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square shoulders, his cropped dark hair. The well between his ribs, the line of hair. The pleasure of his complete attention. If only there was a drawing of that.
    She took his long finger in her mouth, it still tasted slightly of graphite, and his closed green eyes flickered like a dog having a dream, and he moaned.
Oh
. . .
    How could he have killed himself when we could make love like that? How?
    She stripped off her dress, still damp from the pool, and guided his hand down her body, between her legs, she could feel herself pulsing and curling around his fingers. His face, as he memorized her. “There,” she said. “You ever play a guitar?” His hands so strong, he could do her all day. Worlds away from everything she had ever known. His beautiful body, long and slender on the blue sheets.
    Not white. Not dead and cold, wrapped in a sheet with a knot at the chest. On the stereo, under the dark windows, Richard Hell on KROQ sang “Going, Going, Gone.”
    If only she hadn’t been careful that day. If she’d gotten knocked up, at least she’d have something now, some proof he existed. Instead of these lights, and some paintings and the rest of her goddamn life. She never wanted to be alone like this. She’d finally found someone who could give her everything, and then he took it away. Just took it away.
You asshole!
The joy, the delight, where did it go?
What did you do with it?
Her gut ached, as if her love was being dug out of her with a dull knife. She needed him to make her feel good again, right now.
You son of a bitch. You son of a fucking bitch.
    Tears dripping onto the drawings, ruining them. She closed the sketchpad. She wanted to remember him on the blue sheets but all she could see were those blackened eyes, those inky lips. Were they the same lips he kissed her with? What about what he felt like in her arms, and how they danced to Louis Armstrong? That’s what she had to remember. The pleasure they had taken in each other.
Couldn’t you remember how I loved you?
But he didn’t. The story of her life. God gave you everything just to take it away. Just so you knew exactly what you were missing.
    The phone rang on the orange footlocker, by Pen’s sagging right hand. Pen groaned and turned, her heavy hand dropping to the floor, and crammed the pillow over her head. Josie staggered over, shin banging into the footlocker, and grabbed at the phone. “Yeah.”
    The sound of hoarse breathing. Then a slurred, deep, woman’s voice. “Why are you alive? What is the excuse for Josie Tyrell? I ask you.”
    She should hang up, there was nothing but grief on the line. As if there wasn’t enough here in the house.
We don’t need any more, thank you. We gave at the office.
But she couldn’t hang up. This woman had known Michael Faraday. She knew what it meant to lose him. They were sharing a respirator on the same airless planet.
    “Tell me,” the woman mumbled. “I dare you. Say, ‘If Michael never met me, he’d be alive today.’ This is all your fault. I curse the womb that bore you.”
    If it was anyone else, she might have admitted it. Of course it was her fault. But she wouldn’t admit it, not to
her.
“You don’t even know me.”
    A laugh like a bark, a single note. “Know you? You’re an absolute
bill
board. Josie Tyrell.” Spitting out the last two syllables with more pure loathing than Bakersfield could ever have assembled. “Why didn’t you stay up there in Tuleville where you belonged? You and he should never have shared a sentence. My son didn’t love you. He was just slumming.”
    Slumming.
So blind. The blind Merediths climbing the white stairs. He’d been dying up there.
The crippled boy. The deaf-mutes.
Mother and son, in all that decaying luxury.
We fucked in your room, Meredith. We came on your blue sheets.
“I guess he thought it was more real than living with you.”
    There was silence, some kind of scuffling. Cello music in the background, and the heavy breathing of someone