It

the whole thing, would find them and hide them in his footlocker. The quarters bought him cigarettes — tailor-mades — for a month.
Koontz hitched in breath to scream again as the clown lurched toward him.
‘It’s time for the circus!’ the clown screamed in a growling voice, and its white –gloved hands fell on Koontz’s shoulders.
Except that the hands inside those gloves felt like paws.
3
For the third time that day — that long, long day — Kay McCall went to the telephone.
She got further this time than she had on ht e first two occasions; this time she waited until the phone had been picked up on the other end and a hearty Irish cop’s voice said ‘Sixth Street Station, Sergeant O’Bannon, how may I help you?’ before hanging up.
Oh, you’re doing fine. Jesus, yes. By the eighth or ninth time you’ll have mustered up guts enough to give him your name.
She went into the kitchen and fixed herself a weak Scotch-and –soda, although she knew it probably wasn’t a good idea on top of the Darvon. She recalled a snatch of folk-song from the college coffee-houses of her youth — Got a headful of whiskey and a bellyful of gin / Doctor
say it kill me but he don’t say when — and laughed jaggedly. There was a mirror running along the top of the bar. She saw her reflection in it and stopped laughing abruptly.
Who is that woman?
One eye swollen nearly shut.
Who is that battered woman?
Nose the color of a drunken knight’s after thirty or so years of tilting at ginmills, and puffed to a grotesque size.
Who is that battered woman who looks like the ones who drag themselves to a women’s shelter after they finally get frightened enough or brave enough or just plain mad enough to leave the man who is hurting them, who has systematically hurt them week in and week out, month in and month out, year in and year out?
Laddered scratch up one cheek.
Who is she, Kay-Bird?
One arm in a sling.
Who? Is it you? Can it be you?
‘Here she is . . . Miss America,’ she sang, wanting her voice to come out tough and cynical. It started out that way but warbled on the seventh syllable and cracked on the eighth. It was not a tough voice. It was a scared voice. She knew it; she had been scared before and had always gotten over it. She thought she would be a long time getting over this.
The doctor who had treated her in one of the little cubicles just off Emergency Admitting at Sisters of Mercy half a mile down the road had been young and not bad-looking. Under different circumstances she might have idly (or not so idly) considered trying to get him home and take him on a sexual tour of the world. But she hadn’t felt in the least bit horny. Pain wasn’t conducive to horniness. Neither was fear.
His name was Geffin, and she didn’t care for the fixed way he was looking at her. He took a small white paper cup to the room’s sink, half– filled it with water, produced a pack of cigarettes from the drawer of his desk, and offered them to her.
She took one and he lit it for her. He had to chase the tip for a second or two with th e match because her hand was shaking. He tossed the match in a paper cup. Fssss.
‘A wonderful habit,’ he said. ‘Right?’
‘Oral fixation,’ Kay replied.
He nodded and then there was silence. He kept looking at her. She got the feeling he was expecting her to cry, and it made her mad because she felt she might just do that. She hated to be emotionally preguessed, and most of all by a man.
‘Boyfriend?’ he asked at last.
‘I’d rather not talk about it.’
‘Uh-huh.’ He smoked and looked at her.
‘Didn’t your mother ever tell you it was impolite to stare?’
She wanted it to come out hard-edged, but it sounded like a plea: Stop looking at me, I know how I look, I saw. This thought was followed by another, one she suspected her friend Beverly must have had more than once, that the worst