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apologize for. Perhaps I’m the one who should apologize.”
    “For what? For being the first person to believe me?” He laughed shortly. “Except that’s not strictly true. I’ve received letters from half a dozen women over the years. They just know I couldn’t have done such things, and their hearts go out to me, and they want me to know how strongly they support me in my hour of need. I’m told everyone on Death Row gets letters like that, and the nastier and more publicized your crimes, the more mail you get.”
    “It’s a curious phenomenon.”
    “Most of them sent their pictures. I didn’t keep the photos, or the letters, for that matter, and I didn’t even think about answering them, but a couple of them kept writing all the same. They wanted to visit me, and one just wouldn’t give up. She wants to marry me. Now that my divorce is final, she explained, we can get married. And it’s my constitutional right, according to her. It’s a right I’m somehow not tempted to exercise.”
    “No, I wouldn’t think you would be.”
    “And I don’t really think for a moment that she or any of the others really believed I was innocent. Because they don’t want a romance with some poor bastard who’s going to die for no reason whatsoever. They want an affair, or the fantasy of an affair, with a man who’s the very personification of evil. Each of them wants to be the one selfless woman able to see the good in this worst of men, and if there’s a chance I might wring her neck, well, the danger just adds spice to the mix.”
    They talk some more about the vagaries of human behavior. Applewhite is intelligent, as he’d known he would be, with an extensive vocabulary and a logical mind.
    “Tell me again why you’re here, Arne.”
    He thinks for a moment. “I guess because you meet the criteria for what seems to be my interest these days.”
    “And that is?”
    “There must be a better phrase, but what comes to mind is ‘doomed innocence.’ ”
    “Doomed innocence. You and I are the only two people on earth who think I’m innocent. The doomed part, that’s pretty clear to everyone.”
    “I’m interested,” he says, “in how a person in your position faces the inevitable.”
    “Calmly.”
    “Yes, I can see that.”
    “When I think about it, everybody with a pulse is under a death sentence. Some of us are under more immediate ones. People with terminal illnesses. They’re as innocent as I am, but because some cell went haywire and nobody caught it in time, they’re going to die ahead of schedule. They can beat themselves up, they can say they should have quit smoking, they shouldn’t have put off that annual physical, they should have eaten less and exercised more, but who knows if that would have made any difference? The bottom line is they’re going to die, and it’s not their fault. And so am I, and it’s not my fault.”
    “And every day…”
    “Every day,” he says, “I get a day closer to the end. I told my lawyer not to bother trying for any more stays. I could drag it out for another year or two, if I pushed, but why? All I’ve been doing is marking time, and all it would get me is a little more time to mark.”
    “So how do you get through the days, Preston?”
    “There aren’t that many. Friday’s the day.”
    “Yes.”
    “Until then, I get through the hours. Three times a day they bring me something to eat. You’d think I’d have lost my taste for food, but one’s appetite doesn’t seem to have much to do with one’s long-term prospects. They bring the food and I eat it. They bring a newspaper and I read it. They’ll bring books if I ask for them. Lately I haven’t felt much like reading.”
    “And you have the TV.”
    “
There’s a channel that has nothing but reruns of cop shows
. Homicide, Law & Order, NYPD Blue.
For a while I was addicted, I watched them one after another. Then I realized what I was doing
.”
    “Seeking escape?”
    “No, that’s what