A Time of Predators

Preston gave him an odd look. “Yeah, it’s the old squeeze. The difference between what you satisy yourself with, and what you have to have to satisfy a judge and jury.” He paused for a moment, said offhandedly, “You almost sound as if you’d like to go after them yourself.”

“Me?” Curt was truly startled. “Lord no, not me, Floyd. I wouldn’t have the slightest idea of how to go about it, and I wouldn’t know what to do with them if I would find them. I... I guess I’m not a very good hater.”

“Yeah? I would have thought...” Preston stopped, stretched, and slid off the stool. “I’d better get on back to the gym, Curt. Even on Thursdays the guys start coming in around four o’clock.”

After dropping Preston off, Curt tried to hang on to the rather sleepy, euphoric, beery feeling he’d had in the bar; but by the time he had arrived home, it was completely dissipated. He felt singularly useless, somehow dislocated in time. He had always prided himself on his involvement in modem American life: he approved of change, of new directions, new methods at the university. He approved of student involvement in protest marches and civil rights and antiwar agitation. Because of these attitudes, he had always felt himself deeply involved in the goals and aspirations and everyday life of the country.

Yet that afternoon he had felt a gulf separating him from the others in the bar — not a feeling of superiority, just a feeling of apartness. An uncomfortable feeling that his thoughts, actions, reactions to any given situation would not be theirs. How many of his colleagues at the university would dismiss Floyd Preston with witty, cutting, erudite jokes because he ran a muscle emporium? Yet Preston was decisive in everyday situations in a way that Curt desperately wished he could be. If a guy wants trouble, hit him first. Preston saw nothing wrong in the idea of taking vengeance into one’s own hands.

Curt went into the room where the rape had happened. The weekly cleaning lady had been in there every Monday with her vacuum sweeper and dustrag, but Curt had not opened the door since that night. Now, standing in the middle of the room made dim by drawn shades, he remembered vividly the rumpled daybed, the accordioned rug, the overturned stool. He shivered.

Paula, facing it alone, no way to turn, no hope at all of aid...

Paula, whom he had never seen with her head bowed in fourteen years of marriage, defeated, broken, destroyed...

God, why hadn’t he come home early that night? He drew a long shuddering breath and walked out into the hall.

Paula was dead: dead, dead, bloody dead, and there was nothing he could do about it.

Was there?

Chapter 11

Debbie drew a deep shuddering breath and pulled back from Rick’s embrace. “Darling — please. We mustn’t. I have to go in now.”

“Just a little while longer,” he pleaded. His hand again sought her breast through its protective cup of brassiere.

“No, please, Rick. I just... you know, it’s just...”

Rick sighed in mock resignation and removed his hand. Debbie, her face flushed, quickly closed the top three buttons his agile fingers had undone. Her hands were shaking slightly. Rick smiled his special smile, and hopped out of the driver’s side of the Triumph. Then, as Debbie quickly smoothed down her rumpled skirt, he stuck his head in under the canvas top on his side. “Just so long as you aren’t sore,” he said.

When he got around the back of the car to open her door, she said, “You know I’m not, darling.”

The smile she flashed was so full of future delights that Rick caught his breath sharply. When she slid out, he enjoyed an exciting glimpse of her legs well beyond her stocking tops. That was one thing about the old Triumph, all right. It made them show what they had. He put his arm around her waist as they went up the walk together to Forrest Hall.

He started up the steps with her, but Debbie drew him along the front of the porch into the shadows cast by the supporting columns. “So you won’t forget me before next time, Ricky,” she said.

She raised her face to his; when their lips met, her tongue darted into his mouth for a moment. Her breathing was short and quick when she finally drew away. Rick said, “Tomorrow night, Deb?”

“I’ve got to spend the weekend with my folks,” she said. “They don’t even know I signed up for summer school yet. Classes start next week, so we’d better wait until Friday — a week from tomorrow.”

“Week from today, actually,” said Rick. “Eight o’clock. Here.”

“Okay.” She pecked him quickly on the mouth, slid from his automatic attempt to embrace her, and trotted up the steps. On the porch she stopped to blow him a kiss, then went in quickly, catching the screen door so it wouldn’t slam. Safely out of sight inside, she leaned against the wall to get her breath. Wow! Even her legs felt weak!