She can see Zenia clearly, Zenia lying in the fountain, with her cloudy hair floating. As she watches, time reverses itself and life flows back into Zenia, and she lifts out of the water and flies backwards like a huge bird, up onto the orange balcony. But Charis can’t hold her there, and she falls again; falls down, turning slowly, into her own future. Her future as a dead person, as a person not yet born.

Charis wonders whether Zenia will come back as a human being or as something else. Perhaps the soul breaks up as the body does, and only parts of it are reborn, a fragment here, a fragment there. Perhaps many people will soon be born with a fragment of Zenia in them. But Charis would rather think of her whole.

After a while she turns out the other downstairs lights and goes upstairs. Just before she climbs into her vine-covered bed, she gets out her notebook with the lavender paper and her pen with the green ink, and writes: Zenia has returned to the Light.

She hopes this is so. She hopes that Zenia is not still hovering around, alone and lost, somewhere out there in the night.

After Roz takes Tony home she goes home herself, as fast as she can because she’s worried sick, what if there’s cocaine stashed all over her house, tucked into the tea leaves or the cookie jar in little plastic bags, what if she finds the place full of sniffer dogs and men named Dwayne, who will address her as ma’am and say they are just doing their jobs? She even runs a red light, not a thing she normally does, although everyone else seems to these days. She shucks her coat in the hall, kicks off her shoes, and goes on the hunt for Larry.

The twins are in the family room, watching a rerun of Star Trek.

“Greetings, Earthmom,” says Paula.

“Maybe she isn’t Mom,” says Erin. “Maybe she’s a Replicant. “Hi, kids,” says Roz. “It’s way past your bedtime! Where’s Larry?”

“Erla’s done our homework,” says Erin. “This is our reward:”

“Mom, what’s wrong?” says Paula. “You look like shit.”

“It’s old age,” says Roz. “Is he home?”

“He’s in the kitchen,” says Erin. “We think:”

“Eating bread and honey,” says Paula.

“That’s the Queen, stupid,” says Erin. They giggle.

Larry is sitting on one of the high stools, at the kitchen counter, wearing jeans and a black T-shirt and bare feet, and drinking a bottle of beer. Across from him on another high stool is Boyce, neat in his suit; he’s got a beer, too. When Roz walks into the room they both look up. They both seem equally anxious.

“Hi, Boyce,” says Roz. “What a surprise! Is something wrong at the office?”

“Good evening, Ms. Andrews,” says Boyce. “Not at the office, no:”

“I have something to discuss with Larry, “ says Roz. “If you don’t mind, Boyce:”

“I think Boyce should stay,” says Larry. He looks dejected, as if he’s failed an exam: there must be something to Zenia’s story. But what’s Boyce got to do with it?

“Larry, I’m concerned,” says Roz. “What are you into with Zenia?”

“Who?” Larry says, too innocently. “I need to know,” says Roz.

“I dream of Zenia in her light brown lair,” Boyce murmurs as if to himself.

“She told you?” says Larry.

“About the drugs?” says Roz. “Oh God, it’s true! If you’ve got any drugs in this house, I want them out of here, right now! So you were having a thing with her!”

“Thing?” says Larry.

“Thing, fling, whatever,” says Roz. “Holy Moly, don’t you know how old she was? Don’t you know how vicious she was? Don’t you know what she did to your father?”

“Thing?” says Boyce. “I don’t think so.”

“What drugs?” says Larry.

“It was only a few times,” says Boyce. “He was experimenting. My nose aches, and a drowsy numbness pains my sense. Keats. He’s given it up, as of now—right, Larry?”

“Then you weren’t her dealer?” says Roz. “Mom, it was the other way around,” says Larry.

“But Charis saw you kissing her, right out on the street!” says Roz. She feels very weird, talking this way to her own son. She feels like a snoopy old crock.

“Kissing?” says Larry. “I never kissed her. She was whispering in my ear. She was telling me that we were being followed around by this deranged older woman. Maybe it looked like kissing, to Aunt Charis, because that woman was definitely her.”

“Not kissing, but hissing,” says Boyce. “Like ‘not waving but drowning.’ Stevie Smith.”

“Boyce, shut up for a minute,” says Larry irritably. They seem to know each other quite a lot better than Roz has assumed. She’s thought they’d just met the one time, at the Father-Daughter Dance, and then a few nods at the office, as Larry came and went. Apparently not.

“But you went to her hotel room a lot,” says Roz. “I know it for a fact!”

“It’s not what you think,” says Larry.

“You realize she’s dead?” Roz says, playing her ace. “I just came from there, they just fished her out of the fountain!”

“Dead?” says Boyce. “,’Of what? A self-inflicted snakebite?”

“Who knows?” says Roz. “Maybe somebody threw her off the balcony.”

“Maybe she jumped,” says Boyce. “When lovely woman stoops to folly, and finds too late that men betray, they jump off balconies.”

“I just hope to God you had nothing to do with it,” says Roz; to Larry.

Boyce says quickly, “He couldn’t have, he was nowhere near her tonight. He was with me.”

“I was trying to talk her out of it,” says Larry. “She wanted money. I didn’t have enough, and I could hardly ask you for some.

„

“Talk her out of what? Money for what?” says Roz. She’s almost yelling.

“For not telling you,” says Larry miserably. “I thought I could keep it secret. I didn’t want to make things any worse—I thought you’d been upset enough, because of Dad, and everything.”

“Judas Priest; for not telling me what?” shouts Roz. “You’ll be the death of me!” She sounds exactly like her own mother. All the same, so sweet, Larry trying to protect her. He doesn’t want to come home and find her flopping around on the kitchen floor, the way he did before. “Boyce,” she says, more gently, “have you got a cigarette?”

Boyce, ever prepared, hands her the package and flicks his lighter for her. “I think it’s time,” he says to Larry.

Larry gulps, stares at the floor, looks resigned. “Mom,” he says, gay.”

Roz feels her eyes bugging out like those of a strangled rabbit. Why didn’t she see, why couldn’t she tell, what’s the matter with her anyway? Nicotine grabs at her lungs, she really must quit, and then she coughs, and smoke billows from her mouth, and maybe she’s about to have a premature heart attack! That’s what she’ll do, fall to the floor in a heap and let everyone else deal with this, because it’s way beyond her.

But she sees the distress in Larry’s eyes, and the appeal. No, she can handle it, if she can bite her tongue hard enough. It’s just that she wasn’t prepared. What’s the right thing to say? I love you anyway? You’re still my son? What about my grandchildren?

“But all those bimbos you put me through!” is what she comes out with. She’s got it now: he was trying to please her. Trying to bring home a woman, like some kind of dutiful exam certificate, to show Mom. To show he’d passed.

“A man can but do his best,” says Boyce. “Walter Scott.”

“What about the twins?” Roz whispers. They are at a formative stage; how will she tell them?

“Oh, the twins know,” says Larry, relieved that he’s got at least one corner covered. “They worked it out pretty fast. They say it’s cool.” That figures, thinks Roz: for them, the fences once so firmly in place around the gender corrals are just a bunch of rusty old wire.

“Think of it this way,” says Boyce affectionately. “You’re not losing a son, you’re gaining a son:’

“I’ve decided to go to law school,” says Larry. Now that the worst is over and Roz hasn’t croaked or burst, he looks relieved. “We want you to help us decorate our apartment:”