"He wears overalls going to and from work."
"Well, you might have seen him in summertime with a short-sleeved shirt."
"I didn't live in that house in the summertime."
"Anything else?"
I thought of the strange curve of his erect member, the point he had made about it.
"No," I said.
"If you saw nude photographs of six men, just the torsos, could you pick him out?"
"I don't know."
"You saw him naked didn't you?"
"I wasn't making a study of him. I was scared."
"Sure, sure. I understand. I just want to know if there's anything that will interest the D.A."
"Is there?"
"Truthfully, hardly anything."
"There must be something that can be done!"
"Keep cool, miss. We could pay a visit to this Mr. Koslak. See what he says. He'll deny it, of course. No reason for him not to."
"He'd know I'd been to the police. He'll kill me unless you do something about him."
"Like what?"
"I suppose you can arrest him."
"I don't think there's enough to go on here."
"What am I supposed to do?"
"You've done it, miss. You've filed a report. If it happens again — I see on this report — well, don't douche or anything, go straight to the hospital."
"Is that the only kind of proof there is?"
"You could scratch, get some skin under your fingernails."
"He's strong, he could—"
"Well, you shouldn't ever do anything that would endanger your safety."
"You mean let him do it."
The detective said nothing.
"I know what you mean. Then I wouldn't be resisting, so it wouldn't be rape, would it? What the hell can you do?!"
The matron came over and put her hand on my shoulder. It wasn't the hand of a sister. It was the hand of a policewoman.
I found Bill downstairs, thumbing the pages of a beat-up police magazine.
"Finished?" he asked.
"Let's get out of here."
I sat in Bill's car shivering.
"Are you cold?" Bill asked.
"No."
"You look," he said, trying to keep his voice light, "like a machine about to self-destruct."
I didn't respond. We sat in silence for a few minutes.
My voice was a near whisper when I spoke. I could see Bill straining to hear and to understand.
"It's like one of those nightmares, you go to one place and then another and another trying to get some official to understand what you're trying to say, and you just get shunted about, and nothing happens till you want to scream doesn't anyone believe me!"
"What would you like me to do?" asked Bill.
"I didn't mean you. I meant the police, the authorities, somebody."
"You're still shaking."
"Would you do me a favor?"
"Anything."
"Call Dr. Koch. Call this number." I wrote it down on the back of a grocery receipt from my purse. "Tell him I'm coming down. You don't have to drive me. I'll take a cab."
"I'll drive you." Bill slipped out of the driver's seat and called from a pay booth on the corner.
"Dr. Koch wasn't very friendly."
"Oh he's friendly. He probably just doesn't like to see people at this hour of the night. Did he say okay?"
Bill nodded and turned the ignition on. He didn't tell me till later that Koch seemed very concerned until he asked who Bill was, and when Bill identified himself, it was then the coldness came into Koch's voice.
When we arrived in front of Koch's apartment building, I didn't get out of the car immediately. "Thank you," I said, putting my hand on Bill's hand.
"I'll wait for you," he said.
"Oh it could be such a long time."
"You won't get a cab to take you to Westchester. It'd cost a mint. Besides you won't find cabs cruising in this neighborhood that late. I'll wait. You don't need any more trouble."
Koch answered the door wearing a grey, cable-stitched cardigan instead of his usual jacket or suit.
"Come in, come in," he said, looking at my face for signs of distress.
I followed him into his consulting room. Out of habit I headed for the couch until his voice stopped me. "No, no, please, sit here so we can talk."
He gestured not to the chair beside his cluttered desk but to two armchairs at the other side of the room. The chairs were too close. I wished there were a coffee table between us.
"I'm sorry to come so late," I said. "I'm keeping you up."
"It's all right."
"I needed to talk to you." I was used to talking to him as an unseen presence behind me, not a face in front of me like other people.
I looked at my fingernails. I didn't know where to start.
"I guess one always thinks of rape as happening to someone else," I said.
"Yes," said Koch. "Like death."
Suddenly I wished I hadn't come to him.
"Take your time," he said.
When I didn't say anything, he said, "Would you rather lie down? As usual?"
Oh what a relief to be able to lie back on that couch with its familiar leathery smell, with my eyes closed. "I could sleep," I said.
"Sleep if you wish."
I thought I couldn't do that, fall asleep with the old man watching me. I was keeping him up. Yet, tired beyond belief and drifting, I tried not to think, to wash my mind of people and buildings and just see a horizon, the sky meeting the ocean, an infinite expanse of tranquil blue. Suddenly the blue of the ocean was dark and roiling with dangerous white-capped waves coming toward me.
I must have screamed.
I was sitting up on the couch, panting, sweat on my face.
"Tell me," he said. "Lie back down."
"I can't."
"You're afraid."
Oh I was, I was.
"Afraid of what?"
Though I felt drenched in sweat, my mouth was dry, parched.
"What woke you?"
"The water," I said, lying back down, exhausted.
"What water?"
"The water you drown in."
He was silent for a moment. I could hear his breathing. No, it was my breathing. My chest was heaving as if I'd been running.
"Tell me about the water."
And so I told him. "When I was very young, three or four. Mommy and Daddy took us — my parents, I mean, took my sisters and me — to Texas, to visit Uncle Jim in Texas. I remember the long, long train ride to St. Louis and then another train south. Texas seemed like a desert, with dry gulleys and small crevasses in the ground, and I had to hold Daddy's hand when we explored. I remember thunder very loud and then the rain came down, tons of water all at once. We were out walking far from my uncle's place, and suddenly we were drenched, and I remember Uncle Jim yelling at my father, and my father told my mother to carry me and he took my two sisters — they were bigger — and then there were like small rivers where minutes before there'd been just dry runnels, my mother stumbled, dropped me, then scooped me up and I wanted to be with my father, but he was up ahead with my sisters, and suddenly it was so bad we couldn't see him, I was frightened of my parents getting separated, and of all the rushing water. I was sure somebody was going to die, and I didn't want it to be me, or Daddy, or my mother and then just as suddenly as it had started, the rains stopped, and there was just the water rushing over the ground so fast, looking for places to run in, and we were trying to stay out of those places, and then, thank God, we saw up ahead Uncle Jim who had run to bring the pick-up truck, and he had already gotten my sisters aboard, and my father was running toward us to get my mother and me. Four people died in that area in the one flash flood, three of them from one family, but we were okay, wet and shivering and breathless when we got into the house, but okay. I couldn't get it straight in my head that the earth could suddenly turn into rivers."
Dr. Koch said nothing. I could hear a clock ticking.