“She killed her.”

Catherine leans forward and drapes the unfinished rug around her shoulders.

“Catherine, I can’t believe that,” I say.

“It wasn’t an accident. She left them there so Tatum could get them, because she knew Tatum would see them and couldn’t keep her hands off of them.”

I shake my head.

“I can’t believe that.”

Catherine sighs. “No one else’ll believe me either. I could tell the whole fucking world and they wouldn’t believe me.”

I rub my forehead.

“It’s a marvelous show,” the interviewer is saying.

“I don’t believe that,” I say.

“Uh, thank you.”

“And she’s still the same beauty, folks.”

Gillette laughs.

“She knows I know,” whines Catherine, “but she knows I don’t have any way to prove it. No one would believe me. No one would believe me over her.”

I keep rubbing my forehead.

“You never even liked her,” says Catherine. “And even you can’t believe me over her.”

My hand jumps from my forehead to the back of my neck.

“You’re magic. Gillette Viking, ladies and gentlemen. If you get a chance come and see the Gillette Viking showing. Well, it was an honor to talk to you after all these years. I think you’re the strongest, the absolute best of your generation. You know that we of your generation have always expected a lot from you, and we’re proud that you haven’t disappointed.”

Catherine shrinks down further in her chair: if she could have disappeared she would have.

“Uh, thank you,” says Gillette.

Catherine pulls at the nappy edges of her hair, looking like a djinn has hold of her.

43

“When I was a little girl I didn’t know how it was done. I used to puzzle over it.”

“What?” asked Ensinanco.

I stroked the border where his navel was, the top midnight and the bottom dawn.

“How a woman opened up for a man so that he could enter her, so that a man could get inside. I mean how they made love. I couldn’t get the geography right. I couldn’t imagine how it was physically done.”

“A woman never opens up for a man; a man forces her open,” he said, taking it out of the physical territory again.

“I don’t believe that,” I said.

“But it’s true. A woman never opens up spiritually for a man to enter. Certainly no woman has ever opened herself up—opened her spirit up for me. At first I thought you might. But now you’re leaving and going back to the States people.”

“States people, ha; I’ve never heard us called that before.”

Now I am going back to Catherine and Ernest, the States people.

“Has a man ever gotten your spirit open, and gotten in, really gotten in, and mingled his spirit with yours?”

I didn’t answer. But he got my body open, at least, and he’s inside dancing.

“I could just keep holding you,” he said.

“And what about a man? Does a man ever open up for a woman?”