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continued—“Vassago . . . Furtur  . . . Focalor.”—shaking his head again after each name.
    “Simon,” she said.
    “I know,” said McGill. “That’s the boy’s name. Looking for the . . . other one’s name.”
    “Do you just guess?”
    “Something like that,” said McGill. “Vepar. Mammon . . . Räum?”
    “Okay.”
    “Not that,” said McGill, “not him. Are you?”
    No, McGill, I’m not Räum.
    “Ah,” he said, and leaned away from the bassinet. He rubbed his hands together, and blew air out through his cheeks. Just what he was afraid of.
    “Gremory.”
    Aha!
    “He snapped his fingers!”
    “Did he?” said McGill. He was looking away.
    “He did,” she said. “Like a little Dean Martin.” She thought about that for a second. “Is it Gremory? Is that the right name?”
    “Think so.”
    A long breath. “How’d you guess it so fast?”
    “Lucky.” McGill came back and looked at me. His lips were drawn thin. His eyelids were too. He reached out with his right hand, fingers spread. They trembled as they rested on the baby’s skull.
    “What’re you going to do?” she asked, and he brought his left forefinger to his lips. “Okay, I’ll hush,” she said, and his right hand tightened, at the little finger and thumb, like forceps behind the ears. His middle finger danced over the back of the skull, until it stopped, and dithered. It didn’t last long, though; like a wedding ring spinning round a sink drain, it soon disappeared inside.
    I had him to the second knuckle.

    What does McGill see? What I wouldn’t give to know. I know what I see; his eyelids, flickering like a hummingbird’s wings, his mouth hanging open as he mumbles commands, sweat running down the side of his nose, staining his collar. But him? When he looks on me, does he see an obsidian woman, naked and shining, breasts suckling six crows, wormy cunny dripping amarone-scented menses into the deathly loam of Golgotha? Does he cower at my magnificent obscenity?
    Does he wish for his mummy?
    I cannot tell. All the times we have met, he has never said.

    “You need to leave the baby.”
    No, McGill. I don’t.
    He said the baby’s name.
    That means shit to me, McGill.
    “It is the owner of that form.”
    No. It’s nothing. Unbaptized. Belongs to me.
    “You got no claim. You are Gremory. You trespass here. Go on back to where you dwell.”
    I am who I am. I dwell where I am and I am here. You go back.
    “I cast you out. I cast you out.” He said some of those words that his mummy taught him. I let him go on for a dozen of them before I said anything.
    Your heart’s not in it, McGill. What’s the matter now?
    “You got to leave.” He uttered another stanza.
    You have to want it. You don’t want it, do you?
    “Git. Go on.” He paused. His hand gripped the baby’s skull tighter. If it were a baseball, he’d have been making ready to throw a curve. “Fuck out of here, you.”
    You’re in such a hurry, McGill. You’re missing steps; really, you’re far from your usual professional self. Your mother would never have stood for that kind of thing. Never mind the language.
    Oh, that got him. McGill’s mother . . . what of her, hey? I hear she has been out of the game for some eight years now. She taught him everything he knows, and now everything she knows rests in McGill’s unlovely skull. And she and her knowledge were formidable. Truly: None of us could best her like the Alzheimer’s did. Now . . . she wouldn’t know herself reflected in a mirror, would she?
    He told me to fuck right off and called me hell-spawn. He told me I had “no fucking right.” Me? I squirted moist feces into my diaper and chortled.
    Mothers get them every time.
    Eventually he ran himself down. I waited to make sure before continuing.
    You haven’t asked me what I want.
    “You want to leave.”
    You haven’t asked me why I chose this one.
    He paused. “Why did you choose this one?”
    The answer to both is