Strangers

you'd find working with children especially rewarding."
        "Rita, what if I had one of my attacks while I was with the children? It would frighten them, and I-"
        "Oh, pish posh," Rita said. "Every time I've gotten you out of the house these last two weeks, you've used that same excuse to try to resist leaving your room. 'Oh, Rita,' you say, 'I'll have one of my awful fits and embarrass you." But you haven't, and you won't. Even if you did, it wouldn't embarrass me. I don't embarrass easily, dear."
        "I never thought for a moment you were a shrinking violet.
        But you haven't seen me in this fugue state. You don't know what I'm like or-"
        "Oh, for goodness' sake, you make it sound as if you're a regular Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - or Ms. Hyde - which I'm sure you're not. You haven't beaten anyone to death with a cane yet, have you, Ms. Hyde?"
        Ginger laughed and shook her head. "You're something else, Rita."
        "Excellent. You'll bring so much to the organization."
        Although Rita probably did not think of Ginger as another charity case, she had approached this recuperation and rehabilitation as a new cause. She rolled up her sleeves and committed herself to seeing Ginger through the current crisis, and nothing on earth was going to stop her. Ginger was touched by Rita's concern - and depressed by the need for it.
        They stopped at a traffic light, third car from the intersection, with cars, trucks, buses, taxis, and delivery vans crowding them on all sides. In the Mercedes, the cacophony of the city was muffled but not silenced altogether, and when Ginger looked out the window at her side to search for the source of a particularly annoying engine roar, she saw a large motorcycle. The rider turned his head toward her at that moment, but she could not see his face. He was wearing a helmet with a tinted visor that came all the way down to his chin.
        For the first time in ten days, the amnesic mist descended over Ginger. It happened much faster this time than it had with the black gloves, ophthalmoscope, or sink drain. She looked into the blank and shiny visor, and her heart stuttered, and her breath was pinched off, and she was instantly swept away by a massive wave of terror, gone.
        

    ***
        
        First, Ginger became aware of horns. Car horns, bus horns, the air-horns of trucks. Some like the high squeals of animals, some low and ominous. Wailing, whooping, barking, shrieking, honking, bleating.
        She opened her eyes. Her vision swam into focus. She was still in the car. The intersection was still in front of them, though evidently a couple of minutes had passed and the traffic ahead had moved. With the engine running but the gearshift in park, the Mercedes was ten feet closer to the crosswalk and angled slightly into the next lane, which was what was causing the horn blowing as other vehicles tried to get around.
        Ginger heard herself whimpering.
        Rita Hannaby was leaning across the console that separated the driver's and passenger's seats, very close, gripping both of Ginger's hands, holding them down and holding them very tightly. "Ginger? Are you there? Are you all right? Ginger?"
        Blood. After the jarring blasts of the horns, after Rita's voice, Ginger became aware of the blood. Red spots marked her lime-green skirt. A dark smear stained the sleeve of her suit jacket. Her hands were gloved in blood, as were Rita's hands.
        "Oh, my God," Ginger said.
        "Ginger, are you with me? Are you back? Ginger?" One of Rita's manicured nails was torn off, with only a splintered stub sticking up jaggedly from the cuticle, and both her hands appeared to have been gouged. Scratches on the woman's fingers, on the backs of her hands, and on her palms were bleeding freely, and as far as Ginger could tell, all of the blood was Rita's, none of it her own. The cuffs of the gray St. John's suit were wet with blood. "Ginger, talk to me."
        Horns continued to blare.
        Ginger looked up and saw that Rita's perfectly coiffured hair was now in disarray. A two-inch-long scratch furrowed her left cheek, and blood tinted with makeup was trickling along her jaw to her chin.
        "You're back," Rita said with obvious relief, letting go of Ginger's hands.
        "What've I done?"
        "Only scratches," Rita said. "It's all right. You had an attack, panicked, tried to leave the car. I couldn't