HE WAITS IN SILENCE WITH HIS HAT ON HIS LAP, turning it slowly for over half an hour before he rises to some internal clock and scoots to her door, knocking gently. There is no answer, but he doesn’t let that stop him. He turns the knob and pushes in, closing it behind him. I admire his tenacity, but I think Gary is either delusional or into masochism because Mary will not get better. This endless cycle of up and down will define their relationship—any relationship of hers—for the duration of her life.

I, for my part, choose to lose myself in my sketchbook. Awkward doesn’t even come close to defining the last hour for me. With nowhere to go, no privacy, all I can do is direct my attention elsewhere, pretend the whole ugly ordeal isn’t happening.

I breathe a sigh of relief when I finally have the living room to myself. I look down at my handiwork, truly noting my subject for the first time. It is the boy from my dream again—the Fool. He is steady on his cliff perch; his arms open to the sea of nothing swimming before him. His yellow waistcoat is like a drop of sun, and his hair is a smudge of black. His wolf looks smaller on the page, more doglike. He is the spitting image of the card in my deck but for one glaring deviation. A silk cord is wrapped around his ankles several times in a bright, dazzling red. Not the dark, easy-on-the-eyes shade of dried blood, but the ruby-rich color of freshly spilled blood. Of open wounds and thick, spewing lava and brazen lipstick. It is a grotesque color, even as it is compelling. And it undulates through the grass like an underworld snake or some kind of organ all its own.

I know this red, of course. It is the red silk chain from my last dream, the one where the guy from the church led me away into the forest. It is the red of his smile in the dark and the red of his bathrobe in the café. He perplexes me, this devil I have conjured, with his existence in my dream space. But when he steps out into three dimensions, he scares me. I don’t know if I’m hallucinating or being haunted or, worse, stalked, but none of those sound good.