But the boy apparently feels safe with her. In another moment he is asleep again and I don’t know what to make of this. I put my hand on Jude’s thigh and I am confused, vaguely queasy. I don’t know if this is guilt or love. Her mouth twitches and now I think it’s a little bit of both. She glances down at my hand and I slowly withdraw it.

Miller is staring at Jude as if she has just grown a spotted tail. I reckon he thinks she’s gone soft on him. Jude stares back at him with eyes narrow and feral and I have a happy image of Miller waking up with his intestines spilling out of him in a rich steaming mass. I sip my margarita and look from one to the other. It occurs to me that I have been ignoring them lately and now I realize that I have no idea what manner of nastiness transpires between them in the dark. Jude stares and stares and Miller never turns his eyes away from her and after two or three minutes of savory, textured silence during which Jeremy and Daphne drift uneasily from the room, presumably to have sex without bloodshed, Jude passes the boy to Molly, who glows upon receiving him.

Do you see something green? she says to Miller.

He shrugs. Repent, he says. Repent, mother.

Molly walks slowly around the room, hugging young Sam to her chest. She sways back and forth, instinct kicking in. She begins to sing, softly. Momma’s gonna buy you a diamond ring. Her face is shadowy and blissful and I shake my head. Molly too is falling for the boy and I believe we are fucked, all of us. The boy is definitely getting to her. There are black streaks on her face.

Molly, I say. Your eyes are dripping.

What?

I take the boy from her. You’ve got black shit running down your face.

The mascara, she says. I forgot. We were getting ready to shoot a scene.

What scene?

You’re not in it, says Miller. Only the girls.

That reminds me, says Molly. I want to talk about the nudity.

What about it?

The script says that Jude and I are sitting around the bedroom, right. We’re drinking wine and smoking cigarettes and having a raunchy conversation about sex.

Yeah? says Miller.

Jude is topless in the scene, says Molly. Which seems unrealistic, frankly. And I’m supposed to be bottomless.

Bottomless? I say.

Jude laughs. She takes the margarita from my hand and finishes it off.

Two girls getting drunk and friendly, says Miller. A prelude to sex.

Maybe, says Jude. But nobody sits around bottomless and chatting.

Would it be more realistic if there was a pillow fight?

This is hopeless, says Molly.

Okay, I say. How about we talk about reality for a while?

What did you have in mind? says Miller.

The ransom, I say. I think we should make the ransom demand today.

No, he says. That’s impossible.

Why?

Because we have just begun shooting The Velvet.

Jesus. The film is a farce. It makes no fucking sense and we should end it now.

Miller stares at me, his eyes mild. Whatever you say.

The boy is sick, I say. He needs a doctor.

He frowns. Don’t you have faith in Jude?

Jude strokes my thigh, her hand venturing close to my crotch. Molly turns away and goes to the bar. The sound of ice in a glass. I shift the boy in my arms. He’s heavy. Miller lights a cigarette and watches my face. Blue smoke whispers between us. Jude strokes my thigh and I stare into the distance. I stare into the past, into the future. I consider the word faith.

Miller shrugs. Neither here nor there. We will make the ransom demand when I say so.

And if he dies in your basement?

Then it gets more interesting, doesn’t it?

thirty.

BACK THROUGH THE RABBIT HOLE and down the stairs. I tuck the boy into bed and arrange his pillows around him. Sam is breathing well now. But his body is too warm and the hair at the back of his neck is damp. I settle onto the floor with the remote control and flick on the television. I watch cartoons for a while but they depress me for some reason. I surf away and come upon a rerun of Starsky & Hutch squatting on some channel ominously called TV Land. The implications of such a channel are too brutal to wrap my noodle around and anyway Huggy Bear is giving a wildly animated, hopelessly rhetorical, and truly surreal speech about human rights. He’s wearing a maroon suit and a pink tie and a big straw hat and his eyes are bugging out of his tiny head. I’m good for about five minutes of this before I freak out and am forced to flee TV Land. I cruise the TV universe until I find a ball game, the Red Sox and Yankees.

This has potential tragedy written all over it and I promptly mute the sound.

I am tempted to skulk upstairs and get a beer and a sandwich but I’m in no mood to run into any of the others. I don’t want to know what they’re up to and besides, beer would only make me want a cigarette and I would rather not smoke around the boy. I fetch a juice box from the little fridge and settle in to watch the Yankees massacre the Sox.

Baseball slows the vital functions and in no time I am dreamy, contemplative.

I contemplate the boy. He is approximately forty-nine pounds of flesh and bone. Blond hair and big brown eyes nearly black. He has eyes that could swallow you. His nose is the size of a button, the size of my thumbnail. His unflawed skin is somewhere between pink and pale yellow, the flesh of a peach. His hands are devastating. His hands could make a monster weep. He smells like the sun, like the fine sparkle of dust swimming in a burst of sunlight. He smells like a color you can’t name.

He breathes, in and out. Five years of life, barely a ripple.

But there is some serious voodoo packed into his small body and it’s not just him, but all children. There is nothing on the planet quite like a sick or injured child, a frightened child. Jude is a cool hand and usually nothing touches her, nothing moves her. But I could see the boy tugging freely at her cold, broken heart.

This is something that fills my head, sometimes. The idea that I broke her heart somehow.

I fall asleep next to the boy and dream that we are lost in the woods together. Sam is unchanged. He is five years old, with long blond hair. I am nine, his brother. The trees are dense and twisted, with thin black branches that hang just above our heads and tangle together like terrible hair, blotting out the sky. Unseen wolves howling in the dark, their voices ghostly.

Sam is brave, though.

He pushes ahead and I follow him and when we come to a house of gingerbread and licorice, I know that the house is not safe. It’s not safe but I have no control over my limbs and I stroll directly up to the door and hammer on it while Sam helps himself to a tasty chunk of cinnamon rain gutter. The woman who comes to the door is no crusty hag, however. She is maybe thirty, with hair black as tar. She wears raw leather pants stained with what looks like blood and a vest made of fine silver chain. The woman smiles when she sees us and her teeth glitter white as needles. I don’t trust her but Sam shouts hooray when she asks if we like sugar cookies. He trots inside and I follow him, helpless. The woman strokes my face and her fingers are cold and bony, with long black nails. She purrs that it’s a shame but I am too old for her table, that my skin will be tough and gamey. But my brother is still soft and plump and if killed properly and marinated in butter and blackberry wine he will make a delicious stew. The woman asks me to gather wood for her fire and I comply.

I am not stupid, however.

I am only vaguely aware that this is a dream and I can’t seem to wake myself up but I know this woman. I would know her anywhere. I shiver myself awake and Sam is sitting on his haunches like a little stone frog beside me, staring at my face with profound curiosity.