“Tell you what, Violet. Stay, have a drink, and I’ll drive you home. Or—to the university? D’you have a class tonight? I think you said.”

Metti was breathing audibly as if he’d been running. He did not step toward me. Yet, I would recall that he’d stepped toward me.

Quickly I told him No thank you. Suddenly eager to escape.

Not even noticing, until I stepped dazedly out of the elevator on the ground floor, that the bill Orlando Metti had pressed into my hand at the door was a fifty-dollar bill.

I’D CONSIDERED INFORMING THE AGENCY THAT I DIDN’T WANT to return to Dr. Metti’s apartment. And why? Has the client harassed you?

No. No!

IF YOU WON’T FUCK ME, YOU’RE DONE. WE’LL GIVE IT ANOTHER week or two. Understand? Sure you do, you’re not stupid.

JERR SAYS, OK, LET ME FIX IT.

Squatting beside my bicycle. Frowning at the jammed chain.

I’d been riding my bike in the street when something happened to make the wheels lock, I’d fallen tangled with the bike, shuddering with pain as my right leg was dragged against the pavement so that my jeans tore at the knee, a bright burst of blood seeped through the fabric.

Blue Schwinn bike with balloon tires, already an old, discontinued model when Daddy brought it home for me, a trade for carpentry work he’d done for a friend. I’d been ten years old, totally thrilled.

Falling from the bike on Black Rock Street within sight of the house but there’d been no one to hear my cries, I’d had to drag myself home limping and bleeding.

And now, Jerr is repairing the bike for me. For in my dreams of my brothers, Jerr is alive. He and Lionel are just boys. When they’d liked Violet Rue, or anyway had tolerated Violet Rue, as the youngest sister who adored them.

The time before I’d learned to fear them. Before they’d learned to despise me.

SHAME. THE EX-WIFE WHO CALLS METTI TOO OFTEN, LEAVES (drunken?) rambling messages on his answering machine which I am tempted to erase out of shame for a woman so abased, abandoned.

Never! I would never.

Absolutely never beg.

Not me!

EVIDENCE. IN EACH OF THE (THREE) BATHROOMS, IN THE SINKS, on the tile floors, in shower drains there have been strands of hair conspicuously longer, different in color from Orlando Metti’s hair which is dark, gray-streaked.

In a bureau drawer in his bedroom, a silky black nightgown—smelling of faint, fragrant perspiration.

Yes, I’d pressed the nightgown against my face. Yes, my eyes had closed in a swoon of angry rapture.

On a bathroom counter, a half-empty tube of maroon lipstick.

On a shelf in the shower, an unfamiliar brand of hair conditioner.