The question is never "did you lose anyone?", it's always "who did you lose?" or "how much did you lose?" In time the stories blur into a sameness, too much bitterness, too much pain. There's always a loss: family, friends, loved ones, livelihood, home, sanity. No one's been left unmarred. No one will ever be the same.

When the night falls, whether it's with the speed of winter or the slow syrupy crawl of summer, that's when the stories come out, told over flickering flashlights and the sputter of matches. Some stories are told through a shimmering haze of smoke, because drugs are the only way to blunt the pain of the memories. Others are told with one hand clinging to the neck of a bottle for dear life, a lifeline between here and sanity. A few are told in flat monotones, quickly and without help, and sometimes those are the worst of all, the most painful to hear. Sometimes there's no blunting the pain, no hiding it, no disguising it, no avoiding it, just letting it rip, letting it fly. Sometimes the words come quickly, flowing like water, and the flood can destroy anything in its wake. Sometimes it takes the verbal equivalent of a crowbar for the story to come out, but it always does, because if the pain isn't shared it breaks them inside. Everyone's grateful for a kind listener with endless patience.

There's the big blond man with the faded air of leadership hanging over him in tatters. He loves to live on the edge, mixing his drugs with hard alcohol to make the pain bearable. He's a son of Middle America, a culture so distinct that it needs its own capital letters. Once upon a time he was the pride of America as a whole, its greatest hero after destroying its greatest villain. But that was before, he says, his voice half-pleading. That was before I knew what kind of lies they were spinning. I wanted to believe them, so I believed them just as much as everyone else. But it's hard to believe a girl loves you when she walks in kissing her girlfriend. His mind was left in ruins for years afterwards, and it took a long time for him to fit the pieces back in anywhere. But it's clear that not all the pieces went into their proper slots. I have to kill that bitch, he says, bloodshot eyes narrowed. She took years off my life, she mind-fucked me so bad I don't know if it has an end, and she tried to kill the woman I fell in love with. With glee, he recounts the things he's done to rebel against the system, talking just as seriously about switching the music in a radio station's playlist as about getting kids drunk to break the programming as about killing federal agents and members of the armed forces. His sense of proportion is completely shot, his sense of humor gone into some new dark dimension, but his sense of duty is still fully intact. He's ruthlessly single-minded, bent on the destruction of the system. Once upon a time, we used to rebel against the Man, he says with a laugh. Now we fight against the Woman. Guess women's lib got somewhere after all. With that he starts to cackle, and that's always a good cue that the story's over.

There's the black guy with the goofy grin and the long white hair. He's always got a line to make everyone around him start laughing. His best friend is pot, he says so himself, and it's been there for him when no one and nothing else was. He came from the controlled territories, saved because of pot. His memories are sketchy, but he tells them with a certain gusto. He was married once, back home, but even before disaster struck the marriage was going sour. She didn't like my weed, he says. She never did, but a man's got needs, just like she had needs for a new pair of shoes. But they still loved each other, they put up with each other's addictions. But when Britney came into the world and sang a siren song, his wife was lost to him forever. I mighta been high, but I'm not stupid, he says, punctuating the line with a cackle. Sista comes home bullshittin' me about baseball, something ain't right, man. He doesn't say how he escaped the heartland and went to New York, but there's always the sense that it's a hell of a story- and that if he ever decides to tell it, it won't be the truth. Sometimes there's a dark cast to his face that doesn't jive with his regular attitude. Those times, he stares off into the night, eyes fixed on a point of his choosing, hands crushing whatever he happens to be holding. I gotta kill that bitch, he says in a voice that has undertones to it, subtleties that aren't usually present. Bitch ruined my life, I gotta fuck her up to make up for it. That's when it becomes clear that this is what he's like when he's sober and serious, and it's easy to see that his good humor is a front, the only way to keep him from breaking out and doing something drastic. He's one of New York's madmen, yes, but there are levels and levels to madness, and one level is all that keeps the other from breaking loose.

There's a woman with hair like spun gold, and she always travels with a brown-haired beauty. They share everything, including the telling of their stories, because their tales are as intertwined as they are. The blonde leans back into her lover's arms and talks about watching her life fall apart around her. She lost friends to the culture of hate, saw people turn against her who had once adored her. Her words falter, but the brunette pushes her forward, say it, dear, you need to get this out there. She sighs, hair falling in her eyes; her lover brushes it away with a gentle touch. Before the brunette, there was a blonde in her life, a woman who could pass as her sister and often did to save face, and who helped protect her when the government tried to invade New York. They told me I could still play, she says, her voice shaking, they told me they'd let me play as long as I wasn't with that filthy dyke anymore. They'd see to it I couldn't get them in any more trouble, and then they shot her right in front of me. I still see it in my dreams, and when she says that she turns her face into her lover's shoulder so as to not think about it anymore, and the salty taste of tears fills the night air. The brunette's face is twisted with rage. Fuck America, she says. Half of those assholes would have done the same thing on their own. So what if we take down the system? They'll just go holy shit, can't believe we let that happen, and go back to doing the same damn thing. We're all wrecking ourselves for these people, and they could care less. She tosses back a beer, tosses the bottle away carelessly. What's the fucking point, she wants to know. What's the point in freedom if you have to be drugged out of your mind to enjoy it? I'm not throwing my mind away for those bastards. And the blonde always strokes her hair when she says this, tries to reassure her that things aren't really that bad. In the end, they kiss and make up, and it doesn't matter what the world thinks as long as they have each other.

There's a woman with hair black as a raven's wing, but she always says it's brown, despite testimony from everyone who doesn't happen to be toked up at the moment. She always sits gracefully, dangerous substance of her choice held carefully in her right hand. Sometimes she shares the pot brownies or the joints that are passed around the group like candy. Sometimes her hand holds a cheap beer, and sometimes she tells the story bare. New York, she says, and the name comes out like an epithet. New York makes them addicted and weak, and even when they're safe they can't let go of their security blankets. She sounds proud of this when she tells the story without aids. She has the faintest hint of an accent, one that's hard to place. She also has, or used to have, a twin sister, and they were so alike that their parents even mixed them up sometimes. After a drag, or a swig, or just a deep breath, she admits that they were supposed to destroy the supercomputer known by the pop name. I was the backup, she says, and my sister was supposed to get into the system. It got into her instead. I think she's dead. She's still moving and talking, but that's not her inside. She's just another piece of the damned computer, and I miss who I used to know. The black-brown-haired woman always leans back at this point, rests her hands behind her head, looks up at the stars. Part of me is missing, she says pensively, her voice quiet and soft. Some places, they believe that twins are impossible, that there's only one soul at a birth and it can't be given to different people. So they're really the same person in two different bodies. I thought that was crazy, but I can't think properly without her. Sometimes I think she's in my head, and when the woman says 'she' it's not her twin that she's talking about. She wears her grief strangely well; it seems to be something she was waiting for all her life, something that she was born to.

There's a tall man with a melancholy air, a Westerner garbed in the trappings of the Far East, and his languages blur together as he skillfully tells his story, Jersey-boy accent tainting his Chinese and his English coming out tonally. It's clear that he's not comfortable in his skin, that he no longer knows who he really is. He stares blankly at the empty beer bottle in his hand with haunted brown eyes that have seen deep into the heart of Britney's darkness. I left the girl I loved for the woman I hate, he says brokenly. I had no idea if I'd ever see her again, or even if I wanted to. I used to be so scared that I'd come back to her and hug her, and she'd be blonde, looking at me like a stranger, giggling just like the other idiots. I found out she was dead and she'd never given up, instead. And that's better, it feels better. He rakes his fingers through his coal-black hair, and for a second he lingers on the untrimmed ends, a wistful smile forming on his face as his hand drops. I still see her sometimes, he says, it's crazy but I see her, I hear her voice, I feel her touch and taste her kiss. I'd give up everything to have her back, and when he says that, the steel in his voice wilts and melts, and it's clear that he does mean everything and anything, even America's freedom; as long as he had her and a place to hide, he really would stop caring about the disaster that has befallen America. It's no flaw, or if it is, it's only because it's a virtue taken too far. But there's still fire in his eyes and rage in his voice as he swears to bring down Britney, come whatever. Consciously, he fears death the same way any rational human being would, but there's a darkness inside him that secretly doesn't care either way, a shadow that longs to join the people he loves and lost. It fuels him in his fight, allows him to take more risks than he would if he were thinking rationally, but at the same time it's a weakness that could be fatal.

There's a young man, blond-haired, blue-eyed, dressed to the Channel 1 nines, the kind of boy who normally dreams about Britney or the million clones of herself that she's created through her whispers. But the woman in his arms is as black as the night, long hair wild and frizzy, eyes the color of chocolate fixed on her beloved. The love they share is more potent than acid, more intoxicating than vodka, more fulfilling than Britney's siren song; it's the only thing that can keep them free. We just fade into the background for most of them, she says of white society. They don't want to see us, don't want to hear us, don't care about anything except what we can do to make them richer or keep them amused. If they see us at all, we're not even human. Funny how those who don't believe in evolution make use of it. Her words are bitter, and her lover holds her close, caressing her hand and running a finger down her cheek. He looks up and sighs. Some of us got lucky, some of us could see through all of *her* little clones. So many people don't look for something different. I got lucky. I was someone looking for something different, and she's as different as they come. Even then I couldn't see her until she was right in my face. Both of them smile ruefully, and she picks up the story smoothly. That blonde bitch fears us more than she fears two women making love. That just makes her stronger. We show people what they couldn't see before. We show them something that's more real than anything she can give them. The tender look they share speaks volumes about their bond; their love is stronger for all the trials they've endured. Unlike so many couples who fear the stress and strain, these two young people have matured because of it, and something about the way he holds her and the way she looks into his eyes says that they'll never return to the paths that Britney laid out for them.

There's another redhead, hair crimson as heart's blood, her face still wearing the ghost of a smile underneath her permanent frown. She claims she doesn't need her senses changed, but a needle vanishes whenever someone talks to her. Her voice has the remnant of a Southern drawl, just enough there that people avoid her because of the possibility of infection. It's not my fault, she laughs, I came from Alabama, no jokes please. Left there soon's I could. She talks about a cross-country odyssey that came even before the rise of the right wing, always running from what turned out to be one red state to another. I was in Phoenix when they came for me, she says, her drawl slowing the words dramatically. Woke me up in the middle of the night with shotgun blasts. Looked out the window and there was mama and big sis cussin' up a storm and turnin' my ears red. They said I was a shame to them, an embarrassment, that killin' me was the only way to save the family honor. I ain't stopped runnin' since, least until I got here. Some buddies and I tried hidin' in San Francisco, but that place was a joke. Cross-country was the only escape, and she says that not all of them made it, and her dark eyes turn distant, and even the ghost of her smile vanishes then. Her memories burn like acid, and the casual way in which she says it was her family that tracked her and tried to kill her is enough to shake anyone to the depths of their soul. This is what America's come down to, family trying to kill family, family taking it for granted that family will try to kill them.

There is a man who reeks of the smell of the multicolored rat of Channel 1. His white suit and southern accent make all who view him cringe in fear at first. His face seems familiar and evil, a man who many have detested for years before Britney. They see, though, that he is a simple man at heart, and he calms the fears of those around him with a true taste of the old south - Kentucky bourbon and Tennessee whiskey. He holds a mint julep in his hand as he tells his story with a southern drawl that a Channel 1 idiot would kill to possess. You knew me, but you don't. You saw what I did, I created her in part. I was the first one to beam messages 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, but I told the truth. You may not have wanted to believe the truth, but I told it. Be it how the White Widow was being tortured or how the war in Iraq was a sham, I told the truth, and I had to sacrifice my empire to do it. These clowns, I worked with them, knew what they were doing, and what the effects would be, going all the way back to ADAM 1. I never gave in, I have values, I don't think the human race is a fair trade to make a buck. He never wavers; it's easy tell he is uneasy with some of the homosexuals and blacks but he smiles and takes another sip of his whiskey and his appearance sours somewhat. You have the right to kill me, he says. I helped create her. I hated her all the time, but I stayed there and competed. But I can't support these lies just for the name of money and greed. Money is the root of all that kills, that's in the Bible. They forgot that lil factoid. They forgot about don't kill too, another nasty techincality. They piss on the Bible and tell the people that it's the next great flood and to climb into the ark. Hell, if that's the case, they forgot to pack two of every animal, they just brought asses and sheep. And with this it becomes clear that his anger comes from a knowledge deeper than he lets on, a carnal knowledge of Britney and her operators, and a guilt for not doing more to stop the madness and murder before it started. He was once hated for adding color to what should have stayed black and white. Now he is praised for trying to add color to what has become a black and white wasteland.

There's a young woman with old eyes, a champion whose face and name are known throughout the world for her feats in running. She wears a gold medal like cheap costume jewelry, casually dismissing a prize that others would kill for. Her blonde hair doesn't have the gleam of a Channel 1 idiot's; the color, such as it is, is natural. Her gaze never wavers, her focus never shifts, and she's quite an intimidating presence. The bottle in her hand has something murky in it, strong enough to knock even a strong man back ten paces. She takes a sip and speaks. I was the best. No doubt. No one could catch me, because they all got weaker as I got stronger. I was only myself when I ran. Once I stopped, I was hers again, giggly and airheaded. No one ever knew why, but I'll tell you the truth. It was her. I ran to get away from her. She was the whip at my back. I knew that if I stopped running, I would fall back under. The races got longer and longer, because I had to get away. She came from the border territory, the wild places where anyone could see anything, where Britney's world and the real world touched but never mixed; she still sees both cold steel and green copper, still hears the whispers underneath the lies, and that's the price she pays for coming from the borderline. The city was her birthplace, and she comes back to it like a magnet seeking north. I finally realized Britney was my drug after the marathon. I won that, I earned this. The coaches were so afraid I might hurt myself in practice that they kept me on the premises until the heats. When it came time for the finals, I was too out of it to heat up in time. I only took the bronze, but that bronze got me away from Britney. She sighs, staring into the fire, toying with the medal around her neck. Her name is engraved in the record books, and she is a legend, and she is barely old enough to be in college, and yet she will never race again. Giving up Britney meant giving up her goad; she's still fast enough and smart enough to place well in American competition, but she lacks the competitor's edge that made her the best. She still runs, and she admits quietly that she's terrified that Britney will seize her again, this time never to escape, this time to be just another blonde with just another pair of kids and just another ordinary life. I refuse to be ordinary, she says fiercely, flames burning in her eyes, the reflected fire, the Olympic torch.

There's the pretty little bartender, a woman of autumn with hair the color of a two-year-old penny, and her eyes are narrow and her face thin. She speaks with a joint in her mouth, her words calm and measured from behind the cloud. She walks with a limp, one leg twisted underneath her, and she only ever does things with her right hand. In an even voice, she speaks of the Battle of Times Square and the shots that took her down and crippled her as she saved the life of a stranger. She tells stories of pain and a steady kind of fear, the certain knowledge that America's madness would never bleed into New York but it was a shame this shit was happening somewhere else. This stuff is familiar, she says, inhaling deeply. I grew up around it, she says, I grew up in a red world in a blue state, and blue in red in blue was just too much for them to understand, not when they found me kissing the geometry teacher's daughter out behind the basketball hoop. There's a distance in her eyes when she talks about the love of her life, and a paucity of detail when it comes to an ending; somewhere, she says she still dreams that there's a beautiful woman waiting for her. She still looks hunted, even though she's in the safe zone; her eyes never hold still, even when she's not toked up, her hands fidget with whatever's in sight, she still starts at loud noises. Jumpy and skittish, she's been scarred forever.

The same story always follows her, because she passes her joint to her friend and business partner. With shaggy silver hair and a salt-and-pepper beard, he looks like someone's really cool uncle, or maybe a grandfather, but they swear that he's not a day past forty. He rambles before his tokes, unlike his friend who takes a drag before she says a word. Buried in repetition there's a story, and there's a girl because there's always a girl, a sassy New Yorker of the purest Noo Yawk blood, a girl who charged the federal positions at Times Square even though she didn't have to, and once she did the others followed. He watched her fall, and cradled her body as she died in his arms; the blood from her wounds is still smeared on the jacket he hasn't bothered to do anything with. I didn't take back her engagement ring, he says, even though she was dead I didn't take back her engagement ring because she didn't give it to me and it wasn't right to ask. There's always a long pull on the joint after this one, and the redhead always passes an acerbic comment here about leaving some for her, and he just rolls his eyes and hands her the joint. He loves to talk about the idealized New York of his memories, a city with the will of today's rebellious asylum but the hopes of its past, a place where everyone and anyone could live together without too much friction. This always leads to a discussion of philosophy between the two bartenders. They make a strange couple, or they would if both of them weren't looking for a good woman, this fall woman and this winter man.

There's a swarthy, dark-haired man who's shorter than half the women in the group, his features an ancient mix of cultures. He doesn't speak a word of English- not that he can't, but he refuses to speak the tongue of the conquerors. A bottle of tequila by his side, he unstraps his guitar and immediately gathers a crowd. His tenor voice reaches aching heights and sorrowful lows as he sings in a patois of his people's ancestral speech and the language of those who first invaded his land. The music speaks powerfully enough for those who can't understand his words, but there are layers to his pain. His song tells of a loss of infinite scope, encompassing not only the present, but the past and the future. His people surrendered their language, their customs, and their history to the machine called Britney, bartering away their culture for the homogenity of her culture. His tribe is dead to him, and he is dead to them. The song he sings would be as much gibberish to them as a Japanese opera, even though it is in the language of their culture. He is the last who speaks this dialect, at least until Britney's tyranny is broken. Even then there may be no hope, but he doesn't want to think about that. He never says if he loved and lost, or if he just never loved, but when he finishes speaking of his people as a whole he takes a deep swallow of the tequila, then tunes the guitar to a minor key and sings of his family: his desperately poor parents, the grandmother who told him stories of the past, the great-uncle who taught him to set snares, the brothers who teased him in the way of older brothers everywhere, the younger sister who idolized him, the older sisters who taught him to sing and love music. Every stanza creates a visual feast, a potpourri of memories, and then the beauty of the words is crushed under the weight of the truth; all of this uniqueness was lost when Britney came into the world. It's a poignant song, but it's one that's meant to set the blood to burning, to bring indignation up to a level where action will actually be taken. He manipulates people almost as surely as Britney does, but he does it with their full knowledge and consent.

There's a woman with skin so pale it's clear she hasn't seen the sun in a month of Sundays, and she throws back beer like it's nothing. She's not a small woman, she's no blonde, she curses like a sailor, and she needs her glasses to see much past ten feet, but she still has a fearful, hunted look. I was one of them once, she says, and she's got a voice that maybe could take the roof off the Met if she wanted to. I did everything they told me to. I found a guy in my hometown, I married him, I gave him a boy and a girl, I cooked, I cleaned, I gossiped and giggled. I was throwing out my things from college a couple of years ago when I found a recording I did with one of the musical groups. I put it in- I think it was actually by accident, I meant to put in some pop- and it reminded me that, damn it, I can sing. The more I listened, the more I remembered, and... well, I opened my eyes and I flew out of that life. I came back to New York, and I didn't understand why I left until I knew what had been done to me. She sighs, hanging her head, letting her hands fall empty between her legs, and it takes a while for her to muster up the courage to look back up. Some of it's still there, this weird little whisper in the back of my mind that I can't shake. I'm one of the best altos on the continent, if not in the world, and when I'm not making money with that I'm singing the jazz I love, but I get this feeling sometimes that I shouldn't be doing this because I'm a woman, that I should be at home taking care of a family. I get a little weird sometimes when I see two guys kissing in front of me, and I know I shouldn't, but I do. It's all weird, and it doesn't make sense, and I want it to stop. But when she finally does pick her head back up, she looks as fierce as any of the city's adopted children, as free and as proud as any member of the resistance.

There's a slender woman with a slightly unfocused gaze, but that's only because her glasses are in her shirt pocket, not because there's something wrong with her senses. She sits Indian-style on the floor, a cup of tea or a glass of water by her side; unlike most of those who battle Britney, she keeps herself safe by eschewing everything and anything artificial. The light traces the contours of her face, the folds at the corners of her eyes, and makes her fall of jet-black hair shimmer just so slightly. She seems tired, as if ready to lay down her burden as soon as she can just find the strength. Once upon a time, there were four girls, she says in a narrator's voice. Then one of them died for her city, and there were three girls. Then one of them denounced the city and went home, and then there were two girls. Then one of them went crazy and became a priestess, and then there was one girl. But she wasn't a girl anymore. Too many things had happened to her, and she was a woman. The Asian woman looks up here, and she sighs. And I don't think I'm strong enough to be the last. I can't hold on to four sets of dreams, not when I hardly know what my own are. All I can do is what I think is right, and I have to not wonder if what I think is right, because then I'll spiral down into insanity, and it's just tacky to copy your friends. She tries to keep a poker face, tries to pretend that she doesn't care, but the hurt and the pain are all too clear; as much as she tries to detach, she can't. She does what she can, losing herself in her work, but nothing is ever enough, and it's obvious in the way she carries herself.

There's a beanpole of a woman who smokes like a hippie chimney, and when she shakes her head to clear it, the rainbow beads in her long braids click-clack together like a rhythm section. When she genuinely smiles, the corners of her eyes crinkle up and her whole face lights up with the brilliance of that smile; it's a shame that she so rarely has a reason to smile. Her voice is as deep as she is tall, full of the lyrical tropical music of the Caribbean. She's a nomad, always has been, traveling from country to country as the mood struck her, picking up souvenirs that stay nestled within her mind. Shalom, mon, she says with a straight face. Va bene, eh? Yeah, mon, things are just great when you have to flee the country at every turn and if you're foreign you don't dare come back. Wish I could do that, but my home island is part of America now, loyal if not blonde. So I do what I can, and I thank God we have pride enough to keep our ganja. It's the fear that keeps me from staying, there or here or anywhere. So I run. And her running, her wanderlust coupled with her loyalty, aids the Disciples in their resistance; she shuttles relentlessly from home to home, but there's yet another home she misses, a place sucked early into Britney's ravening maw, a place of wild, mature beauty, just like the woman she secretly loved. She smiles when she talks about the woman she loved, about how she mingled the darkness and the light, about how she was elegant without effort and stubborn without end, but the smile fades away like sunset as the story wears on. Her Bible destroyed her soul, left her body standing, the expatriate says grimly. She moved like she was blind to me, spoke like she was deaf to us, acted like she'd gone mad. And she started to hate herself, and as much as I tried to tell her not to, she wouldn't listen. She ran home and slammed the closet door closed behind her, and all my knocking could not make her open it. I wish I'd been able to save her, at least so I'd know someone could be saved. And even through the smoke, even on the high, it's clear that the woman born to the sun is as down as she can be.

There's an elderly couple in the group, the man fair-skinned with the open features of a Midwesterner, the woman darker with more sharpened features. In her s's and h's, there's a hint that Spanish is her mother tongue, but the cadence of her speech is as New York as they come. We had such high hopes for our chiquita, she says with the echo of old pride. She had my vision and his jump shot. We were sure that she would make us proud. I never wanted her to leave home, but she said that it would be all right, that if she wanted to make it big she had to go to that school. Ay de Dios, if I had known what this would do to her, I would never have let her leave home! She throws back a shot of whiskey so fast that it burns her throat, and her husband continues. All of us ignored the divide between our home and the rest of the country, he says, gently mocking his Great Plains roots. She thought she was going crazy when she heard the whispers, and we thought she was crazy when she told us. What else could we think? Who knew? She begged us to let her come home, she told us that she'd locked herself in her dorm room for three weeks to try to get away, but there was no escape. Even her teammates saw that there was no way out for her. They encouraged her to go under- not because they *wanted* her to turn into a God-loving, gay-hating, giggling blonde, but because they couldn't stand to see her suffering anymore. I don't know if we could have done the same. He takes the whiskey from his wife and wipes the tears from her face. Mija, she sobs, mi querida hija, she never came home to us again. She sent us pictures, even if I couldn't wish this world on mis nietos. She tried to turn us, but I don't think her heart was in it. She gave her life in the end. They said it was because she was- she stops, because she doesn't want to repeat the slur that the government used when they killed her daughter, but it's clear what she means. I knew she wasn't that, but she would rather say she was than tell lies about her best friend. Muerte con honra, death with honor; muerte con orgullo, death with pride; it's clear that in any language, these parents are prouder of how their daughter died than how she spent most of her life.

There's a tall woman with a face that makes everyone do a double-take until they take in the defeated set of her shoulders, her beaten demeanor. Her brown eyes are dark with memories; her braided hair falls like treasure, gold and silver mixed together. She doesn't seem to have the strength in her to lift a bottle, or the will to smoke a joint. She looks at nothing in particular when she tells her story. I wasn't always like this, she says in a soft, almost inaudible voice. I had strength once in my beautiful girl. Did you ever see her? Black hair, blue eyes, did you ever see my beautiful girl? She loved me and I loved her, but she fell in love with God, and she told me she couldn't be with me anymore, couldn't be a filthy sinner. There was a man who had said he would marry her and take her away from the city, and she would take him up on his offer. I followed her when she left to meet him down by the river. I hid and listened when they talked. He said he couldn't marry her until she proved that she was no longer a dyke but an honest woman who had seen the light of God. So my blue-eyed girl lay down for him and became a blue-eyed whore. He took her and she screamed. Then he said that she'd been saved, that when she died she would go to Heaven, and why should she wait. He shoved her head in the water and held her down. The broken woman focuses her gaze here, staring at her hands. I couldn't move, as much as I wanted to. She didn't fight him. She let him kill her so she could go to Heaven. Without her in my life, there didn't seem to be a point to anything. I stayed where I was and waited to die, not eating, not sleeping, not moving, barely able to breathe for the tightness in my chest. A kid, a baby zookeeper, found me and brought me to the Lady's temple. He forced me to eat and gave me a reason to live. He was such a cute, innocent kid, I couldn't bear to let him down. She leans back and smiles, and here she admits that she still can't let him down, even though he's not a kid anymore, even though he's not just a zookeeper but the High Priest, a teenager who wields as much power in the city as any of the power brokers. He guided her, and now she guides him. That's the way these things go.

All of them have too much sorrow on their minds to notice that the listener never tells her story. She passes among them silently and only in the night, a gentle smile that hints to them that better times are ahead, an ethereal touch so light it might not be there at all, a pair of kind brown-green eyes that never look away no matter how horrible the words are. She's there for all of them, every night; no one really notices that she's never around during the day, assuming that she's elsewhere. Even if she wanted to she couldn't put her story into words, because it hasn't reached an ending yet. But she knows where all these people are coming from. She's watched her family subverted by the enemy, her friends murdered or turned into brainwashed drones, the love of her life dead on the streets of New York, everything she dreamed of left in ruins. There are a few bits of her old life left, but they've been twisted beyond recognition, and this hurts the worst. She grieves for them all indiscriminately, the dead for dying, the living for living; she mourns the mad for what they've lost, the sane for what they refuse to give up. But she does it all in silence, because her role is not to speak, but to listen; this was what she was born to do. That's why she's here of all places. This is where she needs to be, and where she will remain until this fight is over.