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under a giant fig tree at the bay end of Bettawong Street. The sound of water lapping against the wharf was so pleasant, it was obscene.
    I turned to him and didn't care what he did to me. 'Why did you!'
    I didn't ask. I screamed. It didn't matter to me whether he would be angry—what my goddamn punishment would be. I didn't care about anything but screaming and crying and screaming some more.
    So far, he hadn't answered. He had led us to this place and forced me to sit, to 'calm' me, he said. My head throbbed, and I wanted to hit something.
    Now, I was too tired to do anything more than sit and try not to think of the present, the past, the future.
    'You did it, Angela,' he said into the void.
    I swung around but didn't say anything, as I needed to hear him say something I could understand, maybe for the pleasure of hating him.
    'You didn't listen to me,' he said. 'You thought you could walk away.'
    'But,'
    'But nothing, Angela. The contract gave me a hell's week.'
    He took my hands in his. I pulled away, and his hands tightened around mine like a Chinese finger pull—but this was no party favour. His grip only lessened when I stopped pulling away, but left a bruise of a promise that made my veins pulse with pain as blood flowed again. I lowered my eyes to the ants at the grass near my crotch, for lack of knowing where to look.
    'Angela...' He cupped my jaw in his hand and tilted my head so that my eyes had to meet his. 'It isn't even a hell's hour yet.'

    ~

    Fainting has never been part of my repertoire, but I wished I could then. As it was, all I could do was sit. Sit and think. Above us, fruit bats screeched in the fig tree, leather wings breaking figs from their stems as the bats squabbled. All around us, plops of ping-pong-ball fruits punctuated the gentler slaps of water against the harbour wall metres away.
    All that stuff I'd read at the Higher Light suddenly became useful, as it helped me now to realize that things were possibly all arranging themselves for the best. But I could mull this later. Now was the time to say something. 'Did anyone get hurt?'
    'Do you want?'
    'Of course not!'
    'Angela,' he said, a warning note in his voice. 'Tell the truth.'
    I had to establish equilibrium again, so I asked a question. 'What did you do with Simone? And Andrew, for that matter?'
    'You mean?'
    'You know!' I hated his coy act. 'Did you let them ravish you? And how did you hide your, uh, tail?'
    He seemed surprised at the questions, but answered. 'No to both, though they fought over me at breakfast.'
    I was intrigued in spite of myself. 'How did you get rid of them ... or did you?'
    'I did try to fend them off permanently, but,' and here he sighed theatrically, 'but I fear that I only whetted their appetites.'
    He was such a ham I couldn't help grinning, something that made me almost more angry at myself than him.
    'What story did you tell them?'
    'Do you really want to know? Oh, only that I had fallen in love with you.'
    He pulled a used tampon out of his breast pocket, dangling it between us like a warm dead rat.
    I yanked away from him and smashed my skull against the tree's trunk. 'Where did you get that thing?'
    His right eyebrow circumflexed. 'Don't you recognize it?'
    'Mine?'
    He ran it back and forth under his nose, like a Corona, and stuck it in his mouth and sucked.
    I wanted to throw up.
    'They had the same reaction,' he said.
    'You ...?'
    'Your essence, carried with me.'
    Would they tell everyone they know? Wouldn't I? Could I stop them?
    He broke into my panic. 'I asked you a question.'
    'What?'
    'They died in the fire,' he announced, casual as it rained yesterday .
    'No!'
    'Not yet, but they will have. Now make up your mind.'
    'I don't want them to die! Of course not. I'm not a horrible person. But why did you have to ruin my life? I can't live in the neighbourhood now. Everyone here will know by tomorrow.'
    He just sat there looking at me, his expression as animated as a dead shark.
    Simone and Andrew's fate