"Can I take you out to supper tonight?"

I had that pressed feeling again. I almost balked, said no. But I told myself sternly that I'd be cutting my own throat. Marshall was throwing out a lifeline and I was refusing to grasp it.

"Sure," I said, aware that I sounded stiff and anxious.

Marshall studied me.

"You pick the place," he suggested. "What do you like?"

I had not eaten in a restaurant in longer than I cared to add up. On nights I decide I don't want to cook, which isn't that often, since I enjoy cooking and it is cheaper than eating out, I pick up food and bring it home.

"Um," I said, drawing on an old memory, "I like Mexican food."

"Great, so do I. We'll go to El Paso Grande in Montrose."

Montrose was the nearest large town to Shakespeare, and the one where Shakespeare residents did most of their shopping when they didn't want to drive the hour and a half to Little Rock.

"All right." I carefully sat up and swung my legs over the side of the bed. I bit my lip and I stayed there, trying to feel like getting up and brushing my teeth. I wanted Marshall to ignore my struggle, and miraculously he did, letting me take my time and rise on my own, then walk stiffly to the bathroom for a quick sponge bath and a meticulous brushing of my teeth and hair. I applied makeup quickly and thoroughly, hoping the scratches would be less conspicuous. I turned my face from side to side, checking it in the mirror, and decided I looked much better.

But I still looked just like a woman who'd been in a fight.

I walked out, still holding myself stiffly upright, to let Marshall have his turn.

By the time he emerged, having showered and used a toothbrush in a plastic wrapper I'd put out for him on my sink (the dentist gives me a new one every time he cleans my teeth, but it is a brand I don't like), I'd managed to dress myself in the cheap clothes I wore to work: loose-leg blue jeans and an old dark red college sweatshirt with lopped-off arms. I hadn't been able to cope with pulling on socks, so I'd slid my feet into loafers instead of my usual cross-trainers.

Marshall started to speak, stopped, thought the better of it, and finally settled with saying, "Pick you up at six?"

I approved of his skipping all the "Are you sure you can do it? Why don't you call in sick today? Let me help you" stuff I'd been afraid he was going to put us through.

"Sure," I said, showing him gratitude with my smile.

"See you then," he said briefly, and went out to his car, which was still parked rather crookedly in front of the house.

Moving slowly but keeping going, I gathered together what I needed for the day and drove over to the doctor's office. As usual, I parked in the paved area behind the building, intended for the doctor and staff. I noticed without much interest that Dr. Thrush's car was there, too. Dr. Thrush is new in town and I had just started cleaning for her three weeks ago.

I used my key and stepped uncomfortably over the high threshold. Carrie Thrush was sticking her head out of her office, her brows drawn together with anxiety.

"Oh, thank goodness it's you, Lily!" the doctor exclaimed. "I forgot it was time for you to come."

Then, as I moved down the hall, the relieved smile gave way to concern. "Good God, woman, what happened to you?"

"I had a fight last night," I said.

"In a bar?" The young doctor looked amazed, her dark brown eyebrows raised above eyes just as dark and brown.

"No, a guy jumped me in my yard," I said briefly, explaining only because she'd asked with so much concern.

I didn't have much energy to spare today, so I had to focus on the job at hand. I opened the door of the patients' bathroom in the hall. That was the worst place, so that was where I always started. I had a strong feeling that between my own scheduled cleaning times, Dr. Thrush came in every morning and gave it a light going-over herself. That bathroom would be even dirtier otherwise. I pulled on my gloves and started in.

I cleaned the little double-doored space where patients put their urine samples, then wiped off the knob of the little door into the lab. I laid a fresh paper towel down for the next patient's sample. I remembered I hadn't tested this pair of rubber gloves for leaks, and reminded myself to do that when I got home. The last thing I needed was to catch a bug here.

I became aware that Dr. Thrush was standing in the bathroom doorway staring at me.

"You surely can't work in that condition!" Carrie Thrush said.

She has a firm voice that I believe she assumes to keep people mindful she is indeed a doctor. Carrie Thrush is shorter than I am and pigeon-plump. She has a round face with a determined jaw, unplucked eyebrows, and acne scars. She wears her chin-length black hair parted and brushed back behind her ears. Her dark brown eyes are round and clear, all that saves the doctor from plainness. I set her age at about my own, early thirties.

"Well, yes I can," I said, since she was waiting for a response. I was not in the mood for arguing. I sprinkled powdered cleanser in the sink and wet the sponge to scour it. I compressed my lips in what I hoped was a determined line.

"Could I just look at your ribs? That's your problem, right? Listen, you're in a doctor's office."

I kept on scrubbing, but my good sense conquered my pride. I laid down the sponge, pulled off my gloves, and pulled up my shirt.

"Oh, someone taped you, I see. Well, let me just take this off. ..." I had to endure all the probing again, to hear a bona fide doctor tell me just as Marshall had that none of my ribs were broken but that the bruise and pain would last for a while. Of course Carrie Thrush saw the scars, and her lips pursed, but she didn't ask any questions.

"You shouldn't be working," the doctor said. "But I can tell that nothing I could say would stop you, so work away."

I blinked. That was refreshing. I began to like Carrie Thrush more and more.

Cleaning the Shakespeare Clinic was an exasperating task because of paper. Paper was the curse of the doctor's office. Forms in triplicate, billing forms, patient health histories, reports from labs, insurance forms, Medicare, Medicaid - they were stacked everywhere. I had to respect each stack as an entity, lift it to dust and put it down in the same spot; so the office shared by the receptionist and the clerk was in and of itself a land mine. Compared with the office, the waiting room and examining rooms were cakewalks.

For the first time, it struck me that someone must also be cleaning those more often than once a week. As I vacuumed, I mulled this thought over. Nita Tyree, the receptionist? I couldn't picture Nita agreeing to that as part of her job. I barely know Nita, but I do know she has four children, two of whom are young enough to be in day care at SCC. So Nita leaves when the last patient walks out the front door, no matter what is sitting on her desk.

Gennette Jinks, the nurse, was out of the picture. I'd been behind the fiftyish Gennette in line at the Superette Food Mart only the week before and had heard (as had everyone else in a five-foot radius) about how hard it was to work for a woman, how young Dr. Thrush wasn't accepting the wisdom she (Gennette) had attained with years of experience, at which point I had tuned out and read the headlines on the tabloids instead, since they had more entertainment value.

So the surreptitious weekday cleaner had to be the good doctor herself. I had stacked up the bills. Without wanting to, I knew how much Carrie Thrush still owed for her education, and I had a feeling that some weeks it was hard for Carrie to pay even me, much less Gennette and Nita.

I chewed this over as I mopped, having dusted and vacuumed around the doctor as she sat at her desk, a stack of the omnipresent paper on every available inch of surface.

When I had everything gleaming and smelling at least clean, if not sweet, I stuck my head in the office door and said, "Good-bye."

"Oh, let me write you a check," said Dr. Thrush.

"No."

"What?" Carrie Thrush paused, her pen touching her checkbook.

"No. You examined me. Call it bartering."

I was sure that was against some doctors' rules, but I was also sure the offer would appeal to my employer. And I was right. Carrie Thrush smiled broadly, then said, "Thank God! No paper to fill out."

"Thank God, no insurance to file," I answered, and left, feeling that Carrie Thrush and I, cleaning woman and doctor, had, if not a relationship, at least the beginning of good feelings between us.

Chapter Nine

My bruised side ached more and more as Saturday dragged by. I moved through Mrs. Hofstettler's apartment like a snail, but she was having one of her bad days and didn't seem to notice. I wondered what it would be like to feel this way many days and to know for a certainty it would last the rest of my life.

I made my statement at the police station, sitting bold upright and taking shallow breaths. The man who took it down was a detective, I had to assume, since he wasn't wearing a uniform. He told me he was Dolph Stafford and that he was mighty glad to meet me. He glanced at me out the corners of his eyes, and I saw pity in his elaborate courtesy. I knew he, too, had heard my old story, which I dragged around with me wherever I went, like the albatross around the Ancient Mariner's neck.

As I drearily went through the details of the Ken doll and Norvel's attack, I pondered an old problem. Now that my past was out, should I move? Before, the answer had always been yes. But I'd been in Shakespeare for four years now, longer than I'd been anywhere since I was raped. For the first time, I wondered if I might not just weather it out. The thought crossed my mind, and in crossing, it stuck there. When Dolph Stafford dismissed me, I went home to lie down, finally giving in to the pain. I'd just have to go grocery shopping Sunday or Monday.

My reluctance to go to the store wasn't wholly due to the pain. I knew by now the story about Norvel's attack would be all over town, and I just didn't want to encounter sympathetic looks or horrified questions.

Carrie Thrush had slipped me a few sample pain pills when I'd left her office. Normally, I'd think twice before taking Tylenol, but I was positively longing for whatever relief the pills might bring.

Swallowing two of the capsules with some water, I was just about to leave the kitchen to ease myself onto the bed when I heard someone knocking at the door.

I nearly decided to ignore it. But it was the brisk kind of rap-rap-rap that tells you that the caller is both impatient and persistent. I was already peeved when I got to the door and looked through the peephole, so discovering the caller was my sometime employer the Reverend Joel McCorkindale did not make me any happier. I shot back the bolt reluctantly.

The minister's "happy to see you, sister" smiled faltered as he took in the scratches on my face and the awkward way I was standing.

"May I come in?" He was wisely settling for dignified sympathy.

"Briefly."

Taking that in his stride, McCorkindale stepped across the threshold and surveyed my tiny domain.

"Very nice," he said with great sincerity. I reminded myself I must be careful. Sincerity was the Reverend McCorkindale's middle name.

I didn't offer him a chair.

This, too, he absorbed without comment.

"Miss Bard," he began when he'd taken measure of my attitude, "I know that you and Norvel Whitbread have had a personality conflict" - here I snorted -  "ever since you've had to work together at the church. I want you to know I'm extremely disturbed that he was so stupid last night, and I want you to know Norvel himself is very, very sorry he frightened you so badly."

I had been looking down, wondering when he'd get through blathering, because my bed seemed to have acquired a voice and it was calling me louder and louder. But now I looked up at Joel McCorkindale.

"I was never frightened," I said. "Mad, yes. But not frightened."

"Well, that's... good. Then, he's apologetic for having hurt you."

"I beat the shit out of him."

The minister flushed. "He is definitely a sad sight today."

I smiled.

"So, cut to the chase," I prompted.

"I have come to ask you, most humbly, if you would consider dropping the charges against Norvel. He is repentant. He knows he should not have been drinking. He knows it is wrong, very wrong, to hold grudges. He knows it is against God's commandments to harm another person, much less a woman."

I closed my eyes, wondering if he'd ever listened to himself.

The bad thing was, I reflected as McCorkindale expanded on Norvel's mental anguish, that if I hadn't had my little life-altering experience, I might be tempted to listen to this crap.

I held up a hand, indicating for him to stop.

"I am going to prosecute him to the full extent of the law," I said flatly. "I don't care if you ever hire me again. You've known he was drinking again for weeks; you had to have known. You know whatever convictions he expresses are going to vanish when he sees another bottle. That's his religion. I have never been able to understand why you kept him on when that became apparent to anyone who cared to look. Maybe he has something on you. I don't know and I don't care. But I will not drop charges."

He took this well, like the shrewd man he is. He looked off to one side thoughtfully, turning something over in his mind.

"Lily, I have to tell you some members of our little church have felt the same way about you. They've wondered why I haven't let you go. You know, Lily, you're not everybody's cup of tea."

I felt an intense desire to laugh. The medication was undoubtedly kicking in.

"You're a mysterious and violent woman," McCorkindale prodded further. "Some people have wondered out loud to me if you should still be working in Shakespeare, or at least at our little church."