That night, at the store, she killed X with a box cutter, lodged it first directly into his windpipe, driving down and then to the side, gutting him the way her father used to gut deer, calmly. He was found in the storage room, with his head propped gently onto a bag of presifted flour, his legs open and his pants off. And of course the police suspected her first, and after talking to a few locals, they began their hunt; but she had vaporized, risen up into the state, gone into the woods in one way or another to hide.

She was in a hotel in Houghton, way up, looking out over Lake Superior, which with the howling wind was chrome blue at midday; she was on her knees at her bed praying for forgiveness when she was, again, called up to Christ; he was there this time in a plaid shirt with a bad cold, trying not to sniff, a box of tissues on his knees.

“You didn’t listen to me,” he said. She was surprised at his brisk, businesslike tone. “I told you to come to me, to talk with me before you made your next move.”

“I didn’t have time,” she said, looking into his eyes. His hair had grown a bit and he had to shake his head to get it out of his face.

“Ah, that’s the way with the world,” he said. “Nobody wants to come back to me, to talk it over. It’s act first. Discuss later.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s this weather.” He spoke as if to someone else, out into the void behind her. “It’s driving everybody nuts. I mean even I have cabin fever.”

“So I’m forgiven?”

“Well, I’ll look into it. I mean I’ll think about it.”

Again her fall was eased by a cheap mattress. She lay on the bed listening for police sirens and heard only the cold rasp of wind off the lake. Guys in the room next door were drinking beer, laughing, banging around. She fell asleep and awoke the next day to the sizzling sound of the devil’s voice coming beneath the door with the wind.

“If he has to think about it, you’ll have to come with me,” he said.

“Oh.” She blinked, sat up, drew her arms across her breasts.

“I mean who has time?”

“I guess I don’t,” she said, but she wasn’t sure.

One sees the likes of her everywhere; disposed of, fucked, torn and battered. Let’s be frank, for once. She didn’t end up going with the wind-voiced devil, or with Christ, who, taking his own good time, decided eventually to grant her a stay of forgiveness; she was found dead by the hotel maid, crumpled with her legs up against her stomach in a small blue robe; she had a garter belt on, and a small teddy the man from the room next door demanded she wear, and then the other guy who joined him later, coming over when he heard things getting hot and heavy; her skin was as pale as the sky over the lake that morning, and she had shoot marks up and down her arms from two hard years of high-grade smack; there were signs of abrasion in her vagina, which the medical examiner attributed to rape. The good doctor, shining his penlight into her eyes to check her pupils, made note of beauty—ice white and blue mixed in the dead nonmovement of her eyes; he thought of his fifteen-year-old daughter who still gave him hugs and seemed protected by his love, but he wasn’t a stupid man, and he knew the world, this world, this great country of his, could eat anything, absolutely anything, up.