Certain prey

Начало книги

Clara Rinker. Of the three unluckiest days in Barbara Allen's life, the first was the day Clara Rinker was raped behind a St. Louis nudie bar called Zanadu, which was located west of the city in a dusty checkerboard of truck terminals, warehouses and light assembly plants. Zanadu, as its chrome-yellow billboard proclaimed, was E-Z On, E-Z Off. The same was not true of Clara

Rinker, despite what Zanadu's customers thought.

Rinker was sixteen when she was raped, a small athletic girl, a dancer, an

Ozarks runaway. She had bottle-blonde hair that showed darker roots, and a body that looked wonderful in v-necked, red-polka-dotted, thin-cotton dresses from K Mart. A body that drew the attention of cowboys, truckers, and other men who dreamt of Nashville.

Rinker had taken up nude dancing because she could. It was that, fuck for money, or go hungry. The rape took place at two o'clock in the morning on an otherwise delightful April night, the kind of night when Midwestern kids are allowed to stay out late and play war, when cicadas hum down from their elm-bark hideaways. Rinker had closed the bar that night; she was the last dancer up.

Читать дальше →