Recalling now, though with difficulty, how he’d hurt her, making love to her. The excuse of—“making love.” His roughness, clumsiness. He’d even closed his hands around her throat, in play. Teasing. But serious. Oh certainly—he’d have enjoyed strangling her. All that talk of beautiful, gorgeous—just means that they resent you, would love to strangle you.

And as Kechel strangled her, he’d have rammed the hard, fat slug-thing against her faster and faster until it burst.

She loathed him. She would have to kill him. That way Gordon would never know. The shame of this, this humiliation, would be erased.

But killing the man, the physical bulk of the man, the weight, the will of the man—how could Juliana do this? She wasn’t prepared. She wasn’t strong enough. Even with a knife, a weapon—not strong enough.

On a bureau lay the man’s wallet, in plain sight. This was too obvious. It’s a stupid test. He knows I won’t dare take his money.

She took his money. Just larger bills, fifty-dollar bills, twenty-dollar bills. The smaller bills she left in the wallet, out of contempt. The several credit cards she rearranged in the wallet so that Kechel would assume they were missing. The large-denomination bills she folded into small, tight wads and placed in the pockets of his trousers, which were neatly draped across the back of a Queen Anne chair.

These wadded-up bills the man would discover in his pockets, though not immediately.

By then Juliana would be gone from the Commodore Hotel. Never again would she see Norman Kechel. Never would she see Gordon Kechel. Never again would she return to the red-neon Mon ey Bar, with its crude racist caricatures that she’d mistaken, in her ignorance, for innocent cartoons.

6.

Wild Goose Tavern. Where in the front window neon cascaded in emulation of a waterfall, bright blue, cloudy blue, dark blue advertising a Canadian beer.

Where, six years later, Juliana met Ned Spires.

Or, Ned Spires met Juliana.

Working as a paralegal, part-time. Telling herself it was good work, necessary work. As many hours of her (daytime) life devoted to the cause of social justice as she could manage.

Twenty-six years old. Life just beginning!

Twenty-six years old. Christ, how long has her life been …

Drinking vodka now. Savoring the many facets of vodka. Invisible, no-taste, low-calorie.

Juliana had gone through a (perverse) phrase of whiskey—apricot-colored, smooth-burning, potent. In the wake of the fiancé’s father, a trance of self-loathing.

Following that, a phase of rum and Diet Coke.

But best of all, vodka, seltzer, and lemon. Dreamy waterfall neon captured the taste, the tone. Like something glimpsed through swirling, frothy water.

On the grandiloquent old jukebox with flashing colors, Johnny Cash. Sexy-deep baritone voice of the dead.