Ever had spent three days sitting and drinking water and not washing and needed help.

In a week he would have to go to the doctor but couldn’t go like this, they would snap him up and throw away the key. He could only think of Lomita and got out of his chair and in the boxer shorts he was wearing, found some chinos and pulled them on over his stinking body; with the T-shirt that he had been wearing, found some flip-flops, the keys to the car, his phone, and his way to the garage. He drove as slowly and conscientiously as he could.

To North Oakhurst Drive, hoping and praying that Lomita would be there but he would just sit there, anyway, until she became aware of him. He pulled up, the now familiar driveway, on reaching its gentle rise pushed the horn on his car, once, and waited. Manita appeared at the door and he did nothing, he couldn’t move. The front door had been left open, he was staring at it, hoping with a quiet prayer. The next thing he knew Lomita and Manita were helping him into the house to the previously unseen guest bedroom with bathroom en suite. They lay him on the bed. He was crying the whole time. Lomita went to her pharmaceutical trove. She came back with 20 mg of diazepam and encouraging small sips of water she helped him swallow the dose, carefully returning his head to the pillow; she then pulled up a chair, the way people do with sick people in a bed. She just looked at him and held his hand, his crying very slowly diminished to silence, but the tears continued to run down his face. And the tears she was witnessing in his life she could feel in her own and more than ever she wanted this man to be saved from himself. Revenge for what had happened to her didn’t help: nor would it help his father.

After all he was already dead.

The work had been done, the city had sucked his blood and let’s hope the Angels had saved his soul.

*

Ever’s physicality had been something of a surprise to Lomita. Initially. A pleasure, but he was almost unnecessarily handsome.

A well-built specimen, he was 6’ 2” and weighed about 180 lbs; being only thirty, well, nearly thirty-one, he was very muscular, in a wiry way, his hair was dark, cut short as the curl annoyed him when it grew long.

And he was handsome.

Very.