57

It was just a little squeak, the sort that a tiny drop of oil would have remedied. But when Lida heard it, she knew that Riley had opened the outer door.

She slipped into the nearest stall and softly, steadily drew the bolt. She waited for the inner door to open. It did not.

“Christine?” he called from the dressing room beyond. Something tentative, uneasy about his voice.

Of course. Men, even murdering men, do not customarily violate the sanctuary of a women’s rest room.

But how long would his reticence last?

She could see him out there in her mind’s eye, flexing his hands in anticipation. Paul Riley, purple-faced and breathing hard, his rage multiplied in the row of mirrors that stood above the sinks.

“Christine?” His voice was bolder now.

She squatted on the tile floor, then slid beneath the side of the stall into the next toilet. She locked the door of this one, and slid again, to the third.

She kept on going, until she had reached the farthest stall. There were ten in all. And now, in the last, Lida climbed up on the toilet seat and crouched.

The inner door opened. She did not hear it close. He was standing in the doorway, she guessed, still uncertain.

“Christine?”

Duvivier and the guard stood just outside the entrance to the ladies’ room. From within, they could hear him calling.

The guard took the pad from his pocket and wrote: “I will call D.C. police.” And then he moved away, leaving Duvivier there alone.

“Come on, Christine.” Riley took a step forward.

Lida heard the door. Heard his breath. In the stark tile room, the sound was amplified, the effect was heightened. He was inside now. And what would she do?

“I know you slept around,” he said, “but that was okay. You know it was. But you weren’t sleeping with that faggot, Christine, were you?” Something was tearing at his words. Maybe laughter, maybe tears. Maybe both. “So what were you doing, Christine? What were you doing? Well, you lied to me. You lied. If you slept with him, that would have been okay, but no. I’ll tell you what you were doing. I’ll tell you.”

How long could Lida stay crouched in this position? She dared not stand, because her head would show above the row of stalls. Nor could she ease herself to the floor, because Riley was coming up the row, bending, she could tell, to look under each of the doors.

“You were letting him do it to you, rough you up. And I saw, I saw. You could lie, but I could see.” He was weeping now. “We had something good, you and me. Something that was all ours. But you let him, a lousy faggot, do it too. And you let him do your face, Christine. Your face! You never let me do your face.”

He was Lida guessed, at the fourth stall now. Whenever he stopped to look under one of the doors, he stopped talking. There was no other logic to the pauses. It was just that he could not talk and squat at the same time. Like a Polish joke, Lida thought. Inexplicably, she ached to laugh.

“And you let him do your nose. I thought you were saving your nose for me. Your nose.” He bawled like a baby. But he kept on coming up the row. “I watched you get out of his car. I saw what you let him do to you.”

The guard was back. He opened the outer door and went inside, holding it so that Duvivier could follow. They stood in the dressing room and listened.

The guard carried no gun, but he had drawn a mace. He was a small gray-haired man, withered like a cornstalk in the fall. He looked anything but threatening.

Duvivier would have groaned, except that Riley would have heard.

“You remember, Christine, don’t you? You remember what I did to you last time. That really hurt you, didn’t it? But this time will be even better.” Riley laughed.

The guard handed Duvivier the mace and pulled his pad out, scrawling. “He is not alone in there.” Just then the outer door opened.

Lida tried to stretch her hand out to brace herself. If she didn’t, she would fall, she was sure of it. And when she stretched her hand out, she realized, with astonishment, that her purse was still draped over her shoulder.

That was very stupid. Or very smart. She reached inside carefully, trying not to make any noise.

Okay, Riley, what will it be? The old ignition keys to the nostril? Why not? He liked noses, after all.

She felt for the keys, found them, and closed her fist around them. She had to be sure that they wouldn’t jingle.

But they did. They gave a tinny little rattle that he couldn’t help but hear.

Lida heard his footsteps coming toward her. They were heavy and sure. Riley had her now.

The seven-foot black man burst into the room where Duvivier and the guard waited. “Is that cocksucker still in here?” he asked.

Before they could answer, he had gone in after Riley.

“Well, hello there, whitey.”

Lida heard him and knew, instantly, who it was. Just beyond the door of the stall where she was hidden, she heard the scrape of Riley’s feet. He was turning.

Lida’s hand moved convulsively in her purse. What she found was the tube of spermicidal jelly. She took it out, made a cup with her left hand, and squeezed the tube with her right.

The only thing that she could hear now was the sound of the two men breathing. The sound of two men facing each other, squared off for a fight.

God damn it, Riley, she thought. You really are crazy.

“You know what I’m gonna make of you, white man? I’m gonna make you into scrapple. I’m gonna take your pig face and your pig guts and I’m gonna make you into scrapple.”

Lida lowered her feet to the floor, half-expecting someone to reach under the door, grab for her legs. But no one did. She stood and heard the joints of her knees and shoulders crack.

Riley took a shuffling step forward. The black man apparently hadn’t moved.

Lida drew the bolt, holding her left hand aloft. The thick, mucoid mass was heaped in her palm and ready. She opened the door and stood there, staring at the heaving back and shoulders of Paul Riley.

He turned his head, sensing her there. And she stepped to the side and slapped her hand upward and over his eyes. Riley screamed. His arms flailed, seeking her, but she pressed her hand hard, kneading with her fingers.

“Oh, come on,” Lida said, “it can’t hurt—it doesn’t burn when you put it there.” She narrowly dodged his grasp.

Riley staggered against the wall, his hands clapped over his eyes. He wiped frantically. He was still screaming when the black man got to him.

He probably couldn’t have seen the huge man standing before him. The immense black hand that opened, catching both his wrists. The same black hand, forcing Riley’s hands down and against Riley’s own groin. Pressing. And pressing.

Riley stopped screaming and began to sob.

“White man, why you want to hurt yourself this way?” Increasing the pressure against Riley’s groin. Until Riley’s body shrank against the wall, dropping to the floor.

Lida pressed her cheek against the cool tile wall and listened to the voices that shouted and rang around her. She felt weak—suddenly and utterly—as though someone had, with sleight of hand, yanked her skeleton out from beneath her skin. She shut her eyes.

And then Duvivier materialized beside her. “Ah,” he said, his voice jovial, light, admiring. “‘She neither swooned nor utterd cry.’”

Lida opened her eyes and slowly turned her gaze and then her head in his direction.

For a long moment he read her face, and then he shrugged and backed away, stepping into one of the stalls. “Tennyson,” he called over the crackle of paper. “And not as silly a poem as you think. For instance, there’s the line, ‘She must weep or she will die.’” He reappeared with several stacks of toilet tissue. He began stuffing them into this pockets as Lida watched. Then he spread his arms, walked toward her. “Do that, Lida.” He reached for her, gathered her in, held her. “Weep. Or swoon. Do whatever you like.”

Piece by piece, Lida took the tissue from his pockets. Until she had used it all.