“It happened when I was—oh I don’t know, eight or nine. I was playing after school at a girl friend’s house and her parents asked me to stay to dinner and go on to church with them that night. I called my mother and she said it would be all right, so I went. And it turned out to be one of those fundamentalist churches, with a visiting evangelist. And I don’t know why, but it seemed all evening long that this man, this preacher, was speaking directly to me. He convinced me that I was a sinner and that I had to be saved. I longed to go down that aisle and give myself to Jesus. That was how he put it—give yourself to Jesus. And I wanted to. I wanted so much to be saved. But I was scared. I thought I’d better tell my mother and father about it first. So when I got home that night, that’s what I did. I told them I wanted to be saved.” She paused for a few moments then, and when she went on there was something new in her voice, a hardness he had not heard before. “And they laughed. They were both very attractive people, with beautiful teeth, and when they laughed they showed their teeth. I’ve never forgotten their teeth that night. My mother died four or five years later, by her own hand. But that night she was happy. She laughed, right along with my father. And since then—well, I haven’t thought much about being saved. Being damned seemed much better, so much safer.”

Even in the darkness, in the light from the streets, he could see the pain in her eyes as she looked over at him.

“Until what happened to Chris,” she said. “And then today, when I saw you in the water and I thought you were drowning—I knew it was over for me. I knew I couldn’t go on living the life of the damned anymore. I had to change. Or die.”

Hook did not know what to say. “That’s fine,” he tried. “I’m glad to hear that.”

“Would you come here? Would you sit next to me?”

For a time Hook did not move. And then finally he got up and made it across the few feet, the light-years, separating them. As he sat down on the edge of the bed she took hold of his hand.

“You could help me,” she said.

“How?”

“By not hating me.”

“I don’t hate you, Liz.”

“I’d give my life for him. I’d take his place. I would.”

Hook looked down at her eyes in the darkness, at the tears shattering them. And he nodded.“I believe you.”

“Could you do more?”

“What?”

“Could you hold me? Please. Just tonight. Hold me.”

She was crying now and her nails were digging into his hand. But his other hand was free, was separate from him, a being moving with a will of its own under her shoulder and bringing her up to him, and then it was her lips and teeth and the saline taste of tears, and he felt himself falling, locked in a dream of falling, as if he were plunging from his own life.