“But mostly, of course, as holes to stick their penises in. And the rest of us, our bodies, our minds, our education, our everything, just vehicles to carry around the holes. I’m not talking about sex. Sex would require mutuality. Sex would mean that they understood female sexuality, but that would require them to care about female sexuality, and since they don’t, most of them are ignorant and incompetent, and don’t care that they are, as long as they get into the holes and squirt. If you’re a woman, as you walk down the street, when you go to the office to work, when you’re a girl going to school, or at the gym exercising, or doing sports, and men are looking at you, you know that’s what they’re looking at, oh, here comes a hole, how do I get into it. They whistle, and call, and say stupid things as if we’re supposed to be happy that they see us as desirable holes. They reward us for dressing up as desirable holes and dismiss us and punish us when we don’t.

“It’s wearing, it’s stressful, and if you’re a woman, you begin to feel it’s hopeless. You can’t fight it. You can’t stop it. It goes on and on.

“Then, an individual woman, like Madelaine, gets trapped in it, by an individual man, and she desperately wants to make it stop, to get out of the trap, and she can’t because she can’t match his violence.”

Madelaine was looking out at the river and the mountains, sipping away at her bottomless glass, as if she wasn’t there, as if all she heard was the flowing water and the slow whispering wind.

“That’s why it feels good.” Elizabeth said. “Because we finally matched his violence with violence and we stopped him and won.”

“But you used a man to do it,” I said.

“This time,” Elizabeth said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“We did it,” she said. “A gun, a knife, a bomb, a man. Just tools. We used the available tool.”

“Are we safe?” Madelaine said suddenly, having turned away from ‘the view’ and looking at me.

“Yes.”

“When they examine the body, if they do a tox screen?” Elizabeth asked, out from behind the lectern, now Miz Bizness, doing straight-up due diligence.

“They’ll do a tox screen,” I said. Of course, they would.

“What will they find?”

“Whatever they find, he’ll have put it in himself. Certainly alcohol. We know that. I’m guessing cocaine. I don’t know that,” I said, lying somewhat. I looked at Madelaine. “Your guess is better than mine about that.”

“That’s a good guess,” she said.

“Maybe tadalafil,” I said.

“Very possibly,” Madelaine said, a bitter taste on her tongue. Spritz, quick, to wash it away.

“The police have the car,” Elizabeth said. “They’re investigating.”

“Of course they are,” I said.