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really considering my question.
    â€œI have been in the district for only six months, and … May I be frank with you, Mr. Jonsi?”
    â€œPlease,” I said, “just Jonsi, no mister necessary. And there is nothing left in the world that will offend me. I’m not after the details; I just like to hear how others live. You know, sort of as a barometer for my own life.”
    â€œWell, I and the other three young women who work for Mother, we are supposed to be prostitutes—no sense in trying to dress it up. Not the life I had at one time envisioned for myself. There was a period when I had designs on being an actress and saw myself delivering great speeches from the stage. I might even have had some talent for it, but I allowed myself to be drawn away from my dream by a loathsome man who eventually left me stranded and broke.”
    â€œI can commiserate,” I said.
    â€œBut that’s all in the past. One needs to survive. But, sir, there is something wrong with the gentlemen of the Bolukuchet,” she said.
    â€œWhat do you mean?” I asked, feeling some vague offense.
    â€œI have had only five commissions so far in the time I have been here, and every one of them …” Here she grinned slightly and stubbed out her cigarette. “Limp as dishrags.”
    I couldn’t help but laugh, for a variety of reasons.
    â€œYes, they have money and they have an idea they would like to spend time with me, but when I get close to them, they back away. Instead of me taking them in hand, they want to hold my hand. And they are paying astronomical sums for this. One fellow last month had me simply sleep for an hour in the bed next to him. He never laid a finger on me. When I got up to leave, he sniffed the pillow where my head had been and started crying.”
    â€œAn interesting observation,” I said.
    â€œGranted, I have only been with five of them, but I sense it, a plague of deep sorrow, shall we say?”
    Luckily, the water came to a boil then and I got up and prepared us each a cup. The perfumed-forest aroma of it was comforting, and for the first time since the rains started, I felt a measure of peace. Maylee and I did not speak while taking the tea. She stared at the table, and I at the pressed tin design of the ceiling. During this long pause, the sound of the rain changed from monotonous to beautiful. Out on the street someone yelled. I closed my eyes and remembered the cool of the evening, sitting in the doorway of Thanatos, watching the patterns of fireflies at the edge of the forest across the canal. Mrs. Strellop’s voice started in my memory and then spiraled down through the center of my being, leaving a sense of calm in its wake.
    I rested my cup on the table, empty, just as Maylee did hers. She looked over at me, her eyes not half so big anymore, and smiled.
    â€œAnd Mrs. Strellop told me that you are a poet,” she said, her words having slowed to a drawl.
    I laughed and shook my head. “I sniff the pillow of poetry and weep,” I told her, preparing to forge forward with an honest recitation of my own days to even the account, but she abruptly cut me off.
    â€œâ€”Wait,” she said, and held up her hand. “That is the first time I ever remembered something Mrs. Strellop had told me.” She breathed deeply. “What a sense of relief.”
    â€œI can imagine, believe me,” I said, and clapped for her.
    â€œOh, my god, there’s something else … something else ,” she nearly yelled, squirming in her seat. “That odd skull she had. Do you remember it?”
    â€œOf course,” I said.
    â€œShe called it Jupiter.”
    I scanned my memory, and sure enough, yes, in that moment, I remembered her telling me the same. That crumb of information shifted like a grain in a sand pile, and with the insignificant revelation something else became clear to me. “My turn,” I said. She looked on