I wrote, in the fatuous modern manner, “This Is a Person in the Here and Now Lying Down,” and jotted it down, forensically, working in silence for an hour. I kept the dead insects, the leaf, a couple of pubic hairs, an example of the dirt, a smear of blood and vaginal mucus, and a record of the words inside her notebook. Mostly her eyes were closed, her breaths deep and long.

I awoke her from her “dream” and showed her what I’d been doing.

“No one’s ever done a nicer thing for me,” she said.

“Pleasure.”

“You said to me once, ‘What people want is to be known.’ Can I ask you: What is that scar you have?”

“What scar? Where?”

She looked at me as though I were stupid, before pointing it out to me. It was under my elbow, in the soft flesh.

“You don’t know what it is?”

“I probably do,” I said, irritably. “I don’t even remember where I got it.”

“You don’t want to know yourself. You don’t know yourself as well as you know me. I don’t understand that. If you knew yourself you wouldn’t have done what you did with that woman.”

“I don’t see why we have to know either ourselves or each other.”

“But what else is there?”

“Enjoying each other.”

“Knowing is enjoying, for me.”

These were the sort of wrangles we liked. After, we walked back in silence.

I noticed, out at sea, a large yacht with little boats carrying provisions out to it. I’d forgotten that everyone from the Center had been invited to a party on it that evening. I hadn’t taken much notice at the time, but there were numerous rumors about the owner. He was either a gangster, film producer, or computer magnate. I wasn’t sure which was considered to be worse. I was surprised when Patricia announced at breakfast that we were all going. I was intending to miss it; I couldn’t see that Patricia would even notice my absence. How things had changed since then! Hadn’t she said to me, a couple of hours ago, “See you tonight!”

I couldn’t defy Patricia and remain at the Center. If I was going to leave, I’d have to know where I was going.

I said goodbye to Alicia and went to the roof to think. I discovered myself to be even more furious than before about what Patricia had done to me, and furious with myself for having failed to escape untouched. I would insist on sleeping alone tonight and leave for Athens by the first boat. I packed my bags in readiness. I was young; I could run.