“I want you to make me the way you are,” she said. Then she lowered her voice to a whisper. “I want you to do to me what you did to my daughter.”

He looked at her, his eyes crawling across her body, seeing all of her, and she felt exposed, and frightened, and just a little bit aroused. And then James Harris stood up and walked over to her and laughed in her face.

The force of his laughter slapped her, and sent her stumbling a half step back. The room echoed with his laughter, and it bounced crazily off the walls, trapped, doubling and redoubling, battering at her ears. He laughed so hard he flopped back down in his chair, looked at her with a crazy grin on his face, and burst out laughing, again.

She didn’t know what to do. She felt small and humiliated. Finally, his laughter rolled to a stop, leaving him short of breath.

“You must think,” he said, gasping for air, “that I’m the stupidest person you’ve ever met. You come here, all dolled up like a hooker, and give me this breathless story about how you want me to make you one of the bad people? How did you get to be so arrogant? Patricia the genius, and the rest of us are just a bunch of fools?”

“That’s not true,” she said. “I want to be here. I want to be with you.”

This brought another wave of ugly laughter.

“You’re embarrassing yourself and you’re insulting me,” James Harris said. “Did you think I’d believe any of this?”

“It’s not an act!” she shouted.

He grinned.

“I wondered when you’d get to righteous indignation.” He smiled. “Look at you: Patricia Campbell, wife of Dr. Carter Campbell, mother of Korey and Blue, debasing herself because she thinks she’s smarter than someone who’s lived four times as long as her. See, Patricia, I never underestimated you. If you told Slick you planned to come into my house, I knew you came into my house. And if you got into my house, I knew you’d gotten into my attic and found everything there was to find. Was her license supposed to be bait? Leave it in my car and go to the police and tell them you found it and they’d pull me over and find it and get a search warrant? In what sad housewife’s dream does something like that work? Those books you girls read have really rotted your brains.”

She couldn’t make her legs stop shaking. She sat down on the raised brick hearth. The velvet dress rode up and bunched around her stomach and hips. She felt ridiculous.

“Then again, I moved here because you people are all so stupid,” he said. “You’ll take anyone at face value as long as he’s white and has money. With computers coming and all these new IDs I needed to put down roots and you made it so easy. All I had to do was make you think I needed help and here comes that famous Southern hospitality. Y’all don’t like talking about money, do you? That’s low class. But I waved some around and you all were so eager to grab it you never asked where it came from. Now your children like me more than they like you. Your husband is a weakling and a fool. And here you are, dressed up like a clown, with no cards left to play. I’ve been doing this for so long I’m always prepared for the moment when someone tries to run me out of town, but you’ve truly surprised me. I didn’t expect the attempt to be so sad.”

A rhythmic, wet huffing sound filled the room as Patricia bent double and tried to breathe. She attempted to start a sentence a few times, but kept running out of breath. Finally she said, “Make it stop.”

From far away, she heard a chorus of faint voices shouting with disappointment.

“I tried once,” he said. “But an artist is only as good as his materials. I thought for sure the humiliation I inflicted on you three years ago would make you kill yourself, but you couldn’t even do that right.”

“Make it stop,” Patricia said. “Just make it all stop. I can’t do this anymore. My son hates me. For the rest of his life I’ll be the crazy woman who tried to kill herself, the one he found convulsing on the kitchen floor. I put my daughter in a mental hospital. I have ruined my family. I couldn’t protect them from you.”

She sat, hunched over, spitting her words at the floor, her hands were claws digging into her knees, her voice scouring her ears like acid.

“I thought you were filth. I thought you were an animal,” she said. “But I’m worse. I’m nothing. I was a good nurse, I really was, and I walked away from the one thing I loved because I wanted to be a bride. I wanted to get married because I was terrified of being alone. I wanted to be a good wife and a good mother, and I gave everything I had, and it wasn’t enough. I’m not enough!”

She shouted the last words, then looked up at James Harris, her face a grotesque mask of streaked makeup.

“My husband has no more consideration for me than a dog,” she said. “He goes off and screws little girls with the other men and we sit home like good little women and wash their shirts and pack their bags for their sex trips. We keep their houses warm and clean for when they’re ready to come home and shower off some other woman’s perfume before tucking their children into bed. For years I’ve pretended I don’t know where he goes, or who those girls are on the phone, but every time he comes home, I lie there in bed beside my husband, who doesn’t touch me, who doesn’t talk to me, who doesn’t love me, and I pretend I can’t smell some twenty-year-old’s body on him. Our children hate us. Look at mine. It would have been better if a dog raised them.”

She hooked her fingers into claws and pulled them through her hair, harrowing it into a crazed haystack, jutting out in every direction.

“So here I am,” she said. “Giving you the last thing I have of value and begging you to spare my daughter. Take me. Take my body. Use me until you throw me away, but leave Korey alone. Please. Please.”

“You think you can bargain with me?” he asked. “This is some kind of sad seduction, trading your body for your daughter’s?”

She nodded, meek and small.

“Yes.”

She sat, a long runnel of snot dangling from her nose, dripping onto her dress. And finally, James Harris said:

“Come.”

She pushed herself up, and walked to him on shaky legs.

“Kneel,” he said, pointing to the floor.

Patricia lowered herself onto the floor at his feet. He leaned forward and took her jaw in one big hand.

“Three years ago you tried to make a fool of me,” he said. “You don’t get any more dignity. We’re going to finally be honest with each other. First, I’m going to replace Carter in your life. Is that what you want?”

She nodded, then realized he needed more. “Yes,” she whispered.

“Your son loves me already,” he said. “And your daughter belongs to me. I’ll take you now, but she’s next. Will you do that? Will you give me your body to buy her another year?”

“Yes,” Patricia said.

“One day it will be Blue’s turn,” he said. “But for now, I’m the family friend who helps put your life back together after your husband dies. Everyone will think that we just naturally felt a powerful attraction, but you’ll know the truth: you gave up your pathetic, miserable, broken failure of a life to accept your place at my feet. I’m not some doctor, or lawyer, or rich mommy’s boy trying to impress you. I am singular in this world. I am what you people make legends from. And now I’ve turned my attention on you. When I’m done, I’ll adopt your children and make them mine. But you’ve bought them one more year of freedom. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” she said.

James Harris stood and walked up the stairs without looking back.

“Come,” he said over his shoulder.

After a moment, Patricia followed, only pausing on the way to unlock the deadbolt on his front door.

In the darkness of the upstairs hall, she saw white solid walls all around her, each one a closed door, and then she saw a black hole like the entrance to a tomb. She walked into the master bedroom. James Harris stood in the moonlight. He had taken off his shirt.

“Strip,” he said.

Patricia stepped out of her shoes and inhaled sharply. Standing barefoot on the cool wooden floor made her feel naked. She couldn’t do this, but before she could stop herself her hands were already moving to her back.

She unzipped the dress and let it fall to the floor and stepped out of it. Blood rushed and flowed to parts of her body that were dry, leaving her light-headed. Her head spun and she wondered if she would faint. The darkness seemed very close around her and the walls seemed very far away. A fever seized her as she unsnapped her bra and shucked it off, then kicked her clothes into one corner and threw her brassiere on top.