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“You didn’t use condoms?” he asked.

My body chose that minute to remind me that what goes in, comes out. I shook my head. “We were all metaphysically mind-fucked, so no, we didn’t take precautions. I need some privacy.”

“Anita…”

“I need to clean up, Richard, okay?” I fought not to cry, or scream at him. I wasn’t mad at him. I was too confused to be angry with anyone.

“This isn’t your fault,” he said.

“The ardeur went crazy, why?” I asked.

He stepped in, and whispered, “It had help going wrong.”

I stared up at him. “What are you talking about?”

“We need privacy to talk.”

“Shut the door, I’ll turn on the shower. I need some answers, Richard. Hell, I need a morning-after pill.”

“Doesn’t that tread a little too close to abortion?” he said.

“Could you watch me be pregnant with some stranger’s baby? Could you help me raise a stranger’s baby?”

He opened his mouth, shut it. “I don’t…no.”

“No,” I said. I shook my head. “Micah and Nathaniel were willing to help me when we thought I was pregnant from someone we knew, one of my lovers, our friends. But this is a stranger. God, Richard, God!”

He came to me then, wrapped his arms around me. I stayed stiff in his arms for a moment, and then I collapsed into his body. I clung to him. I let his strength and his nearness hold me. I let him hold me while I wept and screamed and wailed. I lost it completely, and Richard held me while I did it.

45

I CRIED UNTIL my knees went weak, and then Richard’s arms tightened around me and held me. He held me standing, pressed against his body, when my own body would have fallen to the floor. When the crying began to quiet and he could feel that I was standing again, he loosened his hold on me enough to bend back and see my face.

“We’ll get through this,” he said.

I looked up at him. His hair was trailing down from the edge of the hat. Shoulder-length waves of brown with that hint of gold in the lights trailed around his face and the long firm line of his neck. I wanted to see all that hair loose around those perfect cheekbones. I went on tiptoe, found it hurt a little, but did it anyway. I lifted the hat off, and watched a little more hair spill down, but not all.

He turned his head so I could see the really bad bun that someone had done for him. I started to reach for it, to free his hair, but he gripped my wrists and set me back flat-footed in front of him. “Leave it.”

“Why?” I asked.

He gave me a gentle smile. “Because once you start playing with my hair you tend to get distracted. We can’t afford that right now.”

I nodded, agreeing with him. “I’m too sore to get too distracted for a while. I wondered why I felt so awful, but two days of it, that explains it.”

He kissed my knuckles on both hands, then let go of them. “Your face looks so lost.”

I nodded again. “I feel lost.” I looked up at him. “What happened to me, Richard? Why can’t I sense Jean-Claude?”

He seemed to think about it, then said, “Turn on the water. The sound will help drown things out from the tiger.”

I went to the shower without another word. I needed to get clean anyway. I could smell the men on my skin, whiffs of it as I moved. It wasn’t a bad smell, really, but it was the smell of strangers. I had woken up with the perfume of someone’s skin against mine before, but never a scent I did not know. I knelt, slowly, careful of all that hurt, and turned on the water.

Richard started talking, “Do you remember Marmee Noir?”

I tried to look over my shoulder, but found that the big claw marks on my back hurt too much to do that, so I turned more of me to look up at him. “The Mother of All Darkness is kind of hard to forget.”

He looked relieved. “Good, Jean-Claude wasn’t sure how much of your memory she’d wiped.”

I stared at him. “What are you talking about, Richard? Marmee Noir didn’t wipe my memory. I remember every time I’ve seen her, even in dream.”

I did not like the look he gave me; it was too soft, too gentle, too…too you-poor-baby. “No, you don’t.”

“Stop hinting and just tell me,