On the other hand, he is married. And soon, because she is no fool, nor a woman asleep, the queen discovers all. She sends her best servant to fetch her husband’s misbegotten children, and orders them killed and cooked and served to him on silver platters. Then she summons Talia to the castle and tries to throw her in a large fire. What betrayed woman would wish for less? But alas, the cook takes pity on the children and serves lamb instead; the king catches his wife fireside and immolates her instead, and then he begins to plan a fancy wedding for himself and Talia. All the principals are saved! If being saved means getting married to your rapist.

The story ends with this proverb: Those whom fortune favors / Find good luck even in their sleep.

Again, if good luck means, etc.

When Serena finally looked over at me again, she was smiling. “Electric,” she said, “my ass.”

Then she turned on her heel, and it was only once she was out of sight that Luke moved away from the fence. “Finish up, will you,” he said, to me, I suppose. Then he went into the garden shed and closed the door and didn’t come out again, even when I called his name. So I finished washing his shirts and drop cloths, and before I left, I hung them all to dry on the fence I now knew couldn’t hurt me, ignoring the clothesline, feeling both stupid and proud.

But look. Have I explained him properly? Do you understand it yet? That piled hair, like a mystic. The way his t-shirts pulled against his ropy muscles, but not too tightly, not like he wanted you to look, only when he moved the right way. The little round sunglasses he sometimes wore, like John Lennon, and how you could see yourself in them, only a smoothed version of yourself, and how easy it was to believe that was the way he saw you, too. How silent he was, some days. How you had to earn his attention. How sometimes he gave it when you weren’t expecting anything. How he would never laugh at something unless he found it funny, would not entertain conversations that did not interest him. How I would try topic after topic, each one greeted with polite disinterest, a holy man’s serenity, until I struck upon something he fancied. Then he’d turn to look at me, delighted—that radiant smile, that rare laugh. His face would change. “Well,” he would say. “Tell me more about that.”

Now I see it all for what it was, of course. Or, mostly.

As for her, I won’t even try to explain. Like the Feeling, you’ll never understand unless you’ve felt it.