What was the man doing? Taking pictures of her with his cell phone? As she lay sprawled and helpless? Tried to shield herself with her arms. Naked arms, naked torso. Breasts, belly. Seeing the contempt in the face that should have been a kindly face, the blood-darkened rage. Quivering jowls. She was trying to hide, as a child might hide, curled up, knees to her chest. She hoped he would not strangle her in this bed and pull the cover over her. She hoped he would not leave her for dead. Drag her into the bathroom, her lifeless body hauled into the bathtub, an old, heavy porcelain bathtub of another era, as large as an Egyptian sarcophagus.

Those many years, the rumors you hear. Girls, women, raped, strangled, beaten to death, left for dead in their own vomit, excrement. The kindest of these (you might tell yourself) was the body never recovered. For then the case was still open. A possibility that the victim is still alive.

“Evidence. My naïve son needs to know the kind of slut he’s gotten involved with.”

The voice was slurred, elated. The voice went on to inform Juliana that he had a plane to catch, six p.m. that evening. He had no intention of taking “the slut” on a “shopping spree.” He was going to take a shower, Kechel said, to wash the smell of her off his skin, and when he came out of the bathroom, he wanted her gone.

Throwing her clothes at her. The face bloated with gloating, fury.

Juliana pulled a sheet over her stricken body. It was what you did—cover a body. Her reactions were slow, as if underwater. She’d been thinking at first that Kechel was joking, for his manner was often jocular, not serious; yet he did not seem to be joking now.

“Get dressed. Get out of here. Get out of my son’s life. If you try to see him again, I will show him this evidence, what you are …”

He was laughing at her without mirth. He was triumphant, gloating. She was stunned, she’d so miscalculated. The shame of it …

He left her, she could hear the shower in the bathroom. Still, Juliana wasn’t certain what had happened. Was Norman Kechel joking? He’d seemed so smitten with her.

Stricken with pain. Shame. She was whispering to herself—It will be all right. It will be all right. He didn’t hurt you, you are alive.

Her fingers fumbled to dress herself. The clean, chic, attractive clothes on the sullied, smelly body.

No one to observe how she managed to button her jacket, pushing pearl buttons through tight, embroidered buttonholes.

The room swirled about her. She struggled to remain on her feet. He must have put something in her drink—a sleeping pill, possibly. How naïve she was to have accepted that drink from him—how vain she’d been to think that her will was stronger than the man’s.