That’s right, she said. Any and all takers. If they was handsome enough, nice enough. Tell the truth, didn’t have to even be all that handsome. Just nice. That’s why I’m still afoot. Supposed to be looking for Joe, to say sorry. But I ain’t. Ain’t looking, ain’t sorry. So there. So be it. I’m happy enough. With my memories. That mean little ogre, I did him dirty again and again, but he did me dirty again and again. The taking of me by force, I mean. And when he passed? I never came near his stink.

  Good Lord, I thought.

  Taken by force?

  By her own husband?

  Got to where he only got me when he made me, she said. And then I started scratching and a-biting.

  Lucky me, to have been loved by a man as gentle as Lloyd.

  It was cool and dark there below the surface of the earth and dim celebratory sounds drifted down from the wedding, making me vulnerable to certain recollections.

  Such as:

  Lloyd’s “broad hand” on my back, and “alarm” goes off, set to “country station” (“WJJD,” our “favorite”), and Lloyd “springs up” all cheerful and “hopping on one foot,” gets “pants on” (coins “jingle” in the pockets) and for a moment in the “half-light” stands “shirtless,” hair a mess, raring to go, and says aloud, “David Houston,” which is: name of the man now singing.

  Ack, no.

  I must not—

  Such as:

  April, “Stanley, Indiana,” “rental house” of Ada and Todd Sinclair (“real dump” on edge of “FarmHill Estates”), all of us “medium-soused” and the men “cook up” the “bright idea” of slicing up, with “box cutters,” the “cardboard crate” from the Sinclairs’ “new fridge,” to use to “sled” down “mudhill” behind “rental,” and after “first run,” Lloyd takes “shot of Cuervo” and makes “playful grab” for me, Jill “Doll” Blaine, and honestly? I just drop into his arms and fleck/flick at his ear with my tongue, because, to me? Lloyd being so handsome and all? It was (swear to God) like Christmas morning whenever he’d flirt with me, especially here, in front of this crowd, because of me being a former big nobody and Lloyd being seen, in Stanley, by these popular gals, as this, like, I don’t know, big catch or something?

  And that was, I gotta tell you, dynamite.

  Dy-no-mite.

  Oh gosh.

  “Dy-no-mite” was, I recalled, “from TV.”

  TV, goodness, “TV,” “television,” wow, yes: the bright-colored, balloon-lettered Marcus­Welby­Bandstand­Laugh-­In­Flip­Wilson­Bob­Hope­Shindig thrill of it all! Ours (our TV, our “set”), in my childhood, sat “just so” on a “cute Asian table” Dad’d brought back “duty-free” from “Manila.”

  So cool and all.

  Hey, hello, the old lady said. You in there?

  Yes, I said.

  I remembered that second thing I’m to ask, she said.

  On Sunday nights: three TV dinners on three TV trays just in time for “Bonanza.”

  Your old feller dead yet? she said. Up yonder?

  No, I said. Still alive.

  There you go, missy! she said. That weren’t so hard, was it? In that case, that foreign feller’ll be here shortly. With a guest in tow. A real doozy. Who’ll get the job done. No use them coming if your feller’s done kicked it already. Y’all have been serving weak tea. So that foreign fellow said. When what’s needed is: hard whiskey. As he hopes you done figured out by now: this one’s a tough nut. Who’s gotta get cracked open. Stand back, now. I’m a-going.

  The chair began to vibrate and disintegrated beneath her and she was remade into a young woman: lithe, almost liquid, hair hanging down long: a country girl about to hit the town, because Joe, cruel Joe, was gone for a spell, up to Little Rock, and so: happy days.

  She dashed up the steps to meet her friends down to the Pines Hotel, they’d be waiting for her under the overhang, as it was supposed to rain like the dickens.

  I stood there, far beneath the surface of the earth, recalling Lloyd:

  “Tattoo of boat” on one arm.

  Slight “touch of gray” on “sideburns” though “not yet thirty.”

  Girl, careful, I counseled myself.

  The more I indulged in such recollections, I knew, the more inclined I would be to indulge in other such recollections, until indulging would come to seem not like indulging at all but, rather, like a simple, joyful return to who I really was. Do you know what I mean? A return to the person I had been, the person I was most comfortable being, the person it had always been so natural and easy and (hey, guess what?) fun to be:

  Jill “Doll” Blaine.

  And we mustn’t have that.

  Using my arms like a surface-seeking swimmer, I shot up past a severed length of ancient sewer pipe and a bright green sliver of a child’s swimming pool from fifty years prior.

  * * *

  —

  And exploded up into the narrow passageway between the jasmine-covered fence and my charge’s house.

  Here were the Mels, fast asleep in each other’s arms.

  Ugh, still here, said G., startling awake.

  Tired of waiting, said R.

  For him, said G.

  Who always disrespected us, said R.

  Even as he depended upon us, said G.

  Pompous ass, said R.

  Arrogant prick, said G.

  Language, friend, said R. to G. Lady present.

  Language, friend, said G. to R. Lady present.

  Speaking of which, said R.

  Don’t you have a roast to cook? G. said to me.

  A car to start? said R.

  And kaboom? said G.

  Body parts fly across the yard? said R.

  Of your trashy little duplex? said G.

  Which was, in a world full of mansions and villas, said R.

  All you two lovebirds ever got? said G.

  Poor thing, said R. Briefest of marriage, zero kids, lived in a hovel.

  Not even a slight mark on dear old Earth did you leave, said G.

  Although, rumor has it, said R. Bun in your oven.

  I stepped over, gave R. a kick, a hard kick, then G., harder still, as hard as I could, and then, to even things up, went back and gave R. a supplementary kick.

  Oh, but we are inevitable, G. said whiningly. Inevitable occurrences. Aren’t we?

  Who else could we have been but who we are? said R.

  So why would you kick us? said G.

  Why assault us so, when we are lavishly jailed? said R.

  Nice elevation, sis, said G.

  You look funny, said R.

  Like you’ve got one foot in the former world, said G.

  Like you’ve been doing too much recalling, said R.

  It happens, said G.

  Happens even to us, said R.

  I sometimes recall my childhood bike, said G.

  I sometimes recall my childhood bike, said R.

  Which one are you now, dear girl? said G.

  Jill or not-Jill? said R.

  Trending toward Jill, I think, said G.

  Merely Jill, said R.

  Poor dead, said G.

  Plain old, said R.

  Oh, shut it, I said.

  Anyway, no hard feelings, said R. Go on, shoot back up there, do your thing, hon.

  Flail away, said G.

  We’ve got him, said R.

  He’s ours, said G.

  Got him good, said R.

  He’s pigheaded, said G.

  Pigheaded, with an astonishingly limited capacity for self-examination, said R.

  Everything you and your French pal have tried? said G.

  Has come to naught, said R.

  Only hardened his resolve, said G.

  Caused him to retrench more energetically, said R.

  That’s how it is with us, said G.

  Our kind, said R.

  We doers, said G.

  Who accomplish, said R.

  Who bend the world to our will, said G.

  Bash us, we roll up in an impenetrable ball, said R.

  Criticize us, we put our fingers in our ears, said G.

  Kick us, we kick back harder, said R.

  Speaking of kicking, said G. Earlier, you kicked us.

  We have a dim memory of that, said R.

  Then they seemed to smell something on the wind.

  Uh-oh, said G.

  Nearly time, said R.

  Hustle back upstairs, girlie, said G.

  His wee body teeters at the edge, said R.

  Of his mud-black forever-pit, said G.

  Soon will come that special thunk made by: inert load, dropping, said R.

  After which, devoid of its former vitality, his sad former-person-bearing meatlump will begin to rot, said G.

  From the window of my charge’s room a light-rectangle, longing for the wedding, landed instead on the redwood fence, where it manifested as a frustrated, malformed polygon.

  Up I shot, bent hard to the left, and was in.

  In with him again.

  My poor doomed charge.

  * * *

  —

  He lay as before, as ever (eyes closed, one hand under the covers, the other above). In his mind he stood at the window of his New York office, thirty-eighth floor, gazing down at an angry mob swirling around below.

  How had those morons gotten here, anyway, from all over the country? With their filthy clothes, their swear-word-laced posters, these supposed nature lovers heedlessly trampling thirty grand’s worth of planters, berms, and flower beds into a mudfield like something out of goddamn Verdun?

  Did they walk?

  Ride horses?

  Don’t be funny.

  I joined him at the window.

  Were you down there? he said. That day?

  No, I said.

  Is Dell down there? he said.

  I don’t believe so, I said gently.

  He thinks poorly of me, he said.

  He moved away from the window. And was, strangely, nowhere at all.

  Just in some space of great blankness, with me there beside him.

  See me? he said.

  Yes, I said.

  Who am I? he said.

  K. J. Boone, I said.

  The son of a bitch who destroyed the planet, he said.

  Maybe rest a bit, I said.

  So say the cretins, he said.

  Well, I said.

  In a pig’s ass, he said.

  He turned to me and drew in close, uncomfortably so.

  You didn’t have to go through any of this, did you? he said. The long death. Lucky you. Just blew right up. Bang: gone.

  Lucky me, I said dryly.

  There in our shared mental space, he tilted his head.

  What? I said.

  Your pal’s nearby, he said. Frenchie. I can feel him.

  You can feel him, I said.

  Bringing some new turd up here, he said. Some new dead turd. To spook me.

  If he was able to sense the Frenchman’s proximity, his end must be very soon indeed.

  His father had been here. His mother had been here (albeit only in his mind). When his mother came for real, his time would be short; mother and father would unite, and all would be done.

  Have you considered that matter? I said. That matter we discussed?

  He seemed to be drawing a blank.

  Elevation? I reminded him gently.

  Hooey, he said.

  * * *

  —

  At that moment the Frenchman strode in, looking elated and windblown, white rose in the pocket of his glaringly white jacket, wearing white trousers, white leather boots, and a white scarf.

  He was almost too radiant to look at.

  At last I have found it, he said. The perfect means by which to set this fellow on the path to repentance.

  I’m lying right here, you bastard, my charge said.

  Greetings, the Frenchman said. Mr. Bhuti, if you please.

  In came a gaunt, dark-skinned fellow wearing a beautiful orange silk jacket and a pair of wide, flared pants that appeared Eastern in origin.

  I am a recent arrival in that room where no one is content, he said. Do you know it, madam? With its bent-down flowers? And all there is to eat are stale bread crusts?

  Strangely, his speech lagged behind the movement of his lips, which seemed to be speaking a different language than the one we were hearing—i.e., his speech was, by some method unknown, being spontaneously translated into English.

  You may note that I am wearing the traditional angrakha of Churu, in Rajasthan, he said to me.

  Talk to the fellow in the bed, not to her, please, said the Frenchman. He is the source of your misery.

  Mr. Bhuti turned to face my charge, retaining, even in light of this new information, his gentle mien.

  We were, there at the end, extremely irritable, he said. My wife, my mother, and I. We three, who had lived together for many years, never once speaking unkindly to one another, began, there at the end, to speak most unkindly to one another indeed. Also, the skin of our faces became shriveled like the skins of old apples. Also, the color of our urine went from yellow to black as coal. Sounds of suffering came from all over the village. Men fought at the well for the right to lick the bucket.

  The Frenchman came to the bed, leaned over my charge.

  Aarhus, he hissed. Aarhus is the thread that connects you and this unfortunate.

  You talk just buttloads of crap, you know that? said my charge.

  A person makes a reckless speech here, the Frenchman said. Its fatal consequences are felt there.

  Sheer buttloads of senseless crap, said my charge.

  Millions of dollars are spent propagating a falsehood, said the Frenchman. That falsehood goes out into the world and alters it.

  That’s quite a stretch, Henri, quite a goddamned stretch, said my charge.

  Mr. Bhuti cleared his throat and continued.

  It had not rained in over a year, he said. To graze against a metal door was to be burned. Graves could not be dug for the heat. I had not defecated in eleven days. We three sat on the floor, hearts racing, snapping at one another as if possessed. In the last half hour, we seemed, all at once, to shrivel, become skeletal, look identically ghoulish; it would have been difficult to say who was the youngest, who the oldest. One by one, we succumbed. First Mother. Then Charvi. Then me. That is to say, I had to watch as they succumbed.

  Quelle horreur! the Frenchman thundered down at my charge. Behold the vile criminal!

  I’d eat your ass, Frog! my charge thundered. I’d eat your ass whole, you pathetic, limp-dicked, troublemaking—

  You’ll eat my ass? the Frenchman said.

  For lunch, fucker, said my charge.

  He’ll eat my ass, the Frenchman said. For lunch. Did you hear that, Mr. Bhuti? Did you hear that, madame? Is this something of which a person should be proud? This, in the end, is who we are dealing with: a bully, a ruiner, an unrepentant world-wrecker, a self-centered—

  Out in the hallway, my charge’s wife was speaking consolingly to someone.

  It’s all right, dear, she was saying. There’s still time. Deep breaths. Cab’s best. Quicker. Otherwise you have to take a shuttle. To this, uh, pickup area. A cab’s quicker. And quick—quicker’s good, baby. At this point.

  She stepped back into the bedroom, sat defeatedly on the love seat. Something seeming to give way in her, she brought a fist to her forehead, and held it there with some force, as if, by the intensity of the pressure, she might reverse time and restore her husband to health.

  This earnest indication of love had the effect of causing the three of us to fall silent.

  * * *

  —

  There within the orb of my charge’s thoughts, I felt him roll over to face away from us, the way one will turn from one’s lover in the midst of a disagreement.

  Ah, nous avons échoué, the Frenchman sighed. He remains unmoved.

  Damn straight, mumbled my charge.

  Mr. Bhuti, the Frenchman said, I am sorry to have brought you so far. And with so little result.

  Now I must go back to that room, I suppose, said Mr. Bhuti.

  I’m afraid so, said the Frenchman.

  May I rest a moment? Mr. Bhuti said and sat on the edge of the bed.

  No chairs there, he explained. In that room where no one is content. Where my wife and mother wait, still wait, for even a single sip of water. However, in that room? No water. For us. Therein lies the torment: what one wants, one may not have. For some there is, yes, water. But whatever it is that they most desire? Is denied them. One fellow desires his violin. But: no violin. For him. Anyone who does not desire a violin may get one quite easily. One woman wishes to apologize to her son, for some offense: for her, that room is full of telephones that do not work.

  Well, here, look, the Frenchman said.

  And brought out, from behind his back, a tumbler of chilled water, down the sides of which ran fat beads of moisture.

  Mr. Bhuti drank perhaps a third of it, then stopped himself with what seemed an act of tremendous willpower.

  May I be permitted to take this with me? he said.

  Of course, said the Frenchman.

  From behind his back the Frenchman produced a large pitcher with a painted rooster on it.

  Take this as well, he said. With my best wishes. For having come all this way.

  I know they will be most grateful, said Mr. Bhuti.

  He rose and, taking along the tumbler and the pitcher, left the room slowly, so as not to spill a single drop.

  A second or two later, however, he stepped back in.

  One must do one’s best, yes? he said. Having watched one’s loved ones suffer so, then being brought face-to-face with the individual alleged to have been a principal cause of that suffering, one must exert oneself to the utmost, I think.