Thomas Harris - Red Dragon

She felt the tiger’s ears, the width of its head and, carefully, the veterinarian guiding her, touched the roughness of its tongue. Hot breath stirred the hair on her forearms.

Last, Dr. Warfield put the stethoscope in her ears. Her hands on the rhythmic chest, her face upturned, she was filled with the tiger heart’s bright thunder.

Reba McClane was quiet, flushed, elated as they drove away. She turned to Dolarhyde once and said slowly, "Thank you… very much. If you don't mind, I would dearly love a martini."

"Wait here a minute," Dolarhyde said as he parked in his yard.

She was glad they hadn't gone back to her apartment. It was stale and safe. "Don't tidy up. Take me in and tell me it's neat."

"Wait here."

He carried in the sack from the liquor store and made a fast inspection tour. He stopped in the kitchen and stood for a moment with his hands over his face. He wasn't sure what he was doing. He felt danger, but not from the woman. He couldn't look up the stairs. He had to do something and he didn't know how. He should take her back home.

Before his Becoming, he would not have dared any of this.

Now he realized he could do anything. Anything. Anything.

He came outside, into the sunset, into the long blue shadow of the van. Reba McClane held on to his shoulders until her foot touched the ground.

She felt the loom of the house. She sensed its height in the echo of the van door closing.

"Four steps on the grass. Then there's a ramp," he said.

She took his arm. A tremor through him. Clean perspiration in cotton.

"You do have a ramp. What for?"

"Old people were here."

"Not now, though."

"No."

"It feels cool and tall," she said in the parlor. Museum air. And was that incense? A clock ticked far away. "It's a big house, isn't it? How many rooms?"

"Fourteen."

"It's old. The things in here are old." She brushed against a fringed lampshade and touched it with her fingers.

Shy Mr. Dolarhyde. She was perfectly aware that it had excited him to see her with the tiger; he had shuddered like a horse when she took his arm leaving the treatment room.

An elegant gesture, his arranging that. Maybe eloquent as well, she wasn't sure.

"Martini?"

"Let me go with you and do it," she said, taking off her shoes.

She flicked vermouth from her finger into the glass. Two and a half ounces of gin on top, and two olives. She picked up points of reference quickly in the house – the ticking clock, the hum of a window air conditioner. There was a warm place on the floor near the kitchen door where the sunlight had fallen through the afternoon.

He took her to his big chair. He sat on the couch.

There was a charge in the air. Like fluorescence in the sea, it limned movement; she found a place for her drink on the stand beside her, he put on music.

To Dolarhyde the room seemed changed. She was the first voluntary company he ever had in the house, and now the room was divided into her part and his.

There was the music, Debussy as the light failed.

He asked her about Denver and she told him a little, absently, as though she thought of something else. He described the house and the big hedged yard. There wasn't much need to talk.

In the silence while he changed records, she said, "That wonderful tiger, this house, you're just full of surprises, D. I don't think anybody knows you at all."

"Did you ask them?"

"Who?"

"Anybody."

"No."

"Then how do you know that nobody knows me?" His concentration on the tongue-twister kept the tone of the question neutral.

"Oh, some of the women from Gateway saw us getting into your van the other day. Boy, were they curious. All of a sudden I have company at the Coke machine."

"What do they want to know?"

"They just wanted some juicy gossip. When they found out there isn't any, they went away. They were just fishing."

"And what did they say?"

She had meant to make the women's avid curiosity into humor directed at herself. It was not working out that way.

"They wonder about everything," she said. "They find you very mysterious and interesting. Come on, it's a compliment."

"Did they tell you how I look?"

The question was spoken lightly, very well done, but Reba knew that nobody is ever kidding. She met it head-on.

"I didn't ask them. But, yes, they told me how they think you look. Want to hear it? Verbatim? Don't ask if you don't." She was sure he would ask.

No reply.

Suddenly Reba felt that she was alone in the room, that the place where he had stood was emptier than empty, a black hole swallowing everything and emanating nothing. She knew he could not have left without her hearing him.

"I think I'll tell you," she said. "You have a kind of hard clean neatness that they like. They said you have a remarkable body." Clearly she couldn't leave it at that. "They say you're very sensitive about your face and that you shouldn't be. Okay, here's the dippy one with the Dentine, is it Eileen?"

"Eileen."

Ah, a return signal. She felt like a radio astronomer.

Reba was an excellent mimic. She could have reproduced Eileen's speech with startling fidelity, but she was too wise to mimic anyone's speech for Dolarhyde. She quoted Eileen as though she read from a transcript.

"'He's not a bad-looking guy. Honest to God I've gone out with lots of guys didn't look that good. I went out with a hockey player one time – played for the Blues? – had a little dip in his lip where his gum shrank back from his bridge? They all have that, hockey players. It's kind of, you know, macho, I think. Mr. D.'s got the nicest skin, and what I wouldn't give for his hair.' Satisfied? Oh, and she asked me if you're as strong as you look."

"And?"

"I said I didn't know." She drained her glass and got up. "Where the hell are you anyway, D.?" She knew when he moved between her and a stereo speaker. "Aha. Here you are. Do you want to know what I think about it?"

She found his mouth with her fingers and kissed it, lightly pressing his lips against his clenched teeth. She registered instantly that it was shyness and not distaste that held him rigid.

He was astonished.

"Now, would you show me where the bathroom is?"

She took his arm and went with him down the hall.

"I can find my own way back."

In the bathroom she patted her hair and ran her fingers along the top of the basin, hunting toothpaste or mouthwash. She tried to find the door of the medicine cabinet and found there was no door, only hinges and exposed shelves. She touched the objects on them carefully, leery of a razor, until she found a bottle. She took off the cap, smelled to verify mouthwash, and swished some around.

When she returned to the parlor, she heard a familiar sound – the whir of a projector rewinding.

"I have to do a little homework," Dolarhyde said, handing her a fresh martini.

"Sure," she said. She didn't know how to take it. "If I'm keeping you from working, I'll go. Will a cab come up here?"

"No. I want you to be here. I do. It's just some film I need to check. It won't take long."

He started to take her to the big chair. She knew where the couch was. She went to it instead.

"Does it have a soundtrack?"

"No."

"May I keep the music?"

"Um-hmmm."

She felt his attention. He wanted her to stay, he was just frightened. He shouldn't be. All right. She sat down.

The martini was wonderfully cold and crisp.

He sat on the other end of the couch, his weight clinking the ice in her glass. The projector was still rewinding.

"I think I'll stretch out for a few minutes if you don't mind," she said. "No, don't move, I have plenty of room. Wake me up if I drop off, okay?"