Is there any real reason, other than bad luck and ill-timing, that Mary and Duncan could not still be together? Is there any reason it could not have been Mary and Duncan that I walked toward down the stairs, the flesh necklace/noose undone before it ever formed, its pieces resolved into smiling, appreciative faces? The imprint of my hand on Mary’s face transformed into the loving touch of a sister-in-law? I might not be here now, the darkness of the ceiling muted only by the purple tiers of fungus that encroach at such speed. (No purple fungus ever grows with good intent in this city, Janice. You must have known that. It is a breed bred for spying, the source of myriad fragmented reports collected in the depths of the city’s underground passages.)

But words will never persuade the past. Bonmot did fire Duncan. It did signal the beginning of the end (in one sense, but only in one sense) for my brother and Mary.

I remember that Bonmot told me about it during one of our sessions in the Truffidian Cathedral. I didn’t have unbridled sex anymore, so I had, as you may have guessed, turned to “religion.” That didn’t last, either, because it had little to do with faith, but at least it gave me an excuse to spend time with Bonmot. We were standing in the very place where he later died, among the pews closest to the door.

“Janice,” he said. “I’ve had to do something. I hope you won’t hate me for it.”

“I don’t think I could hate you, Bonmot.”

“You might. I’ve had to let Duncan go. Because of Mary. I think you already know what I mean?”

For a second, it was very quiet. I was shocked. Duncan hadn’t had a chance to tell me. I hadn’t seen him in days.

“Did you really have to?” I asked. I think I was worried, at first, as much about how it might affect my relationship with Bonmot as about Duncan.

“Yes. I had to.”

He bowed his head, and we prayed.

How did Mary respond to this news? For a long time—for longer than I might have expected—she stood by Duncan. Duncan told me a week later, an echo of passion in his voice, that Mary had smuggled a letter to him through her unsuspecting parents. (Bonmot had left it up to Mary to tell her parents, and she never did.) In it, she begged him to wait for her. Either Duncan’s line of romantic blather had ensorcelled her or she found the general notion of separated lovers, forced to check their desires, tragically romantic.

“A year and I can be with her,” Duncan told me. “We’ll find an apartment. Settle down.”

“Have some kids?” I said. “Find a respectable day job? Stop skulking around belowground?”

A bitter smile twisted his face, but he did not reply.