Before She Knew Him(90)

“I love it,” he said, then awkwardly lurched in toward her for a kiss. Hen laughed, but kissed him back, telling herself that she just wanted to see what it felt like, getting close to all that springlike green energy; to see what it felt like to be really wanted, really physically wanted, one more time. He scooped her up and rolled her expertly onto his platform bed, one of his large hands already sneaking underneath her top.

“Dustin,” she said.

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m married.”

“You told me. I don’t care. It’s hot.”

“Slow down a minute, okay?” Hen said. “I need to use your bathroom.” She did need to go, but she also wanted a moment to think. Was she really about to make this colossal mistake? Did she even want to?

“Okay,” he said, then added, when she got to the bedroom door, “Don’t fucking change your mind.”

She spun reflexively; his voice had changed so much with those last five words that for a moment she thought someone else had spoken from the room. But in the light from the single bedside lamp she saw that his face had changed as well, his eyes gone dead. And he had slid a hand down his own jeans and was touching himself.

“I’ll be right back,” Hen said, trying to keep her own voice normal, and went into the bathroom—she could still smell it, cologne and stale urine—and sat on the toilet. She managed to pee, telling herself to stop panicking and form a plan. She’d made a huge mistake; Dustin was not some dopey, horny guy. He was something else altogether. If she told him she wanted to leave, he would rape her. She was sure of it. She could go through with it, she thought. Just have sex with him and get out of here alive, but the thought made her nauseated. She still had her clothes on, so if she wanted to she could exit the bathroom and head straight toward the front door, get out of there before he could grab her. But her sketchbook was in the bedroom, and something about leaving that behind was unthinkable. It had her address in it, for one, but it was also filled with personal sketches, even a couple of Lloyd. She flushed the toilet, then looked in the medicine cabinet, hoping there was some kind of weapon she might be able to brandish, a straight razor or a can of shaving cream, but there was nothing that looked remotely effective.

There was a thumping on the door, Dustin’s voice saying, “Hurry up. I gotta pee, too.”

Hen thought, Here’s my chance.

She came out of the bathroom. He was shirtless and he slid past her, leaving the door open. She heard a stream of piss hit the side of the toilet before splashing into the bowl. She moved as fast as she could into the bedroom, grabbing her sketchbook from the chair and the torn-out sketch that was now lying on the floor, then walked rapidly across the living room to the front door.

“Where you going?” he said, his voice threatening again, as she twisted the doorknob. For a moment she hesitated, almost told him she was leaving, out of some ridiculous fear of not being polite, but kept going instead.

She raced down the stairs, but he caught her at the bottom, his hand twisting the soft flesh of her upper arm.

“I’ll scream,” Hen said. “I’ll fucking scream so loud.”

Dustin’s eyes flicked to the side door at the bottom of the landing, a door that most likely led to a first-floor apartment. Hen thought she could hear the sound of a television coming from within. “I’m serious,” she said, and he let go of her arm, then looked right at her with those dead eyes.

“Maybe some other time,” he said, his voice calm. Then he mouthed the word bitch at her, and she pushed through the front door out into the damp night air.

The next time she saw him he was being carried out of his house in a body bag.

She never told Lloyd about what had happened and never told the police, either. She felt guiltier about not telling the police, because it was possible that the information she had on Dustin might be relevant to the case. If he was going to rape her—and he was definitely going to rape her—then maybe he’d raped someone else before, and if that was the case, then that might have been a motive for the crime. But she never went to the police. She couldn’t bring herself to do it, and eventually she told herself that what had happened that week had maybe never happened at all. It was just a foolish, terrifying moment that she needed to forget. But she couldn’t forget it, and she poured all of her guilt and remorse into her obsession with who had killed Dustin.

Later, after her hospitalization and the ECT and the med changes, she sometimes wondered if she’d imagined the whole thing, that surreal, terrifying night with the boy from the Village Inn. The memory of it now felt more like a dream than any kind of reality. And sometimes she’d also wonder if she’d killed him as well, that memory totally obliterated.

She stared at the sketch now. Portrait of a Rapist as a Young Man, she thought, almost smiling. She’d actually forgotten that she’d kept the drawing, shoving it into the bottom of a box after she’d safely made it back to her house that night, shaking with shock and feeling like she’d had a lucky escape. Why hadn’t she thrown the sketch away? Maybe so that now, a few years later, she’d find it and know, for a fact, that it had all really happened. She ran her finger over the pencil marks on the paper. The figure of Dustin was very detailed, the bedroom around him less so, just a few lines trying to show the clutter and depth of the space. On top of a bureau there was a group of objects, bottles mostly, but one of the objects looked vaguely like a fencing trophy, a lunging figure with a sword. It wasn’t so much longer after she’d drawn this picture that Matthew had hunted Dustin down and taken that very trophy for himself.