“You okay?” I said.

“Stupid question,” she groaned. “Jesus. Get in the kitchen.”

“Where’s the guy who shot you?”

“He went out through the kitchen door. Get in there.”

“Fuck that. You’re hurt.”

She grimaced. “I’m okay. Patrick, he can still pick up that gun again. Will you get in there?”

I came up behind Evandro and picked up Dunn’s service revolver, came around to face him. Evandro stared at me as he gingerly fingered the place where a piece of his head used to be, his face bathed gray in the sputtering fluorescence overhead.

He wept silently and the tears mixed with blood flowing down his face and his skin was so pale I was reminded of the clowns from long ago.

“It doesn’t hurt,” he said.

“It will.”

He stared up at me with those confused, lonely eyes.

“It was a blue Mustang,” he said, and it seemed important to him that I understand that.

“What was?”

“The car I stole. It was blue and it had white leather bucket seats.”

“Evandro,” I said, “who’s your partner?”

“The hubcaps,” he said, “gleamed.”

“Who’s your partner?”

“Do you feel anything for me?” he asked, his eyes wide and his hands held out like a supplicant’s.

“No,” I said and my voice was flat and dead.

“We’re getting to you, then,” he said. “We’re winning.”

“Who’s we?” I said.

He blinked at the blood and tears. “I’ve been to hell.”

“I know.”

“No. No. I have been to hell,” he screamed and fresh tears poured out of his eyes as his face contorted.

“And then you created some for other people. Quick, Evandro, who’s your partner?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Bullshit, Evandro. Tell me.”

I was losing him. He was dying in front of me as he placed his palm on his head and tried to staunch the flow of blood, and I knew he could go any second or within a few hours, but he was going.

“I don’t remember,” he repeated.

“Evandro, he left you behind. You’re dying. He’s not. Come on. I—”

“I don’t remember who I was before I went in that place. I have no idea. I can’t even remember—” His chest heaved suddenly and his cheeks puffed up like a blowfish and I heard something rumble in his chest.

“Who’s—”

“—can’t remember what I looked like as a child.”

“Evandro?”

He vomited blood onto the floor and looked at it for a moment. When he looked back at me, he was terrified.

My face probably didn’t provide much hope because as I looked down at what had just left his body, I knew he couldn’t live long without it.

“Oh, shit,” he said and he held out his hands and looked at them.

“Evandro—”

But he died that way—staring at his hands as they dropped back to his sides, one knee bent to the floor, his face confused and afraid and utterly alone.

“Is he dead?”

I came back into the hall after stepping into her bedroom long enough to stamp out a single candle trying to burn through her floor. “Oh, yeah. How’re you?”