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return to your room.
    Do not do this.
    Do this. Put on your pj tops and skirt and slippers. Pull on sweater. Pull out pj collar—it looks something like a blouse. Do you remember our trying this? These slippers have heels and look something like loafers.
    Leave robe in cubicle.
    Put wallet and notebook in skirt pocket.
    When you feel strong enough, look out into hall. If it is clear, leave, turn left, not right, to back door, go out and straight across service yard to big laurel next to water tank.
    Sit under it and far enough back to be out of sight.
    Wait for the bread van.
    The driver will deliver the bread and spend at least ten minutes inside with McGahey (I think you might remember this). He’s got something going with McGahey. The sliding panel door will be on your side (the laurel’s side).
    Walk straight into it. Do not go to the rear, where the bread cartons are, but toward driver’s seat. Next to partition is some kind of carton (not bread) which is there every trip—perhaps a carton of paper bags. Do you remember studying the truck through the binoculars? I think there is enough room between carton and far wall.
    He will make several more deliveries, the last one in Linwood at the Red Bam (I got this from McGahey).
    When you see him unload the last carton, you count to thirty and go out too.
    I can remember Linwood but I cannot remember whether I could remember it the last time I was buzzed. It varies. One time I couldn’t remember my name for a week. When you get out you may know exactly where you are and what to do. But you probably won’t. So I’ll tell you.
    Go down the hill to K-Mart and Good’s Variety. Buy clothes and articles (see list below).
    Go back up hill to Gulf station. Change clothes in rest room.
    Check into Mitchell’s Triple-A motel one block east. Don’t worry about not having car or suitcase. You will have knapsack and they’re used to it. Pay in advance. Check your driver’s license to be sure you remember your name. Sometimes I, you, forget after a buzz.
    Take a hot bath. Eat and sleep for twenty-four hours. You’ll be very hungry after the buzz (remember?) and tired and sore. You’ll feel like a rape victim in every way but one.
    I wonder how you’re feeling now. It varies so much, remember?
    There will also be something good about having gone through the bad experience, the buzzing, for the last time and having survived—the bad maybe even being the condition of the good, I don’t know. Like that man who crawled out of the plane crash in West Virginia last summer, remember? Everybody else dead or dying and he with a cut lip and, realizing he didn’t even have to crawl, not knowing what he was doing, not even remembering it later, simply walked away like a man getting off a streetcar, walked into the woods. They found him hours later two miles from the plane sitting on a highway culvert calm as you please, but saying nothing. In a state of shock, they said. Sitting there blinking and only mildly bemused. Yes, but also, in another way, in his right mind, as if he had crossed a time warp or gone through a mirror, no, not gone through, come back, yes, the only question being which way he went, from the sane side to the crazy side like Alice or back the other way. They took him to the hospital, sewed up his lip, and let him go. Do you remember thinking about him getting on the bus and going on into Huntington, and walking home, hands in his pockets (no suitcase)?
    The only question is how the buzz job will go this time, how much of the feeling will be bad, the real done-in rape-victim feeling, and how much of the feeling of the good, the survivor.
    STOP YOUR CUBICLE READING HERE . CONTINUE YOUR READING AFTER YOU ’ VE RESTED IN LINWOOD AND FEEL STRONG .
    A bareheaded policeman stood on the corner. Feeling stiff, she rose, stretched, and walked down the block a short distance. Her knapsack was hanging from the back of