A WORLD I NEVER MADE is filled with fascinating characters with complex lives that I could only begin to explore within the novel. The stories here will take you deeply into the lives of the key characters in the novel that I feel really deeply about.

Til Death Do Us Part

“So, was it worth the wait?” Lorrie Nolan asked.
“Did it hurt?” Pat, her husband of just under five hours, replied.
“A little, but then it felt good.”
Pat remained silent. He placed his right arm around Lorrie as she turned on her side and pressed against him. Overhead, moonlight spilled through a small skylight, covering them with a silvery blanket. Out of the corner of his eye he could see her strawberry blonde hair spilling like liquid gold over his shoulder and down his arm. Through the cabin’s screen door, which was only a few feet from the foot of the bed, he could see Lake Tahoe, black and sparkling in the moonlight. His orgasm had been mind blowing, but the tension of the last two days had not drained out of him, as he hoped it might once they made love. It was foolish of him, he realized, to think it would. He was the same person now as he was twenty minutes ago. Lorrie had said once that she saw his core and that it was strong and beautiful. What core?
Lorrie got up and, taking the towel she had placidly placed under her earlier, stained red now, she went to the bathroom. Pat watched as she crossed the small room, afraid to think of what a great body she had and how beautiful she was. He would be twenty-one in two weeks, a milestone that meant nothing to him, since, until recently anyway, he was sure he was already a man. An amateur boxer with fourteen wins and a draw under his belt, a heavy equipment operator since the age of eighteen, working on bridge sites in Ohio and Kentucky and a tunnel in Canada, helping support his widowed mother while his older bother, Frank, was in the service: if anyone had asked, he would have said that he had earned the right to call himself a grown man.
But that was before he met Lorraine Ryan, the incredibly beautiful Lorraine Ryan, with her long silky red-blonde hair, her green eyes and her dazzling smile. She had laid down a couple of rules: no sex until we’re husband and wife, quit the boxing, go to school for something, and he had obeyed, a boy again, desperately in love, despite his struggle to retain what he thought of as his dignity, which led them into a couple of terrible rows early on. Was that only six months ago, he asked himself, could it only be six months?
Lorrie came out of the bathroom, still naked, and sat cross-legged before him on the bed. Like they had been hanging out naked together all their lives.
“You didn’t answer my question,” she said.
“What question was that?”
“Was it worth the wait?”
“Yes, Lorrie, it was.”
“Are you sure?”
As she said this, Lorrie began stroking Pat’s thighs through the clean white sheet of their bed. Up one and down the other, coming close, but never touching his penis, which shortly began to lift the sheet as it grew. Pat blushed when he realized what was happening. He watched her breasts hanging heavy and free as she leaned forward to increase the pressure of her stroking. Before he met Lorrie, he had rarely blushed, even as a boy. Now his face was hot and red, like a teenager’s at a whorehouse.
“Kiss me with the kisses of thy mouth,” Pat said. “For thy love is better than wine.”
At this Lorrie quickly pulled the sheet away and knelt over Pat, straddling him, looking him directly in the eye.
“The Song of Solomon,” she said.
“Yes, I’ve been saving it.” Pat was breathing rapidly now, and pressing his crotch up into Lorrie’s.
“You know, Paddy,” she said, reaching down to guide him into her, “you may have potential. You just may.“
•    * *
Five days later, they were in their rented car, Pat at the wheel, headed north on Route 522 in northern New Mexico’s high desert, looking for a bar called Elmo’s, where they would turn to head down into the Rio Grand Gorge to a hot spring they had been told about on the river. They had gone from Reno, where they were married, down to New Mexico’s four corners and then back to Nevada to tour the Hoover Dam and hike in the Grand Canyon. New Mexico had lured them back. Not for nothing was it called the Land of Enchantment. Yesterday they had hiked up Mount Atalaya, outside Santa Fe, and made love at 9,000 feet. At breakfast they had heard about the hot spring up near Pilar and decided to pack a lunch and make a day of it, free and easy like any near-penniless, naïve young couple would be on their low-end honeymoon.
Except that Pat was not completely free and easy. He could not believe his luck in landing Lorrie, and worried that it would not last once she realized that, though he could throw a killer punch and move the earth and build things, big dumb Irishman that he was, he did not know the first thing about loving someone or being a husband. And, now that they had made love twenty times or so-—he was insatiable which so far she didn’t seem to mind—-there was something new. He could not entirely repress his feeling that their use of condoms—-most of the time—-was a mortal sin. He had thought he had shed his parents’ Irish Catholic guilt years ago, along with stopping going to mass and confession and all that hooplah as he called it. But he was now learning the lesson, as everyone does, that theory was one thing, practice another. And neither, Pat was learning, was Lorrie all that naïve. She had definitely been a virgin, but how then did she know so much about making love, about how to please him?
“You’re not telling me something, Paddy,” Lorrie said.
“Huh?” Pat replied, his reverie abruptly broken.
“Something’s on your mind.”
There it is again, Pat thought, she knows things. I can’t anticipate it, and I can’t fake her out once she throws that first pitch.
“You’ve been brooding,” Lorrie said. “You’re too serious, I keep telling you that. I’m not smart, but together we can be.”
Pat looked over at his wife, who looked back at him, her head slightly down, as if to say, stick with me, Big Guy, I’ll navigate. I’ll get us there.
“Is it the sex?” Lorrie asked. “It’s not a sin. We’re married.”
“Come on, Lorrie.”
“Then what is it? You think I’m a brazen hussy?”
“I’ve actually heard that before.” Pat smiled as he said this, as did Lorrie. After dating for a few weeks she had told him that she had decided that she would be trying out lots of words and phrases on him that he may not have heard before, as, she had said, he was such a tabula rasa: a big, dark-eyed, incredibly handsome, muscular, sexy, blank slate. He had not been offended, so madly in love was he, and so obviously affectionate was her teasing.
“The Jesuits again?” she asked.
“I don’t remember.”
“Your prior girlfriends, whom you’re supposed to have totally forgotten by now?”
“Possibly.”
They both stared ahead for a moment, their eyes on the empty two lane highway that was now cutting through a vast, flat Indian reservation, their compact car chugging along at a steady 55 miles per hour.
“What is it, Pat?” Lorrie asked after this moment passed.
“I’ve been offered a job.”
“It must not be your average, run-of-the-mill type of job.”
“No, its not.”
“What is it?”
“Operating a dozer in Paraguay. They’re building a dam.”
“Paraguay!” Lorrie said.
Pat snuck a look at his wife, confirmed that she was, for once, dumbfounded, then quickly returned his eyes to the road.
“Jimmy King,” he said, “is putting a crew together. The pay is unbelievable.”
“How much?”
“A thousand a week.”
“A thousand a week!”
Dumbfounded again.
“Plus a place to live.”
“What did you say?”
“I said I would think about it.”
“You should have said you had to talk to me.”
Shit, Pat thought. I can’t win.
“That’s what I meant,” he said.
“When do you have to tell him?”
“When we get back.”
“When does it start?”
“September.”
“Are wives invited?”
“Yes,” Pat replied, lying, and immediately feeling guilty. He didn’t know if wives were invited. He hadn’t asked. Jimmy King—-Pat’s boss, a boxing fanatic and the owner of King Excavation—-had mentioned the roughness of the jungle site, where they would be moving the Parana River, creating a new mile-long channel where the dam would be located. Pat didn’t know which he loved more, the idea of moving the Parana River, or his new wife. He literally did not know that he did not know this. It was not a question he would think to ask himself until later, when it was too late.
“We have to discuss it,” Lorrie said.
“Of course,” Pat replied. “It’s a big move,” thinking, please God, let her say yes.
“There’s Elmo’s,” said Lorrie, pointing to a building ahead on the left. “Let’s stop and get beer.”
* * *
A sturdy concrete bridge took them over the Rio Grand. Midway across they spotted the hot spring, a semi-circular outcropping of rocks jutting into the river about a half mile north. On the far side, they parked in the dusty day use area and headed for the path that would take them to the spring. The path, hugging the gorge wall, wide enough for one person at a time, ascended steeply to a plateau that overlooked the river. This area they had also seen from the bridge, along with the small group of people standing on it smoking and talking. The climb was difficult and slow, the path narrow and rocky. They stopped often to catch their breath and to look down at the deep blue river flowing through the gorge. The late morning sun blazed down on them through a cloudless pale blue sky.
At the top they were hot and sweaty and stopped to share a beer from the six-pack Pat was carrying in his knapsack, sitting on a fallen tree trunk bleached to a whitish-gray by the sun. The group of people they had seen from the bridge turned out to be three young men, in their early twenties or a little older, all dusky, black eyed and black haired; probably, Pat thought, Indians from the nearby reservation. Their clothes–boots and frayed jeans and cut off shirts–were covered with dust, as if they had been recently doing hard labor somewhere. They were drinking beer and smoking and listening to Santana on a boom box that had been placed on a pile of rocks near the edge of the cliff. The tallest of the three returned Pat’s stare a little too long and a little too hard for Pat’s taste before turning and flicking his butt over the edge of the cliff. Pat surveyed the scene. To the left of the Indians was the plateau’s edge and the river some hundred feet below; to the right he could see their weather-beaten pick up, and beyond it a long expanse of pale brown dessert dotted with brush and stretching to the horizon. After their beer, as they passed the group, Pat smelled marijuana and heard one of them call out, “Sexy chica, muy sexy lady.”
The descent to the river was gradual and easy, and the spring, collected into a man-made half-moon shaped rock retaining wall, well worth the drive and the hike. Lorrie had on her bathing suit under her hiking shorts and cotton blouse. Pat stripped to his boxer shorts and they sat in the 90 degree water with their backs against the low rock wall and luxuriated. Occasionally they slipped over the rocks and into the bracingly cold Rio Grand for a minute or two, holding on as the current swept by and over them, before climbing back into the naturally heated water of the spring. At the foot of the path was a small hardpan area where they had left their gear. Beyond that was a wide, low cave entrance at the base of the gorge where they could make out the shape of another pool, this one bubbling: the source of the spring.
On what turned out to be the last of their hot-cold-hot sorties, when they returned to the spring, they found the tall Indian standing a few steps up from the bottom of the path, about fifteen feet away, staring at them. He seemed a bit older up close, maybe twenty-seven or-eight. His black hair was greasy and long, almost shoulder length. There was a mixture of contempt and amusement in his coal black eyes, in the slight curl of his upper lip. He had, Pat realized, been watching them as they climbed back into the spring, shivering and laughing, Pat effortlessly lifting Lorrie to help her over the rock wall. The Indian was wearing a sleeveless denim shirt, which showed to good advantage his shoulder-to-wrist tattoos, an uncoiled rattler on both arms, the snakes writhing under well defined muscles, their forked tongues ending at the back of each hand.
“Are you going to fuck?” he said.
Pat felt Lorrie’s hand on his forearm under the water, but there was no need for her to calm him, if that’s what she was doing. He was fine.
“We were just leaving,” Pat said, rising to his full six-foot-three. He reached for Lorrie’s shorts and blouse, which she had draped over a rock near the path, and handed them to her. They stepped out of the spring together and Pat stood in front of his bride, keeping his eye on their new friend, while she dressed. When she was done, she grabbed Pat’s arm again, but Pat was in no hurry. He put his Garvey’ Gym T-shirt on, pulled his khaki shorts on over his wet underwear, then sat on a rock outcrop not far from the Indian to put on his hiking boots and socks. Lorrie did the same, sitting close to him. When they had their boots on and laced up, Pat, who fought in the heavyweight division at 205 pounds, but now weighed closer to 220, rose to face the Indian. Lorrie also rose and held Pat by the bicep. He could tell, from the pressure she was exerting, that she was afraid. This did not occur to him until this moment, but it did not bode well for the Indian.
“Excuse us,” Pat said.
“You are leaving so soon?” said the Indian.
“Yes,” Pat answered. “We have to get going.”
“But the spring is so much fun,” the Indian said. “My girlfriend and I have fucked here many times.”
“Pat!” Lorrie said, “let’s just go.”
Pat had not moved a muscle after their friend’s last remark, but he was about to punch him in the solar plexus. Not too hard, not so hard it would give him a heart attack or kill him. Just hard enough to collapse him to the ground, the breath knocked out of him. Lorrie’s sharp calling of his name had stopped him.
“After you, pendejo,” the Indian said, turning sideways to let them pass.
“Let’s go, Lor,” Pat said, nudging her to go first. “Take your time.”
Half way up the cliff path, Pat turned and saw the Indian following them, about twenty steps behind. Pat smiled as they made eye contact. At the top, the other two Indians were still standing a few yards from the plateau’s edge, drinking beer, listening to their boom box. They stopped talking and stared at Lorrie and Pat as they emerged from the path onto the plateau. Pat did a quick one-eighty: the desert, the pick up with pieces of what looked like scrap lumber sticking up from its bed, the two Indians, the cliff’s edge, the river below. In the distance he could see the bridge and at its near end the parking area, where four or five people were sitting on beach chairs next to a Volkswagen bus.
Pat took Lorrie’s hand and started across the plateau. As they were nearing the two Indians, one of them, short, but stocky and well muscled, stepped in front of them.
“Not so fast,” he said. “Have a beer with us.”
“No thanks,” Pat said. “We don’t drink.”
“But we saw you drinking beer before. You have it in your knapsack. You don’t like Indians.”
The tall Indian had come up from the path and walked around to face them, standing next to his friend. The third was still standing near the boom box, about ten feet away, sipping beer.
“They don’t like Indians,” the stocky one said to the tall one, who was holding something in his right hand that looked to Pat, at his first quick glance, like a knife. Looking again he saw that it was a barber’s razor, its shiny curved blade fully extended. The sun was past its zenith now, but still blazing. In its harsh glare Pat could see the stocky Indian’s teeth, white and even and glistening under his mustache as he smiled broadly.
Taking aim at these teeth, Pat stepped forward and hit the stocky one with a right-cross directly in the middle of his face. He crumpled immediately to the ground. Pat put Lorrie behind him as the tall one showed his knife, his eyes dark with anger. Pat nudged Lorie backward, toward the pick up, away from the cliff, watching carefully as the third Indian also pulled a knife and joined his partner. At the truck, Pat reached behind him, grabbed a two-by-four, and in a long sweeping motion swung it at the tall Indian’s head. He ducked but not quickly enough to avoid a glancing blow, which knocked him to the ground. Pat immediately swung the lumber again, against the Indian’s rib cage, a blow that he knew would cause him great pain and debilitate him for days. As Pat was delivering this blow the third Indian rushed at him, his knife high. Pat turned toward him in time to see Lorrie swing the knapsack with five cans of beer still in it against the side of his head, spinning him into the front fender of the pick up, where he hit his head with a clank and fell to the ground.
“Fuck,” said Lorrie, taking in the three Indians in various degrees of consciousness on the ground around them. “Fuck all.” Her eyes were blazing as hot as the sun.
“You’re not mad at me, are you?” Pat asked.
“Mad at you?”
Pat picked up the razor and the knife and with a heave of his long, powerful right arm, flung them as far as he could out into the desert. “We have to go,” he said.
“Mad at you?” Lorrie said again. “Are you kidding?”
•    * *

On 522, not far from Taos, Pat found a spot to park, slightly elevated, in the evergreen forest just off the highway, with a view of the road of at least a mile or two in each direction. Behind them was a rushing stream and beyond that the outline of a small motel, probably a fishing camp. They waited in silence, watching the highway. Pat’s adrenalin had been coming out of his pores, but he was calm now, able to think. His life had been a rough hewn one since his father died when and he was fifteen and his brother went off to the army a year later. Away from home, working on different projects, he spent his nights in bars, where had had had his share of run-ins with the local crazies. But he had never faced a man with a knife before, or a weapon of any kind. He felt like he had passed a test, punched a ticket. And then there was Lorrie. If the Indians had hurt her, they would all be dead now. This thought, a simple statement of fact, confirmed for him that he had done the right thing in marrying her, despite the feelings of inadequacy that were more or less with him all the time.
“I’ll go to Paraguay,” Lorrie said, breaking the silence. “But I have one condition.”
“What’s that?” Pat asked.
“We save all the money. When we get back we’ll buy a house.”
“Will it be enough?”
“More than enough.”
“That’s fine with me. I agree a hundred percent.”
“We can still work and go to Sacred Heart nights.”
Lorrie, who worked days in a lawyer’s office, had thirty credits under her belt going part time to the small Catholic college in Bridgeport. In the past winter, Pat had taken a three credit geology course there at night, selected by Lorrie. He had loved it and gotten a B, amazed that he could acquire an understanding of how the earth’s rocks were formed, the very rocks he grappled with in his work.
Paraguay, he thought, we’re going!
“How long should we wait?” Lorrie asked.
“They’re not coming.”
“You were unbelievable back there.”
“Just doing my job.”
“I mean it.”
“It’s a good thing you picked up the knapsack. You saved my life.”
“No Pat. I saved you from killing him.”
“Killing him? No way.”
They were silent for a second. There was very little space between them in the front seat of their small car. The smell of the tall pine trees that surrounded them, cooked by the sun, wafted sweetly through the open windows. Lorrie turned sideways to face Pat. She put her hand on his shoulder and pressed down on the muscle and bone beneath.
“I don’t know if I want to see that look ever again,” she said.
“What look?”
“The look in your eyes when you hit the tall one with the two by four.”
“How do you know it was a two by four?”
“I know my lumber.”
“Do you know how much I love you?”
“Till death do us part.”
“Yes Lor, that much and more.”

God’s Warriors

Megan Nolan emerged from the bowels of Montmartre’s Abbesses Metro station into a cold and raw late afternoon in January of 2001. Rawer and colder, it seemed to her, than when she had entered the Metro near her apartment in the Latin Quarter only twenty minutes earlier. To catch her breath, she lit a Gauloise and stood near the station’s covered entrance. A passing businessman slowed to stare at her as she stood and smoked. Her strawberry blonde hair flowed down to the shoulders of her dark green, au courant wool overcoat, which itself flowed down to the tops of her knee- high Prada boots. Under the coat, she had on faded jeans and an ivory-colored cashmere turtleneck sweater. She did not wear jewelry in Montmartre as she had heard stories of the sudden knock down and necklace-, or worse, earring-grab by marauding boys. Her hair and her gold-flecked green eyes were her best accessories anyway. She did love jewelry though, to wear and to sell, which is why she was going to see her friend Annabella Jeritza, the widowed gypsy fortuneteller whose shop was only a few blocks away near the obscure little Volney Park.

Skirting the Square Jehan-Rictus with its ridiculous Je T’aime wall–a mass of blue tiles with stylized I Love You’s in various languages written on them–Megan headed east on Rue Yvonne le Tac, whose name always made her smile because she had stolen Yvonne Taccopina’s boyfriend in high school and then broken his heart like it was a dry twig. And Yvonne’s too, into the bargain. In her shoulder bag was a white gold, heart-shaped pendant in its original Raumet velvet box, given to her for Christmas by her current boyfriend, Alain, whose father owned the Raumet chain. This Annabella would find a buyer for and receive a ten percent commission. At Harry Winston yesterday Megan had located a similar pendant priced at $7,800. She expected to net $2,000, which she would add to her account with Pictet & Cie, her private Swiss banker on Avenue des Champs-Elysees.

Alain would no doubt eventually ask her why she hadn’t worn the pendant, which would give her an opportunity to tell him that she decided what she wore and when, not him. She could sell it if she wished, couldn’t she? Or was it a gift with strings? Alain, who was lithely and sensuously beautiful, and whose unconscious sense of superiority exuded from his every pore, was, when all was said and done, a twenty-four-year old child who could–and would–easily be brought to heel. Only three years older, Megan felt ancient compared to her new lover, too worldly wise for her own good. Not a good feeling, but there it was, and there was all of Alain’s unearned money, his very real sexual charms, and of course his father’s jewelry.

As Megan strolled along Rue Durantin, she was stared at by the lost boys, whores, pimps, drug dealers and pickpockets–the cream of Paris’s low life–who hung out in and around the bars and greasy spoons that lined the avenue. Clutching tightly to her bag, her naturally proud and erect bearing making her look taller than her five-foot seven inches, she tossed her hair in defiance, and moved with apparent casualness through the carnival that was Montmartre, especially on market day, when the tourists showed up in busloads to be victimized. At the corner of Rue Caulaincourt, she ran into two prostitutes whose garish makeup and fantastic dress she had used in a story about slut chic that the editors at Cosmopolitan had bought thinking they were on to something new in the world of fashion. The mother-and-daughter team named Marie and Michelle had been agog with pride when Megan photographed them and gave them $50 each for their “personal story and image rights.”

Megan stopped to chat, noticing as she did, the girls’ pimp, a large and muscular mulatto named Sky, watching them through the plate glass window of the pizzeria on the corner. It was Sky who had actually taken the girls’ hundred dollars and signed their names to the releases that Megan carried in her bag at all times. Sky had hit on her, and Megan’s smile in response had not been one of complete dismissal. Afterward, she made it a point to stop by the pizzeria–Sky’s office–to chat him up. A graceful and attractive man of about thirty-five, with close-cropped hair and incredible light blue eyes, Megan was not going to sleep with him, although in another lifetime she might have. Her instincts however–the instincts of a woman alone whose only protection was her wits and her cunning–told her that such a man would be worth knowing, if only to have a friend in the wilds of Montmartre.

On the next block, Megan turned into an alley that led to a weed and rubble-strewn courtyard that serviced several of the six-story apartment buildings on Rue Durantin and the street behind it, including Annabella’s. In the good weather, she would sometimes find Annabella in the courtyard hanging clothes or sitting drinking tea with her gypsy women friends, some of whom were young mothers watching their children playing. Megan, beginning around the age of sixteen, was acutely aware of the envy and jealousy she aroused in other females. Their eyes were paint brushes dipped in fear and hate. Annabella’s friends–gypsies to the bone–painted her with the hottest of colors. Though she was allowed to pass unhindered because of her friendship with the old fortuneteller, she was hoping not to have to deal with any gypsies on her way to the back entrance to Annabella’s shop. At the end of the alley, she slowed and stood behind a rusted dumpster to survey the scene ahead. Relieved to see the courtyard empty, she was about to step from behind the dumpster when she saw Annabella hurtling across the ramshackle wooden porch at the back of her building and down its three steps to land sprawling and twisted in the weeds under a naked clothes line.

Before Megan could react, Annabella’s son, a swarthy and arrogant little man whom Megan had seen once or twice about the fortuneteller’s shop–reeking of alcohol each time–emerged from the back door, through which he had obviously thrown his mother. When he reached Annabella she was trying to rise and he helped her by grabbing her by her brassy orange hair and lifting and turning her to face him before slapping her twice across the face with a fully arcing forehand and backhand, the backhand jarring her loose from his grip and knocking her back to the ground. There Annabella lay, inert, her rouged cheek resting on an old magazine–it looked like Paris Match to Megan–while her son leaned over her to say something before spitting on her and turning to go back into the building.

Megan took a step toward Annabella and then stopped as her friend lifted herself on one elbow and began in halting strokes to smooth her long cotton skirt down her legs, which, stick-like and clad in stockings rolled to just below the knee, had been exposed almost to the waist when she first hit the ground. In the old gypsy’s profile, Megan could clearly see the welted hand mark on her right cheek, its reddish hue deepening by the second so that it looked like it had been painted on, part of a costume or ritual. Megan remembered–she would for a long time–the cloud of rouge that had risen from Annabella’s wrinkled face as each downward blow from her son’s right hand landed with a sharp snap like the lash of a whip. Megan remained in place, only her eyes visible over the top edge of the dumpster, and watched as Annabella slowly pulled herself to her feet. Searching the ground, trying to steady herself, the old palm reader spotted something and then stooped to retrieve the multi-colored kerchief she wore at all times on her head. Carrying it in her hand–the bobby pins must have gone flying–she walked unsteadily but not without dignity into the building.

* * *

Eight months later, near the end of a hot day in early September, Megan stood at the filigreed wrought iron fence that bordered the grassy playing field of L’Ermitage International School in the leafy suburb of Maison-Lafitte, west of Paris. Through the fence’s sturdy bars, she could see a group of middle school girls, eleven- and twelve-year olds, playing soccer amid the elongated shadows cast by the chimneys of the nearby seventeenth century castle that had given the town its name. The girls all wore the same black shorts and Nike sneakers, the teams differentiated by the colors of their L’Ermitage-embossed T-shirts. The girl she was interested in, Jeanne, had just scored for the green team. Megan did not know the score as she had arrived mid-game and there was no scoreboard, but she knew the goal was important by the way Jeanne’s teammates surrounded her in brief exultation before setting up for the ensuing kick-off.

An older girl, a freckled American-looking blonde around sixteen or so in a chic blue skirt, striped top and the ubiquitous Nikes, was doing double duty as referee and scorekeeper. When she blew her whistle to end the game, Megan leaned in as Jeanne passed, fifty feet or so from the fence, as she made her way through the post-game handshake line. With her raven-black hair and dusky coloring, Jeanne looked nothing like the rest of the girls, but her flushed face and the sparkle in her dark, piercing eyes–her team had apparently won–spoke of a happy child, her place in her small world secure. Megan knew this had not always been so.

The girls gathered their gear along the sidelines and headed in groups of two and three to the school. Megan watched Jeanne until the last possible moment. No one had noticed her watching the game. No one knew that she had contracted to fund Jeanne’s tuition at L’Ermitge, a seven-day, twelve-month boarding school, through the end of her twelfth year, a sum that would eventually exceed $90,000. Most of this money she had already extracted from the by now desperately-in-love Alain Tillinac, and given it with special instructions to Pictet & Cie.

On the short train ride back to Paris, Megan watched the small towns and countryside roll by for a while and then, images of a happy and healthy Jeanne fresh in her mind, allowed herself to recall her first, and last, meeting with the child, who was at the time chained to a filthy bed in the rear of an apartment in a housing project in the Paris suburb of Florentin.

* * *

“We have your man,” Sky had said over the phone, giving her the address. “Do not delay.” In thirty minutes, she was there. Boiko Jeritza was there as well, sitting in a stuffed chair in a dark living room, his mouth duct-taped shut, his hands tied behind his back. Boiko’s wild eyes followed them as Sky led her into the grimy kitchen where he showed her the photographs, sixteen in all: of children–boys and girls–naked or half-naked, some forlornly posing, some having sex with men. One of the men was Boiko. In the same folder that had held the photographs was a list of customers, some highlighted in yellow, some with amounts in euros next to their names and addresses. Before Megan could speak, they heard a noise from a back room and there they found Jeanne.

The plan was to frighten Boiko into submission, but Megan now believed he was dead. Was, in fact, sure he was dead. She had been to visit Annabella a half-dozen times since, and not seen Boiko once. Two weeks earlier, she summoned the courage to ask the old gypsy about her son. They were drinking tea laced with whiskey late one night in Annabella’s back room. The old gypsy’s face had healed but occasionally Megan would see her lightly brushing the back of her fingers across one cheek or the other. Annabella had put down her cup on the oilcloth covered table between them, and said, “He is in hell.”

“In hell?” Megan had asked.

“With Satan, where he belongs, and can do no more harm”

“He’s dead?”

Annabella smiled before answering, looking Megan in the eye for a second or two. A long second or two.

“Yes, but you know that he is,” she said finally.

It was Megan’s turn to be silent. Missing, gone away, did not mean dead. Was she fishing? Tying to confirm her suspicions? Or did she, as Megan more and more was coming to believe, have the second sight that gypsies spoke of quietly and revered?

“How did he die?” she asked, at length, returning her friend’s stare with equanimity. She had not survived the last nine years on her own in Europe and Africa by giving any cards away.

“He was slain by St. Michael, the archangel.”

“At your request?”

“Using his instruments on earth.”

“Annabella, you’re scaring me.”

“God’s warriors do not always appear to be so.”

Megan sat back in her chair and shook her head slightly. Sky had disappeared for a while as well, but he had soon returned to his office at the pizzeria, keeping his beautiful eyes on his whores and their customers. He had asked for another two thousand euros, for expenses, but he seemed unchanged, his usual breezy and menacing self.

“Who are they?” she asked.

“I don’t know, but once they are chosen, they are apart. They have one foot in another world.”

Megan picked up her cup and took a sip, feeling the fire in her throat as she swallowed Annabella’s concoction, hot and soothing, like the gypsy herself. Her hand was steady as she replaced the cup on the table, her heartbeat normal.

* * *

Megan was still in her reverie as her train neared the Gare de Montparnasse. Once they are chosen, Annabella had said, they are apart. It would be one thing to have a conscience, bad enough, but to be chosen? To be apart? She shuddered at this thought. Sky had been chosen, not her. She did not mind not liking herself. What was there to like? It was liking herself, or rather attempting to behave in such a way as to create this feeling, that troubled her. That would mean an end to her life as she knew it. There was Jeanne of course, but that was a special case. A child so abused, a young girl with no family, had to be helped. She did not even know her last name and did to want to know. Sky, and her bankers, had made all the arrangements. She had made the trip to Maison-Lafitte out of curiosity, a natural curiosity under the circumstances, but would never see the girl again.

On her recent visits with Annabella, the old woman had taken to holding Megan’s hand, occasionally turning it over and rubbing her thumb across the palm as if to erase the future she saw there. Yes, but you know that he is, her friend had said, and Megan had not denied it. Perhaps retribution was in store for the part she had played in Boiko’s demise. How ironic that she should be punished for so just an act.
Megan smiled to herself at this thought. Cause and effect and moralizing were not her cup of tea. Tomorrow she would spend the day with Alain at the Ritz; it was his birthday. She would tolerate Alain for a while longer. He was very handsome and quite energetic. Why not? The train’s low hissing as it came to its full stop seemed to emphasize this thought. Why not? Nothing need change, nor will it.