I went into the bathroom and urinated and tried not to read the nasty graffiti. Then I washed my hands with soap and water and looked up into the mirror. A terrified Rhoda looked out at me. An initiate of some pagan blood cult, kidnapped, plundered, pressed into service, recruited from my dreams into the rank and file of White Trashdom, Inc. I looked into the cheap wavy mirror lit by a yellow electric light bulb festooned with dead insects and knew that I was lost. I was in some great swamp or marsh, walking without direction. A wide marshland stretching out as far as I could see. In one direction only, toward the morning sun, it looked as though there might be slivers of land, islands I could step upon. If only I could reach them.

I looked at myself without expression. I was not a part of this bathroom or this store or this goddamn cockfight. I could leave anytime I wanted to. I breathed in the terrible odors of toilet cleaner and rusted sink and unwashed board floors, of a thousand drunken urinations and the skull and crossbones on the label of the bottle of lye sitting on the floor. I turned the rusted handle on the door, knowing past all biology that I was touching something which all the Roget and Gallet’s sandalwood soap in my mother’s linen closet would not erase.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said, coming out the door. “Come on, Charles William. Take me home.”

“I’m coming.” He was holding the punchboard. “You want one more punch? I’m paying.”

“No, goddammit, I want to get out of here.” I grabbed him by the arm and dragged him behind me out the door and walked over to the car and got into my side and scrunched down into the seat. “Start driving,” I said. “Get me out of here.”

We were ten miles down the road before either of us spoke. “You wanted to go,” he said. “You wanted to go with me.”

“You didn’t tell me about the capes. I didn’t know they were going to be wearing capes.”

“I didn’t know it either. For God’s sake, Dee. Don’t be mad at me.”