"Thanks for parking down the street," whispered Karla Jean as they stood on the doorstep of her small house. "I've got nosy neighbors."

Gravenholtz glanced around. Hardly any lights on in the surrounding houses. No one on the street. The grass in the yards was overgrown, bikes rusting in the weeds.

Karla Jean unlocked the door, hand trembling. "I…I feel like such a whore."

Gravenholtz stepped inside after her, closed the door. It smelled clean…like she did. Just a single light on in the tiny kitchen. One room, a cast-iron bed in the corner. Wildflowers stuck in a cut-down Coke bottle on the nightstand. Photo-holo display facing the bed, switched off now.

"Do you think this is wrong, Lester? I don't want to ruin things between us."

"No…what we're doing is right. We don't gain nothing by waiting."

"That's…that's what I told myself." She stood on her tiptoes to kiss him.

Her lips were soft against him, and Gravenholtz felt like he was twelve years old again, inexperienced, uncertain and scared at the wonder of it all. He put his arms around her, surprised at how slender she was, her body taut against him.

"We…we don't have to hurry," he gasped. "Been a while for me."

"I can't believe that. A man like you…"

"No, been a long while since I was with anyone like you. Maybe even never."

"You're just flattering me, Lester Gravenholtz, and you don't have to-"

"I mean it."

Karla Jean stared at him in the dim light. "I believe you." She touched his face with her small, slender hands, felt him flinch. "What is it?"

"I don't like you eyeballing me…I'm ugly."

She slapped his chest. "You most certainly are not."

Gravenholtz shook his head. "I got a face like a pig's ass."

"You're strong-looking. Determined. Not like the weaklings and pretty boys I see every day. You're a man who knows what he wants and is not about to let anyone stop him. What woman wouldn't be attracted to that?"

Gravenholtz nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

"You want a drink?" said Karla Jean. "I got beer…bourbon-"

"Do you need a drink?"

"No." Her eyes were certain. "No, Lester, I don't."

"Me neither."

She kissed him again, lightly brushed her lips against his, and there was nothing else in the world but her at this moment, no one but the two of them in this little house on the edge of town, no past, no future…just now.

Karla Jean stepped away from him, trailing a hand across him as she moved away, as though she couldn't bear to part. "Take off your clothes," she said softly.

Gravenholtz blinked.

She unbuttoned the top button of her dress. "Please?"

Gravenholtz tried to speak. It was easier with a hooker. You paid them and did what you wanted and then you left. Even easier when you raped a random woman…not because you didn't have to pay-Gravenholtz didn't care about money-but the passion of the act…their rage and disgust made it better. This, though…when you cared about the woman, when she cared about you…there was so much to lose.

"Please, Lester." Her fingers toyed with the next button. "I have to see you. Really see you." Her lower lip trembled. "My parts…my female parts are tiny as the rest of me. I got to make sure you don't hurt me."

"I told you…I'd die before I hurt you."

Karla Jean sat on the bed. "I won't ask you again."

Gravenholtz kicked off his boots. Peeled off his pants and underwear, left them in a heap. He pulled off his shirt without unbuttoning it, stood there before her naked. He was breathing so hard you would have thought he had run a race.

Karla Jean stared at him from the bed.

"What? You look surprised."

"I am a little." Karla Jean pulled a pistol out from under her pillow. Centered it on his chest. "I thought you'd have on some bulletproof vest or something. I heard you been shot a hundred times and never died. Everyone said you had some kind of…special protection." She pulled back the hammer of the gun. "I guess you left it at home tonight."

Gravenholtz covered his penis with both hands.

"I couldn't believe it when I saw you in church. I thought, Just maybe there is a God."

She switched on the photo display with a remote. An image appeared of Karla Jean in a white wedding dress, a skinny young man in a badly fitting suit beside her. The young man was looking at her with the same expression Gravenholtz had got when he'd thought about Karla Jean these last few days-like how did he get so lucky? And maybe…maybe everything that had gone before could change now. Karla Jean and the young man were dancing inside a small church now, round and round, dizzy with a secret joy.

"You recognize him now?" said Karla Jean.

"Should I?"

"I guess you killed too many men to remember them all. Well, I remember him. His name was Bryce Lee Johnson and you killed him three years ago outside of Harrisburg. He was a gunsmith, traveling the back roads to save money so we could start a family. Way I heard it, you wanted his personal weapon, the one he used to show off the quality of his work, and he didn't want to sell it. So you snapped his neck like a chicken bone and tossed him aside."

Gravenholtz still didn't remember him, but he remembered the gun, a beautiful.41-caliber Colt with an etched barrel, silver inlays and a soft trigger pull.

The pistol never wavered. "It's coming back to you now, isn't it?"

"Karla Jean…I'm sorry about your husband."

"I bet you are."

"Shooting me won't bring him back. If you can forgive me, maybe the two of us-"

"The two of us?" She stepped closer, snarling. "The two of us?" She fired the pistol and he staggered backward, feeling like he had been punched in the heart. She advanced, fired again and again and again, each shot knocking the breath out of him, the house echoing with the sound.

She fired again, just inches from him, and Gravenholtz saw her gasp, put her hand to her neck. In the dimness, something black was leaking through her fingers.

"Karla Jean?"

She wobbled, sat down heavily.

Gravenholtz bent down beside her, moved her hand and clamped his own over the wound. A bullet fragment had ricocheted off his subdural body armor and nicked her carotid artery.

She clutched at his bloody shirt. "Why…why didn't you die?"

"Don't talk." Gravenholtz tried to apply pressure on the artery, but his hand was slippery.

"I shot you. You should…you should be dead."

"You didn't know what you were doing. You were just angry, that's all."

Her eyes looked sleepy.

"Please…please don't go," said Gravenholtz, losing his grip on her neck. Her body jerked, blood spurting. "I…I forgive you, Karla Jean."

She turned her head away.

Gravenholtz thought she was trying to avoid looking at him, then realized she didn't even know he was there anymore. She was trying to get one last glimpse of her husband.