“Yes. I guess there are.”

“Your husband?” She nodded. The woman with the sleeping baby against her breast spoke with a queer, flat assurance that chilled Rosie’s heart.

“You shall be divorced of him.” Rosie opened her mouth, found herself quite incapable of speech, and closed it again.

“Men are beasts,” Rose Madder said conversationally. “some can be gentled and then trained. Some cannot. When we come upon one who cannot be gentled and trained-a rogue-should we feel that we have been cursed or cheated? Should we sit by the side of the road-or in a rocking chair by the bed, for that matter-bewailing our fate? Should we rage against ka? No, for ka is the wheel that moves the world, and the man or woman who rages against it will be crushed under its rim. But rogue beasts must be dealt with. And we must go about that task with hopeful hearts, for the next beast may always be different.” Bill isn’t a beast, Rosie thought, and knew she would never dare say that aloud to this woman. It was too easy to imagine this woman seizing her and tearing her throat out with her teeth.

“In any case, beasts will fight,” Rose Madder said.

“That is their way, to lower their heads and rush at each other so they may try their horns. Do you understand?” Rosie suddenly thought she did understand what the woman was saying, and it terrified her. She raised her fingers to her mouth and touched her lips. They felt dry, feverish.

“There isn’t going to be any fight,” she said.

“There isn’t going to be any fight, because they don’t know about each other. They-”

“Beasts will fight,” Rose Madder repeated, and then held something out to Rosie. It took her a moment to realize what it was: the gold armlet she’d been wearing above her right elbow.

“I… I can’t.”

“Take it,” the woman in the chiton said with sudden harsh impatience.

“Take it, take it! And don’t whine anymore! For the sake of every god that ever was, stop your stupid sheep’s whining!” Rosie reached out with a trembling hand and took the armlet. Although it had been against the blonde woman’s flesh, it felt cold. If she asks me to put it on, I don’t know what I’ll do, Rosie thought, but Rose Madder did not ask her to put it on. Instead she reached out with her mottled hand and pointed toward the olive tree. The easel was gone, and the picture-like the one in her room-had grown to an enormous size. It had changed, as well. It still showed the room on Trenton Street, but now there was no woman facing the door. The room was in darkness. Just a fluff of blonde hair and a single bare shoulder showed above the blanket on the bed. That’s me, Rosie thought in wonder. That’s me sleeping and having this dream.

“Go on,” Rose Madder said, and touched the back of her head. Rosie took a step toward the picture, mostly to get away from even the lightest touch of that cold and awful hand. As she did, she realized she could hear-very faintly-the sound of traffic. Crickets jumped around her feet and ankles in the high grass.

“Go on, little Rosie Real. Thank you for saving my baby.”

“Our baby,” Rosie said, and was instantly horrified. A person who corrected this woman had to be insane herself. But the woman in the reddish-purple chiton sounded amused rather than angry when she replied.

“Yes, yes, if you like-our baby. Go on, now. Remember what you have to remember, and forget what you need to forget. Protect yourself while you are outside the circle of my regard.” You bet, Rosie thought. And I won’t be coming around, looking for favors, you can count on it. That would be like hiring Idi Amin to cater a garden-party, or Adolf Hitler to-The thought broke off as she saw the woman in the painting shift in her bed and pull the blanket up over her exposed shoulder. Not a painting, not anymore. A window.

“Go on,” the woman in the red dress said softly.

“You done fine. Get gone before she change her mind “bout how she feel.” Rosie stepped toward the picture, and from behind her Rose Madder spoke again, her voice neither sweet nor husky now but loud and harsh and murderous:

“And remember: I repay!” Rosie’s eyes winced shut at this unexpected shout, and she lunged forward, suddenly sure that the woman in the chiton had forgotten the service Rosie had done her and had decided to kill her after all. She tripped over something (the bottom edge of the painting, perhaps?) and then there was a sense of falling. She had time to feel her stomach turn over like a circus tumbler, and then there was only darkness, rushing past her eyes and ears. In it she seemed to hear some ominous sound, distant but drawing closer. Perhaps it was the sound of trains in the deep tunnels beneath Grand Central Station, perhaps it was the rumble of thunder, or perhaps it was the bull Erinyes, running the blind depths of his maze with his head down and his short, sharp horns sorting the air. Then, for a little while, at least, Rosie knew nothing at all.

She floated silently and thoughtlessly, like an undreaming embryo in its placental sac, until seven o’clock in the morning. Then the Big Ben beside the bed tore her out of sleep with its ruthless howl. Rosie sat bolt-upright, flailing at the air with hands like claws and crying out something she didn’t understand, words from a dream that was already forgotten: “don’t make me look at you! Don’t make me look at you! Don’t make me! Don’t make me!” Then she saw the cream-colored walls, and the sofa that was really just a loveseat with delusions of grandeur, and the light flooding in through the window, and used these things to lock in the reality she needed. Whoever she might have been or wherever she might have gone in her dreams, she was now Rosie McClendon, a single woman who recorded audio-books for a living. She had stayed for a long time with a bad man, but had left him and met a good one. She lived in a room at 897 Trenton Street, second floor, end of the hall, good view of Bryant Park. Oh, and one other thing. She was a single woman who never intended to eat another foot-long hotdog in her life, especially one smothered in sauerkraut. They did not agree with her, it seemed. She couldn’t remember what she had dreamed (remember what you have to remember and forget what you need to forget) but she knew how it had started: with her walking into that damned painting like Alice going through the looking-glass. Rosie sat where she was for a moment, wrapping herself in her Rosie Real world as firmly as she could, then reached out for the relentless alarm-clock. Instead of gripping it, she knocked it onto the floor. It lay there, bawling its excited, senseless cry.

“Hire the handicapped, it’s fun to watch em,” she croaked. She leaned over and groped for the clock, fascinated all over again by the blonde hair she saw from the corner of her eye, locks so fabulously unlike those of that obedient little creepmouse Rose Daniels. She got hold of the clock, felt with her thumb for the stud that shut off the alarm, and then paused as something else registered. The breast pressing against her right forearm was naked. She silenced the alarm, then sat up with the clock still in her left hand. She pushed down the sheet and light blanket. Her bottom half was as bare as her top half.

“Where’s my nightie?” she asked the empty room. She thought she had never heard herself sounding so exceptionally stupid… but of course, she wasn’t used to going to bed with her nightgown on and waking up naked. Even fourteen years of marriage to Norman had not prepared her for anything quite that peculiar. She put the clock back on the nighttable, swung her legs out of bed-“Ow!” she cried, both startled and frightened by the pain and stiffness in her hips and thighs. Even her butt hurt.

“Ow, ow, OW!” She sat on the edge of the bed and gingerly flexed her right leg, then her left. They moved, but they hurt, especially the right one. It was as if she’d spent most of yesterday doing the granddaddy of all workouts, rowing machine, treadmill, StairMaster, although the only exercise she had taken was her walk with Bill, and that had been no more than a leisurely stroll. The sound was like the trains in Grand Central Station, she thought. What sound? For a moment she thought she almost had it-had something, anyway-and then it was gone again. She got slowly and cautiously to her feet, stood beside the bed for a moment, then walked toward the bathroom. Limped toward the bathroom. Her right leg felt as if she had actually strained it somehow, and her kidneys ached. What in God’s name-? She remembered reading somewhere that people sometimes “ran” in their sleep. Perhaps that was what she had been doing; perhaps the jumble of dreams she couldn’t quite remember had been so horrible that she’d actually made an effort to run away from them. She stopped in the bathroom doorway and looked back at her bed. The bottom sheet was rumpled, but not twisted or tangled or pulled loose, as she would have expected if she had been really active in her sleep. Rosie saw one thing she didn’t like much, however, something that flashed her back to the bad old days with terrible and unexpected suddenness: blood. They were the prints of thin lines rather than drops, however, and they were too far down to have come from a punched nose or a split lip… unless, of course, her sleeping movements had been so vigorous she’d actually turned around in her bed. Her next thought was that she’d had a visit from the cardinal (this was how her mother had insisted Rosie speak of her menstrual periods, if she had to speak of them at all), but it was entirely the wrong time of the month for that. Is it your time, girl? Is the moon full for you?