The punch knocked the wind out of her, and she sagged against the car, clutching her stomach, her mouth open as she gasped for air. And the shrill voice of Nervous was sounding again, but she knew it was no use, and the sound stopped when the Driver snarled, “Shut that idiot up.”
She could do no more than stand, weakly, leaning against the car, trying for breath. When the purse was ripped out of her hands, she could do nothing to stop it. And when she heard the Driver say, “I think I’m going to teach this little bitch a lesson,” she could do nothing to protect herself or to get away.
One of the others — Glasses? — said, “What the hell, Danny, leave her alone. We got the money.”
“She wants a lesson,” insisted Danny. And he back-handed her across the side of the face.
She would have fallen, but he caught her and shoved her back against the side of the car again, and held her with one hand cruelly gripping her breast while he slapped her, openhanded, back and forth across the face. She cried out, finally having breath, and he switched at once, punching her twice, hard, in the stomach. As she doubled, he punched her twice more, on the point of each breast.
She screamed with the searing pain of it and fell to her knees. He slapped her — forehand, backhand, forehand, backhand — and dragged her to her feet once more, shoving her back against the car, and as he did so he kneed her, and ground the knuckles of his right hand into her side, just under the ribcage.
He wouldn’t let her fall. He held her with a clutching, twisting hand on her breast, and his other hand beat at her, face and breast and stomach and side, open-hand and closed fist.
The Blond and Glasses pulled him away from her finally, and she collapsed onto the dank, weed-choked ground, unable to move or make a sound, capable only of breathing and feeling the pain stabbing through her body from every place that he had hit.
After a moment, she heard the car start, and she was terrified that now he was going to drive over her, but the sound of the motor receded to silence, and she knew they had gone away.
She lay for half an hour unmoving, until the worst pain subsided, and then she struggled to a sitting position, and had to stop again, because movement brought the pain back, hard and tight, and she was afraid she would faint. And then she hoped she would faint.
But she didn’t faint, and after another while she managed to get to her feet. Behind her was the street that would lead her back to the downtown section. Ahead of her was the faint rustle of the river. To either side of her were the dark hulks of commercial buildings.
She knew she must look horrible, and with the lessening of the pain she could think about that. If she showed herself on the street looking like this, the police would pick her up right away. And even if she managed to avoid the police, she would never get through the hotel lobby.
Moving painfully, she made her way toward the sound of the river. There was a narrow, steep incline between two buildings which overhung the river’s edge, and old wooden pilings to lean against on the way down. The water was brackish and foul-smelling, filled with sewage and industrial waste, the filthy pollution of a river beside which industrial cities had been built. But it was water.
She knelt gingerly, and pushed her hands into the water. It was cold, and she waited, unmoving, letting the chill move up her arms to her torso, reviving her, restoring her, and then she lay prone and splashed the fouled water over her face, washing away the smudges and stains of her beating.
She almost went to sleep, and her head would have fallen forward and her face would have been underwater. She caught herself in time, and backed hastily away from the edge, terrified at the nearness of death.
She used her panties to towel her face and hands and arms, then threw the sodden garment into the water, and turned toward the street.
Midway, she found her purse, lying on the ground. She carried it out to the street, where a streetlight across the way gave her enough light to check its contents.
There was no money in it, but nothing else had been touched. Her hand mirror was there, and she inspected her face critically, seeing that the signs of the beating were still there. And her hair was a mass of tangled knots, damp and filthy.
She had a comb and lipstick and powder. She re-paired the damage as best she could, and when she was finished, she looked presentable enough, if she didn’t get too close to anybody. She smoothed and adjusted her clothing, rubbing out some of the stains, and started off for the hotel.
She was still weak. Every once in a while, she had to stop and lean against a building for a moment, to catch her breath and wait for the dizziness to go away. And when she came to the bottom of the State Street hill, she looked up at the hotel, so high above her, and she thought she would never be able to get up that long steep hill.
But she made it, finally, and entered the hotel lobby softly, circling away from the desk, where the night-clerk was busy with file cards, and getting to the elevator without being stopped.
The operator looked at her with surprise. “What happened to you?”
She, shook her head. “Nothing. Never mind.”
“Listen,” he said. “There’s cops in your room.”
She stared at him.
The weakness was coming in again, and she thought that this time she would faint for sure, but the operator was still talking, and what he said next drove the weakness away and left her pale and trembling, but only too conscious.
“Yep,” he said, nodding, chewing his cud, happy to be the news-bearer. “Some crazy queer shot him. Right between the eyes. Signed a confession and everything, and then jumped right out a window.” He shook his head, grinning. “Them coppers are sure mad,” he said. “It don’t look good when a prisoner manages to kill himself that way. Hey! Where you going?”
But she didn’t answer him, because she didn’t know.
She didn’t know until she was at the foot of State Street once more, and looking at the signs on a telephone pole. The top sign was shield-shaped, and said, “U.S. Route 9.” The bottom sign was rectangular and said, “NEW YORK,” with an arrow underneath.
New York. She nodded, and noticed she’d dropped the purse somewhere. She was empty-handed. Not that it mattered.
New York. She would be Joshua’s mistress.
She started walking in the direction the arrow indicated. A chill breeze snaked up under her skirt, and she was no longer wearing panties, but she didn’t notice. She just walked, and when false dawn was streaking the sky to her left, Albany was behind her.
Nine
Tires screeched and kicked gravel as the big car pulled off the road and squealed to a stop on the shoulder. The driver leaned across the seat, opened the door and stuck his head out.
“Want a lift?”
She ran to the car. In the back of her mind she heard her mother cautioning her not to accept rides with strange men. But then there had been many things that her mother had told her. It was no time to start listening to those things.
“Where you headed?”
“New York.”
“Hop in.”
She hopped in. The car was a new Buick and it was big. So was the driver. A shock of straw-colored hair topped his big boulder of a head. His hands were huge and they held the steering wheel as if it might fall apart unless he personally held it together. When she had closed the door, he let out the clutch and put the accelerator pedal on the floor. The car responded as though it was scared of him.
“Nice car you got.”
The man nodded, agreeing. “She’ll do a hundred easy,” he told her. “One-twenty if I push her a little. The mileage isn’t much, but if I wanted to worry about mileage I’d get myself a bicycle. I want a car that’ll move when I want her to move.”