Most of the time, our powers of rationalization being what they are, he never has to face it. He can go to his death thinking he’s good.

Most of us can. Most of us do.

But the man who wrote this letter had embraced evil. He enjoyed the pain of others. He didn’t rationalize his hate, he reveled in it.

And reading his letter was, above all else, tiring. In a uniquely sordid way.

“I’m beat,” Angie said.

“Me too.”

She looked at the letter again and touched her palms to her shoulders, closed her eyes.

“I want to say it’s inhuman,” she said. “But it isn’t.”

I looked at the letter. “It’s human all right.”

I’d made myself a bed on her couch and was trying to get comfortable when she called to me from the bedroom.

“What?” I said.

“C’mere a second.”

I walked to the bedroom, leaned against the doorway. She was sitting up in the bed, the down comforter spread over and around her like a rose pink sea.

“You okay on the couch?”

“Fine,” I said.

“Okay.”

“Okay,” I said and headed back for the couch.

“Because—”

I turned back. “Huh?”

“It’s big, you know. Plenty of room.”

“The couch?”

She frowned. “The bed.”

“Oh.” I narrowed my eyes at her. “What’s up?”

“Don’t make me say it.”

“Say what?”

Her lips turned up in an attempt at a grin and it came out looking horrible. “I’m afraid, Patrick. Okay?”

I have no idea what it cost her to say that.

“Me too,” I said and came into the bedroom.

Sometime during our nap, Angie’s body shifted and I opened my eyes to find her leg curled over mine, wrapped tightly between my thighs. Her head was tucked into my shoulder, her left hand draped across my chest. Her breath fluttered against my neck, rhythmic with sleep.

I thought of Grace, but for some reason I couldn’t picture her fully in my head. I could see her hair and her eyes, but when I tried to form an image of her face, whole, it wouldn’t come.

Angie groaned and her leg tightened against mine.

“Don’t,” she mumbled very softly. “Don’t,” she repeated, still asleep.

This is the way the world ends, I thought, and faded back to dreams.

Late in the day, Phil called and I answered on the first ring.

“You awake?” he said.

“I’m awake.”

“Thought I’d drop by.”

“Angie’s asleep.”

“That’s cool. I just…sitting alone, waiting for this guy to try something, it’s driving me nuts.”

“Come on by, Phil.”

While we slept, the temperature had dropped fifteen degrees and the sky turned to granite. Wind roared down from Canada and poured across the neighborhood, rattled windows and bucked the bodies of cars parked along the avenue.

The hail unleashed itself shortly afterward. When I went into Angie’s bathroom for a shower, it spit against the windows like sand carried by sweeps of water off the ocean. By the time I was drying off, it spewed against windows and walls as if the wind were ejecting nails and lug nuts.