The second sip was easier. Her throat loosened and the little muscle at the side of her neck quit jumping. She sat down on the edge of the bed and put the bottle on the floor, in easy reach.

Erika Frohmann’s light steps passed the door. Kate got up, frowning, and turned her own key in the lock. Then she came back to bed and poured another drink.

CHAPTER 2

The world is full of unhappy people. Kate's throat ached to think of them. People who lie in bed at night, fretting about their bills and adding up the hopeless totals. Wives and husbands cheating on each other, meeting at the supper table with their hearts full of guilt. People screaming in hospital beds. People who can't love because their hearts are dried up like last year's seedpods—all the empty women in rented rooms with their hearts running over with love, and nobody to give it to. There are the insane in their own fantasy world, shut away from what they can't endure. And the damned in prison, the hurters of others who can never wash the blood off their hands or wipe from their tormented minds the knowledge of what they have done.

Paul, my lost brother.

Don't think about Paul. Think about what you're going to do. Another employment agency? Another job? Another total failure?

Anxiety neurosis. Dr. Liebermann had explained it to her, leaning over his cluttered desk, dropping cigar ashes down his vest. You cannot accept responsibility. But my good girl, this is an illness like any other, with recognizable symptoms. It can be , cured. We start the cure by finding out what you are hiding from yourself.

She owed Dr. Liebermann a hundred and forty dollars. Also an apology, she admitted grudgingly. Going up to his office the last time, with her stomach in a hard knot the way it always was before an analytic hour, the thought had come: but you don't have to go on with this nonsense. And she had stepped out of the elevator at the floor below his and taken the next one down. As simple as that.

Oh, very simple. She could see herself going up to an office manager and explaining. I can't work any more because I'm nuts. Oh, great.

She would never go to sleep. And if she did, the nightmares would come back.

Do you sleep, Paul? Do you still have bad dreams the way you used to when we were little, and you'd get in my bed and cuddle up close because the black stallion was chasing you and you couldn't run? Your feet are fastened to the ground now, sure enough. The black stallion has caught up with you now. And who comes to comfort you when you scream out in your sleep?

Kate stood up, stiffly. She looked around the room. The empty coffee cups that she and Erika Frohmann had used stood on the dresser. She carried them across the hall to the bathroom. But the door was locked and there was the sound of water running and the smell of cheap bath salts. Some day I'll have a bathroom of my own, she thought. And smiled, not pleasantly. There wasn't going to be any some day.