June 20

"I'm not living with no flea-bitten mutt, so you can just get it the hell out of here!"

The mutt cowered against her legs. Marsha Hughes scooped it up, then took a cautious step back, glad that Keith was standing in the doorway to the kitchen and not between her and the exit door. She knew that tone. She knew the expression on Keith's reddening face. She knew what came next after the angry tightening of his brawny arms, the clenching of his meaty fists. The dog, a small, pitiful-looking stray she had found huddled behind the Dumpster outside their run-down apartment building, seemed to know too. Looking at Keith from the shelter of her arms, it began to shake.

"Okay, okay," Marsha said to Keith placatingly, while at the same time tightening her hold on the trembling dog. It wasn't anything special, it wasn't worth making Keith mad over, but she wasn't going to let him hurt it if she could help it. There was something about it that tugged at her heartstrings. Not much bigger than a cat, it was skinny and dirty and obviously unloved, a female with liquid dark eyes in a foxlike face, big, upright ears, a short, dull black coat with a single white spot on its chest and a curling, improbably feathered tail. It wasn't pretty, but it was a sweet dog that had come to her when she had knelt and snapped her fingers at it. It had let her pick it up and carry it inside and up the stairs, licking her hand in appreciation when she had fed it a meal of baloney and cheese, which was about all they'd had in the refrigerator since this was Thursday night and neither she nor Keith got paid until Friday. In the hours between the time she'd gotten home from her job as a cashier at Winn-Dixie and had found the dog and the time Keith had come in from working the second shift at the Honda plant and started pitching a hissy fit about it, she'd kind of thought she might keep it. With Keith gone in the evenings, it would be something to come home to. Something she could talk to and fuss over and maybe even love.

When she thought about it, it was kind of sad that she was starting to have to look to a stray dog for love, but if that was the way her life was headed, then there was no point in ducking the facts. She was thirty-five years old, a redhead with a pretty good figure if she did say so herself, but a face that was starting to show some age. Men had mostly quit giving her second looks now. The other day, in the Rite-Aid, she'd sort of flirted with the hot young guy who'd filled her prescription. He'd been friendly, but when he called her "ma'am" as he told her to have a nice day she'd gotten the message: thanks, but no thanks. The plain truth was that she was slip-sliding over the hill, with two divorces behind her and not much in front of her except this good-looking but bad-tempered man and her dead-end job.

"So get it out," Keith said, his tone menacing as he gave her the look. The look was kind of like a storm warning, giving her a heads-up that one of their bad times was brewing. Her mouth went dry. Her stomach lurched. Keith in a good mood was sweet as moon pie. Keith in a bad mood was scary.

"Okay," she said again, and turned toward the door. Defused for the time being, Keith turned too, disappearing into the kitchen. Taking a deep, relieved breath as the door that separated the kitchen from the living room swung shut behind him, Marsha hugged the dog closer.

It licked her chin.

"Sorry, angel," she whispered regretfully in its ear. "But you see how it is: You've got to go."

The dog gave a sad little whine as if it understood and forgave her. Patting it, she felt a flicker of regret. It was a good dog.

From the kitchen, she heard Keith say "Goddamn!" Then, louder, "Where the hell's the fucking baloney?"

She almost wet her pants. Just as she had feared he would, he'd lit on an excuse to kick his bad mood up a notch. Now he was mad. Now he would take it out on her. When he got mad, it always seemed to end up being because of something she had or hadn't done. Tonight it would be about the baloney.

The refrigerator door slammed.

Galvanized, Marsha snatched her purse from under the end table beside the couch and bolted, making it out the apartment door just as he burst into the living room.

"Where the hell's the fucking baloney?" he roared. His voice boomed after her through the door that, in her haste, she'd left open behind her. By the time she reached the top of the stairs, he was already coming through it.

"I don't know." Clutching both dog and purse in her arms, she threw the answer back at him over the noise her ancient Dr. Scholl's made clattering down the metal steps.

"What do you mean, you don't know? The hell you don't. The baloney was in the refrigerator when I left for work and now it's gone. Don't tell me you don't know where it is!" He was leaning over the guardrail at the top of the stairs now, his face beet-red with rage as he glared down at her.

"I'll go to the store and get some more, all right?" Out of breath, she reached the downstairs hall. Awkwardly juggling dog and purse, she grabbed for the knob of the heavy metal door that opened onto the parking lot. The purse she had to have: her keys were in it. The dog she didn't. But if she left it behind, Keith would take his anger out on it. She knew Keith. When he was mad, he was mean as a snake.

"What'd you do with it? You don't even like baloney. Did you feed it to that dog?"

No, she couldn't leave the dog behind. Tightening her grip on it, glancing fearfully back as she braced herself and jerked the door wide, Marsha almost had a heart attack. Keith was no longer leaning over the guardrail but was striding with angry purpose toward the top of the stairs. Even the cloud of steamy heat that embraced her as she darted out into the night was not enough to stop an icy shiver from racing over her skin.

"You did, didn't you? You fed my baloney to that fucking dog!"

He was coming after her. Her heart pounded with primal fear. He was good and wound-up now. He would beat the crap out of her if he caught her.

Jesus, Jesus, please don't let him catch me.

One of her sandals came off as she ran across the parking lot toward her car, an eight-year-old junker of a Taurus with a broken air conditioner, a permanently stuck-down front passenger side window, and 127,264 miles on the odometer. Stumbling, cursing, she kicked the other sandal off too and ran on. Although it was only the twentieth of June, the summer so far had been a scorcher and the asphalt was hot as a griddle beneath her bare feet. The air was almost too thick to breathe. The single glowing yellow light atop the pole at the far end of the parking lot seemed to shimmer in the heat. Having guiltily wolfed down a McDonald's hamburger and fries on the way home from work, she'd parked next to the Dumpster so that she could dispose of the evidence before she forgot about it and Keith found it. Keith didn't like her eating fast food. He said it would make her get fat.

The Dumpster was at the very back of the lot, next to the light. She had to run through three rows of parked cars to reach her Taurus. If Keith caught her, it would be all the fault of that damned hamburger and fries.

Keith was always telling her that if she'd just do what he said, it would save her a lot of grief.

A radical thought occurred to her: Maybe she'd had just about enough of Keith.

"We're out of here, sweetie," she said breathlessly to the dog, yanking open the door and dumping the animal inside the car. It hopped into the passenger seat as she flung herself behind the wheel. The black vinyl seat was hot against the backs of her thighs, left bare by her ragged denim cutoffs. The stifling interior still carried the incriminating scent of McDonald's. Thrusting the key into the ignition, she glanced over her shoulder and saw that Keith, moving quickly now, was coming out of the building, his body-builder's frame looking even bigger than it was because of being backlit by the dim hall light.

Copyright © 2003 by Karen Robards