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only love of his long life, a cocoon in a truck bed that was dancing through traffic ahead of him. More than once those red-rimmed eyes leaked tears. Oh Jack. How long we have shared the same world! It was everything, for me.
    The doctor’s grief at the loss that lay wrapped in that bundle filled his heart. He was in mourning. But in another part of Dr. Harst’s mind there was calculation and the ant-like first tickles of fear. Now that Jack had moved on, was the doctor’s own term near?
    But, as always, Harst forgot calculation and came back to his tears. Forty-five years of almost hopeless love. At least there had been their friendship, unfaltering friendship.
    Dr. Harst had seen Marty’s distaste for this old station wagon. He’d never know the reason the doctor still drove it. It was because Jack, with the power upon him, had taken him into the back of this old wagon— pulled off on a dark country road— and sodomized him there, for the last glorious time in Dr. Harst’s life. Again, his tears flowed.

IV
    The motel room offered one towel, one micro-bar of soap, one plastic glass, one blanket, one dim TV that got three channels, and one picture on the wall above the TV— a trite sad-clown print, very dusty. Except for the tiny nook of the bathroom, this room was very near as bare and square as Dad’s room this afternoon.
    She hadn’t chosen the motel with this penance in mind, but instead for the liquor store one block away. A brisk walk down a boulevard of sleepless traffic, a brisk walk back, the crisp fracture of a half-pint’s seal as you twisted its head off… and then solace.
    Karen lay and sipped and watched the news with the sound off, the blow-dries making their pretty faces— how long now? Soon it would be too late to call Susan. She had to call Susan, but sipped again from her spiked Seven-Up and put it off. From time to time she glanced up at the clown print. When it hung too long at the periphery of her vision, the vague smeared face hinted at a more dreadful one. And as she watched, her fingertips traced her wrist. She should not be drinking. Not ever again. Because her wrist which had been gripped… was sore now to her touch. Her wrist which she must have gripped. Her wrist which she had gripped… though she so clearly remembered both her hands resting on the chrome rail of the gurney when that cold clench had had melted every nerve in her body.
    Except, of course, an alcoholic “clearly remembering” was an oxymoron. She should not be drinking. Not ever again.
    The thing was, there was still tomorrow, and the orchard, and the house to go into, and what she had faced in the mortuary had settled nothing, had laid no ghosts. The thought of going into that house was as frightening as it had ever been, going in and staying there. And she had to stay there without drinking, facing everything and beating it cold, if she was to free herself at last and forever. So she should flush this bourbon and start not drinking here and now.
    But she took another pull of bourbon and wryly thought that perhaps the real reason for her drinking was, if she ever got totally sober, she would finally realize she could never quit drinking… .
    Must call Susan or drive herself crazy. She dialed. It was picked up so quickly, Susan must also be in bed, snatching the receiver from the nightstand, “Karen?”
    “Yeah, hon, it’s me. Calling from the land of the dead and the dead-tired.” Trying to take the edge off things, sound amused about her mission.
    “You saw him, huh?”
    “I saw him. He— ” a giggle rose up in her “— he’s a lot shorter than I remembered him.”
    She could hear Susan trying to join her laughter, but not really succeeding. Susan would be waiting to get past the bravado and closer to her lover’s pain. It irritated Karen. She didn’t want Susan to get closer to her pain.
    So she added, abruptly, “I know I mentioned it before and said I wasn’t going to, but I think I do have to