She stared at me as I radiated super levels of good will and empathy and convincing. My superhero powers were on full tilt right at that moment, and for a second I thought she was faltering a little.

“I’m being honest with you,” I said. “Your life is in danger. Please just do it, either with this appointment or on your own. It’s your life, I know, and your body, but I care about your life.”

Then I turned and walked away.

There was nothing else I could do.

I got back on the plane and went home.

I finally heard three months later that they had found her body face down in the desert, as flat-chested as the day she had come into the world.

I think back and wonder at times what more I might have done to convince her I knew what I was talking about. More than likely nothing. She needed to believe I was still the loser she left for abusive husband hell all those years before.

She needed to believe that those special breasts made her a better person. For her, a certain self-image was more important than life itself.

For me, Poker Boy, I have my hat, my leather coat, and my superpowers. What more could I want out of life?

Nothing, except maybe winning every time. But even the best superheroes have to lose once in a while. I learned that lesson on the poker tables and with Julie.

Still, you have to feel bad for a person like Julie, caught in a self-image nightmare. And besides, pulling those sacred suckers out of her ass just had to have hurt.

Second Sight by Ilsa J. Bick

I

I’m not, she thinks, I’m not Lily.

Her brain folds like an accordion, because there’s not-Lily, squeezing her consciousness against the bony vault of her skull.

I’m not Lily; I was, but now I’m not.

She’s naked, legs scissoring spaghetti twists of off-white sheet. Her expensive dress Mother picked for her that evening, the scarlet one slit from her ankles to her thighs and a vee plunging to her navel, pools on the floor like hot, fresh blood.

(Mother? Her mother is dead. Cancer. When her father started up with someone else-twenty-two and Lily’s only fifteen, and she might have to call that bitch Mom?)

Her mind is very cold. The weatherman is forecasting snow by morning, and the mayor promised salt trucks and snow removal crews at the first flake. Yeah, and every guy in prison didn’t do it. This is Washington, for Christ’s sake. This is what Call-Me-Bob, the bald man with the big nose who’s chosen her for this evening, says as the news winks on. Call-Me-Bob’s breath is sharp as burned wood from Scotch, but he wants to watch the late news at the same time. He makes jokes. I like to watch, Eve. Even though Eve is not her name either.

And there is no Call-Me-Bob, not in this room, this bed where Lily lies.

Her skin prickles with the memory of jungle heat, though the only jungles Lily has seen are concrete and tarry asphalt and rusted steel. The village Not-Lily remembers is like something out of a movie, populated with people who have almond eyes and wear straw hats.

But she-Lily-is hot just the same. A burning flush oozes across her skin like lava. With a small impatient movement, she kicks her feet free.

Just as Not-Lily did when she was very small: wanting to be free of the coarse blanket yet scared to death of the monster beneath the bed; how Auntie, a black stinking ghost smelling of rancid flesh and fruity Special Muscle wine, chanted her muon to bring out the Rakshasas. The demons erupted from Auntie’s skin to sit on her chest, and they held her legs and arms so a son of Yama-naked, flat-faced and very hairy-could nibble her toes with his yellow fangs and bite her neck and hurt her in places that still cause her shame. Yet, always, her toes somehow grew back, and Auntie invariably melted into the Daylight Woman everyone else knew at the first hint of dawn. No one believed her about the nights. Every morning at the well the other girls tittered behind their hands even as they stoppered their mouths because it paid to be careful. You never could tell if a stray Rakshasa still lingered and might ride in on your breath so that not even a kru khmae

What? Who?

could help you.

A table lamp splashes a fan of yellow light, and a thin silver-blue wash pulses from the television, its screen of silver fuzz scritch-scratching silent hieroglyphs like the yantra

What?

which only the monks on Ko Len know. The DVD player’s red light winks like a lost firefly because Call-Me-Bob

Mackie

likes to watch.

No, it’s Mackie who can’t get enough of the damn awful thing. It’s Mackie.

There is enough light to see, or maybe she possesses some preternatural second sight, like a jungle cat for whom darkness does not matter and is, in fact, all to the better. Her eyes jerk over the ceiling of the hotel room. Tiny cracks fan the plaster, like the crackling glaze of a pottery vase, because the roof leaks and the way the manager figures it, the only people on their backs long enough to care are the girls. The johns aren’t shelling out twenty-five bucks for the view, for Christ’s sake.

Lying next to Lily/Not-Lily, Mackie sleeps, hugging the only pillow. Not Call-Me-Bob… and who is that?

Get up.

Gasping, she lurches upright, arms flailing, like a marionette whose puppeteer’s been caught napping. Mackie mumbles, shifts, doesn’t wake. The sheet pools at her waist. A scream balls in her Not-Lily mouth. But Lily doesn’t scream. Can’t.

Up, get up.

In the half-light, she staggers to her feet, clawing at air. The room’s so cold her nipples stand, and the floor’s icy against her soles, and she-Lily-wants her fluffy pink rabbit slippers, the ones her mama bought along with a thick pink terry-cloth robe for her thirteenth birthday. Lily wants to go home, where she was someone’s little girl once upon a time.

Not-Lily doesn’t care. Not-Lily can’t go home either. That they have in common. And there are other things.

She-Not-Lily-takes two minutes to make it to the bathroom. By then, however, her movements are more fluid, as if all Not-Lily needed was a little practice. Lily’s mind screams, but her consciousness is like a spectator in the second balcony of a badly lit theatre, the stage faraway, the characters Lilliputian.

Pawing open the medicine chest, her fingers walk over bottles. Pills, lots of pills: Darvocet, Vicodin, OxyContin. And Mackie’s works: two syringes, two halves of a Coca-Cola can, cotton balls for straining heroin, a lighter because discards are way too easy for the cops to match up to a pack. Mackie’s knife, the one he uses on the cans. For an old guy-has to be sixty, if he’s a day-he really goes through this stuff. He explained it once: Spoons are probable cause, but Coke, anyone can have a Coke can, for Christ’s sake, this is America.

Pills. Jesus, but Lily wants pills. Pills make things hazy, so she doesn’t care so much.

Mother

Who?

likes uppers. Feed a girl enough, she works for hours. And men will pay a lot of money for the young ones, especially the virgins. Virgins are good luck. They will cure a man of AIDS. Mother once knew a doctor in Poipet who could make virgins, over and over again. Doctors will do anything for enough money.

Not-Lily’s fingers twitch, flex, grab the knife. The blade locks into place with that sweet, metallic snick.

She says his name three, four times before he rolls over. Mackie’s fat, he’s a pig. Too much beer and Thai takeout, and the grease they use in those spring rolls’ll kill ya if the MSG don’t. His belly jiggles like quick-silver in the light of the dead channel.