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little incident?”
    “Before you started drinking.” The word hit me like a brick. She continued to talk, but it rolled off me like water on a slick surface. There was a liquor store on the corner, and another on the corner after that. Liquor was everywhere. It was pervasive, and not just here in Sin City, either. I spotted an ad for some tarted-up booze, Chivas Regal or some other stuff I couldn’t afford. I remembered the smoky scent of a good scotch, the warm assurance as it glided down my throat.
    “Lisa… could you stop the car?”
    “You can’t drink, Susan. Not at all. Not even once.”
    “I need… something. I can’t… everything… it’s all…”
    “I’ll stay with you tonight.”
    “You don’t have to.”
    “I’m not asking-I’m telling. I’ll stay with you.”
    “I’m not going to drink.”
    “Then you won’t mind my being there.”
    “I don’t need a babysitter.”
    “I’ve heard the first night is the hardest. For people in your situation.”
    So that’s what I’d become. A situation.
    I closed my eyes and tried to conjure up the memory of David just as I’d seen him that morning, but it wouldn’t come. At best, I got a turbid glimmer, a toothy smile, a dimpled chin. Pieces of the whole.
    It seemed I had nowhere to go and no one to see. Nothing to do. Nothing to live for.
    The throbbing in my left wrist intensified. Beneath the bandage, it was sending me a message.
    If ever there was a girl who deserved a drink, it was me.
     
    He lifted his spade and began to dig. The soil was soft and loose, as he had known it would be. It was only about two feet deep, but that would be sufficient. It didn’t really need to be buried. It was the suggestion that was important. The re-creation of the sacred image.
    Despite the simplicity of the task, he found himself tiring and perspiring. But this entire area was deserted and he knew it would remain so until six in the morning, so it didn’t matter how long he took. Just so the job was done right. According to plan.
    He slowly lowered the long box off the dolly and into the freshly dug cavity. He lifted a spadeful of dirt and tossed it onto the box. The resultant clamor caught him by surprise.
    Merciful Zeus. How could I be so forgetful? He leaned over the edge of the pit and lifted the half lid from the top section of the box.
    Helen screamed.
    He clamped his hand over her mouth. “My dear, I can’t allow you to make a commotion.”
    She struggled to get free of his hand. She tried to bite him. She spit on him. Nothing worked.
    “I’m going to release you in a moment. And when I do, I don’t want to hear any more screaming. You know, I could’ve deadened your entire body. And I still can, if need be. Do you comprehend what I’m saying?”
    Slowly, he removed the hand from her mouth. She did not scream.
    “Now that’s more like it.”
    With the half lid open, she was visible from her bare shoulders up. “I couldn’t breathe in there, mister. I thought I was going to die.”
    He made no comment.
    “I could tell you were moving me, but I didn’t know where we were going. And then I heard that thumping on the lid and I didn’t know what was happening and I hate confined spaces and I panicked.”
    “Of course you did. Entirely understandable.”
    She craned her neck, trying to see something other than the walls of the box surrounding her, gazing straight up at the cobwebs and skeletons and white sheet ghosts. “What is this place?”
    “A gallery. A tableau, if you will. To honor the prophet.”
    “I don’t know what that means,” she said, choking. “I want to go home.”
    “And you will, in a sense,” he said reassuringly. “To a far, far better home than any you have known before. Better than the one you kept sneaking away from.”
    “How do you know that? Did Amber tell you?”
    “You must pardon me, but I really don’t have time to continue this conversation.”
    Her eyes were red and watery. “You’re going to