But too quick for him! Not-drunk but all of your senses alert you slip from his clumsy hands, slip beneath his hands, quicksilver as a roused fox. In your fingers a pewter candlestick holder, must’ve been seeing this on a nearby table for the past several minutes without registering its meaning. Out of nowhere you’ve grabbed the pewter object to swing at the enraged face, jubilantly you strike the face between the eyes, not a hard blow but stunning to the man who has never been struck in such a way, by one he’d imagined he might easily subdue. This gives you time to swing the weapon a second time, and much harder. Almost, you imagine hearing the eye socket crack, the cartilage of the nose crushed, you see the panting man losing his balance, falling. Hard.

Splattering of blood. Whimpering, moaning. But you have no mercy, without a backward glance you are ecstatic in flight descending seventeen vertiginous floors to the ground and running shoeless out into the harsh cold air—Running for my life.

AND EACH TIME YOU THINK OF ORLANDO METTI, WICKED LAUGHTER bubbles up like bile.

And each time you think of Orlando Metti, you feel a rush of something like contrition, a kind of remorse, regret, not for what you’d done but for the fact that you have done it, and Metti will not forgive you, and will not forget.

Only a matter of time, you think. Before Metti seeks you out.

He knows where you live, he’d driven you home numerous times, before he’d given you the Honda Civic. He would know your university schedule except he’d never listened carefully, vaguely he might recall that you are on campus on Thursday evenings.

Of course, he calls. Late-night calls on the specially installed phone. You listen, and you do not answer.

Unlike his ex-wife, Metti doesn’t leave lengthy messages. He is too shrewd to threaten you. Too shrewd to leave proof of any intent to do you harm.

All he will say is, in a deceptively jovial voice—Hel-lo, Vi’let. We have a little something to discuss.

AND THEN, THE AGENCY CALLS.

Not Ava Schultz but the manager, a man named Dwyer to whom you’d never spoken before. Dwyer is harsh, disgusted. Informing you that Orlando Metti has accused you of stealing from his apartment. He claims that you took jewelry, articles of clothing, money. Unless you give it back he will call the police and press charges.

You wonder if this is a joke. But no, Dwyer is panting on the phone. No joke.

Weakly you protest: Metti gave you gifts. All those items were gifts.

He’d given you a car, too. A Honda Civic. (But Metti isn’t accusing you of stealing the car, at least.)

Disgusted Dwyer commands you to come to the Agency and bring the “gifts” with you.