Eve's Men by Newton Thornburg

as his gorge rose again, this time irresistibly. Making a dive for the bathtub, he retched into it repeatedly, managing finally to bring up only a skein of vile-tasting mucus. He turned on the cold water tap and washed it down, then thrust his head into the stream long enough to feel as if he too were going down the drain. Shuddering and gasping, he got back on his feet and toweled off while Eve and Brian helped Belinda out of the bathroom and into a robe of Eve’s. All the while the girl kept jabbering and jerking, as if an electric current were being fed into her body.
    As Charley followed them out of the bathroom, Brian gave him a worried look. “Feel any better?” he asked. “Can you do it?”
    For the first time, Charley noticed how ragged and scared Eve looked. “I’ll be okay,” he said, wondering just how he was going to manage it.
    Eve looked at him. “Let’s go then. Help me with her.”
    As they were leaving, Brian kept giving them instructions: that Eve should drive and Charley should hold the girl between them; that they should take the freeway south, because there was a hospital a few miles in that direction; and that Eve should do all the talking, should give the hospital a phony name and address.
    “Above all, get out as fast as you can. You don’t want any reporters getting to you.”
    Nodding impatiently, Eve hurried the girl out onto the walkway, with Charley holding on more than anything else. In the parking lot, they helped her into Brian’s pickup and then got in themselves, on each side of her. As they headed for the freeway, Charley asked how the girl had hurt her forehead.
    “Who knows? Ask Brian,” Eve said.
    “You blame him for this?”
    She laughed coldly. “Who else? We weren’t the ones with her. We didn’t fuck her, did we?”
    “No, I think I’d remember that.”
    Eve gave him a withering look. In between them, Belinda began to squirm and whimper. And when her hands went for her face again, Charley pulled her onto his lap and held her there, pinning her arms. At the same time a new wave of nausea hit him and he broke into a heavy sweat. He leaned his head against her shoulder and choked down the bile rising in his throat.
    As they sped onto the freeway he looked out at the headlights of the oncoming cars and found them skittering sideways, multiplying. He closed his eyes and tightened his grip on the girl, grateful that he had something solid to hold onto. But she began to cry and buck against him, and suddenly she lunged toward the side and accidentally hit the passenger door handle, causing the door to pop open. Struggling to keep her from falling out, Charley shouted for Eve to pull over and stop. But Belinda went on lunging and squirming, and within a few seconds all he had a grip on was her robe, Eve’s green velour, slick as grease in his sweating hands. He held on with all his strength and finally they were on the grassy shoulder of the road, bouncing along, slowing, the girl drooping further into the open doorway, like a huge green sack.
    Then, just as they were pulling to a stop, she for some reason twisted in the opposite direction and unraveled herself from the robe, not unlike Cleopatra coming out of her rug, and for a moment Charley sat there with the empty, useless garment, looking down and back at the girl tumbling naked through the grass. He caught himself then and jumped out too, tripping and almost falling, not wanting to believe his eyes as he saw her dart around the back of the truck and head out across the freeway, right into the path of blazing headlights. There was a howl of car horns and skidding tires, and Charley gripped the edge of the truck bed, trying not to fall, staring past the hurtling traffic at the flash of her white legs against the darkness of the median strip. And still she ran, only now straight into the path of the cars coming from the opposite direction, these too already braking and fish-tailing, adding to the terrible din.
    But this