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the fence, dizzily.
    “I don’t know, I’m not sure. Please, folks, don’t congregate like this. Be a good egg, folks. Give me a break and don’t congregate like this.”
    I pushed up then and started through the crowd, holding myself tight to keep the pain from knocking me on my face again.
    I kept seeing her in there. In pitch blackness. With her fear of men. And someone attacking her in blackness. It would drive her out of her mind.
    Then another thought.
    Jim.
    Steig trailing us. Jumping me. Taking Peggy away. It seemed terribly logical to me then,
    I started running up the pier for the car and planning to drive to Jim’s place to find her. Strange there seemed no doubt in me that she actually was there. Only in a white rage could I be so certain.
    I rushed past endless gaudy concessions, the barker voices shrouding me with blatancy, calling me to break balloons, and throw pennies and pitch hoops around knife handles and telling me what they were going to do if only I’d stop. I got a stitch in my side but kept running, gasping for breath.
    Then, suddenly, I thought, I’ll phone him. He would more than likely deny it but then again he might not. He might flaunt it. It was worth the try.
    In the airless booth my head started throbbing. I gritted my teeth, panting. I looked up Jim’s number, sweat rolling down my face. I called the operator and had the call put through.
    His voice, assured, dripping with aplomb.
    “This is David,” I said. “Is . . .”
    “David who?”
    “Newton!” I said angrily. “Is Peggy there?”
    “Peggy? Why do you ask?”
    “Is she there?”
    “You sound hysterical,” he said.
    ”Did you have me attacked tonight?” I asked furiously, not thinking at all.
    “Did you have Steig take Peggy?”
    “What are you talking about?”
    I suddenly felt my insides falling. If it weren’t Steig, then who was it?
    “Speak up, David. What are you talking about? What’s happened to Peggy?
    I hung up. I pushed out of the booth. I walked a few feet. Then I broke into a weaving run again. I felt a wild fear in me. What had happened to her? Where was she? Oh good God, where was she?
    I moved off the pier and wove up the dark street past bars with tinkling pianos and a mission with a tinkling piano and tone deaf converts singing for their supper.
    “Peggy,” I gasped.
    And found her in my car.
    She was sitting slumped over on the right hand side. The first impression I got was one of stark shock. She was shaking violently and continuously. Just staring blankly at the windshield and shaking. She had her right arm pressed over her breasts. The fingers of her left hand in her lap were bent and rigid.
    “Peggy!”
    I slid in beside her and she snapped her head over. Her stare at me was wild with fear. I put my arm around her shaking shoulders. “What happened, Peggy?”
    No answer. She shook. She looked at me, then at the windshield again. Her pupils were black planets swimming in a milky universe. I’d never seen eyes so big. Or so terror-stricken.
    “Baby, it’s me. Davie.”
    She started to bite her lower lip. I could almost feel the rising emotion in her. She literally shook it out of herself.
    It suddenly tore from her lips. She threw her hands over her face. Then she drew them away just as suddenly and held them before her eyes in tight claws of blood-drained flesh. She clicked her teeth, clenched them together and tried to hold back the moaning.
    But her breath caught. And a body-wracking sob burst from her throat. She dragged her hands across her breasts. And I saw that the front of her dress had been ripped open and one of her brassiere straps had been snapped.
    “I’m dirty,” she said, “dirty!”
    I had to grab her hands to keep her from ripping open her own flesh. I was amazed at the strength in her arms and wrists. Impelled by savage shock, she was almost as strong as a man, it seemed.
    “Stop it! Peggy, stop it!”
    Sitting there in Venice, California, in a black Ford