While she was gone, Jack, light-headed, sat on the closed toilet seat. He stared at the floor. At the molding. Which had a complicated pattern of grooves. Hard to keep clean. Maybe that's why rich people favored complicated molding? To prove they could afford to keep it clean?

The molding in the bathroom was immaculate.

The neon tubes flanking the mirror buzzed.

The shower dripped.

On the shelf above the sink, reflected in the mirror, was a glass bottle of Geo F. Trumper after-shave, some Flomax, and mint dental floss.

The shower dripped.

A branch tapped the window. As if trying to get Jack's attention.

Across the lawn, a deer turned its head. Reflected light gave the deer X-ray eyes.

Jack forced himself to examine the vaginal-looking wound. Something out of Dali.

Caroline came back with the medical supplies. She watched as Jack poured the hydrogen peroxide on the wound. The hydrogen peroxide foamed.

Jack put gauze on the cut and taped it into place.

The exposed edge of gauze was red, damp with blood.

"I should've killed the son of a bitch," he said.

"It's going to leave an ugly scar," Caroline said.

"I know." Jack grinned.

"Take two," Caroline said, spilling a dozen pills into Jack's hand. "Dixie's Percodan."

Jack popped three into his mouth.

He told Caroline what had happened.

"Have you noticed anyone following you?" Jack asked.

Caroline shook her head no.

"The police?" Caroline asked.

"I don't know if that would help," Jack said, thinking of Sciortino's warnings. "I need a drink."

"You just took three Percodan," Caroline said.

"I told you I didn't need a cop," he said.

"Hey, Jack," Caroline said, "I didn't throw you off the train."

"Nobody threw me off the train," he said. "I pushed myself off."

"Whatever," she said.

There was a silence.

"It's stopped bleeding," Jack said.

"Almost," she said.

Another silence.

"I just don't want you to die of an accidental overdose," she explained.

Jack grinned and said in a phony accent, "Strong like ox."

Caroline grinned and said, "Stupid like ox."

This silence had a different quality from the other two.

"Ox," Caroline said softly.

She knelt at his feet, wiping up the congealing blood. In the closed room, she could smell the blood's coppery smell.

"I want to lick the blood off your leg," she said.

"Now, I'll have to keep my window closed against vampires," Jack said.

3.

Before they went out to Dixie and Nicole, Caroline told Jack that she'd found no connection between Keating and the college.

"He must have some other influence," she said.

"I'll poke around," Jack said, "call some old friends. Shapiro was fired after he got involved in that electrical pollution case."

"I'll see if Keating has any connection with the electric company," Caroline said.

"What are you two doing in there?" Nicole called.

She knocked on the door.

"Your sister's helping fix me up," Jack called back.

"I'll bet she is," Nicole said.

"I think she's jealous you have a boyfriend," Jack said to Caroline.

"She's jealous you have a wound," Caroline said. "She likes being the only martyr in the neighborhood."

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE.

1.

Singing alternate dirty lyrics to "You're the Top," Dixie leaned over the piano keys and hit the last note with his index finger, his thumb cocked as if he were pretending his hand were a gun. Like Chico Marx.

"The lyrics Cole Porter used to sing at parties," Dixie said. "When he lived in Williamstown."

A trickle of blood wormed down Jack's leg, over his ankle into his shoe.

"He claimed they were written by Irving Berlin," Dixie said.

Jack took a clean rag from the pile Caroline had put on the arm of the horsehair sofa and wiped it away.

The wound was clotting.

"Thick blood," Jack had told Caroline. "Comes from growing up messing with cars. Some people have greasepaint in their blood. Some have printer's ink. I've got crankcase oil."

"I've got some filthy Larry Hart lyrics, never recorded," Dixie said.

"Jack doesn't want to hear your cabaret act, Dixie," Nicole said.

"Mabel Mercer-" Dixie started.

"Maybe I should put another towel down. Under my foot," Jack said. "I don't want to ruin your carpet."

"Rug," Nicole corrected him.

"-taught me the lyrics the night we all got drunk at El Morocco-"

"It's from Kurdistan," Nicole said. "See the tiny horses along the inside left?"

"Angelo, the maitre d', taught them to her," Dixie said.

"It's a Mina Khani pattern," Nicole said.

"I think Jack's got other things on his mind right now," Caroline said.

Jack felt a metallic taste rising in his throat.

"It belonged to Dixie's grandfather," Nicole said about the rug. "My great-grandfather."

Jack took a swig of his bourbon.

"That night," Dixie said, "we all drove up to Edna St. Vincent Millay's house in Austerlitz," Dixie said. "She'd been dead for years, but her sister still lived there."

"The rug's irreplaceable," Nicole said.

Caroline sighed and said, "I'll get another towel."

"We arrived at dawn," Dixie said. "She gave us breakfast and then showed home movies from when her sister lived in the same brownstone as Cary Grant-Archie Leach back then. He's trying to teach her to stilt walk."

The living room windows were double paned. Cloudy stains looked like nebulae caught between the two sheets of glass.

"You're looking at my collection of antique false teeth," Dixie said to Jack. "I specialize in pre-World War Two."

Jack-who hadn't noticed the collection-followed Dixie's glance to the fireplace mantelpiece, where a dozen pink-and-white dentures grinned, disembodied, at him.

Dixie got up from the piano bench and settled in one of the Duncan Phyfe Sheraton chairs flanking the fireplace.

"My nieces think my collection odd," Dixie said.

"Freaky," Nicole said.

Caroline came back with a dark red towel, which she spread over the blue towel under Jack's foot.

"If the blood stain doesn't come out," Caroline said to Nicole, "it will blend in."

"Bitch," Nicole said.

"Bully," Caroline said.

Jack took another swig of bourbon.

"But dentures are no odder than other things people collect," Dixie said.

"God, Caroline," Nicole said, "he's going to tell about the guy in New Paltz who collects the shit of famous people."

Jack's leg throbbed.

"I should go," he said, low, to Caroline.