This was going from bad to worse to horrible, and the scariest part was how fast it was happening. Suddenly she felt very tired, and a line from an old Paul Simon song occurred to her: “I don’t want no part of this crazy love.” Right on, Paul. You may be short, but you ain’t dumb.

“I know you don’t. And it’s okay that you don’t, because right now the subject is these handcuffs, not how much you do or don’t like me when I tell you I’ve changed my mind about something. I want out of these cuffs. Are you hearing me?”

No, she realized with dawning dismay. He really wasn’t. Gerald was still one turn back.

“You are just so goddamned inconsistent, so goddamned sarcastic. I love you, Jess, but I hate the goddam lip on you. I always have.” He wiped the palm of his left hand across his pouting rosebud of a mouth and then looked sadly at her-poor, put-upon Gerald, saddled with a woman who had gotten him out here in the forest primeval and then reneged on her sexual obligations. Poor, put upon Gerald, who showed no sign whatever of getting the handcuff keys off the bureau by the bathroom door.

Her unease had changed into something else-while her back was turned, as it were. It had become a mixture of anger and fear she could remember feeling only once before. When she was twelve or so, her brother Will had goosed her at a birthday party. All her friends had seen, and they had all laughed. Har-har, preety fonny, senhorra, I theenk. It hadn’t been funny to her, though.

Will had been laughing hardest of all, so hard he was actually doubled over with one hand planted above each knee, his hair hanging in his face. This had been a year or so after the advent of the Beatles and the Stones and the Searchers and all the rest, and Will had had a lot of hair to hang.