young man with the scar on his chest, Slake-holding her down while, one at a time, they assaulted her. The thought nauseated him, he felt dizzy. He wondered what he would feel the next time they tried to make love. Then anger replaced nausea, and he tried to think how, where, he could get a gun. “Take it easy. It’s okay. Tell me what happened.”
She nodded. “I’m probably…” she said, trying to control the convulsive sobs, “dis… silly. It wasn’t… that bad.”
“What did they do?”
She looked at him and realized what he was thinking.
She smiled weakly. “They didn’t rape me.”
Sanders felt relief, but almost simultaneously he sensed regret at losing the supreme cause for revenge. He still wanted to kill them. “What was it, then?”
“What time is it?” she asked.
“Twelve-fifteen.”
“At eleven I went to bed. I locked the door and put the chain on it. I must have gone right to sleep. I don’t know how long I was asleep, but I heard a knock on the door. I thought it was you. I called your name, but a voice said: No, you’d been hurt in a motorbike accident, said he was a policeman sent to take me to the hospital. I opened the door. There were three of them.”
“Did you recognize anybody?”
“All of them. They were all at Cloche’s the other day. One used to be our waiter here, the one with the big scar.”
“Slake,” Sanders said.
“He was the one who pushed me. He put his hand right here”—she cupped her hand over her mouth—“and shoved me back on the bed. He said if I made a sound, he’d cut my throat. I think he would have.”
“I do, too.”
“He kept his hand on my throat and asked if we were going to co-operate. I told him… I suppose I was a little blunt…”
“What?”
“But I was so scared, and I was sure I was going to be raped no matter what. So I said, “Go fuck yourself.” All he did was laugh and say in that way they have, “You be careful, missy, or it be you get fucked.” Then he asked me again what we were going to do, and I said something like, you can tell Cloche we wouldn’t do what he wants for
“Maybe you should have lied.”
“I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction.”
“So then?”
“One of them said, “Let’s do her.” Then I knew
I was going to be raped.” She shuddered, and he held her shoulders tighter. was “Do her.” God, what a horrible word. It’s like what they used to say: “Let’s waste him.” Slake held my throat with one hand and yanked up my nightgown with the other.
He held me so tight I couldn’t look down.
All I could see was the ceiling. I felt a pair of hands pulling off my underpants.” She stopped and began to cry. In a corner, Sanders saw her pants. The fabric was wrapped around the elastic; they had been peeled off her hips and thighs.
“I thought you said they didn’t…”
She put a hand on his knee and shook her head, sniffling and swallowing. “They didn’t. One of them held my legs and spread them apart. I’ve never felt anything like that in my life… helpless, open. It was awful.”
“But they didn’t hurt you?”
“No. The next thing I felt was like a finger running all over me… down there…
from my belly button on down. But it wasn’t a finger. It was softer, kind of hairy. I still don’t know what it was. A brush, I guess.”
“A brush?”
“Look.” Gail lifted her nightgown above her hips and lay back on the bed.
Sanders felt panicked and had to force himself to look.
He remembered a time, years before, when a doctor friend had invited him to watch an appendectomy.
Sanders had worn a surgical mask, and the patient, a teen-age girl, had assumed he was the doctor. Lying there, with her privates exposed and shaven, she had begged him to make the scar as small as possible, so it wouldn’t show above her bikini.
Sanders found himself fascinated, mildly (and ashamedly) excited, and, finally, when the first incision was made, repulsed.
Gail noticed his discomfort, and she said, “It’s okay. Look.”
There were six red smears on her groin, rough lines running crosshatched-from pubis to navel, hip to hip, pubis to each hip, and hip to navel. The design, such as it was, looked like a kite.
“What is it?” Sanders asked. “Paint?”
“No. I think it’s blood.”
“Not yours.”
“No. Animal blood of some land.”
“How do you know?”
“I tasted it. It tastes salty, like blood.”
She sat up and lowered her nightgown.
“Did they say anything?”
“Nothing. Neither did I. I was so scared… as long as they weren’t hurting me, I didn’t dare say anything. The whole thing took less than a minute. Then Slake said, “Now maybe you think again.” He let me go, but I didn’t move.
Then one of the others put that thing on my stomach.”
She pointed to the shoe box. “He said it was a present from Cloche.”
Sanders leaned over and unfolded the tissue paper in the shoe box. “Oh, Christ,” he said.
“I don’t ever want to see it again.” Gail stood and walked to the bathroom.
Sanders put the shoe box on his lap and removed the doll. It was crude-linen wrapped around straw-but its meaning was clear: the hair on the doll’s head was human, exactly the color of Gail’s. Her appendectomy scar was stitched to the right of the silver sequin that represented the navel. And there were six red streaks on the doll’s groin, in the same pattern the men had painted on Gail. But the streaks on the doll had been slashed with a knife, and from them tufts of red and blue cotton hung grotesquely down the legs.
Sanders stared. His fingers felt cold; his mouth was dry and cottony. He had never known a fear like this.
Threats to himself he thought he could handle, but this was beyond his control-which, he was sure, was what Cloche had in mind. He heard water running in the bathroom.
“It’s blood,” Gail called. “It comes off easily.”
“Do you think they really would…” Sanders started to ask.
“What?”
“Nothing.” Sanders pitched the doll across the room.
He went to the telephone and, when the hotel operator answered, said, “Get me Pan American, please.”
Gail came out of the bathroom. Her hair was combed, and she held a glass of whiskey in her hand. “This should help,” she said. “It’s…” She stopped when she saw Sanders on the phone.
“Oh, for…” Sanders said into the phone.
“Okay, thanks.” He hung up.
“What were you doing?”
“Trying to get us the hell out of here. The airlines don’t open until nine in the morning.”
“You mean home?”
“Damn right.”
