Dirk said nothing and walked off toward his offices, his head tilted up and to the right, as though afraid his brains would pour out. She sat at her desk, trembling with anger, and when that began to subside, it was replaced with fear. She had never understood Dirk’s type of passion, which was not about lust. Maybe it’s about power, she thought. Something went by the window, and she turned her head and saw a Lincoln fly toward the street. The blood in the carpet came up with cold water and tissue. When she went up front to check with the young teller, the woman told her with a bland face that business was slow, that nothing unusual had happened.

The next day Colette spotted an envelope on her desk. She held it a long time before carefully slitting it open and finding that she had been fired. As though on cue, the telephone rang, and Dirk told her in a flat voice that she’d better not waste her time trying to get a job at another financial institution in California. She could, of course, expect no recommendations.

She went to see the bank president and told him what her boss had done to her. He informed her that such behavior was irrelevant. Dirk was being promoted, and two people with similar training were being brought in to replace him, and her as well. No, there was no other position for her. No, only Dirk would be the proper person to write her a recommendation. She should count herself lucky that he hadn’t filed charges for aggravated assault. The president was a blocky, cold man with white hair, obviously once blond. In his eye was a dying glimmer of something like Dirk’s want for her.

She went to her desk for the last time, biting the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood. All the good work she’d done for this bank counted for nothing, and she was being put out like a janitor caught drinking on the job. The thought of suing crossed her mind, but what would she win? And what if Dirk decided to sue for bodily injury? She thought about how he had touched her; she thought about what she had lost, and she knew without a doubt that she would hit the bastard again.

She cleaned out her desk and carried two large boxes to the Mercedes, discovering that they wouldn’t fit in the trunk. She tied the lid down with a piece of twine and stepped back to look at the car. When she started it, it jittered and snarled. She looked around at the expensive leather, then drove straight to the dealership and gave her car back, taking for her equity a five-year-old yellow Caprice sitting at the rear of the dealership’s lot. She drove home trying not to cry, and no one looked at her car.

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