At home his father back, television on. Xie glances at the attic door, desire so intense he can taste it: sulfurous, like licking the head of a match. Everything go okay here? Erik says. Yeah, fine, Xie breathes, perching nervously beside his father, doesn’t he feel it? P. glowing behind the couch, the body over their heads. Erik points to the screen with the remote. You hear about this? Xie blinks. A nun clutching a rosary, broken glass at the bottom of the case, P.’s sword on the stone floor, the church itself banal on-screen, lusterless in the afternoon sun. The news anchors speculating about black markets for Catholic treasure, Satanists, meth addicts. It is an unspeakable offense, the nun says, the relic is priceless, it is a body of God. A photograph of P., shown from crown to chest. The newscaster describing him as a macabre seventeenth century antique. Can you believe that? Erik says. Practically next door. Weird, Xie whispers. The weather comes on. Gold dripping from the ceiling. Which is it. Hallucination. Macabre antique. Body of God. Beloved.

As it gets colder, the meetings get longer, fuller, no beer but plenty of hot tea, which Xie drinks nonstop. Having to pee every fifteen minutes. He knows a few of the other people by name, exchanges small talk, reads the notices in the bulletins, but Xie always ends up with Peter, whose eyes find his as soon as they walk in the door. Hands on Xie’s shoulders, little slap from behind. Listen, there’s a group of us thinking about occupying the rodent research lab at the university, I thought maybe you’d like to join us? Next weekend. Xie flushing. I’m still on probation, he says, if anything happens, like, the littlest thing—Peter groans. Hey, I didn’t think of that, sorry. Next time. Friendly grin, as always, no big deal, but Xie can’t meet his eyes. If something happens to Xie then the body is alone. Unwilling to risk it for some mice in a lab, admit it, you came here with FKK to do what Peter’s asking you to do and now you just want to be home. With it. Pathetic. Xie rubs his face on his sleeve. He goes to the bathroom again, then slips out the door, you never touch it without thinking of Nova bursting through it, why can’t you tell anyone. About what she said. That furious smile. He walks the perimeter of the building, his breath white in the air. Hands half frozen inside his hoodie. Such an enormous church, twenty times the size of the one in the woods, merely functional: ugly gray stone, no candles, no colored glass. P. never comes here, is never anywhere with regularity except the woods, the attic; he is not a dog, he won’t come when you call. Xie passes a window, ankle-height, opening onto the basement. Peter’s red head bent toward Jo, Leni on the couch with her arms around her knees, watching a video on someone’s phone. As far as he knows, most of the saints worked alone. When they brought Pancratius to Diocletian he was already an orphan. After he refused to kill the lamb he was beheaded with the same knife he had been offered, but first he was forced to watch the flesh of that other neck part from bone. A god bleeding at the feet of its deniers before becoming, once again, merely an animal. Through the window Peter takes the box of produce you brought from your garden and passes it around. Leni takes a tomato, the first you have grown in the cloche, and feeds it to Jo. You can’t think, now, about those mice; if only you could explain why. What would it be like. To say his name out loud. To publicize the most private ecstasy. But then it would be destroyed; Pancratius knew this, that to speak of the beloved was to invite death. He did it anyway. How can anyone know you, if they don’t know this. Does it matter. If in truth you are barely here.