Dale smiled. It was quick. He suppressed it almost immediately and resumed his look of fear and confusion. But Sarah saw it. He had smiled. Before she could think, question herself, talk herself out of it, she drew her hand back and slapped him. She turned her shoulders into the blow, giving it her all. He fell against the doorjamb and a big, angry red welt in the shape of four fingers rose on his left cheek. The expression on his face was one of stunned outrage but then she saw it again, that quick smile. Sarah balled up her fist and pulled back and Josh grabbed her, dragged her off the steps and into the street.
“I’ll fucking kill you! Do you hear me, you fucking pervert! I’ll kill you!”
Up and down the block, doors and windows opened as the few remaining curious neighbors looked out to see what was going on. Sarah knew she ought to feel embarrassed but she didn’t. She felt great!
“Why did you hit me? You’re crazy! I’m calling the cops! You’re crazy!”
But for the first time in days she didn’t feel crazy. She felt strong again. She felt in control again. And even if she was imagining everything else, she had not imagined that smile. She was certain about that.
She turned and shook free of Josh, then walked into the house, stomping her feet with her hands balled into tight fists. Josh walked in right behind her.
“I can’t believe you slapped him.”
“He fucking smiled at me. That slimy, nasty little bastard was grinning at me.”
“I think we need to get you someone to talk to.”
“What?”
“Maybe…I don’t know…Maybe you need some help.”
There it was, out in the open. He thought she was crazy.
“Do you think maybe we should at least wait for the lab results?”
“That policewoman told me they found no physical signs of rape.”
“She told you?”
“I’m your husband. I was concerned.”
“Did she tell you that it could have looked that way because he used lubrication and had a small dick? Or because the drugs relaxed my damned vaginal muscles?”
“Well, drugs or lubricant would show up in the lab results.”
“That’s why maybe you should wait before you try shipping me off to the fucking loony bin! Wait to see if maybe I’m fucking right!”
Josh was keeping his distance. He appeared to be afraid that she would attack him too the way she had attacked the neighbor. He held his hands out palms up as if he were trying to negotiate with a gunman. Sarah really did want to hit him. Josh knew her well.
“But what if nothing happened? You just slapped that guy. He could press charges. You were about to beat the hell out of him. Can you seriously imagine that little guy attacking anybody?”
“Maybe that’s why he uses the drugs? So we can’t fight him.”
“We don’t know that he uses anything! We don’t know that anything happened! This could all be in your head. You could have sleepwalked and shot off that gun and changed the sheets and scrubbed the carpet and then crawled right back into bed and went back to sleep. That sounds a whole fucking lot more likely than some sheepish little guy who lives across the street has been breaking in at night and raping and killing you but you can’t remember it and, did I forget to mention, you aren’t fucking dead!”
Sarah was stunned. Now it was all out in the open. Everything she had felt before, all the power and confidence, was now gone. Now, she felt crazy again.
“Wow. I-I really didn’t know you felt that way.”
Josh deflated, collapsing on the couch.
“Look, I’m sorry. I just don’t know what to think. This is just so fucking confusing and scary as hell…either way. I mean, if this guy has been drugging both of us and then breaking in and raping you, that’s fucking terrifying. And if you’re, you know, losing it, that’s almost worst. You-you’re my rock. You’re supposed to keep
There was a hitch in Josh’s voice. When he looked up at her there were tears in his eyes. It broke Sarah’s heart. She felt like she had let him down, as if she had failed him in some way.
Sarah hadn’t thought much about how this must have been impacting Josh. She knew that Josh was not built for stress or surprises. He was a middle-of-the-road business-as-usual type of guy and this was as far from that as could be. This was the other side of the moon.
A silence fell between them, heavy and uncomfortable. Sarah walked over and plopped down beside Josh. She leaned over and put her head in his lap.
“I’m not crazy, Josh. But I can’t expect you to believe that. I mean, crazy people don’t know they’re crazy right? If I’m sleepwalking or something, I guess I wouldn’t really know. Let’s just get away for a few days. It might make things a little clearer We could both probably use a little break from all this.”
Once again, in the midst of her own trauma, it was her taking care of Josh. Sarah didn’t mind. It felt normal. She hated that she had been leaning on Josh so much lately.
“Let’s just grab a few things and go. We’ll treat it like a honeymoon.”
Josh nodded and slowly rose from the couch. He still looked shaken, scared, uncertain. Sarah cupped his face in her hands and forced him to look her in the eyes.
“I’m not crazy, Josh. Don’t worry. I’m not crazy.”
Josh smiled weakly and hugged her. She could tell that he was still not certain. Neither was she. She would have to change that.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Once she had settled into the hotel room, the first thing Sarah did was plug in her laptop and get online. She looked up The Spy Store and began scouring through their surveillance equipment. Most of it was prohibitively expensive. She settled on the nanny-cam teddy bear. Both attacks had taken place in her bedroom. If she could catch it on film, then she could prove to Josh and herself that she wasn’t crazy. Then she’d have that fucker arrested and her life would go back to normal…after a few years of therapy.
Sarah wrote down the model number and the address to the store. Then she opened her documents and began working on her dissertation. She had no desire to surf through porn sites. She’d already seen enough violent and deviant sex acts to support her theory that human sexuality on a whole was growing more nihilistic as overpopulation increased. She didn’t need to see any more pictures of women being brutally fist-fucked and gang- raped. Her sex drive had already crashed and burned. She wasn’t certain she’d ever have the desire for sex again. That alone made her want to murder Dale.
Sarah took a digital voice recorder out of her overnight bag and slipped it under her pillow. If anything happened tonight, she would at least have a recording of it. She began to write about the increased popularity of what she called “nonreproductive sex” such as sadomasochism, anal and oral sex, the use of sex toys, and ejaculation outside the vagina, on the face, breast, buttocks, etc., following the start of the AIDS epidemic.
Human sexuality had been a major focus of her study ever since she was an undergraduate. She had grown up in a very religious household where sexuality was never discussed. Sexually explicit books, movies, or TV shows were not allowed in her home when she was young. Even music with explicit lyrics was banned. She had first learned about sex from her friends in high school. It was a wonder she hadn’t gotten pregnant at fifteen like most of them had.
In college she’d finally had the freedom to explore her sexuality and divide the facts from the fiction. She had become fascinated with both the lore and the science of sexuality and had switched her major from psychology to social anthropology. She was hoping to someday write a groundbreaking book that would shed new light on human sexuality and show the necessary social function of so-called deviancy. She believed that the evolution of sexuality followed a Darwinian trajectory where acts like sexual violence would have long been eliminated from the human gene pool if they did not serve some purpose. In this case, she theorized, that the purpose was to harness sexual energy into nonreproductive activities that would not further contribute to overpopulation or exposure to disease.
Of course, by that logic, she should have found greater sexual diversity in the more overpopulated cities and countries than her research had so far uncovered. There should, in fact, have been an exponential increase in sexual
