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“No! No, I want to.”

“We’re facing his back,” Dr. Warfield said. “He’s just sleeping away about two and a half feet from you, waist-high on a work table. Tell you what: I’ll put your left hand—you’re right-handed, aren’t you?—I’ll put your left hand on the edge of the table and you can explore with your right. Take your time. I’ll be right here beside you.”

“So will I,” Dr. Hassler said. They were enjoying this. Under the hot lights her hair smelled like fresh sawdust in the sun.

Reba could feel the heat on the top of her head. It made her scalp tingle. She could smell her warm hair, Warfield’s soap, alcohol and disinfectant, and the cat. She felt a touch of faintness, quickly over.

She gripped the edge of the table and reached out tentatively until her fingers touched tips of fur, warm from the lights, a cooler layer and then a deep steady warmth from below. She flattened her hand on the thick coat and moved it gently, feeling the fur slide across her palm, with and against the lay, felt the hide slide over the wide ribs as they rose and fell.

She gripped the pelt and fur sprang between her fingers. In the very presence of the tiger her face grew pink and she lapsed into blindisms, inappropriate facial movements she had schooled herself against.

Warfield and Hassler saw her forget herself and were glad. They saw her through a wavy window, a pane of new sensation she pressed her face against.

As he watched from the shadows, the great muscles in Dolarhyde’s back quivered. A drop of sweat bounced down his ribs.

“The other side’s all business,” Dr. Warfield said close to her ear.

He led her around the table, her hand trailing down the tail.

A sudden constriction in Dolarhyde’s chest as her fingers trailed over the furry testicles. She cupped them and moved on.

Warfield lifted a great paw and put it in her hand. She felt the roughness of the pads and smelled faintly the cage floor. He pressed a toe to make the claw slide out. The heavy, supple muscles of the shoulders filled her hands.

She felt the tiger’s ears, the width of its head and, carefully, the veterinarian guiding her, touched the roughness of its tongue. Hot breath stirred the hair on her forearms.

Last, Dr. Warfield put the stethoscope in her ears. Her hands on the rhythmic chest, her face upturned, she was filled with the tiger heart’s bright thunder.

Reba McClane was quiet, flushed, elated as they drove away. She turned to Dolarhyde once and said slowly, “Thank you . . . very much. If you don’t mind, I would dearly love a martini.”

“Wait here a minute,” Dolarhyde said as he parked in his yard.

She was glad they hadn’t gone back to her apartment. It was stale and safe. “Don’t tidy up. Take me in and tell me it’s neat.”

“Wait here.”

He carried in the sack from the liquor store and made a fast inspection tour. He stopped in the kitchen and stood for a moment with his hands over his face. He wasn’t sure what he was doing. He felt danger, but not from the woman. He couldn’t look up the stairs. He had to do something and he didn’t know how. He should take her back home.

Before his Becoming, he would not have dared any of this.

Now he realized he could do anything. Anything. Anything.

He came outside, into the sunset, into the long blue shadow of the van. Reba McClane held on to his shoulders until her foot touched the ground.

She felt the loom of the house. She sensed its height in the echo of the van door closing.

“Four steps on the grass. Then there’s a ramp,” he said.

She took his arm. A tremor through him. Clean perspiration in cotton.

“You do have a ramp. What for?”

“Old people were here.”

“Not now, though.”

“No.”

“It feels cool and tall,” she said in the parlor. Museum air. And was that incense? A clock ticked far away. “It’s a big house, isn’t it? How many rooms?”