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lot of it.
    She didn’t pause even when the patrolman and his companion slid in across from her. The patrolman’s breakfast arrived with a brown bag for Leah and a wink from the waitress. “For Goodyear, your blimp.”
    â€œGoodyear?” The law looked up from his number one with ham.
    â€œThe cat … in the car. He’s kind of big and fat like a … Didn’t you ever see the Goodyear blimp over cities or football games?”
    His look was blank but he said, “Oh, the cat.” He made Leah feel old.
    When she’d finished her breakfast she retold her story to the “local fuzz.” She assured them both that she had left marks on the man’s face, that she had not been raped, that she did not need a doctor, that even if it sounded crazy it was all true.
    The sheriff’s deputy had her repeat her description of the attacker, told her of a cheap motel, and left.
    Leah was stunned when the patrolman insisted on paying for her breakfast and escorting her to the Shangri-La. “Not every day I run into a beautiful blonde in distress.” He blushed.
    She felt like giving him a motherly pat on the head and hoped that Shangri-La would prove less exciting than paradise.
    Shangri-La stood at the very edge of the treeless town. On a treeless hill. Across from a treeless cemetery.
    â€œYou stay right here now, so we can contact you when we hear something. Okay?” He’d carried in her luggage, even emptied the trunk.
    â€œOkay.” Leah felt a long way from Shangri-La as she looked around her room. She was getting the shakes again.
    â€œShould we feed your blimp?” He looked at the greasy bag in her hand and the Siamese next to her left foot. God, did the creature heel, too?
    â€œOkay.” She was so tired and at last so sated with food, she couldn’t think. She’d forgotten the cat.
    The patrolman spread out a feast of bits of sausage, bacon, and ham. There were five little cartons of half and half and he poured the cream into an ashtray. “You need sleep. I’ll keep in touch. Good-bye, Miss Harper. You too, Goodyear.”
    Goodyear was too engrossed in the feast to look up. Leah managed a wave and a “Thanks.”
    After the cat had gobbled all but the bag and the ashtray, he yowled at the door.
    Leah opened it. “Good-bye, Goodyear, go find yourself a good home. I can’t afford a pet and I don’t really like cats. My mother had five and.…”
    But Goodyear was gone. He hadn’t even looked back.

Chapter Seven
    Leah reached for the hot and cold handles of the bathtub … and saw the tub in the house in Chicago … and her mother’s body … the bloody razor … heard her own uncontrolled screaming.…
    Would she ever be able to look at an ordinary bathtub again and see just an ordinary bathtub?
    A shudder joined the shakes she already experienced. She lay back in the hot water and stared at the steam slowly clouding the tile. She must relax, soak away the soreness of her wild night, think of something other than her mother’s suicide … what?
    The cat. He’d entered her world and left it as quickly as the big man with the shadowy eyes … no, she wouldn’t think of the man either. But he’d said she had a great body. That was nice to hear at thirty, even from a murderer. There were ugly swollen places on her wrists and ankles.
    She’d think of the good days before her father died, when they lived in the comfortable house in the suburbs. Or she could think of later, her college days before the lawyer informed them that the money was running out, that they’d have to find a less expensive life style, that Leah would have to leave the university and find a job if her younger sisters could hope for even a junior college.
    Leah’s mother had never used her college degree. Unable to face the working world after her husband’s death, she couldn’t even