VI. Gloria

“I can’t believe this,” said General Cortlee.

(No. Not that General. Another General. Pay attention.)

“I can’t believe it,” he said, again.

He was not referring to arcane inscriptions chalked on the floor of his office at Fort Macready, as might perhaps any other self-respecting General; he himself had drawn them, painstakingly, over the course of the previous forty-five minutes. Nor was he referring to the low basso rumble of “And by the name Ana­phaxeton which Aaron heard and spake and was made wise; and by the name Zabaoth, which Moses named and all the rivers were turned to blood; and by the name Asher Ehyeh Oriston, which Moses named, and all the rivers brought forth frogs, and they ascended into the houses, destroying all things,” grating from the throats of the Major and two Captains standing behind him; he’d helped them arrange the invocation as a plainsong in the first place. He didn’t mean the thick, sickly smell of vanilla and honey, with a faint citrus tinge to it, enough to tip it over the edge from refreshing to cloying; truth be told, he rather liked the smell. He wasn’t talking about the white chorister’s robe he wore over his khakis; his wife, after all, had been the one who’d appliquéd the golden stars and comets along the back and sleeves, and no one who saw it dared point out how charmingly... tacky they were. And he certainly wasn’t disbelieving the unclothed pale and spectral form of Smnglf, who stood (so to speak) within that circle, smelling of the very incense of Heaven, constrained by the plainsong and the chalk, speaking with someone else’s voice, while he stood there, listening, in his white robe yellowed at the armpits with old sweat.

“Belief has nothing to do with it, Jasper,” said Smglf, its pearly lips twitching as it spoke.

“And by the name Elion, which Moses named, and there was a great hail such as had not been since the beginning of the world.”

“You’re telling me that I not only have to clean up your mess, the fucking mess you made in my backyard, but you’re telling me that you’re dropping the goddamn Scud Hussy on top of me, too?”

“Attention is being paid. Skd Huzi is an angel of the Sword and is a fit Champion of the Light for Herschberg.”

“Herschberg doesn’t need a goddamn champion!” shrieked General Jasper Cortlee, and there might have been a bit of a bobble in the admittedly difficult line “And by the name Adonai, which Moses named, and there came up locusts, which appeared upon the whole land, and devoured all which the hail had left.” Cortlee mopped sweat from his brow as Smnglf raised one pale white hand and pressed it against a wall that was not there, that gave a little, yielded, almost, but in the end held firm. “Hell,” said Cortlee, quietly, his voice shaking a little more than it ought, “you could use the help out there in the Gulf.”

Far away, someone sighed, and Smnglf shivered. “There is a...” it said, and it had a visible difficulty in forming the next words, “war in—heaven,” it gasped, “and there are fronts wherever you look. We all have our parts to play. Do—do not do this thing!—do what you must, and, and, and—for the love of our Father!—and walk. With God.”

“And by the name Schema Amathia which Ioshua called upon, and the sun stayed his course; and by the name Alpha and Omega, which Daniel named and destroyed Bel and slew the Dragon; and in the name Emmanuel, which the three children, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, sang in the midst of the fiery furnace, and were delivered...” sang the two Captains and the Major.

“Walk with God,” muttered Cortlee, who smudged three chalk drawings in quick succession with his left thumb. When he looked up, Smnglf was gone, as if it had never been.

“So do we let her go?” said a Captain, after a couple of deep, cleansing breaths, and a drink of water.

“Damn—straight—” said Cortlee from somewhere inside the musty white robe, which had no opening front or back, and had to be wrestled on and off. “I have,” he said, his red face popping out from beneath the robe’s hem, “no use for any creature, man or angel, whose feet get that cold.” He dropped the robe on his already cluttered desk.

“Move tonight? I could radio McConnell—”

“No!” barked Cortlee. “No. Second thought, let’s—they’ve got that place warded up through what, Turkey Day? Let ’em play with her a few more days, then when they start to move her, step in, separate, let her go. Adds confusion. More confusion at this point: good.”

“I’m concerned about the actual target,” said the Major, who had an unfortunate habit of sliding into intelligencesprech when nervous. “She’s got an impressive capability vis a vis asset neutralization.”

“We’re all friends here, boys. Don’t know if you’ve been briefed, but you’re all cleared for Operation AMPOULE. Tricky and dangerous as sweet fuck-all, but there are protocols.” Cortlee settled himself into his desk chair and stared thoughtfully at his chalk-dusted fingertips. “First things first. One of you boys raise McConnell on the horn for me, would you? Secure line.”

“Why are you dragging her into this?” said the Captain who had seniority, and thus did not have to go scrounging for a phone list.

“Hell, son, I’m dropping my previous problem of the missing eight squarely on her sturdy little shoulders. Called delegating. What good managers do. Read it in a book somewheres. Now—” He frowned, his gaze caught by a form lying at the top of his inbox. “Jesus wept,” he said, snatching it. “Any of you boys want to own up to authorizing a charter flight to fucking Dubai?”

•

She’d really meant to do it, this time. Honest.

The showers, you see, on her floor had individual stalls, with these little lips, maybe two and a half, three inches high running along the front, which you could stub your toe on in the morning if you weren’t careful, hell, you could bark your fucking shin, and God knows how they’d all managed to go this long without somebody tripping over the goddamn thing and smashing her head against the tile on the back wall or God forbid the faucets or a pipe or something and suing the shit out of this place. So she’d leaned in, still dressed in her Working-Class Faggot T-shirt and the paint-spattered jeans she’d stolen from Tyler’s room the day after his funeral, and she’d turned on the water, not too hot, and then, still dressed, she’d knelt down under the water, letting it soak her hair and her shirt and her jeans and she puzzled a moment, trying to figure out the physics of the thing that made water so much colder when it fell on clothes instead of bare skin, and she wondered if that was really what she wanted rolling through her brain as her last thoughts on this earth, and then she quirked her mouth in a half-smile. What the hell should she be thinking of? Why she was doing this? Since half the reason why was that she couldn’t stop thinking of it—

Enjoy the silence while it lasts.

Because—really, goddammit—she was going to do it. This time for sure.

She sat on the tiled floor, blocking the drain with her butt. She couldn’t lean back against anything from there, but this wasn’t exactly about being comfortable. She tilted her head back and let the warm water trickle into her mouth—

Trickle—

Fuck.

The pipes were wheezing and banging behind her, and the water was trickling—and now it was stopping—

Fucking fuckety fuck fuck fuck.

It was the closest thing to a warm bath she could come up with on short notice, see. She’d meant to let the water fill up the stall, held in by the lip and kept from sucking down the drain by her Tyler-jeanéd butt—ass? no, butt—and when she had enough, she’d have flipped open the case and—

She flipped open the case anyway. It wasn’t quite as long as her forearm and the red cloth wrap had worn away at the corners and along the edges and hinges from constant handling, exposing the old stiff cardboard underneath. Inside, in a black velvet lining, rested a small bowl, a round soft brush with a spherical handle, a leather strop, and a long tarnished silver straight razor. She’d found it in Second Chances last week and paid fifteen bucks for it.

What price, death?

Why, ’tis but three Lincolns, ma’am.

This time, anyway.

Stupid fucking water rationing. Stupid fucking quarantine. Stupid fucking National Guard.

Without quite knowing what she was doing, she reached into the case and swept up the razor, feeling how it fitted to her hand, the heft and weight of it, the balance, wondered briefly how anyone could possibly shave with a disposable plastic Bic after feeling something like this in their hand. Wondered at the image of this large yet—nimble­—blade, sliding along the skin of her legs, tenderly scraping smooth her underarms, slipping so gently along Tyler’s cheek, her hand guiding it—carefully!—under his chin and along his throat. Clean. Smooth. But it was an old blade, not properly cleaned or sharpened, and it pulled at the skin along the inside of her wrist, and hurt like fuck-all when she leaned some weight into it, and it punched right through, and—

Oh, holy fuck.

She hadn’t—

She hadn’t expected there to be quite so much blood. It was so—almost—enthusiastic—

She sat there, wet and shivering in the shower, and watched the blood. A warm bath, it was said, relaxed you, helped draw the blood out more quickly, made the whole thing that much more pleasant. So. She’d finally done it. Sans warmth; sans bath; sans relaxation—but she’d done it. She absently stitched the cut an inch or so higher along her arm and hissed from the pain.

She sat there, and watched the blood, which now slid out of her sluggishly, but with something more than gravity pulling it away from her. Pushing it away. She sat there, and watched the blood, and frowned. Maybe, she thought. Maybe one isn’t enough. Maybe that’s why I’m—I’m still here. I’m still me. I—

She looked at the blade. She looked at the blood. She looked at her other wrist.

The solution to this equation was somewhere just beyond her reach.

She realized, as she struggled to her feet, that she had already become quite lightheaded.

The world—the world faded away a moment, dissolving in a fizzing haze like the onrushing edge of a nitrous high. I’ve—I’ve done it, she thought, I’ve really done it this time. This is it. This is what it feels like. I—

She was standing, out of the shower, dripping water and blood onto the floor. She was standing at the end of the line of sinks, looking out the window at nothing at all. It was dark outside. Pitch-black. Night. The lights were on in here. She could see—she could see—herself.

I’m still here, she thought.

She touched the window with one bloody finger.

Her reflection reached up and did the same.

Something—

The solution to this equation was just beyond her reach.

Something was moving out there. Inside her reflection. Small—falling, over and over again—falling stars, forever lost—

“Hey,” said Candie’s insufferable voice from behind her, “you know you’re not—supposed—to... be... water—I—”

And when she turned to see why, exactly, Candie was having so much trouble speaking, and she couldn’t help it; she raised her bloody hand to her mouth to stifle a giggle. At the idea, you see. The turn of phrase. For Candie’s face was so pale, so blenched. As if all the blood had drained out of it. Get it?

•

VII. Meditation No. 2

“Oh,” whispered Janis, or was it Jill? “Should you really be drinking so much?” Right in her ear. Brittany shrieked and dropped the wineskin—waterskin, really, let’s call the spade a spade, shall we?—which burst, spilling water everywhere, not much of a waste, as she would only have turned it all into piss, which would have ended up down there anyway. Still. It’s not the destination, it isn’t the goal; it’s the journey that matters, and she would probably have greatly enjoyed the sights along the way. At the very least her tongue and throat would, which were already dry and swollen, raspy, as if she had drunk nothing for hours, hours—had it been water? Her stomach felt cold and heavy, swollen, as if it would drop out from under her skirt and burst, her water broken, smashed—aheh. No. Let’s not. There are quite a few pills we take, to be sure; some, perhaps, in vain—but that at least can never happen. We swore. We swore. Never, ever, and even if the spirit is as weak as the too, too sullen flesh, there are pills, after all. Which do wonders to regulate one’s flow, of piss and tears, sweat and snot and bile, choler and blood. To say nothing of how they clear up the complexion. Complected; anorexia, anorectic. Not anorexic. So there; so there.

She was thirsty.

The humors, then: blood, of course; phlegm, so much more dignified than snot; black bile, so sluggish, so leaden, so—black—and choler: yellow, bitter, nasty; but—

But—

The wineskin—waterskin—was so far away, and anyway, it had burst. And—

“Should you really,” said Jill, so calm, so thoughtful, so caring, so considerate, “be drinking so much?” finished Janis, so quicksilver—so quick; quick to defend herself, quick to pick up on what she’d missed out on, up with which she will not put—quick to anger; soggy, and hard to light—

Red blood; blue-grey phlegm, the color of fish-scales; yellow bile, like some cartoon toxic ooze, poison, don’t touch; dark black bile that gleamed deep inside like anthracite. Was anthracite the hard coal? Bituminous, soft? —But black, black, while it was housed deep within her belly, was quick; sullen, perhaps, but hard to pin down, shifting throughout her body, slinking like ink or oil along her bloodstream, darkening her nerves, overwhelming her brain, swelling her forehead like some soft and rotten fruit which she leaned against the cool green column. A green not otherwise found in nature. The mint of industry.

Yellow, and bitter. Humor comes in pills, now, but yellow and bitter were no longer the traits of choler: now they were the sluggards, the glue that she spilled down her throat, that seeped from her belly into her blood, setting like some chilling custard around her nerves, her dark black angry excitable nerves, glinting and winking dully in the half light. Too much, though; too much, and she could not think; too much stupefied. Too much and her nerves could not fire, sniping at each other from behind their lipid bunkers. Too much, and she had to break it up; had to pour down more pills, white and chalky, creamy orange and plastic smooth and tasting of nothing at all, but always, first and foremost, clear and cold, actinic, harsh, burning, sluicing between her teeth as ice clattered against them, for candy is certainly dandy, but liquor is quicksilver quicker—

“Caw,” said a raven, at her feet—on the floor—she stood, her arms wrapped round the column, held in place by a length of chain and two pairs of handcuffs, one at either end, each securing a wrist, the column being so wide as to make kneeling difficult, so working herself down to the raven’s level was always a chore, had always been a chore, for as long as she could remember—spreading her knees in such a way as to work the tatters of her skirt up and past them, so the hem would not hinder their further spreading as she lowered herself, working the chain unseen down the column, avoiding the nozzle or nipple or flange or pipe or protuberance on the other side that the fucking chain always, always hung up on, and when she had squatted as low as she could go, limbo, she stretched out her right arm as far as she could, and used what slack she had to reach down, down, snag the skin, and then the hard part: purgatory: getting hand and skin close enough to her mouth to drink without spilling too much down her—

Her hands had trembled—

The skin had trembled in her hands—

“Caw,” said the other raven. And then “Mer.” Like a cat. She—

Mer?

Oh, thank God. Lucidity—as close as she had gotten to lucidity thus far—had hurt—

“Mer,” said the raven. “Mr-no. Murnan. Mourn; remorse. Memory.”

“Caw,” said the other raven. The first raven, beneath her, raised one clawed foot from the puddle of—water—and shook it, daintily, a vaguely dismissive expression in its beady black eyes.

“Caw,” said the other raven, spreading its wings, flapping them once, twice, but not taking off.

The first raven took two mincing steps towards the burst remains of the skin. “Mr-no,” it said. “Mimir.”

“Caw,” said the other raven.

“Why,” said the first. It poked at the burst skin with its hard black beak, gleaming dully in the dim light like—like oil; like coal—

The other raven flapped again, and then ran, on tottering little legs, to the shadow of the monstrous armoire, just out of her sight. “Caw,” it said. “Cwo. Cwi. Wei; wei; wei wu wei wise. How.”

“Why,” said the first.

“How,” said the second, unseen. “How, how. How.”

Brittany, incredulously, felt a laugh bubbling up out of the turgid murk in her stomach past her lungs and thickly, wetly up her throat and past her lips, and it felt so horribly good she did it again, and again. The why raven fluttered away, alarmed, out of her puddle. The how raven flapped past, across her line of vision, from the armoire to the door on the far side. “Oh, oh darlings. You flatter me, really you do. Is it Wednesday already?” She coughed, and turned the cough into a hoarse, weak laugh. “For if it’s Wednesday, then this must be Yggsdrasil... or is it Sleipnir?” She jingled her fetter against the unnatural green column, and stomped one foot in the noisome puddle at her feet. Mimir’s well, of course, from which she had drunk, and discovered all wisdom. Of course—

“How,” said the second raven.

“Why,” said the first.

Mimir’s head had always been a—

“Cwo,” said the second raven.

“Cwi,” said the first—or perhaps it had been the other way round? They were circling each other, it was hard to tell—

Mimir’s head, the head of the giant bested and slaughtered, held in her trembling hands, filled to the brim with wisdom, which begged the question of why she had bothered to drink from his well—

“Cwo!”

—much less how she had managed to get permission—

“Cwi!”

Oh—oh, yes—the price that had been paid—for one of her eyes was the sun, bright and yellow and burning bitter in her skull—

“Caw!”

—the other, the other—

“Caw!”

She opened her mouth, and before she said anything, both ravens stopped, wings outspread, beaks cocked, beady little eyes boring into her. Adrenaline spiked suddenly like dizzying ice along her veins, splashed into her belly, cleared away all clotted, congealing yellow, all spiky, glittering black, and she could think, could put A next to B and come up with C, and she knew, she knew what was going to happen, mad though it might seem, knew what would trigger it, and yet—“You know,” she said, she heard herself saying, “boys,” and the first raven, the why raven, spread its wings and with a little spring launched itself into the air, “I’m flattered, really,” and she managed not to shriek as its weight settled on her shoulder, claws digging into her flesh, pinching a welt there, and the second raven, the how raven, took one stuttering step, and then another towards her, “but don’t you think,” and it spread its wings, and flapped up and up, as the first raven shifted its weight, ow, oh ow, “that—in order to truthfully play the part, well,” and the how raven was far above her now, fluttering, flapping, and she closed her—her eyes, and gritted her teeth, waiting, and still through those gritted teeth she kept speaking, as if, once begun, the incantation must be finished, the words having taken on a life of their own, “really, I mean, it seems that I have,” and the fluttering grew deafening as the how raven settled on her other shoulder, clench and grip, ow, oh fuck, how and why, wisdom and memory, Huginn and Muninn, wei and mr-no, “I have one eye,” and she could feel it, as why shifted its weight, leaning forward, and she twisted her head against the column, but there was how, its beak a cold, cold point against her skin, not touching, not yet, but close enough, “one eye,” her voice a whisper now, not that it had ever been much louder, “too, too many...”

Tensed, for the blow. She must, of course, pay the price. She knew too much, and now she must—

“Oh,” he said, soft and silkily mocking. “Oh, Brittany. I should have expected such strength. Such fortitude.”

The cold point shifted, she felt it move through the air, unseen, to prick against her cheek, to turn from a point to an edge, from one to two icy dimensions, lying there where the red welt had been left, still warm, blood and ice, ice, another of the humors, so light, so hard, so sharp and bright.

“You may open your eyes, my dear,” he said. “Or not. As you like. Though I feel compelled to point out that there is nothing on either of your shoulders.”

Her shoulders still hunched, she opened her eyes.

The Trivium, kneeling beside her, smiled as much as ever he could.

Gleaming scant millimeters below her left eye was a long and shining milky silver blade.

There were no ravens.

There could never have been any ravens.

Her ankle was on fire. Her leg burned. Her hands, manacled one to the other with a single pair of standard police-issue handcuffs, dangled above—below—her head, her fingertips damp with the noisome puddle all about the column, in which the Trivium knelt, as much as he could be said to. He jerked the knife away from her, and she flinched—any movement of that blade could have been—was—dangerous. He held it lightly, in his left hand, and its hilt was wrapped in layers of some gauzy stuff that also swaddled what passed for his fingers and his palm, entangled in the twitching, jumping lines.

He stood, and laid the length of that blade, icy and burning, slowly, carefully, along the skin of her thigh, of the leg that did not burn, the leg that was folded, so that her foot, bare, could be tucked behind the knee of the leg that bore her weight from a simple hempen noose tied to some nozzle or nipple or flange or pipe or protuberance that stuck out of the smooth, cool column.

“Tell me,” he said. “Is this so easily dismissed as a dream? Or perhaps one of those drug reactions?”

It hurt; it hurt unimaginably. And yet Brittany couldn’t not laugh...

•

VIII. Epistle: “The Word of the Lord”

My God, thought Mark. It’s acid-me. It’s mirror-me. It’s—it’s me in ten years.

He stood there in the men’s room staring at his dulled and unfocused reflection in the scratched and unpolished stainless-steel mirror. Some—trick of the light, the bad mirror, something, a dent maybe, stretched his forehead, scrunched the top of his head, making it seem as if his hairline had receded as badly as his mother’s father’s pattern baldness said it someday would. His cheeks seemed hollow, gaunt. His throat skinny, attenuated. He looked like a replica of himself—his reflection did, rather—a good likeness made from bad wax. He reached up to touch his face, where he felt two days’ worth of stubble that by some—trick of the light, or the mirror itself, he couldn’t see.

In ten years, he thought to himself. The unreal year 2000. Jet-packs and hover-cars. In the year 2000, I will be thirty-one years old. Ten years.

He shivered, and washed his hands thoroughly, and pushed through the door out into the second-floor waiting room for Day Two of Evelyn-and-Jill Watch, 1990.

•

“Jeepers!” said Elgin.

He held up the dog-eared copy of The New Yorker he’d been reading, folding it back to reveal a black and white photograph of a man’s head. It wasn’t a photo the man had posed for, that was for sure; it had the grainy, faintly blurred quality of a snapshot blown up past the limits of its endurance. And the lighting was bad, unflattering, even. Dark shadows scarred the man’s cheeks below his chic rimless eyeglasses, and his black, black hair was slicked severely back from his worried forehead. His squinted eyes were peering up and to the right, and his mouth was pursed, and what could be seen of his minimalist suit and collarless shirt whispered class and taste so loudly they ended up being, well, tacky.

“Jeepers?” sniffed Matilda, who had insisted twice now that she and Brittany hadn’t officially made an arrangement to meet here again, today, to go over Oedipus again, so she wasn’t, you know, mad or anything.

“It’s a perfectly good word whose use, through no fault of its own, has fallen into disuse. I, for one, would not mind its resurgence.”

“Gordon Gekko makes you say ‘jeepers’?” said Claude.

“When,” said Elgin, “he looks rather spookily like poor Albert, yes. Yes, he does.”

“Albert?” said Mark.

“The creep who tried to kill Jill,” said Matilda, though really, he knew who Albert was. That hadn’t been what he meant. She peered at the magazine. “Spooky.”

Mark blinked. Yes...If you replaced the glasses, put him in a T-shirt, mussed up his haircut, put a little more softness in the cheeks and chin, and around the eyes...

“Put it away,” said Stephanie.

“Who is that?” said Mark.

Elgin, frowning a little at Stephanie, unfolded the magazine and peered at it in that affected way he had, as if he were trying to read through the bottom half of the bifocals he didn’t wear. “A financier, apparently. The ‘King Fleecer,’ they called him, since about five years ago he disappeared in the middle of a convoluted mare’s nest of financial deals that ended up damaging the personal portfolios of a number of junk-bond kings.” He looked up. “I’m paraphrasing, somewhat. An interesting article, actually. The author is supporting the rather romantic, Robin Hood King-Fleecer story in the face of the more official tale, which holds he had a nervous breakdown, or was, perhaps, murdered and mixed in with the concrete of an Outer Borough parking garage by less-than-savory acquaintances. She’s trying to trace what became of the money.”

“What’s his name?” said Claude.

Elgin peered at the article again. “‘The Long, Strange Trip of Alastair Currie,’” he read. “Good Scottish name, though he’s originally from, of all places, Delaware.”

“Did she find it?” said Stephanie.

“‘It’?” said Elgin.

“The money.”

He beamed. “Not yet. Though her misadventures, thus far, have been terribly entertaining.”

•

Her socks, Mark had noticed, matched her sweater.

Of course they did. He’d watched her, just last week, clip pairs of socks together—rolling, she explained, stretched out the elastic—and had said nothing at all when he realized she was slipping them into the plastic sock organizer in a grid pattern that corresponded exactly with the neat piles of sweaters on the shelf running along the top of her closet.

It wasn’t, however, a sweater she was wearing. Not today; today was Sunday. She wore a thick, oversized sweatshirt in a faded salmon color, which she wore fashionably inside-out. Thing was, the salmon color was even more faded on the fleecey inside.

And the socks matched that somewhat more faded salmon perfectly.

“Your friend,” said the nurse, who wore blue scrubs and white orthopedic shoes and, appealingly enough, black socks, “is out of Recovery.”

“Which one?” said Mark, before he could stop himself.

•

“Hey,” said Evelyn, quietly. Puffily.

“Hey,” said Stephanie.

She did not let go of Mark’s hand as she reached down and slowly, carefully folded her other hand around Evelyn’s.

“Did you, uh,” said Mark, and then he decided asking if she’d gotten the license plate number probably wouldn’t go over too well, and he stopped.

“How are you?” asked Stephanie.

Evelyn blinked.

“Shitty,” she said.

Mark looked over at the window, whose blinds were pulled. The room was dim. He wondered briefly what had become of Brittany’s flowers. There was no one in the next bed.

“They said,” said Stephanie, “that there was another operation they had to do. For your leg.”

“Yeah,” said Evelyn. “Metal pins or something.”

The blankets were pulled up to her shoulders, which looked ridiculous in the blue-spotted white hospital gown beneath the wilted, bedraggled cock’s comb of her hair. They were tented up, somehow, above most of the length of her left leg. He wondered why. What was on it, was being protected from contact with the harsh-looking hospital blanket.

“It’s dead,” said Evelyn, suddenly. “Isn’t it.”

Which Mark, absurdly, took to mean her leg.

“Evelyn?” said Stephanie.

“It’s gone,” said Evelyn, and she closed her eyes.

Stephanie wore, among other pieces of jewelry, on an irregular basis, a wide ring, pewter or some other dull, colorless metal, inscribed with fiendishly intricate Celtic knotwork. The thing was almost a quarter-inch across, and heavy, and when her fingers were interlaced with his, as they were now, and she squeezed his hand and didn’t let up, as she was doing, the damn ring bit into his fingers and hurt.

•

Last night, they’d had sex for the fourth—no, fifth—time.

It had been the first time they’d done so in her room, rather than his. She hadn’t wanted to leave, and anyway, it was snowing. Plus, she said, his futon—though much wider than her narrow dorm twin—was uncomfortable. Not last night. But before. Still. He hadn’t thought they would. She never said anything about it, or about wanting to; if you’d asked, as he sat there in her generic dorm reading chair, watching her shuck her jeans, fold her predominately yellow sweater carefully and tuck it back into its proper place in the stack, stand there a moment, rubbing one arm absently, one predominately yellow argyle sock half off her foot, he’d have sworn it was the furthest thing from her mind. The last thing she’d have wanted. It wasn’t on his mind at all as he stooped awkwardly over her, pulling the covers up to her chin with a little smile that tried to be comforting. Evelyn’s empty, emphatically unmade bed on the other side of the room, her ugly, battered poster of the New York Dolls in anti-glamorous drag, the heap of ripped black jeans, the ragged flyers for bands with names like Spastic Plaid and Pimp Magnet and Gimpy McPhee, the odd, incongruous pile of safety pins and paper clips on her bureau, glinting in the light of Stephanie’s reading lamp—he was resolutely not looking at these things, but he was still hypernally aware of them. A feeling not unlike that of someone staring at the back of his head.

But when he tried to straighten up, she grabbed his hand.

“Stay,” she said.

Afterwards, he’d lain there, spooned against her back, reflecting on the fourth arm problem.

She, of course, could fold her arms against her chest, and did so. And his arm on top could reach over and cup her arm and was quite comfortable there. The fourth arm, his right arm, couldn’t be folded up against his chest, as that would interfere with the spooning. It couldn’t be slipped under her torso; uncomfortable for the both of them, really, as she’d have a large lump to sleep on, and he’d have the circulation cut off to most of his arm. He’d been jackknifing it and folding it up under his head—not an ideal solution by any means, but barring a breakthrough in mattress design, or a bizarre accident involving large farm equipment, it would have to do.

Or, of course, a change in sleeping habits.

Janis had liked to sleep curled up next to him as he lay on his back. Not unlike the famous portrait of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, except with the sexes reversed. She’d lay her head on his chest and at odd moments, when he’d thought she was long since asleep, and his mind was mumbling whimsical half-waking dreams to itself, she’d suddenly, endearingly murmur, “Lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub,” in time with his heartbeat. And his mouth soured at the idea he’d been comparing the two of them again.

One just didn’t compare ex and current girlfriends. Not cricket, as Alan would say.

•

“It is impressive,” said Elgin, apropos nothing at all.

“It?” said Mark.

“The resemblance. Did Albert ever speak of his father to anyone, I wonder?”

Mark shrugged. As far as he knew, he’d never spoken to Albert about anything.

“Hey,” said Stephanie, resuming her seat next to him, a white styrofoam cup steaming in her hands. The coffee inside looked oily, and had been adulterated with some sort of non-dairy creamer. It looked distinctly and unhealthily grey.

“Do you,” he said, quietly, “think maybe we should go?”

Not looking up from her coffee, she shook her head once, quickly.

He wished vaguely he had one last midterm to take, so he could plead a need to study.

She sipped, and made a face.

“How is it?” he asked.

•

“How was it?” he’d asked.

It was an article of faith for Mark that it was unconscionably rude to ask a woman with whom one had just, well, you know, if, well, she had—

You know.

Come.

You were supposed to know. Be attuned to such things. Be aware. Sensitive to one’s partner, and her needs. Her reactions. What she wanted and needed to get from the whole—

Transaction.

He had paused, hanging there above her, her legs wrapped around his, her heels nestled symmetrically inside the crooks of his bent knees, and he was aware that the thing which had been bedeviling his forearm, scratching it almost, was a tag which, for some reason, was attached to the inside of the underarm of the tank-top undershirt she still wore.

She had grimaced. That’s why he’d stopped.

Now she pushed at his hips. “I think,” she said, “I think we’d better. I’m. Getting dry.”

It was almost a relief, really. He’d been trying to pace himself, trying not to set himself off too soon, thinking of it as circling an airport, almost. Stacked up and holding, waiting to land. But he’d—rubbed too hard, or the wrong way, or something. He’d become too sensitive. Even slow and reasonably gentle movement had become painful, like feedback suddenly squealing over a concert loudspeaker.

He backed up, trying to slip out from under the sheets and the comforter, as she lithely lifted one leg up and out of the way. She had, at one point, been pretty serious about ballet. Her legs were so long and lean, her thighs sweeping up into her slim, almost boyish hips with an inevitable grace that took his breath away. He wished she would wear skirts more often. Short skirts. At all, really. Or tight jeans. Tighter. Tights. Stockings. To show them off, to their best advantage. So that here, now, climbing out of bed, would not be the only time he ever saw that grace, that arc, that curve...

He stood a moment, blinking. Barefooted on the rough carpet. Some sort of recycled fiber, he vaguely remembered. Herschberg being very proud of how environmentally friendly its new and re-fitted dorms were. The condom hung absurdly from his slowly deflating— He looked about. She kept tissues by the bed, usually. Kleenex. There.

“Climb back in,” she said. “It’s cold.”

“In a minute,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “You didn’t, did you.”

“It’s okay,” he said.

“I could—”

“No,” he said. “No.”

He smelled it, briefly, as he lifted the tissue-wrapped wad to drop into the immaculate wastebasket. A clean smell, almost like bleach. Himself. With a little tang from the nonoxynol-9 on the condom.

“Aren’t you cold?”

It wasn’t, actually. Not really warm, but not unpleasant.

He looked at her, smiling up at him from the narrow bed. Imagined her reaching out, as she’d been about to suggest. Him, standing there, by the edge of the bed, as she. Finished him off. No. No. Demeaning, really.

No.

She held up the covers for him as he climbed in, and then wormed around so he could spoon her from behind. She was warm, very warm, against his skin. Perhaps it had been cold out there.

“Mmm,” she said.

“How,” he said, “how was it?”

•

Idiot.

•

But he never knew. She was so impossible to read. He couldn’t tell. Had no idea.

It wasn’t an ego thing. He just—he simply wanted to know. Was there anything more he could do? Had she—well. Enjoyed herself? Was it—had it been good? Had the basic goal of this absurdly simple activity—well, no, not the basic goal, not the essential goal, God no, but the one that mattered to them, here and now—had it been achieved?

Had she—well.

Come?

Her eyes would squeeze shut, her mouth tighten, her whole face compress in an expression of intense—concentration, as if she were trying to push something very heavy—but watch as he might (his hands slipping on the sheets, his knees burning from the friction of acting as a fulcrum point, his stomach on the verge of cramping, trying to keep the rhythm constant, steady, there we go, there we go, that’s the stuff, until, until the feeling snuck up on him from behind, the wave built and crashed into him while he wasn’t looking, and he was carried to some atavistic place where all he could do was jerk and jerk and jerk like some dying fish flopping on a pier next to the cooler full of Pepsis and Budweiser until—until—), he never saw it relax, never saw her mouth open, never saw her eyelids flutter. Never felt the muscles along the inside of her thigh tremble. Never felt her hips jerk suddenly, breaking rhythm, swept beyond her control—

Had she? Hadn’t she?

Had she ever? With him? Or anyone?

Now, with Janis, this had never been an issue—

•

“How was it?” he’d asked, last night, spooned against her.

“Fine,” she’d said, sleepily. After a moment. “Just fine.”

•

Idiot.

•

“Well. She’s found something, at least. Traced some proceeds of a holding company this King-Fleecer once owned to an apocalyptic cult in, of all places, Alaska.”

“Not a bad place for an apocalyptic cult,” said Matilda.

“Apparently,” said Elgin, “they believe that when the year 2000 rolls around, all our computer systems will crash, wiping out the quality of life as we know it and reducing us all to pre-electronic 19th century technology.”

“There’s some truth to that, you know,” said Claude. “Almost all your computer systems have this way of entering the year with just two digits. So when we go from 1999 to 2000, all the computers will flip to thinking it’s the year 1900. Chaos will ensue.”

“Look,” said Stephanie.

“That’s stupid,” said Matilda.

“Look,” said Stephanie.

Mark looked away from Claude who was taking great pains to explain that, no, looked at from the proper point of view, it wasn’t that stupid. Stephanie, her hand tight on his arm, was staring across the waiting room at a baby.

The baby—he couldn’t tell if it was a girl or a boy; it was dressed in a yellow jumper with what looked like little ducks all over it—was half-standing, braced against the back of the skinny modernist sofa it was, well, half-standing on, peering over at them with big, dark eyes. More of a toddler, really. Weren’t they toddlers when they could stand, like that? Sort of half-stand?

“How can she,” said Stephanie, “how can she just leave him alone there? Like that?”

The woman who was presumably the mother—or, let’s be fair, aunt, cousin, friend of the family, sister even, or step-sister—was laughing, talking to the older woman sitting across the narrow aisle from them. Maybe they were waiting to be tested, or maybe they were visiting someone, or something. None of them had the little plastic colored bands around their wrists. Mark already had his: a sickly puce color. He wondered, idly, when he’d be allowed to take it off.

“I don’t think,” he started to say, when she said, “I should just go over there.” Her hand—her ring—was digging into his arm.

“Stephanie,” he said.

She broke off from the baby’s black and silent gaze to look at him. Her eyes were just a little wider than usual. Her nostrils quivered. Her mouth was firmly set. The tendon along one side of her neck stood out.

“I should,” she said, her voice unaccountably brittle. “I should just go over there and take him.”

He had a sudden absurd image of her stalking over there. Snatching up the baby. Bringing it back. The security guards arriving. The screaming argument. Being led away, in handcuffs. The baby—Stephanie was shifting her weight, and he grabbed her hand, snatched at it, but she didn’t stand, she was leaning forward, a little, “Look!” she said, again. “He’s not eating enough. He looks so unhappy. And that outfit isn’t anywhere near warm enough, not for this weather.”

She was—good lord. She was serious. She meant it. Her voice was quiet, but fierce. She meant it. She meant what she was saying. Sincerely.

“Stephanie,” he said.

•

Evelyn hadn’t been talking about her leg. Had she.

•

“Stephanie,” he said. “How can you—”

“Don’t,” she snapped, rounding on him. “Don’t get started. I know. I can tell.”

“How,” he said, flatly. “Women’s intuition? Your latent maternal instinct?” His voice was cold, colder than he meant. But God damn, what was she—she couldn’t be—serious. About—

“Don’t,” she said.

“You aren’t serious,” he said.

“Listen to her. She smokes. You can hear it in her laugh, she smokes around that child! I—”

“Stephanie,” he said, sharply. As sharply as you can say a name like that, anyway.

She blinked.

“Stephanie,” he said, “how old are you?”

“Mark,” she said, “I—”

“How the fuck old are you?” he said. His ears were hot, and full of blood.

“Twenty,” she said, in a quiet voice.

“Twenty years old,” he said, “and you still haven’t come to terms with the problem of evil?” He was vaguely aware that no one was saying anything around them. Elgin wasn’t discoursing on his article. Claude wasn’t talking about computers. Matilda wasn’t asking where Brittany was.

“What?” said Stephanie.

“The problem,” he said, “of evil. You don’t even know if that kid’s in any kind of trouble. You. Can’t. Tell,” he said, biting off the words to forestall a protestation. “But you’re ready to go to jail to, I don’t know, send a freaking message or something. What are you going to do for the next kid in trouble?”

“I—” she said.

“Or the next? Or the next? And what happens when she gets the kid back?” He was vaguely aware he was yelling, and he tried to tone his voice down. “You don’t think she’ll be embarrassed? You don’t think she’ll take it out on him? You have no clue as you’re sitting there that maybe you might just make matters worse?”

“Mark, I don’t,” she was saying, babbling, really, “I just can’t stand to see—”

“Bad things happen!” he said. Loudly. “They do,” he said, in a quieter voice. “You can’t—”

“I wasn’t trying to,” she said. “I—just, I don’t know. I—”

“Besides,” he heard himself saying. “It builds character. This sort of maltreatment might be just the thing—”

She’s going to slap me, a small part of him thought, even as he felt the impact.

•

He stood in the stairwell, gasping. Doubled-over. Unsure of what he’d just said. Trying to go over it again, in his mind. Once more, from the slap. I— Knowing only that he’d had to get out of there. Had to. He’d turned suddenly and walked, quickly, his back straight, trying to open the door without slamming his hand into the crashbar— The situation had gotten so out of hand. She hadn’t been about to— He hadn’t meant to— They’d all been looking, listening, everyone, well, everyone there—

Idiot. He’d said—

Christ.

He’d called her— Fuck.

Idiot. I—

I think I just broke up with—

Aw, fuck—

•

IX. Gospel-Sermon: “God Said”

—which was when she felt the vague and generalized pool of, of, of oomph, well, there were no words for it, really, what else would you call it, pleasure? So bourgeois, that word. So sanitized. So prissy. Pleasure. Like quivering. Trembling. Swooning. Whatever it was, it was tightening. Tautening. Coming into focus, here and now. And she grunted. She sweated. She was gonna fucking come, goddammit. Hell, cum, spell it like you mean it, girl, work it, work that cunt that quim that gash that slit that squack those snizz-flaps that pink that cooze that twat that fuckhole that, oh, oh fuck, oh shit, here it, here I, here I go, I’m gonna—

—this is it—

—it can’t not happen now. We are now in the realm of the inevitable. A moment, an instant before, we could have stopped. You could have said, wait. I gotta piss. My leg’s cramping up. Move that. Let’s. Let’s not. Let’s try again later. How about if I. But now? Now? Now there is nothing anyone on earth can do to stop it, it’s going to, it’s going to change, here it is, the moment when I’m gonna becomes I am—

—it’s here—

—the whole of the moon—

(The torch in her pocket, the wind at her heels, she stands at the top of a very tall ladder and looks down to see the board arrayed with pieces, light and dark, great inky stormclouds and glimmering crystalline lattices; there’s no clear winner as yet, and she knows that she is up here for a reason. She has climbed, all of her, far above the ice, and crowded about her she sees one two many figures like the terrible shining woman she met, briefly, at the feed store this afternoon, who had listened so intently, had opened her mouth and listened so hard that the, the importance just leaked right out of her, but now she’s here, the moon is whole, and she remembers—he hangs head down within her belly and laughs, giddy, and his eyes are bright—but she is too high; she has come too far, too soon. Her fingers are terribly cold in the wind that blows here, and one by one they work free of the rungs, and she falls into the rain-dirty valley, tumbling, down and away, as the light is eaten up by the dark bite by bite until only a sliver is left and then even that—)

“Well?” said Lisa. “How was that?”

“Fuh,” said Shelby, gasping. “Fuck. My ears are still ringing. Damn.”

She was leaning back in Lisa’s arms, and she let her head, which she’d curled down between her shoulders in the effort, fall back to nestle against Lisa’s shoulder. Lisa stirred and tried to shift, and Shelby lifted one leg still trembling so Lisa could adjust herself, better fit herself to the various geometries of couch and pillows and bodies and heads and hands. The stereo chuckled to itself, pianos and synthesizers and Mike Scott’s rough voice singing about how man gets tired, spirit don’t; man surrenders, spirit won’t. Ain’t that the fucking truth, she thought, trembling, short of breath, happy.

“So,” said Lisa, kissing the top of her head. “How was your day?”

“Much better now, thanks,” said Shelby.

“Did you,” said Lisa, kissing the lobe of her ear, “do anything?”

“Signed the petition protesting the quarantine. And how they’re trying to keep us from leaving for Thanksgiving.”

“They most likely will,” said Lisa, kissing her cheek. “Anything else?”

“Threw some snowballs. Cleaned my room. Got seriously fucked.”

“Have you,” said Lisa, kissing her mouth, “gone to go get tested yet?”

“No,” said Shelby, snorting, and seizing a second kiss from Lisa’s lips. “You?” And a third, but this one was cool, nice, but not, well, you know. Nice. “I mean,” she said, pulling back a little, “do you believe the crap they’re feeding us?”

“It’s just a blood test,” said Lisa, quietly.

“It’s just an invasion of our privacy. A violation of our rights. I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, but I could have sworn this was a free country.”

Lisa snorted.

“Don’t snort at me. Don’t, oh, you’re so young me.”

“You are,” said Lisa.

“Do you,” said Shelby, levering herself up and trying to make a joke out of it, “like, not want to get any tonight? Because we could arrange that, real easy.”

Lisa didn’t smile.

“Lisa?”

She bent down to kiss Lisa’s mouth. Lisa turned away.

“Love,” she said, “what’s—”

“Stop,” said Lisa. “Stop it. I—”

There was a confusion of limbs and shifting weights. When it was done, Shelby fell back on the couch, alone. Lisa, wearing only her half-unbuttoned blouse, stood in the arched entrance of her kitchenette.

“Love?” said Shelby, lifting herself on one elbow.

“Don’t,” said Lisa. “Don’t—” She looked back over her shoulder, and her face, her beautiful face, was dark.

Shelby felt cold, and it had nothing to do with the sweat cooling on her skin.

“Lisa?” she said, and her voice was much smaller and quieter than it had been just a moment before.

“Do you,” said Lisa, “know, or have you ever met, a Doctor Waitling? At the hospital?”

“Lisa?” said Shelby. “What is all this? What are you—why are you asking me these—”

“This is not an interrogation!” snapped Lisa. Who then squeezed her eyes shut and turned away.

After a moment, Shelby stood, and scrounged about for her jeans and underwear.

“What are you doing?” said Lisa.

“Getting dressed,” said Shelby.

“Don’t,” said Lisa. “Don’t. I’m sorry, I’m just so worried. I—I.”

“Why,” said Shelby, “don’t you want me to say I love you?”

That was it, of course. Lisa was so afraid, so terrified of commitment, of trusting someone, after Jack, after all the men who’d made such a mess of her life. And Shelby suddenly thrilled to realize that this was the first time she’d ever uttered those words, to her. God. She called her “love,” of course. A term of endearment. But—the Holy Trinity? I. Love. You?

“Do you?” said Lisa. “Do you?”

Shelby swallowed. “Yes,” she said. “I love you, Lisa Morowitz. With all my heart and most of the rest of me, too.”

And Lisa, her face dark, looked away.

Shelby squeezed her eyes shut. She was not going to tear up. She was going to find her T-shirt.

“I,” Lisa was saying, “I can’t afford to—I can’t be in love with you!” she snapped. "I can’t be in love with anybody.”

“Is it Jack?” said Shelby, her T-shirt in her hands.

“It’s a lot of things,” said Lisa. “You, you can’t go out there.” She stepped out into the main room of the apartment. “You can’t. It’s snowing again.”

“You need,” said Shelby, “some time. Or some space. Or something. I should, I should go.”

“But it’s snowing.”

“Like I can’t deal with a little snow.”

“Shelby,” said Lisa. “Look at me.”

She took a step closer, and another.

“You are,” she said, “wonderful, and fantastic, and you, you make me feel like, like a million bucks. I love—arguing with you and kicking your ass and I love—going to bed with you and, but, but I can’t be in love with you. Not the way you want. Not—” She closed her eyes, and swallowed, and opened them. “Not yet. I—”

But that was all Shelby needed to hear, and she stopped Lisa’s mouth with kisses.

•

Leaning back against the door where she’d bearded Shelby and won, Morowitz let the bitter taste in her mouth mix with the rising flood of, the roiling cloud of, of glimmering darkness, of blood, of electricity in the tightening muscles of her thighs, her belly, pooling in her hips like a stormfront, like a thunderhead until the pressure became too great, and she tangled her hands in Shelby’s hair and tugged and pushed and pulled, trying to drive her mouth deeper, bite me, eat me, devour me, swallow me whole, please. Please, God.

Please.

I don’t want to come out the other side of this.

I don’t want to wake up.

Please.

•

Her bed was empty when she did, in the end, wake up.

“Shelby?” she called.

There was an unpleasant retching sound from the bathroom. “Sec!” called Shelby, unconscionably cheery. Water ran in the sink. And then she appeared, abominably naked. “Hey, sweetie,” she said, wiping her mouth on a towel. A good, clean towel. “Sorry. I, uh. Woke up ill. Nauseous. Maybe it was something I ate last night.”

“Nauseated,” Morowitz said, correcting her unconsciously. Thankful no crude jokes about “eating” had, apparently, been intended. Dull and fogged and deeply, profoundly weary.

“It’s almost like I’m preggers or something,” said Shelby. “Morning sickness. Wouldn’t that be funny?”

•

(continued)

•

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