Rose Madder

If I was your husband, lady, I’d bring you the money myself, Norman thought, still describing his drifting little back-and-forth pendulum movement behind the booth. I’d also bring you a swift kick in the ass for doing such a dumbass thing in the first place. In the course of his telephone conversation with the hotel, Thumper gave his name as Peter Slowik. It was enough for Norman. As the Jewboy began talking with the woman again, giving her directions, Norman quit the vicinity of the booth and returned to the pay phones, where there were actually two telephone books which hadn’t yet been torched, torn to pieces, or carried away. He could get the information he needed later in the day, by calling his own police department, but he preferred not to do it that way. Depending on how things went with the Pravda-reading Jewboy, calling people could be dangerous, the kind of thing that might come back to haunt a person later. And it turned out not to be necessary. There were just three Slowiks and one Slowick in the city directory. Only one of them was a Peter. Daniels jotted down Thumperstein’s address, left the station, and walked over to the cab-stand. The guy in the lead cab was white-a break-and Norman asked him if there was a hotel left in this city where a person could get a room for cash and not have to listen to the cockroach races once the lights were off. The driver thought it over, then nodded.

“The Whitestone. Good, cheap, cash accepted, no questions.” Norman opened the back door of the cab and got in.

“Let’s do it,” he said.

Robbie Lefferts was there, just as he’d promised, when Rosie followed the gorgeous redhead with the long fashion-model legs into Studio C of Tape Engine on Monday morning, and he was as nice to her as he had been on the streetcorner, when he’d persuaded her to read aloud from one of the paperbacks he had just bought. Rhoda Simons, the fortyish woman who was to be her director, was also nice to her, but… director! Such a strange word to think of in co

“Ms McClendon?” It was the recording engineer’s voice.

“Could you sit down in front of the mike so I can get a level?” She wasn’t sure she could. She wasn’t sure she could even move. She was rooted to the spot, looking across the room to where the head of the mike was pointing at her like the head of some dangerous, futuristic snake. Even if she did manage to cross the room, nothing would come out of her mouth once she sat down, not so much as a single dry squeak. In that moment Rosie saw the collapse of everything she had built up-it flashed past her mind’s eye with the nightmarish speed of an old Keystone Kops short. She saw herself turned out of the pleasant little room she’d lived in for only four days when her small supply of cash ran out, saw herself getting the cold shoulder from everyone at Daughters and Sisters, even A

“Rosie?” That was Rob Lefferts.

“Would you sit down so Curt can get a level?” He didn’t know, neither of the men knew, but Rhoda Simons did… or suspected, at least. She had taken the pencil which had been sticking out of her hair and was doodling on a pad in front of her. She wasn’t looking at what she was doodling, though; she was looking at Rosie, and her eyebrows were drawn together in a frown. Suddenly, like a drowning woman flailing for any piece of floating detritus which might support her for a little while longer, Rosie found herself thinking of her picture. She had hung it exactly where A

“Rosie?” It was Rhoda Simons’s voice coming through the speakers.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes,” she said, and was relieved to find that her voice was still there, only a little croaky.

“I’m thirsty, that’s all. And scared to death.”

“There’s a cooler filled with Evian water and fruit juices under the left side of the table,” Rhoda said.

“As for being afraid, that’s natural. And it will pass.”