“Why? You’d only despise me all the more.”

“I don’t despise you.”

“Maybe you should. But then it doesn’t matter anyway. So I’ll tell you how it is for me—your son’s death. It’s an irritant, Mr. Hook.” And she continued to lie there with her eyes covered and her mouth parted, almost as if she were waiting for him to do something, strike her, maim her, kill her.

“How do you like that?” she asked. “Not so hot, I imagine.”

All Hook could do was repeat the word. “An irritant?”

“Yes, that’s what I said. An irritant. But let me be more specific. It’s like—well, like there was a fire in a hospital—a hospital in which I was already dying. There I am, near death. The priest has mumbled the proper words over me, and I am ready. And then there is this—” She looked out from under her arm at him for a moment, squinting. “—There is this tall intense man from the other side of the moon and he keeps shaking me and asking me about the fire—his fire—and I want to feel—I want to help him. But I can’t, you see. I am dying.”

Hook decided to go along with her. His rage would keep. “Of what are you dying?”

“Of life, Mr. Hook. I’m dying of life.”

“You’re dying a spiritual death.”

“Yes, that’s all. Just a spiritual death.”

“I can’t see why. I’d think if anyone would have been able to find love in this world, it would be you.”

“Love? Or sex?”

“I said love. I meant love.”

Again she moved her arm and looked up at him. And suddenly tears came into her eyes, began to run down her face. She sat up then, not bothering to hide the tears or even wipe them away.

Hook asked her why she was crying.

“Why?” She shook her head thoughtfully. “I don’t know. I was thinking of him. Your son. And I envied him. Just the thought of it, having someone care for me as you must have for him, to come all this way, to do what you’re doing.”

“Is it so unusual?”

Smiling unhappily, even bitterly, she nodded. “Oh yes. In my world it would be quite unusual. My own dear father, for instance—Don Felipe Ricardo de la Madera, as he bills himself. For him, the action wouldn’t have been at the sheriff’s office at all but at the cemetery. It would have been a marvelous and beautiful service, and no one there would have looked more elegant and sexy than he, with his curly gray hair teased just so. I can see him at the graveside, Mr. Hook—his eyes wandering discreetly one way and then the other—looking for cunt, of course. He did it at my wedding, so why shouldn’t he do it at my funeral? And he was successful too—with one of my bridesmaids, a nice little kid not even eighteen yet—even younger than I was—but she was old enough for Daddy. I heard later they almost arrested him over that one, but I was gone on my honeymoon at the time and didn’t know about all the publicity. He filled me in later, though, one night when he was drunk. Bragged about it. I had the feeling he was trying to make me jealous.”