"It's yours," he said. He went up the stairs and closed the cabinet, then folded her fingers around the robot and led her by the wrist back down to the sofa. "Ice pack," he said handing it to her, releasing her wrist. She sat stiff-spined in on the sofa, the hump of her wings behind her keeping her from reclining. She caught him staring. "It's time to trim them," she said. "Oh, yes?" he said, mind going back to the gridwork of old scars by her shoulders. "When they get too big, I can't sit properly or lie on my back. At least not while I'm wearing a shirt." "Couldn't you, I don't know, cut the back out of a shirt?" "Yeah," she said. "Or go topless. Or wear a halter. But not in public." "No, not in public. Secrets must be kept." "You've got a lot of secrets, huh?" she said. "Some," he said. "Deep, dark ones?" "All secrets become deep. All secrets become dark. That's in the nature of secrets." She pressed the towel-wrapped bag of ice to her face and rolled her head back and forth on her neck. He heard pops and crackles as her muscles and vertebrae unlimbered. "Hang on," he said. He ran up to his room and dug through his T-shirt drawer until he found one that he didn't mind parting with. He brought it back downstairs and held it up for her to see. "Steel Pole Bathtub," he said. "Retro chic. I can cut the back out for you, at least while you're here." She closed her eyes. "I'd like that," she said in a small voice. So he got his kitchen shears and went to work on the back of the shirt, cutting a sizable hole in the back of the fabric. He folded duct tape around the ragged edges to keep them from fraying. She watched bemusedly. "Freakshow Martha Stewart," she said. He smiled and passed her the shirt. "I'll give you some privacy," he said, and went back into the kitchen and put away the shears and the tape. He tried not to listen to the soft rustle of clothing in the other room. "Alan," she said -- *Alan* and not *Asshole* or *Abel* -- "I could use some help." He stepped cautiously into the living room and saw there, in the curtained twilight, Mimi. She was topless, heavy breasts marked red with the outline of her bra straps and wires. They hung weightily, swaying, and stopped him in the doorway. She had her arms lifted over her head, tugging her round belly up, stretching her navel into a cat-eye slit. The T-shirt he'd given her was tangled in her arms and in her wings. Her magnificent wings. They were four feet long each, and they stretched, one through the neck hole and the other through the hole he'd cut in the T-shirt's back. They were leathery as he remembered, covered in a downy fur that glowed where it was kissed by the few shafts of light piercing the gap in the drapes. He reached for the questing, almost prehensile tip of the one that was caught in the neck hole. It was muscular, like a strong finger, curling against his palm like a Masonic handshake.