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If he were not as strong as the Dragon, Reba would die. He knew it. He strained until the room turned red before his bulging eyes.

“i can’t.”

“NO YOU CAN’T. BUT I CAN.”

Dolarhyde gripped the bar. It bowed as the weight rose to his shoulders. UP. Above his head easily. “GOOD-BYE, CUNT FACE,” he said, proud Dragon, quivering in the light.

38

Francis Dolarhyde never got to work on Monday morning.

He started from his house exactly on time, as he always did. His appearance was impeccable, his driving precise. He put on his dark glasses when he made the turn at the Missouri River bridge and drove into the morning sun.

His foam cooler squeaked as it jiggled against the passenger seat. He leaned across and set it on the floor, remembering that he must pick up the dry ice and get the film from . . .

Crossing the Missouri channel now, moving water under him. He looked at the whitecaps on the sliding river and suddenly felt that he was sliding and the river was still. A strange, disjointed, collapsing feeling flooded him. He let up on the accelerator.

The van slowed in the outside lane and stopped. Traffic behind him was stacking up, honking. He didn’t hear it.

He sat, sliding slowly northward over the still river, facing the morning sun. Tears leaked from beneath his sunglasses and fell hot on his forearms.

Someone was pecking on the window. A driver, face early-morning pale and puffed with sleep, had gotten out of a car behind him. The driver was yelling something through the window.

Dolarhyde looked at the man. Flashing blue lights were coming from the other end of the bridge. He knew he should drive. He asked his body to step on the gas, and it did. The man beside the van skipped backward to save his feet.

Dolarhyde pulled into the parking lot of a big motel near the U.S. 270 interchange. A school bus was parked in the lot, the bell of a tuba leaning against its back window.

Dolarhyde wondered if he was supposed to get on the bus with the old people.

No, that wasn’t it. He looked around for his mother’s Packard.

“Get in. Don’t put your feet on the seat,” his mother said.

That wasn’t it either.

He was in a motel parking lot on the west side of St. Louis and he wanted to be able to Choose and he couldn’t.

In six days, if he could wait that long, he would kill Reba McClane. He made a sudden high sound through his nose.

Maybe the Dragon would be willing to take the Shermans first and wait another moon.

No. He wouldn’t.

Reba McClane didn’t know about the Dragon. She thought she was with Francis Dolarhyde. She wanted to put her body on Francis Dolarhyde. She welcomed Francis Dolarhyde in Grandmother’s bed.

“I’ve had a really terrific time, D.,” Reba McClane said in the yard.

Maybe she liked Francis Dolarhyde. That was a perverted, despicable thing for a woman to do. He understood that he should despise her for it, but oh God it was good.

Reba McClane was guilty of liking Francis Dolarhyde. Demonstrably guilty.

If it weren’t for the power of his Becoming, if it weren’t for the Dragon, he could never have taken her to his house. He would not have been capable of sex. Or would he?

“My God, man. That’s so sweeeet.”

That’s what she said. She said “man.”

The breakfast crowd was coming out of the motel, passing his van. Their idle glances walked on him with many tiny feet.