nutske and a Steinway and two-hundred-year-old Japanese art.

  Jim would succeed further. Jim was just getting started.

  It didn't matter.

  She found that, unsurprisingly, the women's group hadn't really helped her at all in one area. Despite what she knew to be true—that this was his fault, not hers—she felt she'd fucked up again.

  That she'd asked too much, given back too little. For all the talk, when it came right down to it what she knew and what she felt were still two different things.

  She finished the coffee and pecan pie at her own deliberate pace. It was a matter of pride. Then she walked past the waiter out the door and smiled at him and hailed a cab for home.

  He wasn't there. That didn't surprise her either.

  What there was was a note.

  You want a divorce, get it.

  She felt a tingling down her spine.

  This was just too damn easy.

  Wait a minute.

  She knew him. Something else was going on.

  She went to their bedroom. Searched through his bureau, through the closet. It wasn't long before she found it, a note off some other doctor's prescription pad, the doctor's name unfamiliar, written in a woman's hand and tucked into the side pocket of his navy blue jacket.

  The note had a little round happy face at the bottom and said 2:30 Wednesday at the Copley Sheraton, Rm. 2208. Right after your meeting. Today was Friday so that meant three days ago. Yes, he'd worn the navy blue that morning. She was sure of it. She wondered how often he'd been this careless or if lately it had been getting so that he wanted her to know.