LITMIR.BIZ

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must have felt pretty good.

      She looked back at me and smiled slowly, a half-wistful, half-frightened smile. Her dark hair fell in a tangle around her face. The pale skin had smudge spots here and there, on her forehead, on one cheek, on her narrow chin.

      “I feel dirty all over,” she said.

      “Freight trains are dirty,” I said. “I’m sorry I don’t have any soap.”

      She smiled a little more.

      “Anyway, we have plenty of water,” she said.

      Before I could catch her whole meaning, she had taken the hem of her wrinkled, flimsy dress and pulled it up over her head. She freed her arms from it and tossed the dress back onto the grass. She seemed to have no sense of shame or embarrassment as she stood there naked at the edge of the water. But she wasn’t giving an exhibition either. It all happened like a completely natural thing.

      Why not? I thought. She wants to go into the water. She doesn’t want to get the dress wet again. She takes it off.

      She waded into the river and I watched the water rise slowly around her, traveling up her thin calves, hiding her knees, her slender thighs, her hips that seemed wider than they should have been to fit her near-skinny figure. Finally she turned to look at me. The water came just to the under curves of her breasts. They seemed to float in front of her.

      She dipped her arms into the water and threw some of it up into her face. She bent her head, wet her hair and scrubbed at it with her hands. When she straightened again she was beckoning to me with both hands.

      “It feels good,” she called. “You ought to try it.”

      I could see that it felt good. I could use a little scrubbing myself. I was getting anxious to push on to a town, find a liquor store and maybe a new job. But I’d have a better chance at the job if I washed off some of the road dirt first.

      I took off my shoes and socks, coat and shirt and pants. I hesitated. Then I laughed. The old inhibitions die hard, I thought. She didn’t have any. Why should I? I found myself wondering where she’d lost them. I went ahead and stripped down to the skin and splashed into the water.

      It did feel good. I hadn’t had a good swim for a long time. I struck out for the opposite bank, taking it easy and slow and I felt good when I got there. But the current had carried me downstream a few yards and it was hard work bucking it to get back to her. I came up, sputtering and coughing, in front of her. Her eyes were wide and awestruck.

      “You can swim,” she said.

      “Millions of people can swim.”

      “Not me,” she said. “They’d never let me.”

      “Who wouldn’t?”

      “They,” she said and looked away.

      I scrubbed myself as well as I could, wishing I had some soap. The river water was none too clean, but it was all right if I didn’t stir it up too much.

      I guided her over the slippery mud of the bank and we picked up our clothes and walked back among the trees. We found a clearing where enough sun came through to dry us and the grass was clean and dry. She lay down on the grass, on her back, her arms flung out, her eyes closed against the sun. Lying there, relaxed, her skin not so taut over her bones, she looked less skinny, more like a woman, curving and graceful. The sun or the exertion, or both, had faintly reddened her cheeks and there was some pink now to soften the stark whiteness of her face.

      I stretched out beside her and looked at the patches of blue sky that showed among the leaves overhead. I felt relaxed and comfortable, no fluttering in the stomach, no shaking, no hollowness of hunger-thirst. It might have been a good sign, but I knew better than to believe it. You couldn’t get over it that way. You could relax once in a while, for a little while, and then the memories came crawling back. You had always deliberately drowned the memories and as long as you lived in the foggy, half-real world, under the anesthesia of drink, they would remain submerged. But when you came out of it, as your mind cleared, the memories rose to the surface, slowly at first, dull and formless, and then faster and faster and sharper and took full possession, stabbing at you, twisting in your head, your chest, your stomach. It all came back, the old pain, the hates, the fears. Every casual glance from a stranger was hostile, threatening. Every suggestion became a persecution. You got nailed to a cross a hundred times every hour. And so you reached for the glass and began to drown them again, the hateful, twisting memories out of the dark and dingy past.

      I knew it would happen again, as always, even here in a sunlit grove by a quiet river, without problems, without hunger. A few minutes of peace, of warmth and contentment, and then I would begin to go taut again, to thrash about in my mind, struggling against awareness, dodging the pain, aching again for the anesthetic, the liquid fire with the horrible taste that brought quick and easy relief.

      The girl spoke, her quiet voice a cymbal crash out of silence.

      “Thank you for helping me,” she said.

      “It’s all right,” I said.

      After a moment she said, more softly than before, “Do you want me now?”

      She asked it flatly, without emotion or even expression. Each word had exactly the same tone and timber as every other.

      I raised myself on one elbow and looked at her. The pattern of the leaves above us made half-toned lights and shadows over her white body. She looked at me, her dark eyes as flat and expressionless as her voice. When I looked into her eyes she turned her head away. When I didn’t move to her, she looked back at me.

      “How old are you?” I asked.

      She looked startled, as if she hadn’t thought about it for a long time.

      “Twenty-one,” she said.

      I put my hand on her, on her breast. Her skin was cool and still damp from the river. There was no response in it to my touch. She lay still, not looking at me, waiting. My hand had asked a question and she had made no answer. None whatever, of fear, of passion, of pleasure or pain. I removed my hand and lay back on the ground.

      “No,” I said. “I haven’t done anything for you. Anyway, that’s not something you can earn.”

      It was her turn to raise up and look at me. When I met her gaze there was something new in it, a kind of shy curiosity. She moved her arm up and partially concealed her breasts.

      “What’s your name?” I said.

      She hesitated.

      “They called me Dolores.”

      That was the second time she had mentioned some mysterious people known as “they.”

      “The big guy that I hit with the rock,” I said. “Was he one of—them?”

      She nodded slightly.

      “There were three of them. He was her husband—Madeleine’s. Then there was another girl. Her name was Mitzi.”

      “And they called you Dolores?”

      “Yes.”

      “But Dolores isn’t your real name?”

      Again she hesitated.

      “No.”

      “All right. You don’t have to tell me your real name.”

      Her voice was a bare whisper when she said, “My real name is Constance—Constance Jordan.”

      It didn’t mean anything to me.

      “All right, Connie,” I said. “My name is Chris.”

      Her eyes had that flat look again. Her arm fell away from her breasts.

      “You don’t believe me,” she said.

      “Why shouldn’t I believe you?” I said. “What’s so special about the name Constance Jordan?”

      She

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