"I took a bath," I said.
"You what?"
"I felt awful. I had to take a bath. I douched several times."
"Jesus!" the doctor said. "We couldn't get a specimen that'll do the police any good."
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"Combing your pubic hairs to see if we find any of his."
He came away with three or four.
"These look like yours."
"If you pulled them out, they're mine."
"I didn't mean to pull any. The loose ones are probably yours, too." He put them on a piece of waxy-looking paper, folded the paper over, and gave it to the nurse. "I'm sorry," he said, "but I'm going to pull one on purpose now, for comparison."
When he had plucked the hair and put it into a second piece of waxy paper, he said, "What about inside? Are you hurt?"
"It aches a bit, too."
"I'll take a look."
It was embarrassing.
"No evidence of trauma," he told the nurse, who wrote it down. To me he said, "Did you resist?"
"I didn't want him to do it."
"Did you resist, though?"
"I tried to get away but he grabbed me at the door. I tried to talk him out of it. And other things."
"What other things?"
I looked at the nurse, ready to write.
"Nothing," I said, pulling my feet from the stirrups and getting off the table.
"What are you doing?" asked the doctor.
"Dressing."
"Here," he said, giving me a card on which he penned something. "This is your case number. The pohce will need it."
In the car with Bill I said, "The doctor was just about your age. He was awful."
"I'm sorry," said Bill, putting his arm around me.
His arm felt mechanical, as if it didn't belong to him, just an arm he put there because he was supposed to.
"I don't think he found what he was looking for."
"What was he looking for?"
"Semen and pubic hair," I said. "Doesn't it disgust you?"
"What do you mean?" said Bill, taking his arm away.
"Doesn't it change your attitude?"
"About what?"
"About me?"
Bill was shrugging his shoulders, groping for words.
"It does, doesn't it?"
"It's like anything. You have to kind of absorb it, right?"
"I didn't do anything. It was done to me."
"I know."
"It wasn't as if I went to bed with someone else, don't you understand?"
Bill, his hands folded helplessly in his lap, seemed to find conversation impossible. He looked like I feel when stomach acids back up into my throat. Finally, he said, "Where do you want to go?"
"The police station on Wicker Avenue."
When we arrived. Bill accompanied me inside. I told the desk sergeant I wanted to see a police matron.
"What for?"
"I want to report a crime."
"What kind of crime?" asked the desk sergeant.
"Rape." Does one ever get used to the word when it's about yourself?
"One flight up, turn left at the head of the stairs, door marked 'Detectives.' " A ticket taker saying "next."
"I'll wait down here," said Bill.
"You won't go away, will you?"
"I'll be here."
In the room marked "Detectives," as soon as I said the word again, the detective, a very freckled man of forty, pulled a form out of the drawer and said "Sit tight" as he went to get a police matron. The matron was older than the detective. Why is it, I thought, in a police station nobody says hello to you, nobody shakes your hand?
The matron said something to the detective that I couldn't hear and the detective nodded. They led the way into a private room and shut the door. The detective offered me a cigarette. I shook my head. The matron sat at the side of the table.
"All right," said the detective. "When did the alleged offense take place?"
I told him.
"Where?"
I told him.
"Can you describe the alleged assailant?"
"I know who he is."
The detective looked up at me, then at the matron. "Before you give us the name, I have to make you aware that if you accuse someone, you could be subject to a suit for false arrest."
"Even if he's guilty?"
"Well, not too many allegations of rape draw convictions, miss."
The green walls of the small room had not been painted for a long time. There were marks where the backs of chairs had scraped against the paint. A two-year-old calendar had not been removed. Near it, some flakes of faded paint had fallen from the wall.
"Well, give us the name, miss."
I looked at the freckled face that was anxious to get this bit of work out of the way.
"Isn't rape a serious crime?"
The detective flicked a look at the matron. "Oh yes, miss," he said, "it always goes with the major crime statistics. The problem, please understand, is that nobody reports an armed robbery that didn't take place. Or a murder. But a lot of the alleged rape cases that walk in here turn out to be, well, borderline seduction, or fantasy, or won't hold up because there are no witnesses, no proof, and nowhere to look for it."
"I am not a rape case," I said. "I am a person reporting a crime."
The detective moved his bottom on the chair, squirming. He seemed the type that always felt uncomfortable with women he didn't know.
"Please spell his name."
I spelled Harry Koslak. "He lives in the apartment above me. I think he owns an Esso station in the neighborhood. At least he seems to be the boss there."
"Did he force his way into your apartment?"
I thought Should I have a lawyer with me? I haven't been accused of anything. I'm filing a complaint, why do I feel trapped?
The detective was waiting for an answer.
"I let him in."
The detective glanced at the matron again. Another one of those.
"He came to borrow a cup of sugar."
The detective started to smile, then stopped, a checked swing. "Do the neighbors in that building come around to borrow things often?"
He wasn't writing answers now.
"That was the first time."
"Didn't it strike you as strange that a man would come around for a cup of sugar?"
"No. He said his wife was cooking something and had run out."
"Okay. Tell me what happened. Keep to the facts. What you saw. What you said, what he said, what you and he did. No speculations."
I told him, eliding a few of the details.
"Did you go to the hospital?"
"Yes."
"What did they do?"
"Can I talk to the matron about this?"
"You're talking to both of us, miss."
"I mean can I talk to her with you out of the room?"
The freckled man lifted himself from the chair, closed the door behind him. The matron sat at the desk where the detective had been. She picked up the ball point pen he'd been using.
"They combed for pubic hairs."
"Semen test?" the matron asked,
"No. I'd douched. Took a bath first, then douched four times."
"Never do that!"
"I didn't know. I hadn't had the experience before. Nobody warned me."
"We'd better call him back in. He knows these forms better than I do. He'll see what I write anyway. Okay?"
I nodded.
"All right," the detective said, resuming his seat, and glancing at what the matron had written. "Is there any way you can identify the alleged assailant?"
"I've seen him around. I've passed him on the stairs. I've been to the gas station."
"Are you friendly?"
"With him? No, first time we spoke was when he came for the sugar."
"Can you identify anything about him that somebody wouldn't ordinarily see?"
"He's got a tattoo."
"What kind of tattoo?"
"It says Mary. It's on his upper arm."
"Anybody could see that."