"Oh she could tell me,” Pierce said, and ground his hands together. “Even if I wouldn't listen when she said no. Wasn't supposed to listen."

"Then how did she tell you?"

"She could say: I tell you three times."

"'I tell you three times.’ That's it?"

He lowered his head, bare and ashamed.

"Okay,” Charis said cautiously but not judgmentally, calm counselor or therapist. “So go on."

So go on. Iter in antiquam silvam, stabula alta ferarum. They had gone on, into the forest primeval, where the beasts den in the deep dark. How far in did they go? Only halfway: then, of course, they began to come out again, though he at least didn't know that. He told about the cutting of her hair, how deeply that got her too, another set of wires crossed; how he had been able to overmaster her simply by showing her the scissors (territio realis) and taking her hair in handfuls, gentle but firm, and not to be refused. And other things.

"So let me see if I get this,” Charis said. Her black brows knitted. “You've got this woman who likes stuff. Needs stuff. She has to have stuff, but she can't say she wants it. So you get her somehow so that she can't get away, strap her up real good, and then while she's that way you do the stuff to her she wants you to do. The stuff she needs. While she says, No no, please no, and you don't listen."

He nodded.

"You figured out what she wants, and you gave it to her. Without her asking. Or even admitting. Which she couldn't do."

He nodded still.

"Well. Jeez. A person can't ask for more than that, Pierce. Isn't that just love? To do that for somebody? Isn't that what it means?"

Could it be that her eyes regarding him were soft? He turned away, feeling a great heaving in his chest as though the hurt heart there were making a break for it; clapped a hand over his mouth to keep it in. It had only been a month or so since he had broken for good with Rose. Not long, not long at all. Real love: if it was, would Charis know, someone like her? Maybe she alone.

"So where is she now?” Charis asked softly. “Are you still...?"

"No. No no. She's gone."

"Gone? Like vanished?"

"To Peru.” He searched his coat pockets for something he didn't find. “Last I heard."

"Peru."

"She became a Christian,” Pierce said. “A sort of Christian. She joined a cult, actually."

"A Peruvian cult?"

"They have some sort of connection there,” he said. “A mission."

"Like converting people?"

"Bringing them the message. The Word. They're a tiny group, but they pretend to be international. The Powerhouse International."

"The what house?"

"Powerhouse. The Bible is the powerhouse.” To say anything about them, to use the fraught words they used, was to him like touching dead flesh, or being spat on by strangers, why? For how long?

Charis shook her head in wonderment. “So when she got converted, that was the end of that stuff, huh? You and her. The things you did."

"Well,” he said. “No. Not right away."

"Oh no?” she said. “No?” She laughed greatly, as though some simple truth about humanity, or women, or life on earth had been confirmed. “Uh-huh. So then how did it end? Between you?"

"Well, her faith,” he said. “So-called. After a while it just got insupportable."

"Really."

"Really.” Insupportable, that was the word, he couldn't support it, for our support is reason, and what our reason will not support we let fall, we walk away from it, everybody does, except those people; it was all he had done, all that he needed to admit he had done. Insupportable. “God,” he said. “Old Nobadaddy. Guy in the sky. I mean, come on."

"Hey,” she said. “You know I believe in God."

"You do?"

"Sure. Don't look so amazed. I could never have got through the stuff I had to get through. Never. I couldn't go on.” She laughed a little, at herself, at what his face showed. “I mean I don't go to like church, I'm not, you know, good. But still. Yeah. Never could have made it. Without him. Who can."

For just a moment, a vast moment, Pierce knew what that would be like: the ground of being your own friend and helper, a pour of power out of elsewhere into your heart, without judgment, asking nothing, giving all that was needed, the last resort. For a moment it was so: everything was unchanged, no different and yet all different. Then it was gone.

He stood. Winter light was citron in the windows now, and Pierce thought he knew why she didn't light lights—she had no power, no bill to pay. He hadn't removed his coat. “Okay,” he said.

"Pierce,” she said softly. “Don't go."

She got up herself, and took his arm. She poured him liqueur in a tiny glass of many colors. For a long time they sat together, and he listened to her story of her own life, and felt the gnaw of boredom it's not uncommon to feel in the presence of one you love and have long ago lost and can't have. She gave him a tour of her apartment, bedroom kitchen front room all in a row, like the apartment he was living in when they first met, the same he had lived in with Julie Rosengarten before: an Old Law apartment. The refrigerator, unused, was covered in a glamorous fringed shawl on which embroidered beasts and birds cavorted in Eden. Outside on the windowsill a bottle of juice and a loaf of bread and some plastic containers kept cool.

"You ever going to get electricity?"

"It means signing up for stuff. I sublet, Pierce. I pay my bills in cash. I'm invisible."

The bedroom, offered to him with the same gesture that his own bedroom had been offered to him by the Chief. More full of more things, this strange art form or indulgence she spent her time and thought on, arrangement of miniature stage sets, marionette tableaus, dioramas no one would ever see but her and her friends and lovers. He thought about her growing old, and turned away.

"Aren't these valuable?” he asked, pointing to a cluster of miniature women gathered like a coven on the refrigerator's top, a mermaid, a Barbie, a Betty Boop, and a Betty Crocker. The one he had noticed was an ivory Chinese figurine, nude and marked with fine blue dashed lines: the kind that, he understood, women once used when consulting doctors, pointing out their pains on its bare body rather than uncovering their own.

"Dunno,” she said. She lifted it from among the others. “You think so?"

"I think they are."

"You need it,” she said.

"I do?"

"You do,” she said, and, taking his hand, she put the little lady into it. “You do."

He could close his fist around it, and hide it completely: almost. Charis named a figure, less than it was worth surely, but still a good sum. He'd thought, of course, that she meant it as a gift, and tried not to let it show that he'd thought so. He only nodded sagely, studying the thing; then he gave it to her to hold while he got out money. Money of the foundation's, meant, he told her, for his trip.

"Well, sure,” she said. “And here's your first souvenir."

"Okay."

She offered to find something to wrap it in, but he took it and put it bare in his overcoat pocket. “She'll be all right,” he said.

"Okay.” She slipped her arm in his, walked the few steps to her door. “People learn things about themselves, you know, Pierce. They do, finally. Sometimes what they don't want to know."

"Yes."

"Me, I've learned that I don't really have a warm heart. I mean it doesn't warm up by itself.” She tapped it lightly, the place where it was hidden. “I need to be loved. Somebody's gotta love me like nuts. And if they do, then...” She made a two-handed catch-fire gesture and a sound. “You know?"