a pain like that, but even with your elongated sense of time, a few days was enough for it to grow, as fast and insidious as a weed. People smiled, they cut into lunch lines, they perfected the tendencies of a psychopath: Yes, her ass is on the street tomorrow -- Oh hey, how are you doing? It is not the stratagems that aggravated you, not even the venality, but the justifi-cations, the rationalizations, the accoutrements of denial, the disconnect between action and awareness. Your head was ready to burst through your skull at that, and yet that pain was a pleasure in its sheer newness, as if you were on the verge of discovery. That was a time ago, and now your vision shifts from that office window to the downstairs café you often spent your nights, where you took pleasure from the rain that stained the pavement, and appreciated the hollow footsteps of thieves and lovers, and you would help stack up the chairs at the end of Lin Page 7 the evening, just to soak in a few more moments, and catch a glimpse of the sky, just as you are doing now, as you turn to face the sliver of dark emptiness that you are falling away from, and just like that, your descent has been halted, and now you are accelerating upward, towards the pinhole stars and what lies behind them, and your entire being is seized with expectation -- This could be it -- but no, the path to the heavens remains closed, and you are settling like a feather on the roof you fell from, arm outstretched over the ledge, the cold concrete an affront to your back, crying in frustration at the wordless black above. She has lived by the sea for years, and you visit her often. In her obstinate refusal to change, her desire to sink into her own oblivion, she has remained ageless. Visitors come and go, some stay for a time, but this temple, like this woman, is merely a stop. Some take pity on her and bear