How could they? he cried to no one. How could they, unless he had somehow deserved it? Was that it?

Still hanging from his door frame, he wept for a time. What did I do?

Then he gathered himself thoughtlessly, in the way of train wreck survivors, and walked down the hall.

Numb, he stared at his children in the night-light gloom. Bartender, who always slept with Frankie now, watched him with brown, infinitely wise eyes. His tail thumped the mattress.

Frankie had kicked his covers off and slept, as usual, with one hand shoved down the front of his pyjama pants. No kid alive was as protective of his balls. Ripley lay on her side, her hands folded as though in prayer. She looked frighteningly old with her hair undone and thrown across cheek and pillow. Like her mother.

Smiling, Thomas closed his eyes, and the thought—no the warmth—of them swept him away.

He could hear them breathe. Really truly breathe.

Could anything be more miraculous?

New tears branched across his cheeks.

'Who've I betrayed?' he whispered aloud.

No one. Not them, the only ones that mattered.

He'd been a fool, sure.

But no more.

You come home late.

While waiting, I peruse the books on your shelves. Freud and Nietzsche. Sedgewick and Irigaray. I like that you are educated. Will there be time for interpretation? I wonder. Will I be something more than what I am? A principle? A metaphor?

Am I broken, mutilated… or am I simply honest?

I find a photo tucked between Updike and DeLillo.

It's you. I know this because you're everywhere: on the television, blissfully unaware of the cleft in your panties; on the magazine racks, a playful thumb hooked in your bikini bottoms; on the billboards, your tongue testing your teeth. You are the center of the eye's gravity. The universal solvent.

White. Female. Skinny-as-a-rail.

I retreat at the sound of keys. I love the feel of your carpet between my toes. I grin the grin of children ducking in ambush.

Will you outrun me with concepts? Will you declare me a symptom or a disease?

I watch you undress from the gloom of your closet. I wonder what your theories think of your thong, of the razors you draw to the very edge of your skin. What would they make of your smooth-skinned glory, twenty-eight going on fourteen?

How could they know I would be watching?

You scratch your buttocks with clear-coated nails, curse your wool skirt. I catch my breath when you turn to my hiding place, striding with thoughtless candor…

Once I used to wonder how people could abuse their pets. Now I understand.

They turn them into little people.

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER NINE

August 19th, 7.20 a.m.

Thomas dragged a raw cheek across his pillow, snuffled and groaned. True to form, Frankie and Ripley were arguing in the bathroom. How early was it? Before his alarm, anyway, the little bastards.