The walls and ceiling are washed with ocher and umber, the colors of the earth, and the stone floor is the color of the sea. Every doorway is an arch, and there are huge pots of acanthus that are limp and brown because she hasn’t been watering them properly, and there is dark hair on the stone floor. Head hair, pubic hair, from when she paces about, sometimes nude, ripping at her hair. She’s asleep on the couch, her back to him, the bald spot on the top of her head pale like a full moon.

His bare, sandy feet are quiet, and the movie plays. Michael Douglas and Glenn Close are drinking wine to an aria from Madama Butterfly playing on the hi-fi. Will stands in the arch and watches Fatal Attraction, knows all of it, has seen it many, many times, has watched it with her through the window without her knowing. He hears the dialogue in his head before the characters are saying it, and then Michael Douglas is leaving, and Glenn Close is angry and rips off his shirt.

Ripping, tearing, desperate to get at what was underneath. He had so much blood on his hands he couldn’t see the color of his skin as he tried to tuck Roger’s intestines in, and the wind and sand blasted both of them and they could barely see or hear each other.

She sleeps on the couch, too drunk and drugged to hear him come in. She doesn’t feel his specter floating near her, waiting to carry her away. She will thank him.

“Will! Help me! Please help me! Oh, please, God!” Screaming. “It hurts so bad! Please don’t let me die!”

“You’re not going to die.” Holding him. “I’m here. I’m here. I’m right here.”

“I can’t stand it!”

“God will never give you more than you can bear.” His father always saying that, ever since Will was a boy.

“It isn’t true.”

“What isn’t true?” His father asked him in Rome as they drank wine in the dining room and Will was holding the stone foot of antiquity.

“It was all over my hands and my face, and I tasted it, tasted him. I tasted as much of him as I could to keep him alive in me because I promised he wouldn’t die.”

“We should go outside. Let’s go have a coffee.”