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light.
    Into the logic of it. Words clearly spoken. Structure around everything, the lines graphed and solid. Eyes still slightly blurry. As if rising up out of deep water into the fresh light suddenly, but it’s still dark in the hotel room. You can run, but then, that wouldn’t be in the nature of the program, so to speak, someone said. In any case, running goes against the nature of your rehabilitation. You run and you run toward that which was enfolded, so to speak. Or you run around it. You feel it and want to know it and also know that to know it would be to know way too much, so to speak, someone said.
    Hurry it up in there, he said.
    I just have to wipe.
    Wipe fast. They’re down by the office right now.
    There’s nothing in my dreams, just some ugly memories, a voice said from behind her. The restrictions of a drugged state, someone had said. Tripizoid with enfolding is salvation. You can’t say that for most of them. You can say it, but it wouldn’t be true.
    Get out there, he said.
    She went and stood where he told her, in her nightie, shivering, her nipples rough against the lace.
    Just stand like that and tell them something sweet and nice. Give them the works. I’ll let you improvise this time. You’ll be the first thing they see. They’ll be dazed and dazzled small-time pokes. They’ll reach up to rub their unshaven chins and that’s when I’ll step out and give them a blast of pure reality.
    He braced the shotgun against his leg while from outside came the distinct clumpy sound of cops who weren’t trying to hide their own presence; cops with an upfront style that reflected the tedium of their lives. At the door they stopped, knocked, and said, Open up, police. One or two beats, and then she sang out, One minute, and then waited another few beats and then said, Hold on, and then another beat and she went and unchained the lock and gazed out at faces leaning in to catch sight of her—she felt it, the light and their gaze forcefully upon her hips and the flat of her belly. One cop had baby fat on his cheeks and small lips and even smaller eyes and a complacent look. He was starting to smile, shifting his weight slightly while behind him the second cop was older, lean, with deep-set eyes, picking his teeth.
    Unchain the door, the younger cop said. We have a few questions to ask you.
    She took two steps back to give them another view, pirouetting slightly as more light came through and revealed the lines of her body—she could feel it, the cheap silk that had been rubbing against her skin for a week now, beneath her jeans and T-shirts.
    We’re not going to bring you in or nothing, the young cop said. His voice passed through his nasal passages, barely making it, and came out squeaking like the air through a balloon and then seemed to loosen as it passed his glossy wet lips. While he waited for her to answer she could hear the calls of sparrows in the fields on the other side of the road and the sound of sunrise striking the bare bones of Big Rapids. The older cop brought himself around and in front of the young one and spoke with a husky voice, his hand down low near his gun.
    Now, please open up, he said.
    Then the door opened with the blast of a well-placed kick, landing hard against Rake, who was up and around it anyway, his gun aimed high to catch them in the face, and the blast of buckshot fanned against the cheap walls with a muted thump, turning them both into a fury of blood and gore that extinguished the sight of her forever: the sight of her standing there was the last they saw before the blast erased all. One for you, and one for you, Rake said.
    A high shrieking in her ears that she recognized from other times, a sense of airlessness as if she’d been sucker punched, and then she was breathing hard, collecting her things, while Rake fingerprinted, marked up the blood on the wall with cryptic designs, a pentagram (sometimes) and a cross (most of the time), and even his name (every time),