“I don’t …”
“A window opened, yes?”
I didn’t say anything, trying to go back—what? A minute? Ten minutes? To when I’d lost … I was underwater with … with the shark. The shark coming for me again.
“What’s a window?” I asked her.
“An intrusive image. Unbidden. Sometimes, when a person concentrates very hard on something, the brain’s safeguards slip. And … other things come in.”
“But …”
“It happens to me, too,” she said. “My mind is like a computer screen—I see whatever is happening before me, in real time. But, sometimes, a little window opens inside that screen. A window of memory. It widens and widens until it
“What do you do, then?”
“I used to scream. Now I just let it come. Because I know it will go if I … let it. The window’s power comes from resistance. I do not resist.”
“But I wasn’t seeing … anything. Just you.”
“And then it opened up, yes? Tell me.”
I closed my eyes. The window was gone. I reached for her. She came close, cheek against my chest. I held her there while I told her about the shark. And how I still keep seeing Pansy cut down. Again and again.
It was a long time before we fell asleep. My cock stayed small and soft. But it didn’t feel useless, nestled in her cupped hand. I drifted away to an unbroken black screen.
Gem was gone when I woke on Friday. I heard the shower running. Then it stopped. She opened the door to her bathroom, looked at me in her bed, and said, “Did your room come with a bathrobe?”
“It did. But I … It’s not clean—I used it last night.”
“Good,” she said, walking past me, dripping, her hair wrapped in a turban of towel.
I ordered a pair of three-egg omelettes—ham, cheese, mushrooms, and onions—with sides of sausage links, home fries, and three large glasses of apple juice.
Ordered something for myself, too.
“Is Gem the way your name is pronounced?”
She smiled. “You mean,
“Yes.”
“Why do you ask?”
“If I had to write your name …”
“Oh. Do you not use e-mail?”
“No. I don’t even have a computer.”
“Oh,” she said. And went back to her food.
She never did get dressed, shucking my bathrobe when the place got warm enough for her. All she had on her body was a thick black PVC band on her wrist, one of those ultra-chic new watches, I guessed.
Nude, she was about as self-conscious as a politician stealing. I just watched her, the sunlight coming through the windows playing against her gentle curves.
Gem took out a small, flat leather case and unzipped it. I could see the gleam of highly polished metal inside. She removed an assortment of what looked like dental picks, a vial of murky fluid, tiny circles of white gauze. Then she unsnapped something from the underside of that thick rubber watchband. It was a beautifully machined piece of blued steel tubing. As soon as she flicked what looked like a mechanical pencil and a long rod came out the front, I knew what she was holding.
“What caliber?” I asked her.
“This one is chambered for twenty-fives.”
“More than one?”
“Two, yes.”
“Not much of an impact with—”
“But very, very small,” she said, tapping the underside of her wrist. “And subsonic ammunition. Very quiet.”
“You have to be—”
“Close. Yes.”
She cleaned the mini-Derringer with practiced movements, her square-cut nails clicking on the metal every so often. When she was done, she came to where I was sitting. Bent down and kissed the side of my neck, her dark- nippled bleached-earth breasts against my face, fresh-harvest hair all around us both.
“Yes?” is all she said.
It didn’t work any better than it had the last time.
Gem took a very long time to put on her makeup. She was sitting lotus-positioned, working by sunlight before a large portable mirror she’d set up in the living room. Looking over her shoulder, I could see her face in the mirror. But I couldn’t see where all the makeup went.
She took a long time in her room, too. When she came out, she was wearing a green plaid pleated skirt and a green wool blazer with a school crest on the left breast pocket. Plain black loafers and white knee-highs. She