Watchers

thirty-first ring.
    Streck said, “I can’t get you out of my mind.”
    Nora did not reply.
    Streck said, “You have beautiful hair. So dark. Almost black. Thick and glossy. I want to run my hands through your hair.”
    She had to say something to put him in his place—or hang up. But she could not bring herself to do either.
    “I’ve never seen eyes like yours,” Streck said, breathing hard. “Gray but not like other gray eyes. Deep, warm, sexy eyes.”
    Nora was speechless, paralyzed.
    “You’re very pretty, Nora Devon. Very pretty. And I know what you need.
    I do. I really do, Nora. I know what you need, and I’m going to give it to you.,,
    Her paralysis was shattered by a fit of the shakes. She dropped the phone into its cradle. Bending forward in bed, she felt as if she were shaking herself to pieces before the tremors slowly subsided.
    She did not own a gun.
    She felt small, fragile, and terribly alone.
    She wondered if she should call the police. But what would she tell them? That she was the object of sexual harassment? They’d get a big laugh out of that. Her? A sex object? She was an old maid, as plain as mud, not remotely the type to turn a man’s head and give him erotic dreams. The police would suppose that she either was making it up or was hysterical. Or they would assume she had misinterpreted Streck’s politeness as sexual interest, which is what even she had thought at first.
    She pulled a blue robe on over the roomy men’s pajamas that she wore, belted it. Barefoot, she hurried downstairs to the kitchen, where she hesitantly withdrew a butcher’s knife from the rack near the stove. Light trickled like a thin stream of quicksilver along the well-honed cutting edge.
    As she turned the gleaming knife in her hand, she saw her eyes reflected in the broad, flat blade. She stared at herself in the polished steel, wondering if she could possibly use such a horrible weapon against another human being even in self-defense.
    She hoped she would never have to find out.
    Upstairs again, she put the butcher’s knife on the nightstand, within easy reach.
    She took off her robe and sat on the edge of the bed, hugging herself and trying to stop shaking.
    “Why me?” she said aloud. “Why does he want to pick on me?”
    Streck said that she was pretty, but Nora knew it was not true. Her own mother had abandoned her to Aunt Violet and had returned only twice in twenty-eight years, the last time when Nora was six. Her father remained unknown to her, and no other Devon relatives were willing to take her in, a situation which Violet frankly attributed to Nora’s uncomely appearance. So although Streck said she was pretty, it could not possibly be her that he wanted. No, what he wanted was the thrill of scaring and dominating and hurting her. There were such people. She read about them in books, newspapers. And Aunt Violet had warned her a thousand times that if a man ever came on to her with sweet talk and smiles, he would only want to lift her up so he could later cast her down from a greater height and hurt her all the Worse.
    After a while, the worst of the tremors passed. Nora got into bed again. Her remaining ice cream had melted, so she put the dish aside, on the nightstand. She picked up the novel by Dickens and tried to involve herself once more with Pip’s tale. But her attention repeatedly strayed to the phone, to the butcher’s knife—and to the open door and the second-floor hail beyond, Where she kept imagining she saw movement.
3
     
    Travis went into the kitchen, and the dog followed him.
    He pointed to the refrigerator and said, “Show me. Do it again. Get me a beer. Show me how you did it.”
    The dog did not move.
    Travis squatted. “Listen, fur face, who got you out of those woods, away from whatever was chasing you? I did. And who bought hamburgers for you? I did. I bathed you, fed you, gave you a home. Now you owe me. Stop being coy. If you can open that thing, do it!”
    The dog went to the aging Frigidaire, lowered its head to the bottom corner of the enamel-coated door, gripped the edge in its jaws, and pulled backward, straining with its entire body. The rubber seal let loose with a barely audible sucking sound. The door swung open. The dog quickly insinuated itself into the gap, then jumped up and braced itself with a forepaw on each side of the storage compartment.
    “I’ll be damned,” Travis said, moving closer.
    The retriever peered into the second shelf, where