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the wastes that sprawled beyond the gates of Paradise. It is not a deep sleep, but rather like a stone skipping one, two, three, four times across still, dark waters, and yet, inevitably, consciousness returns with the utmost slowness, by imperceptible degrees. And, tor a time, I am staring at candlelight without the knowledge that I am staring at anything at all. But then you speak, and I am lost in the chaos of myself again.
    “Why are your hips so hairy, Grandmother?” you whisper, pressing your cool, wet nose against my cheek, and I cannot yet recall the correct reply. I can only be annoyed at how unfair it is to be asking me such a question, when I am still blinking and disoriented from the ignorant bliss of that post-coital slumber.
    Then it comes to me, and I hear myself answer, “Because I wore my corset too tight.” I only dimly wonder at how our usual roles have been reversed, certain that there will be some suitable explanation when you are ready to explain yourself and not before. And without turning to see, I can hear your smile, so similar to the noise aluminum foil makes when crumpled in the hand.
    “Grandmother, why are your knuckles so hairy?” you ask, nuzzling playfully at my left ear.
    And though my hands are hardly the least bit hairy, I reply, “From wearing too many rings on my fingers.”
    “Dear heart, I thought that you would sleep until dawn,” you say, and this is when it occurs to me that I cannot move my legs or my arms, and I turn my head away from the candles to stare into the more genuinely molten pools of your paradoxically freezing-scalding grey eyes.
    “I’m tied,” I say, and you nod, as though I need the confirmation. “There was hardly time enough for the alternative,” you respond. “The sun will be lip soon.”
    “ Why am I tied?” I ask, and I want to laugh, even if I have not quite decided what is funny.
    “Grandmother,” you say, “this wine is very red.” And I do laugh now, because you have begun lapping delicately at my temple and your long, rough tongue flicks across my left eyelid.
    “Drink and keep quiet,” I tell you, struggling to sound appropriately gruff and reproachful, trying to remember hem you would deliver these lines to me, had the night not turned topsy-turvy. “It is your grandmother’s blood.”
    “Yes,” you whisper. “Yes, it is, indeed. Love, I read your story while you were sleeping. I hope that you don’t mind me having taken such a terrible, audacious liberty.”
    And, just as I have learned to write while you watch, just as I have learned that you despise unanswered questions, so too have I learned when to hold back the truth even though you will have no doubt that I am lying.
    “No,” I say, allowing the anger and the murky, sudden sense of violation I feel to wash through me and quickly fade, as I would do with anything which is of no use whatsoever. “I hope you did not find my handwriting too totally illegible.”
    “I think I know how it ends now,” you whisper and lap at my face again.
    “Is that why I’m tied up?” I ask, and I can feel the nylon ropes at my ankles and knees, at my wrists, which have been firmly bound behind my back so that my arms have gone numb and cold. Your ingenious, expert knots, and I know that wrestling with my bonds will only make them draw that much tighter, until they bite into my flesh. Not that you would mind the welts.
    “I sat here, while you slept,” you say, not even bothering to brush my question aside, negating it with no effort or acknowledgement at all. “I sat and read these pages, and it occurred to me, dear heart, that the cannibal in your story truly does love the woman she is so slowly devouring.”
    “I believe I’d told you that already.”
    “Then perhaps I failed to comprehend. I needed to read it for myself, to fully appreciate the cannibal’s devotion.”
    Somewhere far away there is the keening wail of a police car’s siren, and I close my eyes, wishing now