You bet, the no-bullshit voice said. If you’re a hotshot shyster inthe biggest corporate law-firm north of Boston and south of Montreal, Iguess you can know whatever you want to know and not know whateveryou don’t want to. I think you’re in big trouble here, honey. The kind oftrouble that ends marriages. Better grit your teeth and squint your eyes,because I think one bitch of a vaccination shot is on the way.

That grin. That ugly, mean-spirited grin.

Pretending ignorance. And doing it so hard that later on he would be able to pass a lie-detector test on the subject. I thought it was part of the game, he would say, all hurt and wide-eyed. I really did. And if she persisted, driving at him with her anger, he would eventually fall back to the oldest defense of them all… and then slip into it, like a lizard into a crack in a rock: You likedit. You know you did. Why don’t you admit it?

Pretending into ignorance. Knowing but planning to go ahead anyway. He’d handcuffed her to the bedposts, had done it with her own cooperation, and now, oh shit, let’s not gild the lily, now he meant to rape her, actually rape her while the door banged and the dog barked and the chainsaw snarled and the loon yodeled out there on the lake. He really meant to do it. Yessir, boys, hyuck, hyuck, hyuck, you ain’t really had pussy until you’ve had pussy that’s jumping around underneath you like a hen on a hot griddle. And if she did go to Maddy’s when his exercise in humiliation was over, he would continue to insist that rape had been the furthest thing from his mind.

He placed his pink hands against her thighs and began spreading her legs. She did not resist much; for a moment, at least, she was too horrified and amazed by what was going on here to resist much.

And that’s exactly the right attitude, the more familiar voice inside her spoke up. Just lie there quietly and let him shoot his squirt. Afterall, what’s the big deal? He’s done it at least a thousand times beforeand you never once turned green. In case you forgot, it’s been quite a fewyears since you were a blushing virgin.