The Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets Read Online Free PDF Page A

tight.
    She would be locked for days in this hot house, raped repeatedly and finally murdered and thrown from the trunk of his black car into a ravine off the Angeles Crest.
    He put his head back. He closed his eyes. This has to be adream, Winnie begged the universe. I am still sleeping. I am home in bed. My blue comforter is tucked up under my chin, my pillow soft against my cheek. It seems so real, and then for some reason you realize it is just a dream. And you wake up. You wake up. Wake up!
    But she was still there.
    Something scratched and scraped behind the kitchen door. An accomplice? Two men at once? Her stomach lurched, her teeth chattered and in the incredible heat she felt a feverish chill.
    â€œJust a minute!” His voice startled her.
    Another scrape, the sound of someone digging into the wooden kitchen door with a spoon or dull knife.
    â€œStop it!” he yelled again.
    The sweat spilled from every pore. She was drenched between her breasts, along the bottom of her sport bra, between her legs. The salt stung her eyes. Her ponytail wrapped around her neck in tentacles.
    He stood. She shrunk into the chair, but he stepped past her, around the coffee table, through the dining room, to the kitchen door. He went inside and the door swung shut behind him.
    â€œWhat’s the matter with you?” She heard him complain. “Jesus Christ.”
    It sounded like paper ripping. Not an accomplice, it was his previous victim, or his insane mother, someone without legs lying on the kitchen floor, scratching at the walls, peeing on newspaper.
    She stood and walked quickly, quietly to the front door. Her hand was shaking as she slipped the chain out of its slot and let it down gently against the doorjamb. She slid the bolt back. She turned the doorknob silently.
    He grabbed her shoulder, turned her around and shoved her back against the door. Her head thumped against the peephole.There were beads of perspiration on his nose and forehead. His eyelashes were as pale and long as millipede legs. She closed her eyes.
    â€œWhere you going, Mom?”
    He cursed her with it again. She should never have told him she had a child.
    â€œNowhere.”
    â€œThat’s right.”
    Winnie felt his fingers brush her breastbone. He slowly, gently slid down the zipper of her warm-up jacket. She kept her eyes closed. He used both hands to open her jacket. Underneath, she wore a sleeveless tennis shirt with a logo over her breast.
    â€œHey,” he said softly.
    Maybe it was just sex. That would not be the end of the world. She would grit her teeth, get through it, and kick him in the head the minute she had the chance.
    â€œI said, hey. Look at me.”
    She had lived through bad sex before, sex with men who wanted it when she did not, sex when it was easier to say yes than otherwise, sex when she felt sorry for the guy or grateful to him or obligated. On her first date after the divorce she had forced herself into bed with Phil the pharmacist. He was short and pot-bellied with thick fingers he insisted on sticking into her mouth again and again. He did not kiss her, but rubbed his chest and belly against hers in circles, squishing her into the mattress and leaving drool on her cheek. Afterwards he wanted her to tell him how wonderful he was. He had asked her for a play-by-play critique. She had cried when she was finally home, and then, two days later, laughed about it with her friend, Sara.
    Why was she thinking about Phil now?
    â€œHey,” he said again. His hands relaxed on her arms.
    Her eyes opened and she kicked him as hard as she couldbetween his legs. He screeched like a girl and tripped over his own feet as he backed away. She spun around and opened the door. She fumbled with the lock on the screen. She yelled and kept yelling.
    â€œHelp! Help! Help me!”
    The street was empty. The houses looked unlived in, as if everyone had locked up and left for vacation. Or as if every house held a solitary