"You'll never mistake them. Seeing it is like remembering spying on someone, only you haven't spied on him yet. Like you were standing behind him and he just didn't notice. You hear it, you smell it, you see it. Like you were standing *in* him sometimes, like it happened to you. "Understanding, that's totally different. That's like a little voice in your head explaining it to you, telling you what it all means." "Oh," Andy said. "You thought you'd seen, right?" "Yeah. Thought that I was running out of time and going to die, or kill Davey again, or something. It was a feeling, though, not like being there, not like having anything explained." "Is that going to happen?" Mimi asked Brad. Brad looked down at the table. "'Answer unclear, ask again later.' That's what this Magic 8-Ball I bought in a store once used to say." "Does that mean you don't know?" "I think it means I don't want to know." # "Don't worry," Bert said. "Kurt's safe tonight." Alan stopped lacing up his shoes and slumped back on the bench in his foyer. Mimi had done the dishes, Bill had dried, and he'd fretted about Kurt. But it wasn't until he couldn't take it anymore and was ready to go and find him, bring him home if necessary, that Billy had come to talk to him. "Do you know that for sure?" "Yes. He has dinner with a woman, then he takes her dumpster diving and comes home and goes to bed. I can see that." "But you don't see everything?" "No, but I saw that." "Fine," Adam said. He felt hopeless in the face of these predictions, as though the future were something set and immutable. "I need to use the bathroom," Billy said, and made his way upstairs while Alan moved to a sofa and paged absently through an old edition of *Alice in Wonderland* whose marbled frontispiece had come detached. A moment later, Mimi joined him, sitting down next to him, her wings unfolded across the sofa back. "How big are they going to get, do you think?" she said, arranging them. "You don't know?" "They're bigger than they've ever been. That was good food," she said. "I think I should go talk to Krishna." Adam shook his head. "Whoa." "You don't need to be in between us. Maybe I can get him to back off on you, on your family." "Mimi, I don't even want to discuss it." "It's the right thing to do," she said. "It's not fair to you to stay." "You want to have your wings cut," Alan said. "That's why you want to go back to him." She shied back as though he'd slapped her. "No --" "You do. But what Billy didn't tell you is that Krishna's out there with other women, I saw him today. With a girl. Young. Pretty. Normal. If he takes you back, it will be as a toy, not as a lover. He can't love." "Christ," she said. "Why are you saying this?" "Because I don't want to watch you self-destruct, Mimi. Stay here. We'll sort out Krishna together. And my brother. Billy's here now, that means they can't sneak up on us."