"Charis,” he said. “Hey."

The door opened at his push and he saw her rising from a sofa, or a mattress clothed in figured stuffs, a stricken look for a moment on her face that cut him as the same face could in dreams. Then that passed, and simple delight replaced it.

"Oh my God! Pierce!"

He opened his arms, hands displayed, here I am, as I am. She opened her arms too and they embraced lightly, tentatively.

"Pierce,” she said. “My god. Back in the big city."

"Just for a day."

"Then home to the country?"

"No. I'm going to Europe."

"Gee, wow,” she said. “Europe. How fun. You'll love it."

They stood together in the doorway a long moment, uncertain. Then she pulled him into the apartment.

It was as he imagined it might be, just as. Here were the ad hoc furnishings made from street finds, the walls of alligatored tenement paint disguised in hangings, like a khan's tent. Here were the things she now made her living buying and selling, gathered on her daily hunts through junk shops and rummage sales and the Salvation Army store. She'd once told him that when she was young she thought the Salvation Army had been formed for just this, the salvation of your old stuff from eternal discarding: your hats and coats and sunsuits and stopped clocks and three-legged chairs.

She took a seat, her seat, on the pillowed mattress on the floor, folding up with an easeful practiced motion, like a cat. “So hey,” she said; she looked at him, and laughed, as if he'd prompted a funny memory of their life together, though he'd done nothing.

He sat on a low velvet hassock.

"You going alone?” she asked. “All by your lonesome?"

"Yep.” He nodded, nodded, no help for it.

"I'd go,” she said.

"Hey,” he answered, and opened his hands again, ready when you are, any time; and he felt a long impossible future come to be and then burn out.

"So you didn't get married, out there in the country,” she said to him.

"No. Nope."

"Nobody good enough for you."

"Right."

"You're a good guy,” she said. “You deserve somebody good."

"Don't say that,” he said.

She picked up from the cluttered low table beside her—it was a wooden cable spool, he guessed, covered in scarves—a cigarette holder, jade.

"How's your mother?” he asked.

"Aw. The same."

He thought of her mother's apartment, a big old-fashioned place on the other side of town, where at Christmas once an old Gypsy woman had told his fortune. An old, old Gypsy; and her mother; and her.

"And you?” he asked. “Steady guy?"

"Two,” she said, and laughed. “Yeah. I sort of got them spelling each other, you know?"

"Do they know about each other?"

"Actually no. One of them works way downtown, days, and I see him at night. The other is up around here, and works nights. So."

"Cox and Box,” said Pierce.

"You're not kidding,” she said. “Anyway it's fun.” She turned the cigarette holder in her small smooth hands. “So come on,” she said. “Tell me how you've been. You know you don't look all that hot. I don't know about the beard."

He had just begun to grow it. He rubbed it now, a scratchy sound. “Not all that hot, no."

"No?"

He clutched his brow, and she came closer to where he sat, and, smiling, put a hand on his knee. “I'll tell you something,” he said. “When I moved out of the city. After you ... well. The day I moved out. I made myself a promise. That I'd give up on love."

Still smiling, she shook her head: don't get it.

"I thought I'd had enough,” he said. “After you. I mean enough in both senses. Enough to last me; and as much as I could take."

"Wow,” she said. “Dumb idea."

He nodded. But it was true: he had thought that all that had happened between the two of them was enough to fill a soul to overflowing, and if time ever emptied his, new wine could not, surely should not, be poured in.

"So, what,” she said. “You were going to join a monastery?"

"No no,” he said. “I wasn't going that far. I'm not the monastic type. I was just going to. To keep my fancy free."

"Really."

"Really."

"Don't tell me,” she said, profoundly tickled. “It didn't work out."

He hung his head.

"Jeez, Pierce,” she said. “You never go to the movies? Read a book? Don't you know what happens to people who make promises like that?"

He did, he had known very well, but those were only stories after all, and because they were, the end or final capitulation to Love in effect came first in them; the initial vow of abnegation was just a means to it, and all the chastening errors and humiliations that lay in between were nothing, nothing at all, the confusions of a night, everybody already knew, even the suffering fool himself seemed to know from the beginning, because he was after all in a story: so you laughed, for him and with him.

"So who was she,” Charis asked with a sigh: let's get started.

"Her name was Rose."

"Huh.” She seemed not quite to believe this. “And what was she like?"

What was she like. Pierce for a moment couldn't answer. He had been lately experiencing a sort of intermittent catatonia, a division of consciousness when certain questions were put to him, wherein lengthy explanations or ponderings occurred within him even as his mouth opened and his jaw lifted and dropped saying things other than the things he thought, or nothing. What was she like? She was like him: he had once in bed told her that, though he didn't really believe it. He had told her that he knew what it was like to be her, her on the inside; but he never knew if she believed him. Really, nothing that he knew about her or that she had said about herself accounted for her, just as it might be said to him, Here is a night-blooming orchid that awakens only once a year and smells of flesh—all that could be said about it was that if it didn't, then there would be no such bloom. The same for Rose.

"And so what happened?"

He stopped again, chin wagging for a moment like a ventriloquist's dummy whose partner has fallen silent. He thought to say he had got lost in a haunted wood, because he thought he saw her go that way, or simply because he lost the right way. The thorn trees there bled when he cut them with his sword. He had met himself—right hand raised, in strange clothes, coming toward him, about to speak a warning, ask an unanswerable question. But he turned away, and went on. He was tricked into binding and whipping his beloved, and only discovered his mistake (that it wasn't his beloved, or his blows weren't kisses) too late.

"Ooh. She liked that stuff?"

"She did."

"Do you?"

"I did. Because she did."

She waited.

"It was,” Pierce said. “It was um. It was actually a lot of fun. I have to admit.” He saw reflected in her face the whiskery skull-grin he was making, and ceased.

"Nobody's ever gonna hit me,” she said.

"No,” he said, sure of it.

"I mean sometimes a little spank,” she said. “On the behind. Sometimes it feels good. Right on that hole."

Her level cool eyes. Never complain, never explain: her motto, she always said. In dreams he had seen her too sometimes, Charis, on the path ahead, turning to look back, with just those eyes. Or maybe it wasn't her, or Rose either, or anyone.

"But listen,” she said, cross-legged now on her divan, a little idol. “Weren't you afraid you might go too far with her? That's what I always wonder. Like how were you supposed to know if she. You know. Didn't want to."