Charlie’s body changes tone. He is dead. No, at his mouth she eavesdrops on the whistle of his breathing. Sudden sweat soaks his brow, his shoulders, his chest, her breasts, her cheek where it was pressed against his cheek. His legs relax. He grunts, “O.K.” She dares slide from him, tucking the covers, which she had torn down to bare his chest, back up to his chin.

“Shall I get the real pills now?”

“In a minute. Yes. Nitroglycerin. What you brought me was Coricidin. Cold pills.”

She sees that his grimace had meant to be laughter, for he does smile now. Harry is right. She is stupid.

To ease the hurt look from her face Stavros tells her, “Rotten feeling. Pressure worse than a fist. You can’t breathe, move anything makes it worse, you feel your own heart. Like some animal skipping inside you. Crazy.”

“I was scared to leave you.”

“You did great. You brought me back.”

She knows this is true. The mark upon her as a giver of death has been erased. As in fucking, she has been rendered transparent, then filled solid with peace. As if after fucking, she takes playful inventory of his body, feels the live sweat on his broad skin, traces a finger down the line of his nose.

He repeats, “Crazy,” and sits up in bed, cooling himself, gasping safe on the shore. She snuggles at his side and lets her tears out like a child. Absently, still moving his arms gingerly, he fumbles with the ends of her hair as it twitches on his shoulder.

She asks, “Was it me? My throwing that awful fit about Harry’s sister? I could have killed you.”

“Never.” Then he admits, “I need to keep things orderly or they get to me.”

“My being here is disorderly,” she says.

“Never mind, tiger,” he says, not quite denying, and tugs her hair so her head jerks.

Janice gets up and fetches the right pills. They had been there all along, on the top shelf; she had looked on the middle shelf. He takes one and shows her how he puts it under his tongue to dissolve. As it dissolves he makes that mouth she loves, lips pushed forward as if concealing a lozenge. When she turns off the light and gets into bed beside him, he rolls on his side to give her a kiss. She does not respond, she is too full of peace. Soon the soft rhythm of his unconscious breathing rises from his side of the bed. On her side, she cannot sleep. Awake in every nerve she untangles her life. The traffic ebbs down below. She and Charlie float motionless above Brewer; he sleeps on the wind, his heart hollow. Next time she might not be able to keep him up. Miracles are granted but we must not lean on them. This love that has blown through her has been a miracle, the one thing worthy of it remaining is to leave. Spirits are insatiable but bodies get enough. She has had enough, he has had enough; more might be too much. She might begin to kill. He calls her tiger. Toward six the air brightens. She sees his square broad forehead, the wiry hair in its tidy waves, the nose so shapely a kind of feminine vanity seems to be bespoken, the mouth even in sleep slightly pouting, a snail-shine of saliva released from one corner. Angel, buzzard, floating, Janice sees that in the vast volume of her love she has renounced the one possible imperfection, its object. Her own love engulfs her; she sinks down through its purity swiftly fallen, all feathers.