SNOW IN DIRT

 

Once a Lifetime

it can happen. Once a lifetime it should. I found the girl of my dreams in the garden. She was buried in dirt.

I was digging a hole. Four feet down, three wide, a ditch for a foundation to prop up the falling shack at the back of the lot. Pine trees overhead. Bluest of skies. My ox-like shoulders, sweat running down my spine. She was hidden in soil, tucked between roots, still as a statue, beautiful. The shack, a ten by twenty foot post and beam redwood cabin, had been built after the Great Earthquake, and in its time had been shelter, wood shop, storage shed, chicken coop, teenage retreat, and hole-up for a drunk who beat his wife then cried all night in remorse. It had been falling down ever since I took the time to notice, pushed by the hill behind it, by gravity, clay and radiolarian chert. After watching passively for years, I finally decided to do something. I chased out the raccoons. I baited the mice. Took two weeks off work, cleared the calendar, jacked up the down hill side, cut a path through the fence to the back. I was thinking of making a career move. I was in between women. Hearing a mockingbird, catching my breath, smelling the pine sap.

Very carefully, I dug her out.

The Wheelbarrow

was newly painted, glossy and red as lipstick. I lifted her over the front lip. She slid into the bed like satin. Her eyes were closed. She wore a sort of body suit the color of dead leaves. I picked a worm out of her hair. She had the face of a young woman. My neighbor appeared on his back porch, and I covered her with a tarpaulin.

“Gardening?” he asked.

“A little.”

“Looking good.” He meant me, not the garden. He was drunk, and when he was drunk, he flirted.

“I like your roses,” I said, changing the subject.

“Come on over. I’ll give you one.” He leered at me. “Come on. I’ll make sure to cut the thorns.”

It had been like this since his lover had died three years before. He never talked about it, just drank and watched sports on TV.

I begged out and beat it into the basement, parking the wheelbarrow and getting the girl out and onto a sofa inside. Her hair was long and dark. Her lips were full and slightly parted. I called my brother Frank.

“Yo,” his machine said. “Talk to me.”

I left a message, then washed up and hurried out. Mom was waiting at the entrance of the nursing home when I arrived, freshly bathed and made up. Her attendant was putting the finishing touches on her hair.

“Sorry I’m late,” I said.

Mom smiled. “Hello, Frank.”

“Martin,” I corrected, pecking her on the cheek. “So what’s your pleasure? You want to walk, drive, what?”

“The pie is very good,” she said.

“You had pie?”

She smiled again but didn’t answer. The attendant had tied a pink bow in her hair, something my mother would never have done in her life. It made her look girlish and even more helpless than she was.

I took her arm. “How ’bout we take a drive?”

We drove to the beach, then back-tracked through the park and up Twin Peaks, which was socked in by fog. We couldn’t see a thing. My mother called it soup. She loved it.

Afterwards, we swung by my place. The woman was where I had left her. My mother frowned when she saw her, then glanced uncertainly at me.

“I found her in the garden,” I explained. “Just a few hours ago.”

She strained to understand, looking back and forth between the girl and me. Suddenly, her face broke into a smile.

“Marry?”

“No no no.” I shook my finger. “We just met.”

She smacked her lips. “Kissy kissy. Pussy pussy. Thing comes out.”

“Thank you, Mother. I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Thing,” she repeated, gesturing with her hands, struggling for the word. She became frustrated and started to pace, back and forth in forced little steps. This was always a bad sign.

“It’s okay,” I told her. “I get it. Thing. I understand.” A lie of course, and it didn’t work. My mother halted in mid-stride and pointed an accusatory finger at the woman.

“Bad girl. Bad bad bad.” She wheeled on me. “You.”

I supplied my name. She frowned. Now she looked lost. Now she started to cry. I sighed, fighting back my own tears, and steered her out of the room. We had a cup of tea. I took the bow out of her hair and told her I loved her. Then I drove her home.

Frank came over around nine. He was all dressed up, and I asked where he’d been.

“With the Grizzly,” he said with a swagger. This was his newest flame, so named by him for her size and the ferocity of her embrace. “She has a friend, Marty. Someone you should meet.”

He was always trying to set me up. For the thousandth time, I told him I was a one woman man.

“Yeah?” He pretended to search the room. “There someone I don’t know about?”

I took him downstairs. The girl was lying where I left her. Her eyelids were translucent and shaded ever so lightly blue. She had started to breathe.

“Well goddamm. My baby brother.” He punched my arm. “What’s that brown stuff she’s got on?”

“I don’t know. Some kind of protective coating or something.”

“Looks like old newspaper.” He sniffed at it. “Smells like dirt.”

“No shit, Sherlock. I found her in dirt.”

“What does that mean?”

I explained.

“Jesus,” he said. “So what are you going to do with her?”

“I don’t know. I’m taking suggestions.”

He thought for a minute. “We could ask Shirley.”

Shirley was his other girl, his steady one, ever tolerant (a requi­site with Frank) and loaded with common sense.

“On the other hand,” he said, “we could keep the lid on for a few days. See what develops. Who knows? The lady wakes up, maybe she’s as nice as she looks. Maybe the two of you get it on a little. Pardon me for saying, but you could use the action.”

“Your suggestion being?”

“I’m just thinking of something a guy said to me today in the shop. We were making small talk, and I asked him how he was doing. He gave me a funny look and said, you know what the answer is to that, don’t you? And I said, no, what’s the answer? And he said, it’s how many toys you got when you die. They can have wheels, gears, buttons, skirts . . . it doesn’t matter. Just how many you got on the day you croak.”

“You liked that, did you?”

“The guy’s an asshole, but yeah. I did. How many toys. I can think of worse ways to measure.”

“You got toys, Frank?”

“You know I do.” He winked at me, pulled out his wallet and handed me a foil-covered package nestled between two bills. “Safety first, Marty boy. You find her in the dirt, who knows? Maybe she’s dirty.”

So that was Frank’s advice. After he left, I called my sister Carol to complete the family poll. She was on her way to bed, a ritual to be disturbed only on pain of death. She promised to stop by in the morning, which she did, arriving on the dot at seven, dressed for work in a snappy, tailored suit. She took one look at the girl and pulled a phone out of her purse, which she pushed at me.

“Call 911, you jerk.”

To my credit, the thought had occurred to me, but the truth was I didn’t want to. No doubt this is why I’d called Frank first.

“She’s breathing,” I said defensively. “How bad can it be?”

“She’s breathing. Terrific. Jesus, Marty.”

I decided not to mention that she hadn’t been breathing before.

“Does she have a pulse?”

“Sure she has a pulse,” I said, thinking I don’t even know if she has a heart. “She’s sleeping.”

“Have you tried to wake her up?”

“Carol. Please. I would never wake a sleeping lady. You yourself taught me that.”

“Get off it, Martin.” She took the girl’s wrist and felt for a pulse, then slapped the back of her hand a few times. She called to her loudly. She slapped her cheek.

“Get her to a doctor, Marty. If you aren’t willing to call an ambulance, then take her yourself.”

I suppose, at heart, this is what I wanted to hear. Sheepishly, I asked Carol to come with me.

“Can’t. Got a meeting at eight.” She checked her watch, pecked me on the cheek and hurried out the basement door. A minute later she was back. Irritated but stalwart. My sister. Loyal to the core.

“Let’s do it,” she said.

We hefted her back into the wheelbarrow. Then I told Carol to go, I could handle the rest.

“You sure?”

I nodded. “I got the family behind me. Check it out: you say I should get help, Mom says I should marry her, Frank says I should fuck her. I can’t lose. Anything I do is bound to be right.”

The Problem of Concealment

I solved with a blanket, wrapping her loosely, then sliding her in the back of my pickup and securing her with some bungie cords. At the hospital I swiped a gurney without being seen, hoisted her on top, unwrapped her and wheeled her inside. Because she had no ID and therefore no insurance, the intake clerk didn’t want to take her. He smirked when I said I’d vouch for her, and when I said that she was homeless (a tactical mistake), he looked at me with dried up pity and rolled his eyes. The clerk beside him had more sympathy and asked if she happened to be a city resident. A native, I replied. Tenth generation (it was a wild guess). Deeply rooted in our illustrious past.

This claim met with suspicion, but the line behind me was growing. No clerk on earth likes the sight of a long line, and mine was no exception. With a rebuke and a promise not to be so lenient the next time, he filled out the necessary forms and waved us in.

We spent a total of six hours in the emergency room, complicated by the fact they couldn’t get that brownish covering of hers off. Someone suggested it might be part of her skin, which prompted a call to the dermatologist, who came and discoursed at length on epidermal proliferation, psoriasis, ichthyosis and generalized melasma, none of which, in his opinion, this was. Blood was taken from a vein in her foot, and all the tests came back normal. A chest x-ray and electrocardiogram showed nothing out of the ordinary. A scan of her brain showed brain. Because they could not find an opening in her body suit, they could not get urine, but they sent hair to screen for heavy metal poisoning. They tested everything they could, and then they called a neurologist­.

His name was Dr. Aymen. He had short, salt and pepper hair parted on the side, a deeply tanned face, a prominent jaw. He wore a blue bowtie, and his knee-length lab coat was stiffly starched. His manner, by contrast, was smooth as butter. The other doctors treated him with deference, clumping around the gurney and observing in silence as he poked and prodded the patient. When he was done, he took a half step back, slid his hands deep in the pockets of his lab coat and struck a professorial pose.

“Thoughts?” he asked.

There was a flurry of them. Encephalopathy, involutional melancholy, prolonged atonic epilepsy, drug overdose: I jotted down what I could, but I missed more than I got. All at once, Dr. Aymen seemed to notice me. He introduced himself, absorbed my name, asked if I was any relation to the subject, then politely asked me to leave.

I assured him I wouldn’t make a peep. I wasn’t there to interfere.

But he remained firm in his request. “Our suppositions are far-flung,” he explained. “And strictly conjectural. They’re easy to misinterpret. It would be a grave disservice to you if your hopes were falsely raised, or, worse, prematurely dashed. So please. Allow us a few minutes alone to ponder this fascinating case.”

He seemed a nice enough fellow, earnest if somewhat pompous, but I had no intention of leaving. Again, I promised to stay out of the way.

He regarded me sternly, then inclined his head. “As you wish.”

Turning his back to me, he swept out of the room, followed immediately by his retinue of admirers. Twenty minutes later he returned.

“Speculation is inherent in medicine,” he continued, as if no time at all had passed. “The possibilities of cause are, in nearly every case, manifold. This can be both a challenge and a thrill to the diagnostician, but to others, family for example, it can be unnerving. Not to mention cast us in an unflattering light. Our scientific musings can make us seem cold and hard of heart. Nothing could be further from the truth. Please accept my apologies if such was the case.”

No apologies, I said, were necessary. Whatever it took to get to the bottom of things was okay by me.

“So what does she have? Do you know?”

“Possibly.” He glanced at her, then fixed his attention on me. “Are you sure you’ve left nothing out?”

The implication was clear, and simply by asking, he made it a fact that I had. I thought back. The dirt? The worm in her hair? Family advice?

“No,” I said. “Nothing.”

He waited, giving me time to reconsider. I didn’t need time.

“What’s going on, Doctor?”

The Theory,

he said, “is hard to explain. Suffice it to say, there’s definitely a literature on this. It seems that intact bodies are turning up all the time. There’s actually a registry somewhere. I suggest we send a specimen of the patient’s DNA for fingerprinting. Perhaps there’s someone on file who’s been lost. Or who’s missing. Perhaps in this way we could identify her.”

“Okay. Sure. But what does she have?”

He gave me a patronizing look. “What you really want to know is, what can be done.”

“I want to know if you’ve ever seen anything like this.”

“Certainly,” he said.

“Someone buried in dirt?”

“Young man. In forty years I’ve seen diseases and afflictions beyond your wildest dreams. The range of human pathology, not to mention survivability, is nothing short of miraculous. Our ability to downregulate vital functions, to enter at need into vegetative states, prolonged metaphases if you will . . .”

He was interrupted by one of the other doctors, who handed him some papers held together by a clip. He perused them, mumbling to himself and nodding.

“Yes,” he said. “Good. Just as I recalled. You made copies for the others?”

“Yes,” the underling replied.

“Excellent.” Dr. Aymen addressed me. “This is an article . . .” He halted a moment, then resumed with an air of gravity and subtle condescension. “A scientific article comparing the efficacy of three regimens for the revival of found bodies. Cohort study, two year follow-up, morbidity, mortality, proposed mechanisms . . . all of it. You see, young man, we are not living in the dark ages. We are not charlatans, nor do we operate by sleight of hand. No, no.” He wagged a finger. “We adhere to science. The language we speak is strictly the language of reproducible results.”

So saying, he pulled a pad from his pocket and scribbled out a prescription. “Give her two in the morning, two at bedtime. In a week increase it to three.”

“What is it?”

He said a name so rapidly I didn’t get it, handed me his business card with instructions to call for a follow-up appointment, and started out of the room. This put me in something of a panic.

“When’s bedtime?” I asked. “She hasn’t woken up yet.”

He dismissed this with a flip of his hand. “Bedtime, nighttime, it doesn’t matter. Just get it in her. The young lady should perk right up.”

As it turned out, he was wrong. She did not perk right up. On the other hand, she didn’t get any worse. Carol was satisfied a doctor was involved. Frank suggested I try something more direct, more, as he put it, “physically stimulating”. My mother, bless her heart, had forgotten everything.

The Kiss

was something I considered for days. It seemed the obvious thing to do, called for in some intuitive way, but in the end I decided against it. I felt virtuous and admirably restrained, but also repressed and confused. It was a vexing situation, so much so that this is what I began calling her. Vexing. The closest I came to her lips was spreading them apart with my thumb and finger to pour the pills, which I dissolved in water, down her throat. I returned to the ditch, digging out the remainder of the dirt. When I got deep enough, I built the forms for the foundation, laid the rebar and poured the concrete. By then it was three weeks since our visit to the hospital. Vexing slept on. I started on the framing. Her hair was black as coal. Foot plates, joists, studs. Eyelids like butterflies. Headers, rafters. Skin, clothed in parchment, like milk.

“Our Armamentarium

is vast,” said Dr. Aymen, with the sweep of an arm that seemed to take in as potential allies not just the books and equipment that were in his office but all information and knowledge that lay beyond it as well. “If one pill doesn’t work, we try another. It’s what’s called an empirical approach.”

I heard only two words in that. Armamentarium, which brought to mind epic battles on dusty, medieval plains, and empirical, which made me think this guy doesn’t have a clue. It was time to stand up for Vexing, who remained incapable of standing up for herself.

“What’s this new drug?” I asked.

There was an edge to my voice, and he shot me a glance. Then he leaned back in his chair and bridged his fingers. He appeared to be thinking. Maybe he was. At length he mumbled something to himself and unclipped his pen. Barely looking down, he scribbled out a prescription.

“Start with two at night, go to three if no change in a week, four if no change in two. After that it’s up to you. You can split the dose, give two in the morning and three at night, or you can reverse that, give three in the am and two in the pm, but under no circumstance must you increase more than twenty milligrams in any four day period, unless you are prepared to watch assiduously for side effects, which of course you should do anyway. And call me.”

“Call you?”

“If there’s a problem.”

I was reeling with his instructions. “What side effects?”

“The usual. Nausea, GI upset, headache, dizziness, twitchy muscles, sudden death.” He let that sink in, then dismissed it with a bizarre smile. “Just kidding. But not really. I mention it only to assure you that it’s very rare.”

“What’s the name of this drug?”

“3,5 dihydroxy, gamma-endoperoxide PGD4. It goes by the trade name Resusinol.”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“Are you a doctor, sir? A pharmacist, perhaps?”

“I work in a drug store.”

“Indeed.”

I didn’t tell him that the counter I worked was at the opposite end of the store from the pharmacy. It was not a piece of information, I felt, that would have helped my cause.

“Do you have experience with it, Doctor? Have you used it before?”

“It’s an excellent choice,” he said. “I have no doubt it will be equal to the task.”

“That’s what you said about the first one.”

He suffered me a look, then took a moment to compose himself.

“I realize your impatience, but understand. All things take time. This is Nature’s decree, not ours. There are many conditions whose duration we can predict with great accuracy. Coma, unfortunately, is not one of them. An encephalopathic child may sleep for a day or a week. He may sleep for a year. Your young lady will awaken when she is ready. No sooner. No later.” He paused, then added, “with or without drugs, I suspect.”

“Then why give any?”

He smiled and stood up, indicating the end of the visit. “Because it’s our nature to try. Because you, like us, like everyone, want to be able to fix what’s hurt. Because sadly, we’re too old for band-aids.”

A week passed, then another. The cabin took shape, and the smell of fresh wood banished the smell of rot. I framed in a window facing east and one on the opposite side facing west. I had views of English ivy, pine trees, my neighbors’ houses, my neighbors. From the roof I could see the bay. I roughed in the front door the third week of June. That Saturday Vexing woke up. It was Midsummer’s Day.

She stretched. She yawned. Eventually, she sat up.

“I feel wonderful,” she said. “I love naps.”

Her voice was rough from disuse. It seemed to come from deep in her throat. The sound of it, and the sight of her awake, gave me goosebumps.

“Naps? You’ve been asleep forever.”

“Have I?” She took a few tentative steps. “Well, then I feel even better.”

She spun around, arms outspread. Her hair fanned out. She laughed.

“And I suppose I owe it all to you.”

I ducked my head. “Shucks. All I did was dig you out.”

“You’re a miner?”

“Not really.”

She frowned, as if this didn’t compute. Her forehead bunched into tiny furrows, a look that didn’t become her. It pained me to be the cause of such distress, so I reconsidered.

“A miner? I guess you could say I am. Sure. Why not?”

She brightened instantly. “That is so great. God, it’s perfect. I love miners.”

She came to me then. She smelled of dry leaves. She wrapped her arms around my neck.

“I guess that means I love you.”

What can a man want in a woman? Good manners, good looks, good brains, good sex. Vexing had it all. To boot, she kept telling me how she’d never been so happy. When we made love, she said she forgot who she was.

For the first month or two we made the basement room our bedroom, because Vexing preferred the damper, cooler air. Her body suit, which had slid off intact the day she woke up, remained in a corner, retaining its shape but growing progressively paler and more translucent, except for what I took to be its supporting structure, thin threads that looked like the veins of leaves. These grew darker, and the more I looked, the more they seemed to represent something beyond mere structure. The way they intertwined and repeated themselves looked man-made, refined. A language? I mentioned this to Vexing, who denied knowledge of such a thing, but one evening after work I found her hunched over the suit, puzzling it with great concentration. She acted as if I had caught her at something illicit, and the next day the suit was gone. When I asked her about it, she declined to discuss the matter further, begging my indulgence, which I gave freely. Shortly thereafter, we moved upstairs.

The heat in the upper story seemed to do something to her metabolism. It revved her up and got her juices flowing. We were having sex day in and day out. Sometimes it got to the point that I couldn’t keep up with her. Not that I was old, but I was older than she was. Not that it bothered me. Not much.

After a particularly grueling and exquisite week of little food and less sleep, I suggested she find an additional outlet for her boundless energy. She was aghast.

“I don’t want someone else.”

“Not a person,” I said with a choking little laugh. “God no. A hobby. A job.”

“I’ve never had a job. I wouldn’t know what to do.” She scrunched up her forehead. “What do you do?”

“I’m a miner,” I said. “I dig up riches.”

She smiled.

“I also work in a drug store. Talk to my Mom every day, take her out twice a week. Be with you every other moment I can.”

She seemed daunted. “Maybe I should start out working for you.”

“What did you have in mind?”

“I don’t know. What do you need?”

There were some chores. I listed a few.

“No problem,” she said. “What else?”

“I can’t think of anything.”

“C’mon. You want to get your money’s worth. Use your imagination. What do you want me to do?”

The vastness of her invitation made me tremble. “I can’t tell you.”

“Please.”

“You’ll laugh at me. Either that, or you’ll be offended.”

“I won’t,” she promised.

“No?”

She shook her head. “Absolutely not.”

As it turned out, I didn’t need more encouragement than that, and I unburdened my heart of its puerile little fantasy. What I asked would have made a schoolboy blush. Her response?

She laughed.

“There,” I said. “You’ve hurt me.”

“No, no. I’m laughing only because you’re so silly. Of course I will. And anything else. And as much as you like. I was born to this. I feel it in my bones.”

“You’re not vexing at all,” I said.

She smiled. “You’re kind. With any luck I never will be.”

So she worked for me, and hard. Swept and scrubbed the floors, cleaned the bathrooms, washed the clothes, changed the sheets, dusted, vacuumed and polished till her hands were sore. I had to help her with the shopping, because very little in the supermarket was familiar to her. But she had a flair for cooking and learned how to operate all the kitchen gadgets in a day or two. She was a great homemaker. It was a good life. Contentment reigned. For a while.

One night we were lying in bed, and she was obviously troubled. I asked what was wrong.

She faced me, as innocent and fetching as the day I found her. “Are you happy?”

“Completely.”

This seemed to baffle her. “Then why aren’t I?”

I replied that I couldn’t imagine. Which made her even more puzzled.

“I’m kidding,” I said. “You can’t depend on me for your happiness. You’ve got a mind of your own. A separate identity.”

Her flawless forehead furrowed.

“You need to get out. Meet people, do something besides housework. Volunteer somewhere. Maybe even try a part-time job.”

“I could cook,” she said. “Be a housekeeper. A scrubber.”

“You could do a lot more than that.”

“Like what?”

She was beautiful beyond belief. It came to me without thinking.

“Be a model,” I told her. “You’ve got the looks. The style. You’re a natural. Let the world in on the secret. You’ll be a star, I swear. People will beat a path to your door.”

The Look

was all her own. Feminine, masculine, ingénue, queen. She liked to adorn herself with mirrors and other reflective objects, and this became something of a trademark. Sequins, foil, cut glass, polished stones. And mirrors themselves, appliquéd to her dresses or woven in the fabric, some large but most the size of dimes and quarters, catching the light and making her shine all the more brightly. She loved it when people stared, for like all models she craved attention. To be the center about which all else revolved was her constant desire. For all the world, you might have thought she felt unwanted and unloved.

On the advice of her agent she shortened her name to Vex, which rhymed so fluently with Flex and Hex. Initially, she did ads for Macy’s and Target, but quickly graduated to the big time. Vogue, Elle, Redbook: you couldn’t pass a checkout counter without seeing her face. She modeled for Dior, St Laurent, Gaultier, Miyake; did the runways in Paris, Milan, New York, all the major shows. When Playboy, promising discretion, begged for a spread, her agent advised against it. But Vex went ahead, and a week after the issue hit the stands, she appeared on the cover of Good Housekeeping. After that it was Working Women, Cosmopolitan, Better Homes and Gardens: Vexing crossed over at will. She had the moves. She had the talent. She had the ambition. By the time either of us got around to noticing how this new world of hers was affecting and changing our life together, she was famous, and we were both dedicated to her career.

The Thing Is

she got more desirable with each passing year. She had a way of capturing a person’s attention, pinning it like a butterfly, then extracting it as if it were some precious elixir. Sometimes the extract was envy, sometimes admiration. To her it didn’t matter which. She was greedy for praise and took what she got. To all appearance she inhabited a different world from her public. A better, more desirable, one. It was funny, then, to hear her worry and complain.

Her weight was a constant anxiety, but this was true of all the models. Vexing also had a thing about height, not so much hers as that of the male models she sometimes worked with. Simply put, she hated short men. I was five-six (the same as her), no giant but no midget either, and it had never before been an issue. But one day after a long shoot with a circus motif, she came home in a rage, mouthing off against clowns and freaks and especially “stubbies,” as she called them.

I should have kept my mouth shut but didn’t, asking her what was wrong with short men, making sure at the time that I was standing as tall and erect as I could.

She had the broom in hand, a vestige from her erstwhile housekeeping days, work that had long since passed to others. She wrung the handle as though it were a neck.

“They’re bossy and domineering. They’re like old women. Or else they act like children. I’ve had it.”

“Who exactly are we talking about here?”

“Short men,” she said sharply. “Don’t you listen.”

I cringed. “How short is short?”

She snapped the broom in two over her knee and held the shorter fragment up. It was the height of a dwarf, which, it turned out, was no coincidence.

“Hairy little buggers,” she muttered. “I need a bath.”

She had other anxieties too, chiefly involving her looks. She was paid, I suppose, to be fastidious in this regard; in a sense, it was an occupational hazard. Like most of the models, she took stimulants, along with massive doses of vitamins. When she was high, she was magnanimous, charming and full of fun. When she was strung out, she turned petty and vicious. At work she got away with this rollercoaster personality because she was, quite simply, the best. At home she got away with it because I, like the rest of the world, was in her thrall.

The tabloids dubbed her “The Queen,” and if not omnipotent, she was certainly ubiquitous: magazines, TV, newspapers, the internet—her name and face were impossible to miss. At home she was also the queen, my queen, and I quit my job at the drug store to be by her side. It was a switch for us: now I worked for her, fending off the sycophants and boot-lickers, doing my best to keep her from going insane. Typically, this involved making sure she had what she wanted when she wanted it, a short list of necessities that included food, drugs, praise, privacy and sleep. To my knowledge, I was the only one ever to hear her confess to jealousy or self-doubt, the only one ever to see her cry. I was also the only one she ever truly loved, this from her own lips. In the beginning of our relationship she said this often, but as the years passed and her fame grew, it was a sentiment she rarely expressed. This made the times she did all the more memorable.

There was one: it was early winter, and we were in a hut on a mountain above a lake somewhere in Switzerland, at the tail end of an exhausting day for her, modeling swimwear in the snow. In the hut were a cot, a wood-burning stove and little else. Outside, the production crew was setting up for a final shot, and we had a few minutes alone.

Vexing was wearing a quilted cape over a lamé bikini. Her toes were blue from the cold, her face chafed by the wind. She was past the point of giving orders but bravely trying to keep up appearances. I helped her onto the cot, massaging her legs and blowing on her toes (and even going so far as to put them in my mouth) to warm them. She gave a sigh and closed her eyes. Moments later she was asleep.

The hut was small and cozy. It reminded me of the cottage in our yard, which, since completion, I had barely set foot in. The wind rattled the door, and Vexing opened her eyes. Her hair at this time was short, her face rather gaunt and undernourished. It was a look the models aspired to, suggestive of hunger, to be interpreted in so many ways. It was nothing like the face of the woman I had dug up in the garden. What was, though, was the way she seemed to be asleep, even now, with her eyes open. They moved without seeing, in jerky rhythms, as though she were following the flight of some insect, though it was far too cold in the hut for insects. Suddenly, she fixated on something invisible to me and uttered a sound. My father had suffered from epilepsy, but this was unlike any seizure I had ever seen. I thought to yell for help, but then she started to speak.

At first the words were too garbled to be intelligible. Then it came to me that she was speaking a different language, one I’d never heard, or, for that matter, could imagine hearing, a combination of clicks, grunts, gurgles, groans and hisses. Except for her throat and lips, her body was rigid. It was terrifying. At the same time it struck me how little I really knew of this woman. True, I had dug her up. I had given her a name and a career, had set her on the path to success and glory. In a way she was my creation, or at least (to my discredit), I thought of her as such. I shook her, gently at first, then harder. The wind howled. I was frightened, and I cried out to her, using the name I’d christened her with, feeling foolish and ashamed of myself for knowing no other. I begged her to snap out of it.

Eventually, she did. The strange, primeval sounds she was uttering subsided. The tension left her body. She sat up.

“Where am I?” she asked.

I told her.

“What happened? Did I fall asleep?”

“Something like that.”

She clutched the cape across her chest. “I’m exhausted. I need something to get me going. I need to wake up.”

“What you need is real sleep.”

“Don’t say that. Sleep is death. I’m done with sleep.”

“You used to love naps.”

“No more.” She pushed herself to her feet. “Now I choose to be awake. As much as humanly possible. Awake and on my toes.”

“I’m worried about you.”

“Don’t be.”

I swallowed down a lump. “I liked you better before.”

She blinked, as though she hadn’t heard me right, as though I were now the one speaking in tongues. “That hurts my feelings.”

Her tone was careless, almost mocking, and slowly, seductively, she pulled the edges of her cape apart and struck an incredibly sexy pose.

“How about now?” she asked. “Do you like me better now?”

I didn’t answer. The point was made. She took my hand as if I were an errant child.

“I do love you, Martin. Even if it sometimes seems I’ve outgrown you. I haven’t. You care for me. You put up with me. When I’m ugly, you always take me back.”

“You’re not ugly,” I said.

“No?”

“Marry me, Vexing.”

She laughed. “You’d take a woman like me?”

“And a child. Let’s have a child too.”

The laughter died. “A child?” She shivered at the thought. “That would ruin me. A child would be my doom.”

The Fertile Moon

smiles on some, but it didn’t on us. Despite her initial refusal and deep misgivings, Vexing agreed to give motherhood a try. But conception was not in the cards. Although she denied it, I’m sure she was relieved, as the prospect of pregnancy had from the outset filled her with dread. Models bearing children were, by and large, models on the way out. In the industry, motherhood was tantamount to retirement. But beyond the threat to her career, children, it seemed, were not to her liking, just as short people were not, as if in some other life she had had her fill. Paradoxically, she was able to convey the maternal role with stunning conviction. The covers she did for Family Living, Good Housekeeping and Ladies’ Home Journal were some of her best ever: they literally glowed with that competence, contentment and love that epitomize motherhood. It broke my heart to see that look and know it was manufactured.

I wanted children. Always had. There was never a doubt in my mind. We went through all the tests, and the finger pointed at Vexing. Not infertile exactly, but “challenged.” Her eggs seemed to kill any sperm that came close to them. Not just mine, but anyone else’s (this confirmed in test tubes), a quirk of nature for which she expressed regret, though once again I suspect that secretly she was glad. She didn’t want a family, except for once or twice a year, when the idea would take hold of her, and for a brief time she could think of nothing else. I took these rare opportunities to make my case for alternative solutions to our infertility problem. On one such occasion I broached the subject of artificial insemination.

“We’ve tried that,” she said. “A million times.”

“I was thinking of something different.”

“Like what?”

I hesitated, then blurted it out. “A surrogate mother.”

It was a gaffe. I meant to say “egg,” and I corrected myself, but it was too late.

“No way.”

“You choose her, Vexing. Any woman you want. We’ll do it all in a test tube. I won’t come near her.”

“Forget it.”

“Why?”

“Because it offends me.”

“That’s the furthest thing from my mind.”

She regarded me with suspicion. “What if no woman agrees?”

“You’re world-famous. You get hundreds of letters and emails a week. Who wouldn’t agree?”

“I wouldn’t,” she said. “For one.”

“Think about it. Please.”

“This makes me sad, Martin. Are you tired of me? Have I ceased fulfilling your precious needs? Are we drifting apart?”

I knew the tone. Foolishly, I told the truth.

“All of it. Yes. A little.”

She looked at me with death in her eyes and threw a hairbrush. It missed my head and broke a mirror.

“Seven years bad luck,” I said under my breath.

“I don’t believe in luck,” she replied coldly. “You know that. I believe in preparation and vigilance. And loyalty, Martin. If the thought of leaving me continues to enter your selfish little brain, I suggest you squelch it. Because while you might have a child with another woman . . . heavens, you might have a hundred . . . darling, you won’t have me.”

She could be cruel, yes. She could be heartless. But she was other things too, and in the broken mirror she looked like a broken woman. But then, when I looked at her straight on, directly, she was nothing less than she ever was, beautiful to me.

“I don’t want you to go,” I said. “All I want—all I ever want—is for us to be happy.”

“How nice of you to say. How sweet. Me, too. That’s what I want. Let’s see if we can make it happen. Let’s try.”

The Search for Happiness

was not a great success. Our marriage had its moments, but for a match seemingly made in heaven, it felt an awful lot like hell. Frank was continually on me to take a mistress, while Carol brought me books on separation and divorce. Mother was the only one who was unaffected by our marital discord, chiefly because she forgot us from one visit to the next.

The years went by. Mom died, Carol took an advertising job in New York, Frank finally found it in his heart to marry Shirley and father a couple of kids. Vexing grew older, and her star fell. Not by any means completely, but to a person at the top, any movement is apt to be down. She became increasingly insecure in her looks and as a result, increasingly vain. She got back in the habit of popping pills, which made her even more difficult than usual. She was, by turns, restless, aimless, grandiose, desperate and mean. She had spasms of possessiveness, where she craved everything both within and beyond her reach, followed by crashing fits of despair. She went on binges and purges, lost weight, composure, hair. Mirrors, which had always been allies, became enemies. She would stiffen at the sight of herself, and her eyes would narrow. At other times they would fill with suffering and longing, and she would stare for minutes on end, as though lacking the strength to turn away.

I pitied her, though perhaps I should have saved some pity for myself. I also lacked strength, in my case, to turn away from her. My dear, beloved Vexing. I longed for something too, something that seemed lost to us.

I took to spending time in the cottage, which had become a refuge for me. The trees and birds and sunlight could still work their magic, and for short periods of time I was able to stave off despondency and hopelessness. I had never seen fit to decorate the inside, but now the bare walls, as if metaphors of our barren marriage, became oppressive. I had to do something, and one day in a fit of nostalgia the answer came.

It took a week to cull through the magazines and another to cut, arrange and tack up. When I was done, every surface, including the ceiling, was covered with pictures of her. Vexing the ingénue, the vixen, Vexing the girl-next-door, the starlet, the fresh-scrubbed housewife. Vexing the princess, radiant and happy. Vexing the athlete, racquet in hand. Vexing the pin-up. The dreamboat. Vexing my lover, my queen, my wife.

I should have known better. More to the point, I should have been a better man. On the other hand, bombs exist to explode. After a terrible fight one morning I fled to the cottage. A few minutes later, there was a knock at the door. Vexing stood on the porch in tears.

“I need help, Martin. I don’t know what to do. I can’t stand it anymore.”

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen her cry, and I took her inside and held her, feeling a closeness that had long been missing, a warmth and a fledgling hope. Gradually, she calmed down, and by degrees became aware of her surroundings. At first she was puzzled by what she saw. Then shocked. Then outraged.

“Jesus. Look at this. How dare you!”

Instinctively, I defended myself. “It’s my scrapbook of you. My photo album. I didn’t mean anything by it. It’s a tribute.”

“It’s sick,” she said. “I don’t believe this.”

She walked the length of the room then back, halting at this or that photograph, shaking her head.

“So,” she said at length. “This is what you want.”

“What I want is for us to be happy again.”

“Such happiness,” she said. “You’re a cruel man, Martin.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for you to see this.”

“You loved me then. Why not try to love me a little more now?”

I swallowed hard. “I’d love you more if you loved yourself.”

She took that in. “If I loved myself, I wouldn’t be who I am. But if I wasn’t who I am, you would never have found me. Leaf and branch, sun and moon, cock and cunt. We were made for each other, Martin.” She glanced around the room, and a gleam came into her eye. “Perhaps there’s life to this marriage yet.”

The next six months were the most extraordinary of my life. Vexing made an appointment with Dr. Aymen, whom she had seen for various nervous conditions through the years, to get a referral to a reliable plastic surgeon. She planned to do the whole works, starting at her legs and working up to her face, bottom to top, the natural direction, she said, of all regenerating things. She wanted a good technician but also someone with taste and style.

“I want the whole nine yards,” she told Dr. Aymen. “Veins, butt, belly, boobs, face. Stem to stern. I understand they can do just about anything these days.”

Dr. Aymen agreed that this was true. There were surgeons eager to do this work. “Technicians, as you say. I suppose some consider themselves artisans. To me it seems a drastic approach.”

“No lectures, Doctor. Please.”

“You misunderstand me. There is an alternative to the knife. A new drug. I’m involved in the study. It’s reached phase two trials.” He opened a drawer of his desk and pulled out a folder. “QP 1500. It’s a combination telomerase and anaplastic conjuncticator.”

We had no idea what he was talking about, but then, before Hiroshima, few knew of the atomic bomb. For the next twenty minutes he regaled us with what, at the time, seemed pure fiction. He used words like cellular senescence, apoptosis, feedback control and defined homeostasis. Telomeric sequencing. Base pair deletion. Cellular immortality.

Cancer cells, it seemed, had a way of staying alive indefinitely, and it had to do with something called a telomere. They now had a drug that worked on this telomere, as well as on the mechanism of cellular differentiation. It kept cells from growing old, and miraculously, it didn’t cause cancer.

“It’s been tested in mice, sheep and albino rabbits,” the doctor declared. “We have animals that not only have halted the aging process but have literally reversed it, recovering eyesight, olfaction, mobility and sexual function. These animals are shedding years from their lives before our eyes. In a very real sense, they are growing younger by the minute.”

He shook his head at the wonder of it. “Do you understand? Do you see what this is? The Holy Grail. The Fountain of Youth. The end, perhaps, of illness as we know it. The beginning of a new age.”

The thought robbed him of words, and for an instant I saw him in a different light, not as a stuffy professional but as a younger man, a boy, starry-eyed and immersed in a world of the imagination.

Several moments passed before he continued.

“We need volunteers. Human volunteers. Would you be interested?”

“Are you kidding?” said Vexing.

Recalling the good doctor’s propensity to exaggerate, I remained guarded. “Did you understand anything he said?”

“Does it matter? Did you?”

“Not much,” I admitted. “How come we haven’t heard of this drug?”

“You will soon,” said Dr. Aymen. “Once you do, I can’t promise supply will be able to keep up with demand.” He let that sink in, then continued. “You certainly needn’t participate in the study if you’d rather not. The choice is fully yours.”

Vexing shot me a glance and proceeded to take control of the interview, questioning the doctor at length about the drug’s effectiveness, its risks and expense. Nothing was certain and therefore, nothing promised. The cost of the drug and any treatment necessitated by its use were covered by the study, which was funded jointly by Bristol-Myers, Microsoft, Revlon and the Department of Defense. Weekly blood tests, as well as periodic measurements of bone density, skin turgor and resilience, arterial plaque, dental erosion, and other markers of aging, were required. There would be psychological tests, PET scans, electron microscopy, MRIs, cell cultures and nuclear probes. PCR, RIA, Western blot, Eastern blot, ELISA and GIR. Everything they could think of would be done. The Holy Grail was not a product to go begging.

“No problem,” said Vexing.

“Sign here,” said Aymen. “And here, and here, and here. You too,” he told me. “Our witness.”

“Beneficiary,” said Vexing.

I told her that was cruel, and she patted my hand. “Now now, dear. That’s only if I die.”

She didn’t, thank God. On the contrary. The pills actually worked. In a month she looked, felt and acted ten years younger. In two months, twenty. By three, she was, in every way, the creature I had found in the garden, half girl, half woman, all sunshine and beauty and light. It was truly a miracle, and our happiness during this period was marred only by my anxiety that she would keep growing younger, that the process, once started, would somehow continue, with or without the pills, and I would be forced to watch in horror as my beloved went from woman to girl to infant to . . . what? Fetus? Ovum? Nothingness? Was this miracle drug to become nothing more than a new form of death?

It was a needless worry. She didn’t keep getting younger, and she didn’t die. What did happen was in some ways worse.

She fell asleep.

I should have foreseen it. If I’d had even an ounce of intelligence, I would have known. It happened quite suddenly: one moment she was animated and gay, the next in a deep swoon from which I couldn’t wake her. I immediately stopped the medication. I called Dr. Aymen, who, over the course of the next few months, tried everything he could think of—drugs, shock, plasmapheresis, peri-cochlear stimulation, pulsed GHB infusions. Nothing worked. She didn’t so much as stir. Nor age. Nor change in any fashion. Day in and out she stayed the same, as if suspended.

I cared for her night and day, bathing her, dressing her, doing her hair as I thought she’d like it, rubbing lotion into her skin. Sometimes I read to her, sometimes told her stories, often simply sat. Months passed.

Years.

I turned sixty, then seventy, birthdays I celebrated in solitude. I ceased thinking of Vexing as a lover or a wife; my feelings for her became more those of a father for his daughter. I began to worry what would happen to her after my death.

I looked into nursing homes, but we were poor now and couldn’t afford them. The drug study, which by rights should have covered the expense, had long since been terminated because of an untoward number of “adverse outcomes.” The lawsuits had been settled, but because Vexing remained technically alive, we received nothing. I thought of setting up a foundation—there were certainly people who would sympathize with her plight and more who would pay to see the formerly famous model in state. But the idea of putting her on display was both repugnant and profane to me, just as the idea of her having to alter herself for my benefit should have been in the first place. I had been wrong to have asked it of her, wrong to have wished it. Guilt and loneliness dogged my days. Perhaps if she could have spoken, she would have forgiven me. But what would it have mattered if I couldn’t forgive myself?

At a certain point I moved her from the house to the cottage, which was quieter and more detached from the world at large, much in the way that I had become. I tore down the photographs and in their place hung her favorite gowns. This was an improvement. The walls glowed with their rich fabrics, and in the sunlight, which reflected off all the tiny mirrors, they glittered and danced.

On the day I turned seventy-five, Frank paid me a visit. He was as spirited as ever: despite two hip operations, he still found a way to walk with a swagger. His face, like mine, was creased with age, and like me, he had hairs sticking out his nose and ears. Unlike me, he seemed to be enjoying life.

The first thing he did on entering the house was clap me on the back. “Happy birthday, old man. How’re you doing?”

“Struggling along, Frank, thanks for asking. You?”

“Doing fine, Marty. Couldn’t be better. And the little lady? How’s she?”

“The same,” I said. “I’m worried.”

“You’re always worried.”

“Well excuse me, but now I happen to be more worried. I’m seventy-five. How many years do I have left? What’s going to happen to her when I’m gone?”

“I’d say that’s out of your hands, buddy.”

“I can’t just leave her.”

Frank, bless his heart, seemed to understand. He squeezed my arm.

“It’s a tough one. But look, Marty. As long as you got breath, you got life. You got time. The point is, you got to make the most of what you got.”

“I want her to wake up, Frank. Even if it’s just for a day. An hour. Jesus, I’d take five minutes.”

He gave me a wink. “Sometimes five minutes is all it takes.”

Good old Frank.

He asked to see her. It had been quite a while since he’d paid his respects.

I led him to the cottage, where we stood, aptly it seemed, on opposite sides of the bed.

“So what have you tried?” he asked.

“Tried?”

“To wake her up, Marty. What?”

“Everything,” I said. “I’ve tried everything.”

“Lately,” said Frank. “What have you tried lately?”

“I don’t know. I talk to her. I move her arms and legs so she doesn’t get stiff. I read to her.”

“Reading puts people to sleep, Marty. Maybe that’s the problem right there. You need to get more involved. More active. Give the lady some stimulation.”

“Like what?”

“Tell her you love her. Tell her she’s wasting time. You got something for her, but you’re not going to be around forever. Kiss her.”

“I have kissed her,” I said. “I do.”

“Sure you have,” said Frank. “Where? On the forehead? The cheek? Little get well pecks. I love you, don’t worry, everything’ll be all right kisses. Like I used to do to the kids.”

“This is embarrassing.”

“You’ve got to be bold, Marty. Nothing’s going to work if you don’t believe in yourself.”

My big brother. Giving me a pep talk. I was touched.

“So what do you suggest?”

“I suggest you kiss her. On the lips. Like you mean it. Like you care. Like it matters what happens next.”

“She’s asleep,” I said.

“So?”

“It seems wrong.”

He threw up his hands. “She’s your wife, for chrissake. Kiss the woman, before I do it myself.”

So I did. I kissed her.

“Thataboy,” said Frank. “Breathe some life into the old girl.”

I tried. First tentatively, then with more gusto. More passion, you could say. Life, heart, soul—whatever I had I tried to breathe into my Vexing.

Nothing happened.

Frank was undaunted. “Now kiss her tittie.”

I looked at him.

“Her tittie,” he repeated. “Trust me on this, Marty.”

With trembling fingers I undid the first button of her nightgown. And the second. Then I stopped.

“I don’t think so, Frank. Maybe later.”

For a moment I thought he was going to ridicule me. But he didn’t.

“Sure,” he said. “In private. No problem.”

I led him out of the cottage.

“You did good,” he told me. “Keep it up. Every day. Don’t just tell her, show her you love her. Show her what she’s worth. What she’s missing. You do like that, no girl in her right mind is going to stay asleep.”

So that was Frank. Carol was next. In honor of my birthday, she flew in from New York. She had put on weight, which was a relief to me. All her life she tended to run thin, due, I suspected, to the same chemistry that made her such an indefatigable go-getter, but thinness at fifty, or even sixty, is not the same as thinness at seventy, which was when I’d last seen her. At seventy thinness becomes frailty, or worse, the specter of some horrible wasting disease. But now her face was fleshed out, and her cheeks had the blush of health. Business was prospering, as was her marriage, her third. She asked after mine, and in reply I took her to the cottage. Upon entering, she had a quick look around, puzzled, it seemed, by the sight of the gowns on the walls, then approached the love of my life.

“So,” she said, “she refuses to wake up. She insists on remaining asleep.”

“Insist? I’m not sure I’d put it like that. It’s been twenty years, Carol. This isn’t exactly news.”

“I mean, since your renewed efforts. Your re-dedication toward raising her from wherever she is.”

I felt the beginnings of embarrassment. “You talked to Frank.”

She acknowledged this.

“And?”

“He thought you were acting a little strange. A little desperate maybe.”

“What made him say that?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe because you took his advice.”

This was meant as a joke, but I wasn’t in a laughing mood. “I am desperate.”

“Why, Martin? Why all of a sudden now?”

“I’m going to die soon,” I told her. “I can feel it. I want to talk to her again. I want another chance to make it work.”

“So talk to her,” said Carol, ever the champion of free speech. “Maybe she hears everything you say. Maybe she gets it.”

“I want her awake. I want her to move. To smile. To speak.” My voice caught. “I want her to love me, Carol. I want to know that she cares.”

“That’s a lot of wants, Marty.”

“Just one really. I want another chance. I want to show her I can be a better person.”

She sighed and took my hand. “Don’t we all.”

She spent the night, and the next morning said she’d been thinking about our conversation. On a purely practical note—and my sister was nothing if not practical—she advised me to get a lawyer. If I was so sure I was going to die, I needed to update my will.

This, of course, was the crux. My will.

We were sitting on the cottage porch having coffee. Carol was reading the business section of the paper, while I was leisurely making my way through the obituaries.

“You want to know what I really think?” she said.

I was on McLamb, Yvette, beloved wife of Charles, devoted mother of Irene, Frederick and Diane, adored grandmother of Adam, James, Portia, Kiki and Maurice, cherished great-grandmother of Laura, Gregory, Thomas . . .

I glanced up. “Sure. What do you really think?”

“Put her in a nursing home.”

It took a moment for me to shift gears. “You’re talking about Vexing?”

“Of course Vexing.”

“I don’t have the money.”

“I’ll lend you the money. Do it, Martin. The sooner the better. Especially if you’re going to die. Which I doubt. And what makes you say so?”

“I’m seventy-five, Carol.”

“Are you sick?”

“No.”

“Are you thinking of killing yourself?”

“Not that I know of. On the other hand, I don’t see the sense in needless prolongation. Life at this point is what? C+? B–? That’s about an even shot that death is going to be better.”

She didn’t like that. “I thought you wanted another chance.”

“Barring that.”

“You know what, Martin? You’re not desperate. You’re depressed. You should see a doctor.”

I folded the paper. “So, I should put her in a nursing home. Tell me something, Carol. How does a person do that to someone he loves?”

“We put away Mother.”

“That was different. Mother was senile. She needed round-the-clock attention and care. She was like a baby that way.”

“Exactly,” said Carol, as if I’d finally seen the light. “A big baby.”

She had never liked Vexing, had thought her spoiled and self-centered and generally unsuitable as a mate. The current situation did nothing to alter her opinion, and I felt pressed to my wife’s defense.

“She’s a victim, Carol.”

“Victim schmictim. She’s had everything a person could want.”

“She lost what she had.”

“What did she lose? Her looks? Her fame? What?”

“Both. Among other things.”

“Then give her to posterity, Martin. She’ll be famous again.”

“What does that mean, ‘posterity’?”

“I don’t know. A research foundation. A medical facility. Hell, give her to an art museum. They can put her on display, make her the center of attention, just like she always wanted. Design some new outfits for her, maybe work up a whole new line. She’d love it. You think she was famous before. How famous do you think she’ll be when the world sees her like that?”

“It sounds awful.”

“She’d be taken care of, Martin. That’s what you want. Make the plans now, and you’ll have that peace of mind. You’ll have that security. And you know something else? I bet you’ll be a happier man. She’s a burden, Martin. When burdens are gone, life has a way of taking a turn for the better.” She gave a self-deprecating little laugh. “I’ve been through two divorces. Trust me on this.”

In the End

I took her advice. Or part of it. And Frank’s, I took part of his, too.

I kissed Vexing all over. With each kiss I gave her my love. I said it aloud: I love you. It flowed from my lips and my heart. Then, with the same shovel I had used to dig her out, I dug a hole to put her back where I had found her.

I did it at night, when no one was looking. During the day I covered the hole with a tarp. At my age the job wasn’t easy and took a full week. When I was done, I lined the hole with her gowns. I made sure that the mirrors and sequins faced inward, so that if she did happen to wake up and open her eyes, and if those eyes could pierce darkness and dirt, what she’d see was herself. It was three in the morning when I finished this final part. The moon was high in the sky. The gowns glittered softly in its pale light.

Not a hole, I thought, a nest.

I went into the cottage, hoisted her over my shoulder and carried her outside. Gently, I laid her in the ground. The effort left me breathless. Her face was white as snow.

She was no longer Vexing to me, if ever she truly had been. She was the woman of my dreams, and I wished her well. Some day, I hoped, a new and better prince would come along. That was my parting prayer as I lifted the shovel and covered her with dirt.