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torment if it is not…but she finds his gleaming tool has been torn away.
    No matter.  She is strong.  She is a princess.  Her will is powerful.  She knows she needs no weapon, ultimately, to achieve her aim.
    Rising from her kneeling position, she lies down inside the cigar box, upon the very body of her lover, and slowly withdraws her existence.  Unwills the animation of these gathered scraps of pretty junk.  Her lovely blue glass torso becomes an empty perfume bottle.  Her porcelain head like that of a marionette with its strings cut by its own hand.
    They are found that way.  They are remembered that way.  There are a few who resent them, betrayed by them.  But for most of those who dwell in the three palaces of the kingdom, they become legend.  Their love inspires.  It lives on in the bodies of the inspired.  It lives on without vessels to carry it, as a fable and an ideal.
    Their parts are not reused, recycled.  They are not buried together, but they are both buried.  And part of the legend that survives like a thing that can not be killed is this: that even now, those buried pieces are reanimating themselves under the soil, the leaves.  He, finding new pieces in that soil to complete his sundered body.  Even now, so it is told, they are working their way toward each other through the very flesh of the kingdom.  Slowly, arduously, crossing the great distance between their respective palaces.  It may take years.  It may take until those greater beings who live beyond the rusted fence have themselves all passed into the earth.
    But such is the patience of immortals.

Clouds and Rain
    The naked man stood before the plate glass window, its curtains fully drawn back to unveil the nightscape of Hong Kong.  The window was like an aquarium through which the naked man gazed into the ocean’s deepest depths…black, but filledwith the alluring light of life.  The phosphorescence of hungry creatures.  Like most great cities, at night Hong Kong looked to be a city made of volcanic glass and scintillating jewels.  But that was the glamour of midnight, the painted gloss of a prostitute.  By day, the city showed its ulcers and tumors.
    But the flesh of the naked man held no such imperfections.  Against the window, he appeared to be floating in space, some serene god.  His short black hair was still slicked back from his shower, beads of water still clinging to him like dew.  Behind him, Cheung watched one bead wind down the man’s lower back, and vanish at the cleft of his small, hard buttocks.
    It was a testimony to Kot’s trust in Cheung that he would turn his naked back to him, knowing that Cheung had a pistol holstered beneath his jacket.  And it was a testimony to Cheung’s skill at his job that Kot would have made him his personal bodyguard, not knowing that Cheung was an undercover agent…a constable with the Royal Hong Kong Police.
    It was beginning to rain.  The first drops pattered hard against the glass wall, like bullets attempting to pierce it.  They trickled down, resembling the bead of water Cheung had watched run down Kot’s back.
    “Clouds and rain,” Kot murmured in Cantonese.  Cheung could see the man’s reflected face, saw him smiling.  Clouds and rain was Chinese slang for the sex act.
    A half hour ago, a handsome male prostitute had left Kot’s apartment.  Cheung finallyspoke up about the man.
    “It isn’t wise to bring…guests into your own home, Kot.  You shouldn’t make yourself vulnerable.”
    “What do you propose, Cheung? That I become celibate?” A soft crackle as Kot drew on his cigarette.  He took a savoring, almost sensual approach to smoking.  “My career has its dangers.  But I’m not willing to give up the pleasures of living.” He held his cigarette in front of his face in pointed contemplation.  “This could kill me, too.” He shrugged.
    Although he masqueraded as Kot’s bodyguard, Cheung truly was a bodyguard of sorts.  He didn’t want