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prosperous.
    Eventually, he became familiar to you, which you didn't mind, for no one can long sustain passion without the relief, the release, of domestic tranquillity. What you could not tolerate was the inequality that crept up on you. It was the inequality of worship, for Shadrach mastered the city, became a part of it, and in this mastery he gained a distinct advantage over you, the resident, who had never needed mastery to make the city work for you.
    He became familiar to you. He mastered the city. More and more, his caresses, the white of his smile, the explosions of his cock inside you, became the actions, the mannerisms of a worshipper. Somehow, you realized one day, as he surprised you with flowers and dinner at a fancy restaurant; somehow, instead of becoming more real to him, you had become less real, until you existed so far above him and yet so far below that to become real again, you had to escape—his body, his scent, his words.
    Too fast, too fast—does time really pass that quickly? Can you wake up as if from a daydream and find that years have gone by, and you untouched by it?
    You remember the ending more clearly than the middle . . . His face, turned away, toward the window of your apartment, his stance stooped once more, his eyes on the glimmering of lights outside. “But I still love you, Nicola,” each syllable of your name a tense and teasing love on his lips. A promise that he would kiss you
there
and
there
, all the while whispering your name.
    â€œI don't love you anymore. I can't . . . anymore.” The argument you'd had with him in many guises over several months, stripped down to its essentials.
    â€œI see. I understand.” In a voice as if the world had cracked open and left him in midair. Diminished in his long coat and boots, making his way to the door, and when you put your hand on his shoulder, he shuddered and pulled away and said, in a muttering hush, “If I am to survive this. If I am to survive, you understand, I must go now, immediately.”
    Then he was gone, through the open door, and you closed the door behind him, and cried. Love was never really the issue.
    It took time, but eventually you found that life without Shadrach was . . .
wonderful
. Free. Quiet. You grew more confident with the knowledge that you
were
someone—autonomous, separate, a world that had no need of another world. Your programming job satisfied, your few close friends satisfied, as did your hobbies. Only the initial shock of love became a missing element in your life.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 
    FIVE YEARS later and you have seen him only twice—once on the holovision, in the background, during a report on Quin, and once in passing at a city luncheon.
    When you reach the Canal District, you stand at the entry point, trembling. The shop windows glint and glitter with the force of the fiercely subdued sun as it fights through the gray sky. This light, a fading gold, lends to the holoads, the canalside merchants, the hustlers, an angelic quality. But still there is the wind and the cold, and the tar smell of drugs and chemicals. You are, finally, without a choice, and the decision that you have been slowly circling toward now seems inevitable. The police are permanently on pay-for-hire and service is terrible. You can't expect more from them than a filed and quickly forgotten report, accompanied by the cliché: “Veniss has walls to keep the pollution out. Where can he go? Underground?” (Derisive laugh.) “He'll turn up soon.”
    So you seek out Shadrach Begolem among the crowds already hungry for entertainment, although it is not yet night. Ganeshas and meerkats move through the human rivers like strange and exotic toys, unreal somehow, both threatening and harmless.
    You don't really want to find him, but he is a creature of habit and you still know those habits. He sits not twenty meters from his favorite cafe, legs dangled over the edge of