Rose Madder

9

She was making another bed, but this time it was all right. It was a different bed, in a different room, in a different city. Best of all, this was a bed she had never slept in and never would. A month had passed since she had left the house eight hundred miles east of here, and things were a lot better. Currently her worst problem was her back, and even that was getting better; she was sure of it. Right now the ache around her kidneys was strong and unpleasant, true enough, but this was her eighteenth room of the day, and when she'd begun at the Whitestone she had been close to fainting after a dozen rooms and unable to go on after fourteen-she'd had to ask Pam for help. Four weeks could make a hell of a difference in a person's outlook, Rosie was discovering, especially if it was four weeks without any hard shots to the kidneys or the pit of the stomach. Still, for now it was enough. She went to the hall door, poked her head out, and looked in both directions. She saw nothing but a few room-service trays left over from breakfast, Pam's trolley down by the Lake Michigan Suite at the end of the hall, and her own trolley out here in front of 624. Rosie lifted a pile of fresh washcloths stacked on the end of the trolley, exposing a banana. She took it, walked back across the room to the overstuffed chair by 624's window, and sat down. She peeled the piece of fruit and began to eat it slowly, looking out at the lake, which glimmered like a mirror on this still, rainy afternoon in May. Her heart and mind were filled with a huge, simple emotion-gratitude. Her life wasn't perfect, at least not yet, but it was better than she ever would have believed on that day in mid-April when she had stood on the porch of Daughters and Sisters, looking at the intercom box and the keyhole that had been filled with metal. At that moment, she had seen nothing in the future but darkness and misery. Now her kidneys hurt, and her feet hurt, and she was very aware that she did not want to spend the rest of her life as an off-the-books chambermaid in the Whitestone Hotel, but the banana tasted good and the chair felt wonderful beneath her. At that moment she would not have traded her place in the scheme of things for anyone's. In the weeks since she had left Norman, Rosie had become exquisitely aware of small pleasures: reading for half an hour before bed, talking with some of the other women about movies or TV shows as they did the supper dishes together, or taking five minutes off to sit down and eat a banana. It was also wonderful to know what was coming next, and to feel sure it wasn't going to include something sudden and painful. To know, for instance, that there were only two more rooms to go, and then she and Pam could go down in the service elevator and out the back door. On the way to the bus stop (she was now able to differentiate easily between Orange, Red, and Blue Line buses) they would probably pop into the Hot Pot for coffee. Simple things. Simple pleasures. The world could be good. She supposed she had known that as a child, but she had forgotten. Now she was learning it over again, and it was a sweet lesson. She didn't have all she wanted, not by any means, but she had enough for now... especially since she didn't know what the rest might be. That would have to wait until she was out of Daughters and Sisters, but she had a feeling she would be moving soon, probably the next time a room turned up vacant on what the residents at D amp; S called Anna's List. A shadow fell across the open hotel doorway, and before she could even think where she might hide her half-eaten banana, let alone get to her feet, Pam poked her head in.

"Peek, baby," she said, and giggled when Rosie jumped. "don't ever do that, Pammy! You almost gave me a heart attack."

"Aww, they'd never fire you for sitting down and eating a banana," Pam said.

"You should see some of the stuff that goes on in this place. What have you got left, Twenty-two and Twenty?"

"Yes."

"Want some help?"

"Oh, you don't have to-"

"I don't mind," Pam said. "really. With two of us on the case, we can turn those two rooms in fifteen minutes. What do you say?"

"I say yes," Rosie told her gratefully.

"And I'm buying at the Hot Pot after work-pie as well as coffee, if you want." Pam grinned.

"If they've got any of that chocolate cream, I want, believe me."

10

Good days-four weeks of good days, give or take. That night, as she lay on her camp-bed with her hands laced behind her head, looking into the darkness and listening to the woman who had come in the previous evening sobbing quietly two or three beds down on her left, Rosie thought that the days were mostly good for a negative reason: there was no Norman in them. She sensed, however, that it would soon take more than his absence to satisfy and fulfil her. Not quite yet, though, she thought, and closed her eyes. For now, what I've got is still plenty. These simple days of work, food, sleep... and no Norman Daniels. She began to drift, to come untethered from her conscious mind, and in her head Carole King once again started to sing the lullaby that sent her off to sleep most nights: I'm really Rosie... and I'm Rosie Real... you better believe me... I'm a great big deal... Then there was darkness, and a night-they were becoming more frequent-when there were no bad dreams.

Chapter III. PROVIDENCE

1

When Rosie and Pam Haverford came down in the service elevator after work on the following Wednesday, Pam looked pale and unwell.

"It's my period," she said when Rosie expressed concern.

"I'm having cramps like a bastard."

"Do you want to stop for a coffee?" Pam thought about it, then shook her head.

"You go on without me. All I want to do right now is go back to D and S and find an empty bedroom before everyone shows up from work and starts yakking. Gobble some Midol and sleep for a couple of hours. If I do that, maybe I'll feel like a human being again."

"I'll come with you," Rosie said as the elevator doors opened and they stepped out. Pam shook her head.

"No you don't," she said, and her face lit in a brief smile.

"I can make it on my own just fine, and you're old enough to have a cup of coffee without a chaperone. Who knows-you might even meet someone interesting."

Rosie sighed. To Pam, someone interesting always meant a man, usually the kind with muscles that stood out under their form-fitting tee-shirts like geological landmarks, and as far as Rosie was concerned, she could do without that kind of man for the rest of her life. Besides, she was married. She glanced down at her wedding band and diamond engagement ring inside it as they stepped out onto the street. How much that glance had to do with what happened a short time later was something of which she was never sure, but it did place the engagement ring, which in the ordinary course of things she hardly ever thought of at all, somewhere toward the front of her mind. It was a little over a carat, by far the most expensive thing her husband had ever given her, and until that day the idea that it belonged to her, and she could dispose of it if she wanted to (and in any way she wanted to), had never crossed her mind. Rosie waited at the bus stop around the corner from the hotel with Pam in spite of Pam's protestations that it was totally unnecessary. She really didn't like the way Pam looked, with all the color gone from her cheeks and dark smudges under her eyes and little pain-lines running down from the corners of her mouth. Besides, it felt good to be looking out for someone else, instead of the other way around. She actually came quite close to getting on the bus with Pam just to make sure she got back all right, but in the end, the call of fresh hot coffee (and maybe a piece of pie) was just too strong. She stood on the curb and waved at Pam when Pam sat down beside one of the bus windows. Pam waved back as the bus pulled away. Rosie stood where she was for a moment, then turned and started walking down Hitchens Boulevard toward the Hot Pot. Her mind turned, naturally enough, back to her first walk in this city. She couldn't recall very much of those hours-what she remembered most was being afraid and disoriented-but at least two figures stood out like rocks in a billowing mist: the pregnant woman and the man with the David Crosby moustache. Him, particularly. Leaning in the tavern doorway with a beer-stein in his hand and looking at her. Talking (hey baby hey baby) to her. Or at her. These recollections possessed her mind wholly for a little while, as only our worst recollections can-memories of times when we have felt lost and helpless, utterly unable to exert any control over our own lives-and she walked past the Hot Pot without even seeing it, her heedless eyes blank and full of dismay. She was still thinking about the man in the tavern doorway, thinking about how much he had frightened her and how much he had reminded her of Norman. It wasn't anything in his face; mostly it had been a matter of posture. The way he'd stood there, as if every muscle was ready to flex and leap, and it would take only a single glance of acknowledgment from her to set him off- A hand seized her upper arm and Rosie nearly shrieked. She looked around, expecting either Norman or the man with the dark red moustache. Instead she saw a young fellow in a conservative summer-weight suit.

"Sorry if I startled you," he said, "but for a second there I was sure you were going to step right out into the traffic."

She looked around and saw that she was standing on the corner of Hitchens and Watertower Drive, one of the busiest intersections in the city and at least three full blocks past the Hot Pot, maybe four. Traffic raced by like a metal river. It suddenly occurred to her that the young man beside her might have saved her life.

"Th-Thank you. A lot."

"Not a problem," he said, and on the far side of Watertower, WALK flashed out in white letters. The young man gave Rosie a final curious glance and then stepped off the curb and into the crosswalk with the rest of the pedestrians and was borne away. Rosie stayed where she was, feeling the momentary dislocation and deep relief of someone who wakes from a really bad dream. And that's exactly what I was having, she thought. I was awake and walking down the street, but I was still having a bad dream. Or a flashback. She looked down and saw she was holding her bag clamped tightly against her midsection in both hands, as she had held it during that long, bewildering tramp in search of Durham Avenue five weeks ago. She slipped the strap over her shoulder, turned around, and began retracing her steps. The city's fashionable shopping section started beyond Watertower Drive; the area she was now passing through as she left Watertower behind consisted of much smaller shops. Many of them looked a little seedy, a trifle desperate around the edges. Rosie walked slowly, looking in the windows of secondhand clothing stores trying to pass themselves off as grunge boutiques, shoe stores with signs reading BUY AMERICAN and CLEARANCE SALE in the windows, a discount place called No More Than 5, its window heaped with dollbabies made in Mexico or Manila, a leathergoods place called Motorcycle Mama, and a store called Avec Plaisir with a startling array of goods-dildos, handcuffs, and crotchless underwear-displayed on black velvet. She looked in here for quite awhile, marvelling at this stuff which had been put out for anyone passing to see, and at last crossed the street. Half a block farther up she could see the Hot Pot, but she had decided to forgo the coffee and pie, after all; she would simply catch the bus and go on back to D amp; S. Enough adventures for one day. Except that wasn't what happened. On the far corner of the intersection she had just crossed was a nondescript storefront with a neon sign in the window reading PAWNS LOANS FINE JEWELRY BOUGHT AND SOLD. It was the last service which caught Rosie's attention. She looked down at her engagement ring again, and remembered something Norman had told her not long before they were married-If you wear that on the street, wear it with the stone turned in toward your palm, Rose. That's a helluva big rock and you're just a little girl. She had asked him once (this was before he had begun teaching her that it was safer not to ask questions) how much it had cost. He had answered with a headshake and a small indulgent smile-the smile of a parent whose child wants to know why the sky is blue or how much snow there is at the North Pole. Never mind, he said. Content yourself with knowing it was either the rock or a new Buick. I decided on the rock. Because I love you, Rose. Now, standing here on this streetcorner, she could still remember how that had made her feel-afraid, because you had to be afraid of a man capable of such extravagance, a man who could choose a ring over a new car, but a little breathless and sexy, too. Because it was romantic. He had bought her a diamond so big that it wasn't safe to flash it on the street. A diamond as big as the Ritz. Because I love you, Rose. And perhaps he had... but that had been fourteen years ago, and the girl he'd loved had possessed clear eyes and high br**sts and a flat stomach and long, strong thighs. There had been no blood in that girl's urine when she went to the bathroom. Rosie stood on the corner near the storefront with the neon in the window and looked down at her diamond engagement ring. She waited to see what she would feel-an echo of fear or perhaps even romance-and when she felt nothing at all, she turned toward the pawnshop's door. She would be leaving Daughters and Sisters soon, and if there was someone inside this place who would give her a reasonable sum of money for her ring, she could leave clean, owing nothing for her room and board, and maybe even with a few hundred dollars left over. Or maybe I just want to be rid of it, she thought. Maybe I don't want to spend even another day carting around the Buick he never bought. The sign on the door read LIBERTY CITY LOAN amp; PAWN. That struck her as momentarily strange-she had heard several nicknames for this city, but all of them had to do either with the lake or the weather. Then she dismissed the thought, opened the door, and went inside.

2

She had expected it to be dark, and it was dark, but it was also unexpectedly golden inside the Liberty City Loan amp; Pawn. The sun was low in the sky now, shining straight down Hitchens, and it fell through the pawnshop's west-facing windows in long, warm beams. One of them turned a hanging saxophone into an instrument which looked as if it were made of fire. That's not accidental, either, Rosie thought. Someone hung that sax there on purpose. Someone smart. Probably true, but she still felt a little enchanted. Even the smell of the place added to that sense of enchantment-a smell of dust and age and secrets. Very faintly, off to her left, she could hear many clocks ticking softly. She walked slowly up the center aisle, past ranks of acoustic guitars strung up by their necks on one side and glass cases filled with appliances and stereo equipment on the other. There seemed to be a great many of those oversized, multi-function sound-systems that were called "boomboxes" on the TV shows. At the far end of this aisle was a long counter with another neon sign bent in an arc overhead. GOLD SILVER FINE JEWELRY, it said in blue. Then, below it, in red: WE BUY WE SELL WE TRADE. Yes, but do you crawl on your belly like a reptile? Rosie thought with a small ghost of a smile, and approached the counter. A man was sitting on a stool behind it. There was a jeweller's loupe in his eye. He was using it to look at something which lay on a pad in front of him. When she got a little closer, Rosie saw that the item under examination was a pocket-watch with its back off. The man behind the counter was poking into it with a steel probe so thin she could barely see it. He was young, she thought, maybe not even thirty yet. His hair was long, almost to his shoulders, and he was wearing a blue silk vest over a plain white undershirt. She thought the combination unconventional but rather dashing. There was movement off to her left. She turned in that direction and saw an older gentleman squatting on the floor and going through piles of paperbacks stacked under a sign reading THE GOOD OLD STUFF. His topcoat was spread out around him in a fan, and his briefcase-black, old-fashioned, and starting to come unsprung at the seams-stood patiently beside him, like a faithful dog.

"Help you, ma'am?" She returned her attention to the man behind the counter, who had removed the loupe and was now looking at her with a friendly grin. His eyes were hazel with a greenish undertint, very pretty, and she wondered briefly if Pam might classify him as someone interesting. She guessed not. Not enough tectonic plates sliding around under the shirt.

"Maybe you can," she said. She slipped off her wedding ring and her engagement ring, then put the plain gold band into her pocket. It felt strange not to be wearing it, but she supposed she could get used to that. A woman capable of walking out of her own house for good without even a change of underwear could probably get used to quite a lot. She laid the diamond down on the velvet pad beside the old watch the jeweller had been working on.

"How much would you say that's worth?" she asked him. Then, as an afterthought, she added:

"And how much could you give me for it?" He slipped the ring over the end of his thumb, then held it up into the dusty sunbeam slanting in over his shoulder through the third of the west-facing windows. The stone sent back sparks of multicolored fire into her eyes, and for just a moment she felt a pang of regret. Then the jeweller gave her a quick look, just a glance, really, but it was long enough for her to see something in his hazel eyes she didn't immediately understand-a look that seemed to say Are you joking?

"What?" she asked.

"What is it?"

"Nothing," he said.

"Just a mo." He screwed the loupe back into his eye and took a good long look at the stone in her engagement ring. When he looked up the second time, his eyes were surer and easier to read. Impossible not to read, really. Suddenly Rosie knew everything, but she felt no surprise, no anger, and no real regret. The best she could do was a weary sort of embarrassment: why had she never realized before? How could she have been such a chump? You weren't, that deep voice answered her. You really weren't, Rosie. If you hadn't known on some level that the ring was a fake-known it almost from the start-you would have come into a place like this a lot sooner. Did you ever really believe, once you got past your twenty-second birthday, that is, that Norman Daniels would have given you a ring worth not just hundreds but thousands of dollars? Did you really? No, she supposed not. She'd never been worth it to him, for one thing. For another, a man who had three locks on the front door, three on the back, motion-sensor lights in the yard, and a touch-alarm on his new Sentra automobile would never have let his wife do the marketing with a diamond as big as the Ritz on her finger.

"It's a fake, isn't it?" she asked the jeweller.

"Well," he said, "it's a perfectly real zirconia, but it's certainly not a diamond, if that's what you mean."

"Of course it's what I mean," she said.

"What else would I mean?"

"Are you okay?" the jeweller asked. He looked genuinely concerned, and she had an idea, now that she was seeing him up close, that he was closer to twenty-five than thirty.

"Hell," she said, "I don't know. Probably." She took a Kleenex out of her purse, though, just in case of a tearful outburst-these days she never knew when one was coming. Or maybe a good laughing jag; she'd had several of those, as well. It would be nice if she could avoid both extremes, at least for the time being. Nice to leave this place with at least a few shreds of dignity.

"I hope so," he said, "because you're in good company. Believe me, you are. You'd be surprised how many ladies, ladies just like you-"

"Oh, stop," she told him.

"When I need something uplifting, I'll buy a support bra." She had never in her life said anything remotely like that to a man-it was downright suggestive-but she had never felt like this in her whole life... as if she were spacewalking, or running giddily across a tightrope with no net beneath. And wasn't it perfect, in a way? Wasn't it the only fitting epilogue to her marriage? I decided on the rock, she heard him say in her mind; his voice had been shaking with sentiment, his gray eyes actually a little moist. Because I love you, Rose. For a moment the laughing jag was very close. She held it at arm's length by sheer force of will.

"Is it worth anything?" she asked.

"Anything at all? Or is it just something he got out of a gum-machine somewhere?" He didn't bother with the loupe this time, just held the ring up into the sunbeam again.

"Actually, it is worth a bit," he said, sounding relieved to be able to pass on a little good news.

"The stone's a ten-buck item, but the setting... that might have gone as much as two hundred bucks, retail.

"Course, I couldn't give you that," he added hurriedly.

"My dad'd read me the riot act. Wouldn't he, Robbie?"

"Your dad always reads you the riot act," said the old man squatting by the paperbacks.

"That's what kids are for." He didn't look up. The jeweller glanced at him, glanced back at Rosie, and stuck a finger into his half-open mouth, miming a retch. Rosie hadn't seen that one since high school, and it made her smile. The man in the vest smiled back.

"I could give you fifty for it," he said.

"Interested?"

"No, thanks." She picked up the ring, looked at it thoughtfully, then wrapped it in the unused Kleenex she was holding.

"You check any of the other shops along here," he said.

"If anyone says they'll give you more, I'll match the best offer. That's dad's policy, and it's a good one." She dropped the Kleenex into her purse and snapped it shut.

"Thanks, but I guess not," she said.

"I'll hang onto it." She was aware that the man who'd been checking out the paperbacks-the one the jeweller had called Robbie-was now looking at her, and with an odd expression of concentration on his face, but Rosie decided she didn't care. Let him look. It was a free country.

"The man who gave me that ring said it was worth as much as a brand-new car," she said. "do you believe that?"

"Yes." He replied with no hesitation, and she remembered his telling her she was in good company, that lots of ladies came in here and learned unpleasant truths about their treasures. She guessed this man, although still young, must already have heard a great many variations on the same basic theme.

"I suppose you do," she said.

"Well then, you should understand why I want to keep the ring. If I ever start getting woozy about someone else-or even think I am-I can dig it out and look at it while I wait for the fever to pass."

She was thinking of Pam Haverford, who had long, twisting scars on both forearms. In the summer of '92 her husband had thrown her through a storm door while he was drunk. Pam had raised her arms to protect her face as she went through the glass, and the result had been sixty stitches in one arm and a hundred and five in the other. Yet she still almost melted with happiness if a construction worker or housepainter whistled at her legs when she walked by, and what did you call that? Endurance or stupidity? Resilience or amnesia? Rose had come to think of it as Haverford's Syndrome, and only hoped that she herself could avoid it.

"Whatever you say, ma'am," the jeweller replied.

"I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, though. Myself, I think it's why pawnshops have such a bad rep. We almost always get the job of telling people that things aren't what they're cracked up to be. Nobody likes that."

"No," she agreed.

"Nobody likes that, Mr-"

"Steiner," he said.

"Bill Steiner. My dad's Abe Steiner. Here's our card." He held one out, but she shook her head, smiling.

"I'd have no use for it. Have a nice day, Mr Steiner." She started back toward the door, this time taking the third aisle because the elderly gentleman had advanced a few steps toward her with his briefcase in one hand and a few of the old paperbacks in the other. She wasn't sure he wanted to talk to her, but she was very sure that she didn't want to talk to him. All she wanted right now was to make a quick exit from Liberty City Loan amp; Pawn; to climb aboard a bus and get busy forgetting she had ever been here. She was only vaguely aware that she was passing through an area of the pawnshop where clusters of small statuary and pictures, both framed and unframed, had been gathered together on the dusty shelves. Her head was up, but she was looking at nothing; she was not in the mood to appreciate art, fine or otherwise. So her sudden, almost skidding stop was all the more remarkable. It was as if she never saw the picture at all, at least on that first occasion. It was as if the picture saw her.

3

Its powerful attraction was without precedent in her life, but this did not strike Rosie as extraordinary-she had been living an unprecedented life for over a month now. Nor did that attraction strike her (at first, anyway) as abnormal. The reason for this was simple: after fourteen years of marriage to Norman Daniels, years when she had been all but cut off from the rest of the world, she had no tools for judging the normal from the abnormal. Her yardstick for measuring how the world behaved in given situations mostly consisted of TV dramas and the occasional movie he had taken her to (Norman Daniels would go see anything starring Glint Eastwood). Within the framework provided by those media, her reaction to the picture seemed almost normal. In the movies and on TV, people were always getting swept off their feet. And really, none of that mattered. What did was how the picture called to her, making her forget what she had just found out about her ring, making her forget that she wanted to get away from the pawnshop, making her forget how glad her sore feet were going to be when she saw the Blue Line bus pulling up in front of the Hot Pot, making her forget everything. She only thought: Look at that! Isn't that the most wonderful picture! It was an oil painting in a wooden frame, about three feet long and two feet high, leaning against a stopped clock on the left end and a small naked cherub on the right end. There were pictures all around it (an old tinted photograph of St Paul's Cathedral, a watercolor of fruit in a bowl, gondolas at dawn on the Grand Canal, a hunting print which showed a pack of the unspeakable chasing a pair of the uneatable across a misty English moor), but she hardly gave them a glance. It was the picture of the woman on the hill she was interested in, and only that. In both subject and execution it was not much different from pictures moldering away in pawnshops, curio shops, and roadside bargain barns all over the country (all over the world, for that matter), but it filled her eyes and her mind with the sort of clean, revelatory excitement that belongs only to the works of art that deeply move us-the song that made us cry, the story that made us see the world clearly from another's perspective, at least for awhile, the poem that made us glad to be alive, the dance that made us forget for a few minutes that someday we will not be. Her emotional reaction was so sudden, so hot, and so completely without connection to her real, practical life that at first her mind simply floundered, with no idea at all of how to cope with this unexpected burst of fireworks. For that moment or two she was like a transmission that has suddenly popped out of gear and into neutral-although the engine was revving like crazy, nothing was happening. Then the clutch engaged and the transmission slipped smoothly back into place. It's what I want for my new place, that's why I'm excited, she thought. It's exactly what I want to make it mine. She seized on this thought eagerly and gratefully. It would only be a single room, true enough, but she had been promised it would be a large room, with a little kitchen alcove and an attached bathroom. In any case it would be the first place in her whole life that was hers and hers alone. That made it important, and that made the things she chose for it important, too... and the first would be the most important of all, because it would set the tone for everything that followed. Yes. No matter how nice it might be, the room would be a place where dozens of single, low-income people had lived before her and more dozens would live after her. But it was going to be an important place, all the same. These last five weeks had been an interim period, a hiatus between the old life and the new. When she moved into the room she had been promised, her new life-her single life-would really begin... and this picture, one Norman had never seen and passed judgement on, one that was just hers, could be the symbol of that new life. This was how her mind-sane, reasonable, and quite unprepared to admit or even recognize anything which smacked of the supernatural or paranormal-simultaneously explained, rationalized, and justified her sudden spike reaction to the picture of the woman on the hill.

4

It was the only painting in the aisle that was covered with glass (Rosie had an idea that oil paintings usually weren't glassed in, maybe because they had to breathe, or something), and there was a small yellow sticker in the lower lefthand corner. $75 OR? it said. She reached out with hands that trembled slightly and took hold of the frame's sides. She lifted the picture carefully off the shelf and carried it back up the aisle. The old man with the battered briefcase was still there, and still watching her, but Rosie hardly saw him. She went directly to the counter and put the picture carefully down in front of Bill Steiner.

"Found something you fancy?" he asked her.

"Yes." She tapped the price-sticker in the corner of the frame. "seventy-five dollars or question-mark, it says. You told me you could give me fifty for my engagement ring. Would you be willing to trade, even-Steven? My ring for this picture?" Steiner walked down his side of the counter, flipped up the pass-through at the end, and came around to Rosie's side. He looked at the picture as carefully as he had looked at her ring... but this time he looked with a certain amusement.

"I don't remember this. I don't think I've ever seen it before. Must be something the old man picked up. He's the art-lover of the family; I'm just a glorified Mr Fixit." 'does that mean you can't-" "dicker? Bite your tongue! I'll dicker until the cows come home, if you let me. But this time I don't have to. I'm happy to do it your way-even swapsies. Then I don't have to watch you walk out of here with your face practically dragging on the floor." And here was another first; before she knew what she was doing, Rosie had wrapped her arms around Bill Steiner's neck and given him a brief, enthusiastic hug.

"Thank you!" she cried.

"Thanks so much!" Steiner laughed.

"Oh boy, you're welcome," he said.

"I think that's the first time I've ever been hugged by a customer in these hallowed halls. See any other pictures you really want, lady?" The old fellow in the topcoat-the one Steiner had called Robbie-walked over to look at the picture.

"Considering what most pawnshop patrons are like, that's probably a blessing," he said. Bill Steiner nodded.

"You have a point." She barely heard them. She was rooting through her bag, hunting for the twist of Kleenex with the ring in it. Finding it took her longer than it needed to, because her eyes kept wandering back to the picture on the counter. Her picture. For the first time she thought of the room she would be going to with real impatience. Her own place, not just one camp-bed among many. Her own place, and her own picture to hang on the wall. It's the first thing I'll do, she thought as her fingers closed over the bundle of tissue. The very first. She unwrapped the ring and held it out to Steiner, but he ignored it for the time being; he was studying the picture.

"It's an original oil, not a print," he said, "and I don't think it's very good. Probably that's why it's covered with glass-somebody's idea of dolling it up. What's that building at the bottom of the hill supposed to be? A burned-out plantation-house?"

"I believe it's supposed to be the ruins of a temple," the old guy with the mangy briefcase said quietly.

"A Greek temple, perhaps. Although it's difficult to say, isn't it?" It was difficult to say, because the building in question was buried almost to the roof in underbrush. Vines were growing up the five columns in front. A sixth lay in segments. Near the fallen pillar was a fallen statue, so overgrown that all that could be glimpsed above the green was a smooth white stone face looking up at the thunderheads with which the painter had enthusiastically filled the sky.

"Yeah," Steiner said.

"Anyway, it looks to me like the building's out of perspective-it's too big for where it is." The old man nodded.

"But it's a necessary cheat. Otherwise nothing would show but the roof. As for the fallen pillar and statue, forget them-they wouldn't be visible at all." She didn't care about the background; all of her attention was fixed upon the painting's central figure. At the top of the hill, turned to look down at the ruins of the temple so anyone viewing the picture could only see her back, was a woman. Her hair was blonde, and hung down her back in a plait. Around one of her shapely upper arms-the right-was a broad circle of gold. Her left hand was raised, and although you couldn't see for sure, it looked as if she was shading her eyes. It was odd, given the thundery, sunless sky, but that was what she appeared to be doing, just the same. She was wearing a short dress-a toga, Rosie supposed-which left one creamy shoulder bare. The garment's color was a vibrant red-purple. It was impossible to tell what, if anything, she was wearing on her feet; the grass that she was standing in came almost up to her knees, where the toga ended.

"What do you call it?" Steiner asked. He was speaking to Robbie.

"Classical? Neo-classical?"

"I call it bad art," Robbie said with a grin, "but at the same time I think I understand why this woman wants it. It has an emotional quality to it that's quite striking. The elements may be classical-the sort of thing one might see in old steel engravings-but the feel is gothic. And then there's the fact that the principal figure has her back turned. I find that very odd. On the whole... well, one can't say this young lady has chosen the best picture in the joint, but I'm sure she's chosen the most peculiar one." Rosie was still barely hearing them. She kept finding new things in the picture to engage her attention. The dark violet cord around the woman's waist, for instance, which matched her robe's trim, and the barest hint of a left breast, revealed by the raised arm. The two men were only nattering. It was a wonderful picture. She felt she could look at it for hours on end, and when she had her new place, she would probably do just that.

"No title, no signature," Steiner said.

"Unless-"

He turned the picture around. Printed in soft, slightly blurred charcoal strokes on the paper backing were the words ROSE MADDER.

"Well," he said doubtfully, "here's the artist's name. I guess. Funny name, though. Maybe it's a pseudonym." Robbie shook his head, opened his mouth to speak, then saw that the woman who had chosen the picture also knew better.

"It's the name of the picture," she said, and then added, for some reason she could never have explained, "Rose is my name." Steiner looked at her, completely bewildered.

"Never mind, that's just a coincidence." But was it? she wondered. Was it really?

"Look." She gently turned the picture around again. She tapped the glass over the toga the woman in the foreground was wearing.

"That color-that purply-red-is called rose madder." "she's right," Robbie said.

"Either the artist-or more likely the last person to own the picture, since charcoal rubs away fairly rapidly-has named the painting after the color of the woman's chiton."

"Please," Rose said to Steiner, "could we do our business? I'm anxious to be on my way. I'm late as it is." Steiner started to ask once more if she was sure, but he saw that she was. He saw something else, as well-she had a fine-drawn look about her, one that suggested she'd had a difficult go of it just lately. It was the face of a woman who might regard honest interest and concern as teasing, or possibly as an effort to alter the terms of the deal in his own favor. He simply nodded.

"The ring for the picture, straight trade. And we both go away happy."

5

"Yes," Rosie said, and gave him a smile of dazzling brilliance. It was the first real smile she had given anyone in fourteen years, and in the moment of its fullness, his heart opened to her.

"And we both go away happy." She stood outside for a moment, blinking stupidly at the cars rushing past, feeling the way she had as a small child after leaving the movies with her father-dazed, caught with half of her brain in the world of real things and half of it still in the world of make-believe. But the picture was real enough; she only had to look down at the parcel she held under her left arm if she doubted that. The door opened behind her, and the elderly man came out. Now she even felt good about him, and she gave him the sort of smile people reserve for those with whom they have shared strange or marvellous experiences.

"Madam," he said, "would you consider doing me a small favor?" Her smile was replaced with a look of caution.

"It depends on what it is, but I'm not in the habit of doing favors for strangers." That, of course, was an understatement. She wasn't even used to talking to strangers. He looked almost embarrassed, and this had a reassuring effect on her.

"Yes, well, I suppose it'll sound odd, but it might benefit both of us. My name is Lefferts, by the way. Rob Lefferts."

"Rosie McClendon," she said. She thought about holding out her hand and rejected the idea. Probably she shouldn't even have given him her name.

"I really don't think I have time to do any favors, Mr Lefferts-I'm running a little late, and-"

"Please." He put down his weary briefcase, reached into the small brown bag he was holding in his other hand, and brought out one of the old paperbacks he'd found inside the pawnshop. On the cover was a stylized picture of a man in a black-and-white-striped prison outfit stepping into what might have been a cave or the mouth of a tunnel.

"All I want is for you to read the first paragraph of this book. Out loud."

"Here?" She looked around.

"Right here on the street? In heaven's name, why?" He only repeated

"Please," and she took the book, thinking that if she did as he asked, she might be able to get away from him without any further foolishness. That would be fine, because she was starting to think he was a little nuts. Maybe not dangerous, but nuts, all the same. And if he did turn out to be dangerous, she wanted to find out while the Liberty City Loan amp; Pawn-and Bill Steiner-was still within dashing distance. The name of the book was Dark Passage, the author David Goodis. As she paged past the copyright notice, Rosie decided it wasn't surprising she'd never heard of him (although the tide of the novel rang a faint bell); Dark Passage had been published in 1946, sixteen years before she was born. She looked up at Rob Lefferts. He nodded eagerly at her, almost vibrating with anticipation... and hope? How could that be? But it certainly looked like hope. Feeling a little excited herself now (like calls to like, her mother had often said), Rosie began to read. The first paragraph was short, at least.

"It was a tough break. Parry was innocent. On top of that he was a decent sort of guy who never bothered people and wanted to lead a quiet life. But there was too much on the other side and on his side of it there was practically nothing. The jury decided he was guilty. The judge handed him a life sentence and he was taken to San Quentin." She looked up, closed the book, held it out to him.

"Okay?" He was smiling, clearly delighted.

"Very much okay, Ms McClendon. Now wait... just one more... humor me..."

He went paging rapidly through the book, then handed it back to her.

"Just the dialogue, please. The scene is between Parry and a cab-driver. From

"Well, it's funny." Do you see it?" She saw, and this time she didn't demur. She had decided Lefferts wasn't dangerous, and that maybe he wasn't crazy, either. Also, she still felt that queer sense of excitement, as if something really interesting was going to happen... or was happening already. Yes, sure, you bet, the voice inside told her happily. The picture, Rosie-remember? Sure, of course. The picture. Just thinking of it lifted her heart and made her feel lucky.

"This is very peculiar," she said, but she was smiling. She couldn't help herself. He nodded, and she had an idea that he would have nodded in exacdy the same way if she'd told him her name was Madame Bovary.

"Yes, yes, I'm sure it seems that way, but... do you see where I want you to start?"