Rosalia found the dog right around mid-afternoon a couple miles past the iron scorpion. The studio was in the garage stall of an old service station. The doors were open and the space was full of scrap metal and half-finished sculptures. Everything smelled like burnt iron. It was a hundred and five but he was leaning over welding one chunk of scrap to another. She didn’t want to shout over the hiss of the torch so she waited in the wide-open doorway in front of her car. Before long she ran out of things to focus on. He had a birth mark on his elbow so she ended up focusing on that for a while. There was something familiar about it, and when she realized where she’d seen it before she decided to get back in her car and leave before he figured out someone was there.

Then the torch cut off with a pop.

He straightened and pushed the mask up from his face. He still seemed to think he was alone so she cleared her throat and he turned around. He was blinking as if she were made out of sparks and his eyes needed to adjust. There was a scar running down his left cheek from just under his eye. Right in the same place she punched him when they were eight years old.

Her Shoshone mother dubbed him Little Dog when he started hanging around their front yard. Little by little, he almost acted like he belonged there, trying not to look like he was staring at the house hoping Rosalia would come out. Her mother laughed and rolled her eyes whenever he showed up. “Little Dog come looking for scraps,” she’d cackle.

Rosalia just wanted to hide under her bed and cry until he went away. “He don’t even know how to talk!” she’d cry back at her mother, who just laughed harder.

The first couple of times he showed up she got her brothers to chase him out of the yard. They picked up small rocks and threw them at Little Dog as he sped off covering his head with his hands. But after that her brothers couldn’t be bothered, so the boy would sit in the yard while Rosalia sat in her room wishing the end of the world would come.

Sometimes her father would come home early and she’d peek through the curtains while he stood talking to the odd little white boy with almost nothing to say. Her father often laughed during those conversations, but she never asked why. It was enough to see Little Dog finally get up off the grass and go home, her father patting him on the shoulder as he dragged his feet off their lawn.

At that age, Rosalia’s accent was more like her father’s Sengalese French. Every day she set foot in school she hated the sound of her own voice. She had more than one girl’s share of things for the other kids to make fun of, but at least she wasn’t as bad off as Little Dog. That boy didn’t know how to talk at all. Every time the teacher called on him he looked up at some spot on the ceiling and gazed off like there’d been a movie playing there. Then he’d give the teacher his usual one or two word answer.

The day he finally found words in his throat for Rosalia he just came out and asked her if she wanted him to carry her backpack. It was almost a complete sentence and it nearly paralyzed her. Even worse than Little Dog talking to her was the possibility someone might hear him talking to her. Some strange force suddenly possessed the girl’s limbs and before she knew what she was doing, her arm reared back and she hit Little Dog in the face so hard he fell on his ass.

“Just leave me alooooone! You’re not my boyfriend!” she’d screamed, and then ran away without looking back.

He didn’t come back to loiter in front of her house after that, and for the next few weeks she kept going to the front windows to peek through the curtains and see if he’d come around. “Maybe you punched him too hard,” her mother had said, but she wasn’t laughing anymore. The deflated girl ended up going back to her room thinking the end of the world was getting closer.

It was a long time before any moonstruck boys came around her house after that.

Now she was still thinking about getting back in her car, but he didn’t seem to recognize her. It had been too many years. If it hadn’t been for the birth mark she wouldn’t have recognized him, either.

“Mr. Harris? Alden Harris?” She probably should’ve remembered his name when she first heard it, but all she remembered was the nickname her mother had given him.

He nodded and took the mask off his head. It left a sweaty depression in his dark brown hair which hadn’t been cut for a few months. She thought about getting back in her car again. Like she should have a minute ago.

“I’m not taking any commissions right now.” He set the mask on the bench next to the torch and grabbed a half-full water bottle. He was big as a refrigerator now but the way he moved made him seem light as a boy.

It seemed like his eyes were following her while he drank off the rest of the water, except she wasn’t moving, just standing there in a black pencil skirt that went past her knees and a light, cotton blouse tied in a knot under the heavy mounds of her breasts. She should’ve worn a bra, but when she was getting dressed it seemed like a good idea not to wear one when you were going to ask a strange man to do something illegal for you.

Just get back in the car and go home. Forget everything.

“I came a long way to see you,” she said out loud. “I can pay well. Quite well.”

“I’m sorry you wasted your time, ma’am.”

He took off the dark blue apron he’d been welding in. He was shirtless underneath, just wearing faded jeans and sneakers. There were more scars on his sweat lacquered body. The stark shapes of the muscles under them made them look worse somehow.

He kept ignoring her breasts, giving her brief doses of eye contact. After spending the major portion of her life feeling annoyed when other men did the opposite, she found herself annoyed with him. She reached up and lifted the dark fall of ringlets off her shoulders, airing her neck and pushing her breasts out. He continued puttering with tools and odd shapes of metal, putting them in some kind of order that probably made sense to him.

“I’m not interested in your sculpture.”

He nodded. “Well that’s all I’m working on these days. Thanks for stopping by, though.”

Jesus Christ just get back in the car and go, she told herself.

“Lonnie Coleman said you do certain types of salvage work. The sort no one else is willing to do.”

The mention of the man who sent her there made him stop what he was doing and look at her squarely. His eyes narrowed.

“Guess I’ve heard that name. A convicted felon, if memory serves.”

“Yes.” But then so was Little Dog, Mr. Alden Harris, who’d shared a cell for six years with Coleman two hundred miles north at Black Oak Pen.

“You don’t seem like somebody who spends a lot of time around convicted felons.”

“I’m not. In general.” She suddenly felt like she was peeking through the curtains in the house she grew up in.

“Best to keep it that way.” He nodded vaguely in the direction of the road back out of town. “Anyway I don’t do that sort of work anymore.”

“If you could see fit to make an exception … “

“No.”

The reply came sharp as a bottle breaking at her feet.

“The problem is extremely time sensitive.”

He stepped out into the sun from the stall and stood in front of her within arm’s length. Considering the length of his arms he was still none too close. He studied her eyes. The afternoon felt even hotter while she waited for him to recognize her. But he blew past the moment he should have figured out who she was.

“I can see you’re up against something serious, but I really can’t help you. Just ask Lonnie. Not much he won’t do for the right price.”

“That’s not possible.”

He looked the question at her.

“He’s back in prison.”

He nodded like it made perfect sense. All her chances were evaporating so she decided there was nothing left to lose.

“Mr. Harris, I’ve never broken the law in my life. Never asked anyone else to. As an attorney I’ve seen too much of the damage it can do. But I find myself … out of options. I just need to get back something that was stolen from me. It’s just an envelope and a flash drive.”

“And where would they happen to be?” His eyes narrowed again.

“In a safe. On a boat. Moored on a gated pier.”

It looked like he almost smiled. He still hadn’t looked at her breasts. She quit trying to get him to.

“I have to go,” he said. “And so should you.”

He walked over to the corner of the garage where a garden hose was coiled up on the side of the building. He uncoiled it and turned the water on, holding the end over his head and shoulders, leaning over to keep his pants from getting too wet.

Rosalia got back in her car. Everything was falling down. Even the water pouring down over Little Dog’s head. But he wasn’t Little Dog. He was an ex-con named Alden Harris and he wasn’t going to help her get her life back. She tried to remember if she’d known his real name back then but she couldn’t. She leaned back against the headrest and lost a quick battle with the urge not to cry.

The dog shut off the water, hung the hose back on its hook and then shook himself off. Like a dog. He looked over at the car and seemed surprised she was still there. She didn’t start the engine. She was stalling. Waiting for the next bad idea to come.

He walked over and got in the passenger’s seat. It felt like he was taking up more than his half of the car. She started the engine and blasted the air with the windows open. Her nipples gathered and he finally looked at her breasts but then he leaned back on the headrest like she was and stared at the ceiling.

Nobody said anything for a long time. His hand was on top of his leg and she put her hand on top of it. It didn’t matter who he was. She just wanted to touch a man she didn’t know well enough to hate.

“S’okay. Wherever you are right now, pretty sure I been there at some point too.”

It was no consolation but he turned his palm up and their fingers locked. The last and only time she ever touched him was over twenty-five years ago when she punched him. He probably didn’t remember that little girl. Had probably forgotten her the way junkies forget promises. It was the most consolation she’d had since she got there so she gripped it like she was gripping his massive hand.

“Whose boat?” he asked.

“My husband’s. Well, ex. Basically.”

“Okay. I suppose Lonnie told you I used to find things for people. Valuables usually. They never paid me except I’d keep some of whatever I got back for them. My fee, so to speak. One time somebody lied about what it was they needed found. Everything ended up in a river of shit after that.”

She sighed and resigned herself to losing the rest of her life the way he had. Maybe she owed it to him or maybe she just deserved to go down in flames. She reached over with the other hand and touched the scar following the line of his collar bone on one side.

“All right. I’m sorry I bothered you.”

A blue SUV pulled into the lot and stopped cater-corner to her coupe. A blonde somewhere in her thirties got out and walked over to Rosalia’s 240i and leaned toward the window. She was wearing Wayfarers and looked over the pair in the car with a suspicious smile. A light blue blouse was tucked into a pair of stretch jeans. The blouse was open far enough to show plenty of cleavage and bra fringe. She had a stocky build but wore it like a negligee, even with the gun and badge on her belt.

“Good to see you keeping out of the hot sun, Al.”

“’Sup, Bonnie?”

“Oh, you know. Routine visit and all.”

“Almost forgot it was Tuesday,” he said, nodding.

“No you didn’t. But anyway.”

Rosalia felt like someone stuck in a bad seat at a tennis match. Bonnie’s eyes slithered onto the dog’s leg where the two hands were still laced. She looked like she was used to being the second most beautiful woman in the room. Rosalia was used to being the first, and she was envious. She wondered what that kind of freedom would’ve been like.

“So who’s your friend?” Bonnie added. She was talking to the dog but looking at Rosalia.

“She’s … “

“Mrs. Drake.” She didn’t want to say her first name in front of the dog.

Bonnie laughed. “Mrs. Drake,” she echoed. “Don’t get a lot of high tax bracket married ladies with tits like that coming around, eh Al?”

“Mrs. Drake is a potential client.”

“Well sure she is.” Bonnie grinned and glanced back quickly at their joined hands.

Rosalia thought it was well past time to give the dog his hand back. But she didn’t want to. So she didn’t. “I’m thinking of putting several sculptures in my garden.”

“Sculpture business, huh?”

“It’s the only business I do, Bonnie. You know that.”

“Sure, Al. Sure. I know you wanna keep it that way, too.” Then she turned to Rosalia. “Al here has a pretty tight schedule. Better not keep him out too late or take him too far away. Like anywhere outside the county without a phone call.”

“Right.” She nodded without looking at the blonde.

“I’ll just let you two talk out your, uh, business then.”

Bonnie want back to her vehicle and drove off.

“My parole officer,” the dog explained.

Rosalia looked at him curiously. They were still holding hands. She wondered if that was how he wanted to hold hands when they were eight.

“How long have you been fucking her?” she asked.

He just shrugged. “Drive me home. I’ll cook for you before you have to go back.”

Before she could say anything either way, he got out of the car and walked over to the motorcycle parked on the side of the lot. He grabbed the T shirt hanging off one of the handle bars and pulled it on, then he pushed the bike into the garage and locked everything down.

Rosalia waited. She knew she should’ve just driven away. He wasn’t about to help her with her problem, and now that she knew he was on parole she didn’t want to push it any further. Maybe if he were someone else. Anyone else.

The last thing she had time for now was anything simple, but she watched him finish closing up and head back toward her car. As big as he was he moved like he was floating and she realized why he’d been as good as Coleman said. He was just the right man for just the wrong thing.

The house was about five miles away through desert scrub where the biggest of his sculptures sat out on the open ground. Like the scorpion she drove past on the way in. Some were dinosaurs. There were others depicting Mexican farm workers.

There was an old Nova up on blocks beside the small, white house he told her to pull up to. The inside looked neat, but Rosalia thought that was only because there was so little there to clutter anything up. The kitchen had a Masonite poker table and lawn chairs. In the living room was a well worn easy chair with a stack of old books beside it on the floor. There was a much smaller stack of notebooks on the other side.

“I’m a shitty cook,” he warned her. “But I promise I won’t poison you. There’s cold water in the fridge. I’m just gonna grab a quick shower. I hope you’re still here when I get back.”

“Why am I here, Mr. Harris?”

He approached her where she stood by the kitchen counter, close enough to press his body into the tips of her breasts. Her body filled with breath. It was less committal than pushing her whole front back against his. It felt like they were back in her car holding hands except now they were doing it with their bodies.

“I don’t know if it’s one big thing or a lot of little ones.” He paused and touched her face. “Maybe it’s because I can tell you don’t belong to whatever shitstorm you’re in. Maybe ‘cuz of the way you seem to be able to dance with shit luck and remorse. Or maybe it’s ‘cuz looking at you feels like someone telling you their worst and most beautiful secret.”

She inhaled big again. Studied his face. There was no sign anywhere of the boy who’d once made her panic and fret. She touched his scar again. Right where she’d hit him.

“Where’d you get this one?”

He was looking at her like he hadn’t heard the question. “Same place as the others. In a garden of broken glass.”

She arched upward, dragging her breasts along his body, and kissed the scar lightly. He angled his head and whispered. “Don’t feel bad for me. I was lucky once. I got to fall in love with a girl who had a name like a song.”

He kissed her once on the neck and turned away to leave the room. She stood in the same place holding the edge of the counter with both hands. There was the sound of the shower turning on. Then the sound of a plastic curtain on chrome rings being pulled along an aluminum bar.

She thought of her husband, Ransom. How they had slowly become hateful strangers the more successful their law practice became. Ransom Drake: husband, business partner, pimp, tormentor, extortionist. May he burn like a witch on the stake.

Though he wouldn’t now. The dog had been her last chance. By this time tomorrow Ransom would be in Mexico. At least she finally realized why she was there now in Little Dog’s ratty little house. It was to realize the closest she’d ever come to love was a man who didn’t remember knowing her.

Following the sound of the shower she found herself in his bedroom, the door to the bathroom standing open. She peeled off her blouse, then the long skirt she hated walking in.

Naked, she went into the bathroom and pulled back the curtain around the old, clawfoot tub. When he saw her he held out his hand to help her step in.

The water was pouring over both of them. She reached for his cock while he put one hand on her neck and the other on her heavy breast.

“Did you ever take a shower with someone you hardly know?” she asked.

He shook his head. “It’s like not talking for long stretches at a time. One of those things you only do with someone you know really well.”

“I guess you’re right.” His cock grew bigger and hotter while she fondled him. Her nipple bunched under the back and forth rub of his wet thumb.

“We can make an exception, can’t we?”

She smiled. “I think we already have.”

The whole rest of her life was going on without her somewhere far out beyond that little sphere of shower spray. It was nothing but a burning building on its way down to ash. But she wasn’t in that building right now and a feeling came over her she couldn’t name at first.

Safety.

His cock was rippling hard in her hand now while everything else about him seemed to finally soften. “I wish I knew you,” he said.

You already do. But he kissed her before she could say anything. His tongue slid into her mouth on a sigh while he gripped her breasts with both hands. Her nipples burned with sensation under the strong pinch of his fingers. She pulled his cock between her dusky thighs and ground the wet lips of her pussy along his shaft. His kiss deepened, but his mouth soon moved to her neck, kissing down her tendons to that soft, hollow spot by her collar bone.

Her sighs were rapidly turning to gasps. She gripped a handful of his hair while his lips moved closer to her nipples. “Yessss,” she sighed. Ohhh, yes, Little Dog.”

His mouth froze on her skin and then his hands. His head suddenly shot up and he stared at her. Eyes dazed. “You?”

He grabbed her shoulders and pushed himself away from her. His cock slipped out from between her thighs as he stepped off but he didn’t have much room to move and tripped backward over the side of the tub. He grabbed for the curtain on his way down but it was too late to right himself and the weight of his body ripped the curtain off the rings as he fell backward onto the bathroom floor.

Rosalia stared through a few, frozen seconds and then scrambled out of the tub and went to him, kneeling over his body with his leg between hers. She grabbed him by shoulders and studied his face, worried he might’ve slammed his head.

“Please, please be okay.”

“You,” he said again.

“Do you remember my name?”

He turned his head and stared off at the exposed drainpipe under the bathroom sink. “Rosalia.”

“Do you remember … “

“Whatever you’re going to say, I remember. Jesus. You keep doing this to me.”

“Knocking you on your ass, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“Well you don’t seem like you get punched out by too many girls anymore.”

“It only gets worse. Now I always get beat up here.” He pointed to his chest where his heart was supposed to be. At least he was looking at her again. The water kept running in the background.

“I didn’t come to beat you up. I promise.”

“When did you know?”

“At your shop. When I saw you welding. That birthmark on your elbow.”

“So all that time we were talking.”

“Yeah.” She nodded. “I’m sorry.” Her wet hair dangled toward him as she lowered her head. Her eyes were closed but she felt him touch her ringlets.

“And that thing you wanted me to do?”

“Just forget it. It doesn’t matter anymore.” His eyes narrowed on hers but he left the matter where she decided to set it down. Her knee was touching his balls. “Your skull isn’t cracked, is it?”

“No more than usual.”

“Good. Because unless you’ve decided to start hating me, we were … “

“Yeah. We were.”

She backed off to let him get up. The plastic curtain was splayed out on the floor and the shower was misting all over the room. He took a step toward the tub but she caught hold of his leg and hugged it. The meat of his thigh squashed between her wet breasts and she pressed her face to his hip. At the moment, she didn’t need his understanding, just his indulgence. His hand came to rest lightly on her head.

“Rosie,” he called softly.

No one but her family ever used that name. Everyone else always called her Lia. She hugged his leg a little tighter. His hand moved from the top of her head to the skin of her shoulder where his fingertips traced patterns that didn’t feel like patterns. Her arm brushed his balls.

“Fuck. I really wish I knew you,” he said again.

“You already do. At least whatever’s left of the good part.”

She let go of his leg and he helped her stand. Then he shut off the water and they walked into his bedroom.

She sat on the end of his bed and he followed her down, sitting close. He reached over and put his fingers gently against her throat. It felt like the air passing in and out of her body was going through his fingers and she put her hand on top of his, squeezing his fingers tighter. She started squeezing hard enough to stanch the air flow and he yanked his hand out from under hers. Then he put them on the side of her neck and touched her wild pulse. He touched her face with the other hand but it felt like his eyes were touching her even harder.

“You keep looking at me like there’s something different running in my veins than everyone else,” she said.

“That’s because there is.”

“That doesn’t scare me anymore.”

His hand slid between her legs. She opened them for him and his finger stroked the lips of her waxed pussy while he started kissing her. He kissed her all the way back against the mattress while her shins were still dangling over the end. His cock felt like hot silk against her hip and she groped blindly for it. She stroked him while his finger curled up into the sweet spot inside her.

Her mind began to spiral into this waking dream full of terrifying darkness and light all at the same time. She felt the force of his desire to fuck her like she didn’t exist, but there was a tremor behind his hands and lips so subtle it seemed hidden, like he was forcing himself to make love to her instead because that’s what he’d always promised himself he’d do, given the chance.

Until today, she’d believed half a life lived among freaks had made a freak of her, too, but some brand new kind of animal began to wake up inside her and howl as if the sound made a difference to anyone standing close enough to hear.

Her hips started rocking to the rhythmic stroke of his finger, but when he pushed in another one her movements jerked in and out of the flow. When his mouth found the first nipple she gripped his cock harder, too hard to keep stroking, and grabbed a fistful of his hair with the other hand.

She thought she must have been cumming but she wasn’t sure because it was all shooting through places she didn’t know she had. Then his fingers and mouth pulled away at the same time and he was lifting her and tossing her higher on the bed like a fish he’d caught with his bare hands.

He floated into the space between her legs, then hooked his hands under each of her knees and pushed them up until they were mashing back against the fullness of her breasts. His cock was jutting against her pussy. It felt like at least one of them was throbbing but she couldn’t tell who. He was looking at her like he deserved the scars over his face and body.

“I don’t care what you think you turned into,” he told her. “The only thing that matters is what we turn into next.”

She wasn’t sure if she heard him right but then he descended and licked her from her ass bud to her clit. He did it again and then again. He kept at it until her clit felt like a bud about to open into a blossom. Then his tongue started running circles around that bud while he soaked his finger deep inside her sheath. Moments later the same, dew-lacquered finger was pushing into her ass with careful insistence.

Somehow her breath began to feel like it was woven into the counterpoint of his finger and tongue. His hunger would have been frightening but he wore it as naturally as his own, score-marked skin. It was like he didn’t know he was doing anything for her but taking something for himself he was never giving back.

Soft explosions kept going off under her skin. Maybe it was what turning into light felt like.

Suddenly she shoved him away from her pussy with her feet on his shoulders. His finger slipped out from her ass when he reared back and looked at her. Breathing. Just breathing.

She sat upright and reached for his cock. He was kneeling and she came up and knelt in front of him and skimmed her hand up and down his sap-dripping stalk.

“I don’t care whatever we turn into next as long as it’s made of whatever we started out with,” she said, breathing hard enough to push the sublime obscenity of her breasts up and down.

He gripped her throat again, harder than before but not as hard as she’d tried to make him. “But you hated me.”

“Crazy Little Dog come round begging for scraps. Next time you find a woman who loves you enough to hate you don’t let her go.”

“Next time?”

She smiled. “This time. Which is why you’re gonna be the first and last to fuck me everyplace I got.” She lay back and pointed to her lips. “Go here first.”

He knee-walked up her body, knees mashing down the mattress on either side of her body with his balls dragging along her skin until his cock was at her mouth. She opened her lips when he gripped his shaft and pushed it inside. She watched his face while she held her head still and flattened her tongue against the sliding underside of his hot flesh. He gripped two fists-full of her hair and thrust repeatedly into her mouth. His thrusts went deeper and deeper until she uttered a small cough, then he backed off and kept his thrusts just shy of the back of her throat.

“I just want the soft parts,” he groaned.

She didn’t know how long it was before he pulled out of her mouth and moved back down between her legs. Her hands moved onto her upper thighs and she peeled herself open.

“Soft parts,” she said.

“Play the dirty girl all you want,” he said, pushing the blunt dome of his cock into her sheath with his hand. He sank into her and leaned down to her face. “You’re all mahogany silk and pink lace to me.”

She closed her eyes and sank her teeth lightly into the meat of his shoulder while be began slicking his cock in and out of her body. Within a few thrusts they were rocking together. She folded herself around him as well as she could, considering the clumsy width of his body. A hypnotic circular motion seemed to possess his hips as he massaged the walls of her pussy with his shaft and her neck with his breath.

He fucked her steadily until she was peaking, the climax washing through her in a wave.

Then he reared up and pulled free of her.

“Every place you got?” he said, looking the question at her.

“Just the soft parts,” she said, rolling over and lifting her ass toward him.

“Soft.” It sounded like a growl and then his hard, open palm smacked across her ass so hard it brought tears to her eyes and heat to the surface of her skin in the shape of his hand.

His cock settled into the cleft between her cheeks. She felt him reach for something on the nightstand near the bed. Then his head slowly opened her rim, the solid girth of his throbbing shaft widening and deepening into her channel. As he began to stroke slowly in and out, she felt him dripping oil over his cock and her ass. He slid more and more easily into her and she expected him to begin slamming into her like a punishment.

But it never happened like that.

The deeper he fucked her ass the more tender he became. His large hands reached under her body to cup her breasts. His cock kept an agonizingly slow pace, driving every cell in her body into an aching desperation for everything that had yet to happen between them. She jammed her hand down beneath herself and ground her fingers against her pussy. The entire fucking planet was dripping and hungry. Cock. Slow desperation. His body’s refusal to give her body what it was crying for washed over her skin like the gift of a summer rain.

Then he was gripping her nipples harder and grunting against the urge to fuck harder. Faster. No. Everything was going slow as love and her body rippled inside. He groaned and rippled with her. His cock pulsed hard and he finally lost himself to a volley of desperate thrusts while a flush of wet heat bloomed into her body.

After they disentangled, they lay together with as much of their bodies touching as they could manage. They just kept looking at each other, silently, but it felt like a conversation anyway.

She woke up in the dog’s bed but he wasn’t there. It was dark out but she didn’t know what time it was. She got up to look for him and her phone to check the time. She found the phone but not him. When she looked out the kitchen window to see if he might have gone outside she discovered her car was gone.

It wasn’t like he’d stolen it, but how many places were there to go? She checked her phone and it was midnight. After a few minutes wondering she decided he’d probably gone to his shop for a while. He’d be back sooner or later. After all, this was where he lived. She discovered a sweet pleasure in walking around his house naked while he was gone. It felt like she belonged.

She went into the living room and sat in his chair. The books piled next to it didn’t draw her attention the way the notebooks on the other side did. She picked one up and opened it, realizing they were journals. Thumbing through them one by one, she avoided reading the words in detail. It was just to look at the many lines of his handwriting. As far as invasions of privacy went, it seemed like a pretty minor one. Then she got to the last one. The one on the bottom of the stack. She opened it to the first page and found her name scrawled across the top.

It always goes back to Rosalia, but I don’t why because she was someone I never really knew. Only wish I might’ve a little. For a while might’ve been nice. It doesn’t matter. But I remember that first day she walked into school in one of those summery dresses like the actresses used to wear on TV in those shows in the sixties. She was neither black nor brown nor caramel. She was just herself and I thought maybe she was something that wasn’t forged on Earth and as such didn’t even belong in a school like ours. And as unhappy as she looked all the time there was this thing about her eyes and the way she kind of looked through everything like it wasn’t there and she had a special power to walk through walls and doors. But a thing like her seemed like she should’ve been happy.

As for myself, I was unbearably quiet, and when Rosalia came along I got even quieter. I think she only talked to me once to tell me she hated me or something of that nature. None of it’s all that clear except the time she smacked me in the face and ran away.

It was her father talked to me more than her. I think he liked me, and he used to stand with me and tell me little stories about days he was my age growing up in Africa. It was the first time the rest of the world started to seem real. I think he liked me more than my own father. Oh I know my father loved me, but liking someone is a different proposition.

I don’t know why I should be talking about this when Bonnie said what I ought to do is write a goodbye letter to the person I was before prison. Like junkies write Dear John letters to heroin when they go into rehab. So I guess I go back there now and then because Rosalia hit me – and I don’t mean her smacking my face – with the realization that severely rare and beautiful things have the power to light fires in your dreams. Everything from there got to be a clusterfuck of biblical proportions.

She stopped reading and started crying. She cried for a while without knowing which of all the parts of everything were what she was crying over. It was the first time she’d cried since she realized that weird little quiet boy wasn’t coming back to her house.

Getting up, she went to look in his closet for something to wear. There were women’s clothes in there. Not all that much but it didn’t take long to figure out they were Bonnie’s size and style. Without thinking about what she was doing, she took all the women’s clothes out of the closet and put them in a cardboard box she left on the kitchen table. Then she got a big, white button-down shirt that had to be his and put it on without buttoning it up.

She went outside and sat on the step with her back against the door. Feet planted wide apart as she could get them on the step, she started fingering her pussy and wishing he’d drive up and catch her. She thought over what she read in his journal and promised herself she wouldn’t read any more, but she knew she was going to anyway.

Thinking over everything that happened before she fell asleep in his bed, she fingered herself until she came. He didn’t drive in and catch her so she went back inside and fell back to sleep in his chair.

It was still dark when she woke up the next time. He still wasn’t back and she wandered around his house and fingered herself on his bed and wished he’d walk in and catch her.

When she wanted to get some more sleep she went back to his chair. The bed smelled like cum, sweat and the soap he was using in the shower. If she were going to have to smell him, she wanted him there.

The place was full of sunlight when she woke up the next time. The house was still empty but for her. She decided to investigate the coffee situation and went into the kitchen, padding barefoot through his house and still wearing that big, unbuttoned shirt that fit her like a boat sail.

While she was moving around the kitchen she saw her car was back in front of the house. He was sitting in front with his head bowed low. She went outside and called his name. When he didn’t look up she ran the rest of the way. He finally looked up when she whipped the door open and saw the blood all over him and the inside of her car.

She squatted to check his body.

“I’m sorry for getting blood on your car. It’s a really nice one. I think it’ll clean up alright, though.”

“Fuck the car!” Her voice had a quaver in it now. There were two rips in his shirt that looked like knife cuts.

“I’m okay.” His voice was steady but shallow sounding. “Just tired. Really could use a nap about now.”

She helped him come out of the car and he leaned on her shoulder as she led him into the house. There was blood on her now, too.

“S’okay. It’s not all mine.”

They lumbered into his bedroom and he told her she could find some peroxide in the bathroom and a fresh roll of toilet paper. She came back with a box of Band-Aids too. He’d already pulled off his shirt, and yelled at her when she poured the peroxide over the slices in his skin. She dabbed and cleaned them up as well as she could until there were reddened wads of toilet paper littering the floor.

In the background you could hear the warning ding that her keys were still in her car.

She started using Band-Aids to make crude butterfly stitches. “I’ll run into town and pick up better supplies.”

His eyes were almost closed but he looked at her and said no. “You better not go anywhere for a while. S’okay, though. You’re good here, right?”

The tremor in her hands got worse but she kept making stitches while she asked what happened.

“He’s gone. They won’t find him, but I figured you’d want to know he’s gone. And that stuff you wanted – that stuff in the safe – it’s in the trunk of your car. Damn I could seriously use a nap about now.”

The butterflies were finished.

“Alden, I really wish you hadn’t gone. After everything. Jesus, what if things had gone the other way? Fuck!”

She saw he was sleeping and probably hadn’t heard the last thing she said. There’d be more time to talk it through when he was awake and on the way back to being himself. Whatever that really was.

Bonnie’s SUV pulled up in front of the house while Rosalia was getting a thick, oversized envelope out of the trunk. It was covered with bloody handprints and she could feel the shape of the flashdrive inside. When she saw Bonnie she tossed it back in the trunk and shut the lid.

The blonde parole officer got out of her vehicle with the same obsequious grin Rosalia had seen the day before. The grin quickly faded when she approached the car and saw the blood. She bolted into the house and Rosalia went back into her trunk for the envelope. She hid it in one of the kitchen cabinets before going back into the dog’s bedroom.

Bonnie was sitting on the bed next to him, soothing back his hair with her fingers. She looked up and Rosalia pulled the shirt closed around her body. It went like that without any talking for the next few minutes or so.

“You couldn’t just fuck him and go home to your husband like I usually do?” the blonde said.

“I don’t have a husband. Not anymore.”

“There’s a fuckin’ ring impression on your finger.”

“And no ring. There’s a reason.”

Bonnie got up and walked past her. Rosalia followed her into the kitchen where she spotted the box full of her clothes. She started laughing and then stopped suddenly.

“Moving me out and yourself in, huh?

“No. I wasn’t thinking. I don’t know why I did that.”

“Yeah, you do. But what I don’t know is why he’s lying in there sliced up like an Easter ham.”

The response was slow to come. “Have you read his journals?”

“I have.”

“I’m Rosalia.”

Bonnie sighed and nodded as if everything made sense now. She looked at the floor for a while without talking. When she looked up again her eyes narrowed on Rosalia while she put her hand on her gun.

“If he gets hurt again … or gets caught breaking parole … “

“I know.”

“Get that car cleaned up. And good. There’s DNA all over that shit.”

Bonnie walked out slowly and drove away. Rosalia went outside to get her key out of the ignition. The constant ding was driving her crazy.

She went back inside and into the bedroom where she took off the shirt and stretched her naked body up against Little Dog. His body felt cooler than hers and she wanted to give him the heat from her skin. She put her hand on top of his heart. He wasn’t cut there. The beat didn’t feel strong, but at least it felt stronger than a little while ago, like it was beating its way back to the beginning.