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I shrugged. “Okay, I guess.” Then: “Listen, man—is that her name?”

This time, he had to hold onto the wall.

“Jesus, buddy,” he said, finally. “Next time ask, okay? It seriously helps.”

* * *

That was the same week we cut the demo. The same week I wrote it. We liked to leave things as close to the wire as we could, back then—before the money started coming in, and our lead guitarist started worrying about who our “real fans” still were.

The song was “Skeleton Bitch”—just the B-side, originally—and it broke us wide open, just like we always wanted. Just like nothing we did before ever could, and nothing we’ve done since ever has.

But I’m not here to talk about the band.

* * *

Next time I saw her was at the launch party, wedged between a cluster-fuck of drunken music critics and the kitchen counter, keeping herself amused by making anagrams from mine honorable host’s (a.k.a. our agent’s) Froot-Loop-bright fridge magnets. I slid in behind her, one arm under her breasts, and whispered in her ear:

“I do got a phone, you know.”

“That’s nice,” she said, making S-H-E-S-V-A-I-N into V-A-N-I-S-H-E-S.

Something in her voice told me to gulp my drink, and when I shook the one I’d snagged for her in front of her face, she turned—to study me close, like we’d never even met before.

“That’s nice too,” she said, taking it. Then, sipping: “Do I know you?”

For a minute, I couldn’t speak. Literally.

“Last I heard,” I said, finally.

* * *

Because, Goddammit, it was her. Same white hair. Same white lips. Same cold limbs all a-roll in their sockets, lithe as bones. And her pale, thread-veined eyes, beneath their fresh black diamonds of mascara—still shiny, still blank, like old blood under ice.

We ended up in the cloak-room, that time, doing it like dogs on a pile of coats worth more put together than I’d made in my entire life. She was all slick and tight under that jacket she wouldn’t take off—wet but frozen, her inner ridges icy slipknots, pulling me down. She popped my zip and ripped her tights wide open with one long thumb-nail, sliding back onto me like some well-oiled, key-swallowing lock. And her nipple seemed to burn a hole right through my palm as we fell the full fathom five together, down deep to where the only fish are blazing ghosts and the pressure crushes you flat.

When I came, I heard “Skeleton Bitch” playing somewhere. “Wrote that for you,” I gasped, in her ear.

She just smiled. And asked:

“Wrote what?”

* * *

Hours later, I woke to find Jaime gingerly trying to extricate his date’s velvet cape from the mess underneath me.

“Chris,” he said, “you’re one exotic guy, and I mean this in the nicest possible way—but anyone ever tell you ‘bout beds?”

I coughed, mouth full of cat hair and whiskey fumes. “Her name’s Rictus,” I told him.

“Yeah, great, man.”

And he passed his date her shroud, just in time for me to stumble past them both, not quite making the washroom door before the rest of my brains all boiled up through my nose.

* * *

That was how it went, from then on. She was everywhere, like an itch—capillary-deep, unscratchable. If I’d had any trouble pissing, I would have thought she gave me something.

But I wasn’t getting off that easy.