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But this is the truth: I tried. When he came begging back to me—when he told me he hadn’t known what he was saying, that night in the restaurant, when he told me it was no use going through with the wedding, and could I please pay back that $150 I owed him from our vacation in Ireland—I made excuses, made allowances. Because hey, it was probably my fault, anyway. As so many things are.

So I went out with him again. I sat with him, talked with him. I kissed him. I let him kiss me. And I felt—nothing. Except that I wanted less and less to sleep with him, to touch him, to be in the same room with him. And the real joke of it was, I didn’t even know what was wrong. It didn’t even occur to me.

’Cause when you get right down to it, I guess I’m just stupid. When people tell me they don’t love me anymore, I tend to believe them. (And what was it you did mean to say, then, Colin? Exactly?)

I should have known a long time ago that I will never marry anyone, except maybe myself.

I hear noises at night, now. One the bus, riding up, my two-hour trip is dogged with the steady pad of bare feet on asphalt, with the scratch of clawed toes. On my rounds, I carry a plastic bag full of unpopped soda cans, swinging it like a weighted sling. I memorize the exits, and check the walls for fire extinguishers. I listen carefully to each new person I meet, trying to decide what they’re hiding, what they really are.

Because the pain is draining away now: Taking my well-worn detachment with it, leaving nothing but the fear I never felt—glinting sharp.

The knife in my unhealed wound.

And whenever I stop long enough to consider it, it occurs to me that breaking a bottle of my own urine across the face of something with an animal’s sense of smell may not have been the best idea I ever had.

I think of my dream, of the woman with hooks for hands, Our Lady of Self-Protection, who can only wound, never touch.

Never touch. Not even herself.

Skin City

THE STREET LAMP’S glare leaks in over her windowsill, unchecked by blinds, to touch what little furniture remains with a bleak light. Before her, a table—actually, three upturned boxes topped with a plank stolen from the construction site just north of the railway tracks. On the table, a tape recorder. Next to it, an empty cassette case.

Her suit waits, thrown over the end of the bed, for her to make up her mind.

Adage swallows.

The bright eye of her cigarette blinks, as ash dots the rug beneath her feet.

Useless even to try and tell you what she looks like: She’s naked now, though not as we know the term. Naked and red and wet. And it’s so comfortable to be hidden away here in the dark, she almost wishes her cigarette would last forever.

But that’s impossible.

Soon the clock will strike, and she’ll get up. She’ll dress herself, as carefully as she can. And then, when she’s presentable, she’ll go out.

To meet somebody.

Anybody.

Adage takes a last drag. She drops the butt on the rug and lets it lie, smoldering.

She leans forward into the dark, feeling for the “record” button.

* * *

A month later.

Mike Grell sits by the window nearest the front door, looking out. In one hand he holds a postcard, in the other his walkman.

Outside the bus, Chinatown blurs by, trailing pennants of red lacquer and neon.

The postcard is custom made. One side’s a holiday snapshot: 13-year-old Adage tilts her head back, laughing, as the sun bleaches away her face.

Mike touches his wallet, where the original lies folded between bank card and expired driver’s license.

The other side is a scribble. Deciphered, it reads:

It’s happening again. In Toronto. At the Meat Market, there’s a girl named Sherri. Ask her where I am. Find me.