"Don't blame the victim for the crime!" we said. I have to admit this was an effort for me. I was about to decide Jack owed me big time when I remembered the blood running out of his nose.

"A woman's walking on a street alone at night, she gets grabbed and raped," Tamsin said. "Is it her fault?"

"Don't blame the victim for the crime!" we said firmly.

"A woman's wearing a tight skirt and no bra, goes to a bar in a bad part of town, gets drunk, takes a ride with a stranger, gets raped. Is it her fault?"

The chorus died out. This required more thought.

"What do you think, Lily?" Tamsin asked me directly.

"I think wanting to look attractive, even provocative, doesn't mean you deserve to get raped. I think even the stupidity of getting drunk with people you don't know doesn't merit the punishment of being raped. At the same time, women should be responsible for their own safety. ..." I trailed off.

"And what does being responsible for your own safety mean?"

That was something I could answer. "It means learning to fight," I said with certainty. "It means being cautious. It means taking care of your car so it won't break down, making sure your doors are locked, and evaluating the scene around you for danger."

Some of the women looked dubious when I mentioned fighting, but the rest of my measures met with approval.

"How responsible for your own safety were you before you got raped?" the therapist asked. Her dark eyes were fixed on me intently. She leaned forward, and the blouse gaped slightly because she filled it up too much.

I tried to remember. "Not very. I made sure I always had enough money to make a phone call. When I was going on a first date with someone I didn't know, I made sure a friend or two knew where I was going and who I was with."

"So wouldn't you say that most of this wisdom is hindsight?"

"Yes."

"Can you blame other women for not having the same sense?"

"No."

The talk went on, and I confined myself to listening for the rest of the hour. The problem of responsibility was a knotty one. Women dress provocatively to attract sexual attention and admiration, because that's gratifying. I believed that very few women would wear a push-up bra, a low-cut blouse, high heels, tight skirts, if they were going to stay home working on the computer, for example. But sexual attention does not equate with rape. I knew of no woman who would walk out the door for an evening of barhopping with the idea that maybe she would enjoy being forced at knifepoint to give a blow job to a stranger. And very few women walked alone at night hoping a man would offer them a choice between sex and strangulation.

The fact remained that stupidity and/or poor judgment are not punishable by rape. And that was the bottom line, as far as I was concerned, and as far as Tamsin was, I thought, by the way she seemed to be steering the group.

What about the great-grandmothers and children who got raped? They were only sex objects to the eyes of the hopelessly warped. They could hardly be accused of "asking for it."

This pattern of thought was familiar to me, an old treadmill. Once I'd reconfirmed where we were going, I thought about the therapist herself. By her bearing and presence, Tamsin Lynd was forcing us to think about events and issues we found it hard to face. What a job - having to listen to all this! I wondered if she'd ever been raped herself, decided it was none of my business to ask since she was the natural - and neutral - leader of the group, at least ostensibly. Whether or not Tamsin had survived a rape, she definitely had problems to face now. That phone call had not been from a friend.

When the session was over, Tamsin ushered us out, remaining behind in the empty building to "clear some things up," she said. Once we were outside in the parking lot, the cocoon of mutual pain dissolved, and Melanie and Sandy scooted off immediately. Carla got in an old boat of a car and lit a cigarette before she turned the key in the ignition. Firella said, to no one in particular, "I live right down the street." She arranged her keys between her fingers in the approved face-ripping position and strode off into the dark.

Janet gave me a hug. This was not typical of our relationship and almost made me flinch. I held rigidly stiff and pressed my hands against her back in an attempt at reciprocation.

She took a step away and laughed. "There, that better?"

I was embarrassed and showed it.

"You don't need to pretend with me," she said.

"What's the story on Tamsin?" I asked, to get off the subject.

"She's had this job about a year," Janet said, willing to go along with my drift. "She and her husband have a little house over on Compton. They're both Yankees. He has a different last name." Janet clearly saw that as evidence that the couple had a very untraditional marriage.

"Does that bother you?"

Janet shook her head. "She can screw alligators, for all I care. Coming to this group is the most positive step I've taken since I got raped."

"It doesn't seem like you, not reporting," I said carefully.

"It's not like me now. It was like me then."

"Do you ever think of reporting it, even now?"

"He's dead," Janet said simply. "It was in the paper last year. You may remember. Mart Weekins? He was trying to pass on a yellow line on that big curve outside of town on Route Six. Semi was coming the other way."

"So," I said. "He wasn't taking responsibility for himself, I guess. Would you say his being there was - unwise?"

"I wonder if he was dressed provocatively," Janet said, and we both laughed like maniacs.

As it happens so many times, once I'd met Tamsin Lynd, I saw and heard of her everywhere. I saw her at the post office, the grocery store, the gas station. Sometimes she was with a burly man with dark hair and a beard and mustache carefully shaved into a pattern. Each time, she gave me a friendly but impersonal nod, so I could acknowledge or ignore her as I chose.

As Jack and I drove to Little Rock the next week, after my second therapy session, I tried to describe her character and found I had no handle on it at all. Usually, I know right away if I like someone or not, but with Tamsin I just couldn't tell. Maybe it didn't make any difference, if the person was supposed to be helping you get your head straight. Maybe I had no business liking her or hating her.

"She's smart," I said. "She always gets us to talking about different sides to our experience."

"Is she likable?" Jack smoothed his hair back with one hand while gripping the steering wheel with the other. His wiry black hair was escaping from its band this morning, a sure sign he'd been thinking of something else while he got dressed. I wondered if my job performance was the issue on his mind.

"Not really," I said. "She's got a strong character. I just don't know what it's made up of."

"You usually make up your mind about someone faster than that."

"She puzzles me. Maybe it's a part of being a counselor, but she doesn't seem to want to focus right now on how we feel about the attacker, just about the problems we have adjusting to being attacked."

"Maybe she's assuming you all hate men?"

"Could be. Or maybe she's just waiting for us to say it. I guess none of us are in the 'Men Are Wonderful' club, and I think one or two in the group really hate all men, to some extent."

Jack looked uncomfortable. I wasn't sure how much he wanted to hear about this new experience of mine, and I wasn't sure how much I was willing to share.

"You sure you're okay at this new job?" he asked, for maybe the hundredth time.

"Jack," I said warningly.

"I know, I know, I just... feel responsible."

"You are responsible. But I'm fine, and I'm even enjoying myself some." Jack had this idea that I should be a private detective, like him. To achieve this, I had to work with an experienced investigator for two years. This job was my first step, and the experienced investigator was Jack.

We pulled up in the parking lot of a strip mall in the western part of Little Rock. This was the second Marvel Gym to open in the city, and it had taken over about three store widths in the strip mall. Mel Brentwood was risking a chunk of investment money in opening a second gym, especially since Marvel was no back-to-basics weightlifting place. Marvel was a deluxe gym, with different classes all day, a special room for aerobic equipment (treadmills and stair climbers), a sauna and tanning beds, a whirlpool, and lots of free weights for people who actually came to the gym to pump some iron.

I went in the women's changing room, which also contained the women's bathroom, and peeled off my shirt and shorts, folding them to stack in my tiny locker. Underneath, I wore what I considered a costume, since I wouldn't ever wear it otherwise: a Spandex unitard patterned in a leopard print. It came to mid-thigh and was sleeveless. Across the chest, MARVEL was printed in puffy letters, with the word "gym" centered underneath in smaller type. Though this so-called garment was brief and showed every ounce I had on me, it covered the scars left from the knifing I'd taken. I wore heavy black socks and black Nikes to look a little more utilitarian. After a moment's thought, I left my purse out when I pushed my locker shut, then went out to the main floor to punch in my time clock. My job, the lowest paid as the newest employee, was to check "guests" in, that being the gym's euphemism for people who'd paid for a year's membership. The rest of my job consisted of showing new guests how to use the equipment, spotting for someone who'd come without a buddy, pushing the drinks and clothes the gym sold, and answering the phone. There were always two people on duty, always a man and a woman. If the man who shared my shift wanted to go work out, I was supposed to watch the desk. He was supposed to do the same for me.

I had never shown quite so much of myself to so many strangers, on a day-to-day basis. Even before what I labeled my "bad time," I'd been modest. But I had to blend in with the other employees, most of whom were younger. If any of them had had a body like mine they would have flaunted it much more than I was doing, Jack had assured me.

To minimize my self-consciousness about appearing in this getup, I kept my makeup to a minimum, avoided direct eye contact with the men, and tried to squelch any interest manifested by any of the guests.

Since the front door had been opened already, I knew the manager was there. Sure enough, the light in her office was on. Linda Doan didn't like me and was determined to get rid of me the first chance she got. But Linda couldn't fire me, though she didn't know that yet. She didn't know why I was really at Marvel.

I was under cover. The very term had a tendency to make me snicker, but it was true. Since its opening seven months before, the gym had been plagued by a thief. Someone was sneaking into the changing rooms and stealing items - cash, jewelry, cell phones - from the guests. It wasn't impossible that the thief was a guest, but Jack thought the culprit was one of the staff, given the territory the thief had covered.

"The men's changing room, the ladies' changing room, the storage cubes outside the sauna," Mel Brentwood had moaned. "Drinks, watches, chains, cash. Never a lot, never anything awfully expensive, but it's just a matter of time. And the guests will hear about it and they won't come. If we don't find out who's responsible, I'll fire everyone working there and replace all of them, I swear I will."

I was pretty sure such drastic action was illegal, but it wasn't my business to say so, and I noticed Jack glanced out the window and kept his face blank. Mel couldn't be the idiot he projected himself to be. He had started this string of gyms with money he'd begged and borrowed from skeptical friends of his parents, and he'd made the gyms prosper by thinking of ever-new ways to get them in the news without actually burning them down.

"Can we install a camera in the changing room?" Jack asked.

"Hell, no! How do you think these people, most of 'em trying to take off weight, would react to discovering they'd been on camera? There's no way to put one in there that no one would notice." But I could tell the idea had caught Mel's interest. "If I didn't want to take the thief to court..." he said slowly. "If I just wanted to catch the bastard and fire him..."

"The camera would never come up," Jack said. "We could take it out, destroy the tape, no one the wiser. I can run by Sneaky Pete's. I'm not crazy about the idea of filming people who don't know about it, but it would work."

"So, do I need Lily?" Mel Brentwood eyed me like I was a gunslinger who might draw on him.

"Sure. There are things cameras won't catch," Jack said. "And we have yet to figure out a way to disguise them."

"Okay, girl," Mel said, whacking me on the shoulder to get me fired up for the big game. "You start work as soon as you can get your tights on."

I eyed him balefully. I wasn't happy about working for Mel, but I'd worked for plenty of people I hadn't liked. I told myself to ease up. Politically correct he wasn't, but Mel would pay Jack to do this, Jack would have another client who would call him when he got in a jam, and Jack's business would prosper.

So there I was, in Marvel Gym, in glorious leopard print Spandex, making sure guests swiped their green plastic cards as they came in so their presence would be recorded on the computer. I handed out small towels to the guests who'd forgotten theirs, I checked the supply of bath-sized towels in the locker rooms, and I sold the expensive "health" drinks displayed in the cooler behind the counter. Those tasks were constants, but every day there was some specific problem to solve. In the first hour I worked today, I unstuck the weight-setting peg on a leg-extension device. Then I discreetly sprayed cleaner on a weightlifting bench after a particularly sweaty guest had used it, and got the vacuum out to suck up clods of dirt tracked in by a guest who'd been running in the mud yesterday.