Her voice is silent and roaring at once. Her voice is mildly terrifying, like driving into an ice storm. The silence ripples and after a brief pause, everyone begins to come alive. I stand in the doorway, wondering if she wants me to go. Or just the others. Jude puts down the scissors and walks toward me. I step aside to let her pass, which she does without quite looking at me. Miller flops off of the bed and comes toward me, naked and hairless. He scratches his chest, grinning. He doesn’t say a word. Jeremy, Huck, and Daphne troop past me, their heads lowered. Molly stands in the center of the room, arms folded across her chest. I tell her it’s okay, we’re off camera. She stares down at the yellow hair at her feet and mutters a response I don’t understand and, with two fingers, gently pushes the wooden chair over backward so that it falls with a dull crash. She turns to the bed and violently strips the sheets from the bed, throwing them to the floor.

What did you say?

Molly turns her doll’s head around slowly to look at me, her blue eyes unblinking.

What did you say just now?

Dead flowers, she says. My hair looks like dead flowers on the floor.

Molly crawls onto the bare mattress and crawls slowly across it and for a moment it’s like she’s crawling across an endless table, blue and white. There’s a bowl of porridge at the far end and she just wants to taste it. She huddles in the corner against the wall, arms wrapped around her legs. She looks like a kid on a boat and she’s afraid the waves will take her away. Her hair is short and wispy but it doesn’t look bad. Jude could have butchered her, if she had wanted to. She could have cut her ear off or something. I expected her to, really. Molly looks cold and I crawl across the mattress to give her a sweater. I sit next to her, not touching her. The air in the room has a silver, post-apocalyptic glimmer, a strange fairy dust quality that I associate with dinner parties and domestic violence.

You’re still here.

Yeah.

She lowers her head to rest on my lap, and I stroke her new hair.

What do you think? she says.

You look like a boy. But not bad.

Molly sighs.

What happened? I say.

The scene, she says. We were shooting the scene. Jude and I were lying on the bed, talking about you and John. We were sharing a cigarette. We were talking about sex and drinking vodka and Jude was touching my arm, just lightly touching it, you know. It felt nice and I kissed her, I kissed her cheek and then she kissed me on the mouth and we started sort of making out and it was weird because everyone was in the room but I think it was a nice scene. The lights were soft and there were good shadows and it felt natural, it felt pretty. Jude was touching me, touching me and I was spinning or falling like I was going to come. And then suddenly John was on the bed, he was naked and he stank and he started kissing Jude, grunting and groping at her and she pushed him away and I started to sort of panic. I wanted John to go away. I wanted everyone to go away but John was trying to get Jude’s clothes off and she was telling him to stop, just stop but he jerked her pants down and he was trying to get inside her and she was crying and the three of us were tangled together and suddenly it was hot, I couldn’t breathe and it was like I had these extra arms and legs and too much skin and Jude was kissing me, her mouth was all over me, her mouth on me and John’s eyes were so black and the light started to turn green around the edges and I was slipping, disappearing. I had a seizure and I was gone for a minute and when I came out of it Jude was holding her face and there was blood in my mouth.

Jesus.

By now she has climbed on top of me. Molly is as small as she can make herself, crouching like a bug on my chest. I wrap my arms around her, carefully. I don’t want her to feel trapped but maybe it’s what she wants. Molly is no longer shaking but her arms and legs are so cold. Her skin feels like she’s been outside in winter. I have an erection but I ignore it.

And then what?

Then John told Jude to cut my hair, to punish me. He told her to make me ugly.

What did Jude say?

Molly shivers. She didn’t want to do it but I think she’s afraid of John.

I think so, too. It worries the hell out of me but I don’t say so and then I forget about it because Molly is aware of my erection. Her hand drifts down into my crotch to give me a squeeze. It seems like the wrong time for this but I groan and she unbuckles my belt and slips her hand into my pants. Molly kisses my ears and throat and chest but she avoids my face and mouth, as if she is reluctant to let me see her. She unbuttons my shirt without looking at me.

A ring of yellow hair on the floor.

Lost feathers, dead flowers.

I make love to Molly on her bare mattress and the sex between us is grim, tender, wordless.

thirty-one.

MOLLY SLEEPS BESIDE ME, snoring softly. I’m wide awake and staring at nothing in muddy underwater light. The gloaming, baby. Panic attack, delirium tremens. Headache and shrinking vision. Blackbirds on the wing. I can’t tell the difference between panic and sickness but my body is begging for a drink. My arms and legs are numb, naked and tangled with Molly’s. The separation between us is vague. I slip out from under her and she mumbles nonsense at me but does not wake. I gather my clothes and creep into the hall to get dressed. The clock chimes four times and for a moment I have no idea whether it’s afternoon or morning.

Jude is in the kitchen, drinking coffee. She holds the cup with both hands and sits with her back very straight. She stares through me and says nothing. The mark on her face is purple and swollen. I take a bottle of vodka from the freezer, then fetch a glass and pour myself a generous shot over ice.

Happy hour? she says.

I grunt and light a cigarette.

Your hands are shaking, she says.

It’s a new feature. I don’t want to talk about it.

Jude sighs. You are dying before my eyes.

How’s your face?

It hurts. But it’s no one’s fault.

What about Miller?

What about him?

Molly said he forced himself on you.

Jude flinches, slightly. That’s not true.

What is the truth?

He wanted to make love to me, she says. I wasn’t interested.

I don’t understand.

What, she says. What don’t you understand?

I don’t understand why you don’t cut his wee willie off and feed it to him.

Jude takes a cigarette from my pack, fumbles with the matches.

Are you afraid of him?

Jude strikes a match and lets it burn down to her fingers without lighting her cigarette. She strikes another and watches it burn. I push the glass of vodka across the table but she shakes her head. I reach for her hand but she pulls it away and now Miller crashes into the room. He wears black jeans and a black military-style sweater with patches on the shoulders. He tosses my jacket at me.

On your horse, Poe. We’re out of here.

Where are we going?

Baseball game, he says. The Giants are playing the Reds.

Oh, yeah. Who’s going?

Miller winks at Jude. The boys, he says. Just the boys.

I finish my drink but make no move to get up.

Don’t tell me you’re not interested, says Miller. These are dream seats, behind third base.

I look at Jude, who nods and lights another match.

Yeah. I’m interested.

Excellent choice, he says. I’ll meet you out by the truck.

Outside and the sun is fierce in a white sky. Jeremy and Huck wait beside the Range Rover and I have a sudden, surreal vision of the four of us at the ballpark. The crowd like an ocean around us, roaring. The smell of peanuts and big plastic cups of warm beer. Miller waving a big puffy hand. Huck grimly shoving fistfuls of cotton candy into his mouth. Jeremy flirting with a red-haired girl behind us. I can see it like it already happened but there’s a tracking problem and the back of my neck has gone cold. Huck sits on the hood of the truck, smoking one of Miller’s cigars. His hands are filthy and he looks tired. Jeremy crouches in the driveway, tossing pebbles at an empty wine bottle. His eyes are narrow and red and he regards me warily as I approach.