This was averted by a girl of perhaps eleven, who was sitting to Mommy's left. The girl had a Porta-Carry on her lap. Inside was a large blacksnake, its scales glowing with luxuriant good health. The little girl shot out one jeans-clad leg with the unearthly reflexes of the very young and stamped on the trailing end of Eric's leash. Eric did one complete snap-roll. The little girl reeled the Pom in. She was by far the calmest person in the waiting room.

“What if that little fucker gave me the rabies?” Mommy was screaming as she advanced across the room toward Mrs Alden. Blood twinkled between the fingers clapped to her arm. Peter's head turned toward her as she passed, and Anderson pulled him back, heading toward the door. Fuck the little sign in Mrs Alden's cubbyhole reading IT IS CUSTOMARY TO PAY CASH FOR PROFESSIONAL SERVICES UNLESS OTHER ARRANGEMENTS HAVE BEEN MADE IN ADVANCE. She wanted to get out of here and drive the speed limit all the way home and have a drink. Cutty. A double. On second thoughts, make that a triple.

From her left came a long, low, virulent hissing sound. Anderson turned in that direction and saw a cat that might have stepped out of a Halloween decoration. Black except for a single dab of white at the end of its tail, it had backed up as far as its carrying cage would allow. Its back was humped up; its fur stood straight up in hackles; its green eyes, fixed unwaveringly on Peter, glowed fantastically. Its pink mouth was jointed wide, ringed with teeth.

“Get your dog out, lady,” the woman with the cat said in a voice cold as a cocking trigger. “Blacky don't like “im.”

Anderson wanted to tell her she didn't care if Blacky farted or blew a tin whistle, but she would not think of this obscure but somehow exquisitely apt expression until later-she rarely did in hot situations. Her characters always knew exactly the right things to say, and she rarely had to deliberate over them-they came easily and naturally. This was almost never the case in real life.

“Hold your water,” was the best she could do, and she spoke in such a craven mutter that she doubted if Blacky's owner had the slightest idea what she had said, or maybe even that she had said anything at all. She really was pulling Peter now, using the leash to yank the dog along in a way she hated to see a dog pulled whenever she observed it being done on the street. Peter was making coughing noises in his throat and his tongue was a saliva-dripping runner hanging askew from one side of his mouth. He stared at a boxer whose right foreleg was in a cast. A big man in a blue mechanic's coverall was holding the boxer's rope leash with both hands; had, in fact, taken a double-twist of the hayrope around one big grease-stained fist and was still having trouble holding his dog, which could have killed Peter as quickly and efficiently as Peter himself could have the Pomeranian. The boxer was pulling mightily in spite of its broken leg, and Anderson had more faith in the mechanic's grip than she did the hayrope leash, which appeared to be fraying.

It seemed to Anderson that she fumbled for the knob of the outer door with her free hand for a hundred years. It was like having a nightmare where your hands are full and your pants start, slowly and inexorably, to slip down.

Peter did this. Somehow.

She turned the knob, then took one final, hasty glance around the waiting room. It had become an absurd little no-man's-land. Mommy was demanding first aid of Mrs Alden (and apparently really did need some; blood was now coursing down her arm in freshets, spotting her yellow slacks and white institutional shoes); Blacky the cat was still hissing; Dr Etheridge's gerbils were going mad in the complicated maze of plastic tubes and towers on the far shelf that made up their home; Eric the Crazed Pomeranian stood at the end of his leash, barking at Peter in a strangled voice. Peter was snarling back.

Anderson's eye fell on the little girl's blacksnake and saw that it had reared up like a cobra inside its Porta-Carry and was also looking at Peter, its fangless mouth yawning, its narrow pink tongue shuttling at the air in stiff little jabs.

Blacksnakes don't do that. I never saw a blacksnake do that in my life.

Now in something very close to real horror, Anderson fled, dragging Peter after her.

Pete began to calm down almost as soon as the door sighed shut behind them. He stopped coughing and dragging on the leash and began to walk at Anderson's side, glancing at her occasionally in that way that said I don't like this leash and I'm never going to like it, but okay, okay, if it's what you want.

By the time they were both in the cab of the pickup, Peter was entirely his old self again.

Anderson was not.

Her hands were shaking so badly that she had to try three times before she could get the ignition key into its slot. Then she popped the clutch and stalled the engine. The Chevy pickup gave a mighty jerk and Peter tumbled off the seat onto the floor. He gave Anderson a reproachful beagle look (although all dogs are capable of reproachful looks, only beagles seem to have mastered that long-suffering stare). Where did you say you got your license, Bobbi? that expression seemed to ask. Sears and Roebuck? Then he climbed up on the seat again. Anderson was already finding it hard to believe that only five minutes ago Peter had been growling and snarling, a bad-tempered dog she had never encountered before, apparently ready to bite anything that moved, and that expression, that… but her mind snapped shut on that before it could go any further.

She got the engine going again and then headed out of the parking lot. As she passed the side of the building-AUGUSTA VETERINARY CLINIC, the neat sign read-she rolled her window down. A few barks and yaps. Nothing out of the ordinary.

It had stopped.

And that wasn't all that had stopped, she thought. Although she couldn't be completely sure, she thought her period was over, too. If so, good riddance to bad rubbish.

To coin a phrase.

Bobbi didn't want to wait-or couldn't-to get back before having the drink she had promised herself. Just outside the Augusta city limits was a roadhouse that went by the charming name of The Big Lost Weekend Bar and Grille (Whopper Spareribs Our Specialty, The Nashville Kitty-Cats This Fri and Sad).

Anderson pulled in between an old station wagon and a John Deere tractor with a dirty harrow on the back with its blades kicked up. Further down was a big old Buick with a horse-trailer behind. Anderson had kept away from that on purpose.

“Stay,” Anderson said, and Peter, now curled up on the seat, gave her a look as if to say, Why would I want to go anywhere with you? So you can choke me some more with that stupid leash?

The Big Lost Weekend was dark and nearly deserted on a Wednesday afternoon, its dance-floor a cavern which glimmered faintly. The place reeked of sour beer. The bartender cum counterman strolled down and said, “Howdy, purty lady. The chili's on special. Also-”

“I'd like Cutty Sark,” Anderson said. “Double. Water back.”

“You always drink like a man?”

Usually from a glass,” Anderson said, a quip which made no sense at all, but she felt very tired… and harrowed to the bone. She went into the ladies” to change her pad and did slip one of the minis from her purse into the crotch of her panties as a precaution… but precaution was all it was, and that was a relief. It seemed that the cardinal had flown off for another month.

She returned to her stool in a better humor than she had left it, and felt better still when she had gotten half the drink inside her.

“Say, I sure didn't mean to offend you,” the bartender said. “It gets lonely in here, afternoons. When a stranger comes in, my lip gets runny.”