Hope Standish was at home with her son, Nicky, when Oren Rath walked into the kitchen. She was drying the dishes and she saw immediately the long, thin-bladed fisherman's knife with the slick cutting edge and the special, saw-toothed edge that they call a disgorger-scaler. Nicky was not yet three; he still ate in a high chair, and he was eating his breakfast when Oren Rath stepped up behind him and nudged the ripper teeth of his fisherman's knife against the child's throat.
"Set them dishes aside," he told Hope. Mrs. Standish did as she was told. Nicky gurgled at the stranger; the knife was just a tickle under his chin.
"What do you want?" Hope asked. "I'll give you anything you want."
"You sure will," said Oren Rath. "What's your name?"
"Hope."
"Mine's Oren."
"That's a nice name," Hope told him.
Nicky couldn't turn in the high chair to see the stranger who was tickling his throat. He had wet cereal on his fingers, and when he reached for Oren Rath's hand, Rath stepped up beside the high chair and touched the fine, slicing edge of his fisherman's blade to the fleshy pouch of the boy's cheek. He made a quick cut there, as if he were briefly outlining the child's cheekbone. Then he stepped back to observe Nicky's surprised face, his simple cry; a thread-thin line of blood appeared, like the stitching for a pocket, on the boy's cheek. It was as if the child had suddenly developed a gill.
"I mean business," said Oren Rath. Hope started toward Nicky but Rath waved her back. "He don't need you. He just don't care for his cereal. He wants a cookie." Nicky bawled.
"He'll choke on it, when he's crying," Hope said.
"You want to argue with me?" said Oren Rath. "You want to talk about choking? I'll cut his pecker off and stuff it down his throat--if you want to talk about choking."
Hope gave Nicky a zwieback and he stopped crying.
"You see?" said Oren Rath. He picked up the high chair with Nicky in it and hugged it to his chest. "We're going to the bedroom now," he said; he nodded to Hope. "You first."
They went down the hall together. The Standish family lived in a ranch house then; with a new baby, they had agreed that ranch houses were safer in the case of a fire. Hope went into the bedroom and Oren Rath put down the high chair with Nicky in it, just outside the bedroom door. Nicky had almost stopped bleeding; there was just a little blood on his cheek; Oren Rath wiped this off with his hand, then wiped his hand on his pants. Then he stepped into the bedroom after Hope. When he closed the door, Nicky started to cry.
"Please," Hope said. "He really might choke, and he knows how to get out of that high chair--or it might tip over. He doesn't like to be alone."
Oren Rath went to the night table and slashed through the phone cord with his fisherman's knife as easily as a man halving a very ripe pear. "You don't want to argue with me," he said.
Hope sat down on the bed. Nicky was crying, but not hysterically; it sounded as if he might stop. Hope started crying, too.
"Just take off your clothes," Oren said. He helped her undress. He was tall and reddish-blond, his hair as lank and as close to his head as high grass beaten down by a flood. He smelled like silage and Hope remembered the turquoise pickup she'd noticed in
the driveway, just before he appeared in her kitchen. "You've even got a rug in the bedroom," he said to her. He was thin but muscular; his hands were large and clumsy, like the feet of a puppy who's going to be a big dog. His body seemed almost hairless, but he was so pale, so very blond, that his hair was hard to see against his skin.
"Do you know my husband?" Hope asked him.
"I know when he's home and when he ain't," Rath said. "Listen," he said suddenly; Hope held her breath. "You hear? Your kid don't even mind it." Nicky was murmuring vowel sounds outside the bedroom door, talking wetly to his zwieback. Hope began crying harder. When Oren Rath touched her, awkward and fast, she thought she was so dry that she wouldn't even get big enough for his horrible finger.
"Please wait," she said.
"No arguing with me."
"No, I mean I can help you," she said. She wanted him in and out of her as fast as possible; she was thinking of Nicky in the high chair in the hall. "I can make it nicer, I mean," she said, unconvincingly; she did not know how to say what she was saying. Oren Rath grabbed one of her breasts in such a way that Hope knew he had never touched a breast before; his hand was so cold, she flinched. In his awkwardness, he butted her in the mouth with the top of his head.
"No arguing," he grunted.
"Hope!" someone called. They both heard it and froze. Oren Rath gaped at the cut phone cord.
"Hope?"
It was Margot, a neighbor and a friend. Oren Rath touched the cool, flat blade of his knife to Hope's nipple.
"She's going to walk right in here," Hope whispered. "She's a good friend."
"My God, Nicky," they could hear Margot say, "I see you're eating all over the house. Is your mother getting dressed?"