Her name was Perle, she was forty-seven, and just six months ago she got up one morning and decided she was leaving her marriage. She was not leaving her children, mind you, who were away at college, she was leaving Fred, as things between them had been dead for some time, the two of them like ships passing in the night en route to some unknown destination. The truth was, early on she had lost herself, had given it over, thinking that was love, did not know where he ended and she began, and now she wanted to retrieve herself, for she had stopped living, she was just coasting now, on the sea of life. It sounded like a cliché, she knew, but that was how she saw it. She did not say a word to him the morning she left. She waited until he was gone to the hospital to visit the sick and the dying-he was an evangelical minister who believed in the laying on of hands-then she packed one suitcase full of clothes, another of her face products as she had a tendency to break out into boils, and she called the movers to collect the upright her mother had given her. Heading west, she slowly drove away from her life that morning in the white Pontiac, stopping only once to fill it with gas and to buy a cheese sandwich and a bottle of water. She rented a semi-furnished one-bedroom in Watertown, a sleepy little place that had a river running through it. She knew no one, no one knew her, and except for the tortured sonatas she played in the early mornings upon arising, she interacted only with the hairdresser where she went for a weekly rinse and set, the cashier at the bank for she was living off some CDs she’d put away for a rainy day, and the Armenian grocers that lined both sides of the main drag with their dark overstocked little shops full of Mediterranean goods.

Who is it? she cried weakly, and then she muscled up herself, for this was ridiculous. Who is it? she snapped, her voice unrecognizable even to her, and the pounding stopped at once. A face was pressed up against the glass, a dark face wet and wild with a falling-down mustache and a felt hat pulled so low she could barely see the eyes, but she could sense the desperateness in them. And when a sliver of lightning lit up the porch, she saw it was a white man slightly stooped, or maybe he was holding something, his raincoat glowing in the brief light.

It was crazy what she was about to do, she knew all the stories, knew them up and down, knew too there were white men who preyed on black women, and yet she yanked open the door and he stumbled in, wet and heavy and dank with the smell of dread.

What? she cried. What’s the matter! She ushered him into the kitchen, where he leaked water all over her floor, perhaps even blood, she could smell iron. She had the light pointed on his face, which looked gray and swollen, and on his pin-striped suit, on the untied shoes that looked slightly small for his long slim frame. She had the screwdriver poised for his heart at her side.

Help me, he gasped, leaning on the kitchen counter, and holding his arm that looked unhinged. They’ve shot me.

Blood was seeping onto her clean white Formica table and collecting into black pools.

She did not ask who had shot him; she did not want to know. She lit the candles on the counter, grabbed the light, and flew upstairs, pulling out towels and antiseptic fluids and ammonia and bandages and gauze, a pair of scissors, tweezers, pliers, and pain relievers, whatever she could find. She had a well-stocked medicine cabinet.

Downstairs he had removed the jacket, and his shirt was soaked with blood and the blood was still dripping on the floor she had just mopped that morning and he was whimpering like something half dead. Should I call an ambulance? she asked him. Should I call the police? Take you to the hospital. She tried to remember where she’d seen one.

And he turned to look at her, perhaps for the first time, and the hardness on his face disquieted her. I wouldn’t do that if I were you, he said coolly.

A fat piece of rage flew into her chest suddenly. Was he threatening her, was this fucker threatening her in her own house after she had dragged him in, that piece of shit? She let the rage hang there between them for a minute. Finally she said, Well, just so you know, mister, you can’t stay here, okay, you can’t fucking stay here. She was out of breath, winded. She could see the phone and she tried to think who she could call if this joker tried to play the fool. She’d rented the house from an older lesbian couple who were psychiatrists and who lived two houses down with their adopted son Ron, who they said had Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder, but that term, she’d come to learn, was just a euphemism for crabby and rude and antisocial behavior. She could call them. Or, if she screamed, there was George the electrician across the street, she’d met him just yesterday, and there was the woman to her right whose dog was always shitting in her yard; there was the old geezer on the other side who leered at all the young women who passed his porch. Chuck. But even if she screamed, who would hear her with all this rain battering down?

Help me, he whimpered like a half-dead dog, help me clean this up, please. He was losing massive amounts of blood, she could see that now, and his face looked scared and at the same time slightly suprised. His full lips were loose and leaking.

She could just let him bleed to death, she was thinking. But she was not that kind of person. She didn’t think she could do that. Here, she said, dropping some pills into his hand that shook mightily and giving him a glass of juice. He swallowed them quickly, his Adam’s apple sliding up and down. Then she set to work, boiling water on the gas stove, helping him out of his shirt that smelled like shit and sulphite, hauling him over to the sink where she proceeded to extract the bullet with her assortment of instruments, and to bathe and dress and bandage the wound. She was good at this; she’d been an emergency room nurse until a few years ago. She was gentle and patient, as she tended to be with all things maimed. The whimpering soon subsided. She could see he was impressed, but more than that, relieved. Perhaps even grateful. He could have bled to death or the wound could’ve turned septic. It took a good thirty minutes, and during that time she felt his eyes moving up and down her chest-she was stacked-and around her neck and arms which were strong and scented with ginger and musk oil.

Have you eaten? she asked him.

He nodded wearily. And she saw that he was not a bad-looking man, his face was bony and square, his eyes big and long-lashed, and he wore his hair cut close and even to his head. The mustache made him look older than he probably was; she put him to be slightly past fifty. He was not a very big man; she could take him down, she decided, if it came to that, she was strong. Still, he was muscle-bound, as if he’d spent a lot of time in jail or at the gym. She did not think it was the latter. He wore a layer of defeat about him that reminded her of Russell.

You have family around here? she asked him. You married? She made her voice hard.

Twice, he said. Two kids. One at community college. The girl. You?

She shook her head and remembered that she was wearing her duster-and underneath that her pink gown-and she pulled the string tighter around her waist and pressed down her hair, which felt big and heavy suddenly. Did she have toothpaste on her face? Sometimes she used toothpaste to stop the swelling boils. Her fingers edged up toward her cheeks to check. She breathed in relief.

Divorced, she said when she saw that his eyes were still moving on her honey skin, and then she could’ve kicked herself. My boyfriend should be coming home about now, she added, and glanced at the clock on the wall, which had stopped at 7:19.

Got in with the wrong crowd, he said, as if he hadn’t heard that her man was coming home. And now they’re on my ass.