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  This book is dedicated personally to

  Christine Cary Leilani Hall and

  Carla Renee Plambeck wise kind loving voices on the net

  and organizationally to

  Frighten the Horses Straight But Not Narrow and

  Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics

  It is dangerous to dream of wine, it is worse To speak of wailing or blood:

  For the images that the mind makes Find a way out, they work into life.

  —euripides, Medea (trans. Jeffers)

  Where is the ebullient infinite woman who . . . hasn’t been ashamed of her strength? Who, surprised and horrified by the fantastic tumult of her drives, hasn’t accused herself of being a monster?

  —HELENE Cixous, Surrealism & Women

  The definition of good and evil was difficult, but those two eternal entities did not always coincide with the community’s loose and mutable moral dichotomy. In other words, what was right was not necessarily good, and evil and wrong did not have to be the same thing.

  —anthony BURGESS, You’ve Had, Your Time

  Life breaks in on philosophy like morning.

  —HERMAN MELVILLE, Pierre

  PROLOGUE

  A Laying-on of Hands

  The day Katt Galloway decided to kill her husband did not begin unusually. No revelations hung in the air as it coaxed morning from dawn and turned it into afternoon.

  Fridays were Fridays. Folks’ minds were on plans for the weekend. Katt’s too, somewhat. But mostly she mulled the coming end to her separation from Marcus and their son Conner. She’d be thrilled to see Conner. But her husband meant freedom gone, a chokehold, a strangulation.

  The job at Hewlett-Packard had opened up in February, These days you compromised. Katt had come out on her own, rented a room north of Col-

  orado State, flown the family in to find a house during Easter week, and made the place her own, a refuge for the spirit, a breathing space.

  Four months without Marcus. She’d savored them.

  But her freedom was approaching its end.

  Ten days and they’d be back, coming off the road from Iowa. And the hidden longing she never spoke about, never dared speak about, the need to be unshackled, would return in spades. She’d had years of that. She faced a lifetime more, invisible bars holding her in for good.

  She sighed, raised her eye to the cubicle walls, and spotted the digital readout. The time had slipped by. Grace Kantor was due for her massage at four thirty. Katt just had time enough to log off, catch Timberline north to Prospect and Riverside, and pull into the Healing Pathways parking lot. And if Grace was her usual ten minutes late, Katt would have time to change and compose herself.

  She poked her head out of her cubicle, wished Schreck and Darwin a superb weekend, and hit the exit doors to the second-floor stairwell. The June sun was made bearable by a patchy cloudcover, and the traffic was mercifully sparse and the lights in her favor as she cut across Fort Collins to Old Town Square.

  Healing Pathways was a simple two-story building next to the food co-op. Good energy, said Lyra and Joseph, the founders of the place. A building whose design and layout caressed the soul, Katt translated, thinking kindly of her friends but not buying into their New Age jargon.

  Other masseuses and their resident acupuncturist were at work behind closed doors on the second floor. Katt did this for extra money, yes—but primarily to ground herself after hours in front of moving electrons. Grace Kantor, a retiree in her seventies, creaked the stairs when she took them. Katt heard the stairs creak now.

  “Hello, Grace.” Katt met her in the hallway.

  “Katt,” the old woman said, a tiny wave, a crinkle of her eyes. She was big-boned. Her flesh sagged. This was her third session, and she looked healthier with each one. Little wonder. The massage Lyra and Joseph had given Katt in their cabin west of town had had its effect—had gifted her, those two nights, with a power that grew so gradually it felt not miraculous but inevitable. That she’d come to accept it with such nonchalance, such surety, astounded her. And tonight they’d massage her a third time, under a full moon. Full moon or not, Katt expected yet another surge in what she’d come to call the power of healing.

  Ratt left the room so Grace could disrobe in private. When she came back, the old woman was almost asleep again, lying supine under the sheet on the massage table. It had been convenient, her dozing. It made working deeper magic on her easier. Katt could leave off massage and place her hands on Grace-s ribcage, checking the pleural fluid about the lungs, the infection—empyema, they called it— she had healed the last time Grace had come in. Her rasp had been audible without a stethoscope; now it was gone.

  A puffy pink mole, looking like crushed fungus, stood on the woman’s neck just below baggy rolls of chin.

  Marcus had a much smaller one, and nubbier, where his dark chest hairs began. As she shut her eyes and tried to press her vision down toward the linings of Grace’s lungs, Marcus refused to leave tier, thoughts.

  They’d been married fourteen years before, had Conner twelve months later—and drop by drop, their marriage had lost its vitality since then. Though they wouldn’t hit the road for another week yet, it felt almost as if Marcus and Conner had already arrived in Colorado.

  She tried to shut them out, tried to focus on massage and healing, the potency she’d gained from the cabin, from her friends’ hands moving upon her and from the atmosphere of (he place. She did her best to check Grace’s pleurisy.

  But it proved impossible.

  Marcus and Conner came too vividly to mind.

  She could see them now, beading along the thin black wire of 1-80, leaving Iowa City behind at last. Conner’s sweet smile had made her marriage bearable, that wreckage that she’d never let on to Marcus was a wreckage. To see her son again would be her sole comfort. It’d be good to hold him, to gauge his self-conscious discomfort at being mommied, at once amusing and offputting, poised as he was on the uneasy cusp of adulthood. Despite the untriggered genetic death he and Marcus most likely held inside—Huntington’s disease had caused the lingering death of Conner’s grandfather—her son had borne bravely the news that he might be the victim some day of a fatal brain disorder.

  As for Marcus, slowly growing away, it had been easy to lie by omission, a habit she’d clung to for years now. If he’d ever asked her point blank, she wondered if she’d have been courageous enough to say, No, I’m not happy; in fact I’m miserable. Doubtful. That would have led them, as inevitable as day, to divorce. And divorce was not to be considered, an option unthinkable among Hunt women—so her mother had hammered into her from birth.

  Not even when she snooped onto his PC and discovered his ineptly hidden file of correspondence with Love Bunny (the alias his lover hid behind), the real reason for his step down the academic ladder to Colorado State—not even then did she consider confronting him. His whole push to move westward had been fueled by lust, something Katt had not learned until she’d accepted the job with HP and made plans to move out early, while Conner finished up seventh grade and Marcus sold the house and brought to completion his spring semester’s classes. Newly moved, Katt fiddled with her PC’s modem, checking out a handful of electronic bulletin boards available locally. She’d found this Love Bunny logged on to the same BBS as she, and had gone into chat mode with her, typing private realtime messages back and forth. The woman had been strangely flirtatious, and Katt—memories of a brief college fling resurfacing—had, to her surprise, responded in kind. A weird mix of anger and arousal held her during the first encounter and

  those that followed. People took aliases (hers was Newcummer), let their sensuality bloom under anonymity, even attended adult BBS parties to allow it fleshly expression. A week from tomorrow, in f
act, she had agreed to drive to Denver, meet Love Bunny at a BBS party, and attend her first such gathering in the company of her husband’s lover.

  The old woman on the table grunted in her sleep.

  Katt opened her eyes. There was that mole again, its blurt of flesh pink and puffy.

  No danger that Grace would awaken.

  Katt flowed her hands from the cottage-cheese ribcage up the sides of the torso to the shoulders and neck. Rubs there, gentle, closer. Then she touched the mole, knowing enough to barely rest her fingertips on it, nearly cupping it beneath the curve of three fingers.

  She probed the mole, keeping her eyes open this time. Her brow furrowed.

  The thing was benign.

  Katt began to wonder if she could undo the mole, make smooth the skin where it bloomed. She trained her healing power on the pink excrescence. Under her intense scrutiny something began to happen, a loosening in the cells.

  Then, a dark curiosity arose. She thought of Marcus. Somehow, with no great deliberation, she turned her intent around. Into the puff-pink burl, she willed a malignancy. Completely under control; nothing reckless. It frightened her how completely under control it was.

  What was she doing? How could she be willing harm to anyone? And yet she was. It felt dreadful to be doing it but the urge to press on overwhelmed her.

  The mole darkened.

  A curl of blood sliced along its base.

  Grace winced.

  Katt broke out into a sweat, almost sobbing. But she held her sobs in check, reversing her power again, calming the cellular agitation, restoring the mole to its inactive state. In all that time, she couldn’t remember breathing.

  Now she began again.

  “That feels good, Katt.” The woman’s voice was lazy. She was still half asleep. Her mouth in motion looked like a cathedral made of weathered soap, pocked and slubbery.

  “I’m glad, Grace,” she managed.

  Inside, she shivered; outside, she was cool and calm.

  She would look like this woman on her deathbed, years of Marcus ravaging her face, her body. Suddenly she hated Grace. It made no sense. It wasn’t charitable. But it was all she could do to keep from terminating the appointment. And when, at last, the old woman softly lumbered out the door, the stairway creaking as she descended, Katt vowed never to be available to her ever again.

  Gone home, she blendered up an Ultimate Meal smoothie and augmented it with popcorn and vitamins. Living single made it pointless most days to spend a lot of time on meals.

  She took in the clock over the sink. Ten past seven. She was expected at the cabin about eight.

  Time enough to turn on her PC, check for e-mail and postings on CFRnet—a message repository for BBSs along Colorado’s Front Range—and log off.

  As she headed toward the front door and up the stairs to the bedroom, in her mind’s eye Grace Kan-tor lay beneath her hands, bearing that squat mole and reminding her oddly enough of Marcus. Handsome brute. Dark, charming, tight-bellied embracer. Katt had loved him once. Had loved him fiercely. What love remained for him was a pilot light on a dormant furnace, present, yes, but feeble and dim.

  Still bright in the room. No need for a lightswitch. She uncovered the PC, booted it up. When it had completed its initial gyrations and the DOS prompt appeared, she ran QuickLink II, hit Okay, then alt-P, arrowing down the menu to The Symposium BBS’s subscriber line and pressing Enter. The modem dialed, beeping along a muted scale of notes. A connection was made, she typed Newcummer and her password, and there was The Symposium’s Main Menu.

  Not five seconds later, as she was preparing to check out CFRnet, a message blipped across her screen:

  “Love Bunny here,” it said. “Meet me in Chat?”

  Elation seized her. And confusion. And quiet anger. And a whole array of other emotions. She’d never met this woman, but Love Bunny had turned into a tantalizing nub of torment, all in one intriguing month.

  Katt hotkeyed back to the Main Menu and selected Chat Mode. C’mon, she thought, c’mon. It always took so long, getting through the preliminary screens. But at last, she was in. “Here I be!” she typed. She knew the program had identified her to Love Bunny as **Newcummer**.

  “Well hey hey, succulent one. What’s shakin’?” This woman’s typing was atrocious, backspacing, mind-changes, a torturous treat watching her thoughts slowly formulate.

  “Can’t chat long,” Katt typed. “Gonna be massaged.”

  “Mmmmmmm! Sounds peachy! Who’s the lucky guy or gal who gets to fondle you?”

  “Both. Friends of mine. A married couple.” “Ooooh. Sizzle sizzle, burn burn. You *are* the hot one, Newcummer. Can I come watch? Or join in? I promise not to eat much.”

  Hot chat, they called it. Love Bunny was good at it. But Katt’s reaction was ever a mishmash of lust and anger. Love Bunny’s words teased. But for all Katt knew, Marcus had been the recipient of the same phrases. “It’s nothing like that. No sex. These are pros. Good buds.”

  “How boring. :'( :'(

  “Have to go,” Katt typed, wishing she didn’t. “Okay, lover. Don’t forget the twelfth.” Saturday, June twelfth, the BBS party in Denver.

  “I won’t. Leave me directions, okay?”

  “Okay. Here’s a big fat smoocheroo on yer lips. You get to-pick which pair!” Outrageous.

  “Bye for now, hon,” Katt typed.

  “See ya.”

  Out of chat mode. She logged out, then turned the PC off so that the monitor darkened and the fan stopped.

  Seven thirty. Time to hit the road.

  The phone rang.

  Katt hesitated. Lyra and Joseph calling it off? Her husband? But he never phoned unless it had to do with the move. Friday night. Marcus would be out boffing a senior or a secretary, or on the make for one, circumspect as all hell but with his fuck-me antennae out and his radar honed in on female flesh.

  She picked up the receiver.

  “Katt. Hi. It’s your mom.”

  Instantly the bedroom darkened. Katt felt the parlor rise up around her, that place of dark woods and antiques, of hunched tea—quiet clinks of china on china—and gossip between Mom and Granny Hunt, that place where Katt’s early identity had been forged.

  “Hi, Mom,” she said. “How are you?”

  “How is the marriage doing?” Her first question each time she called. Katt pictured her mother’s thin red lips moving. As a little girl, Katt’s mom had somehow survived her own mother’s madness, the slaughter of husband and son and the sparing of her only daughter. But over the years, and who knew when it had begun, Mom had taken on a madness of her own, grown old and pinched before her time, a spill of common concerns ever escaping her mouth, both in Katt’s childhood and afterward over the phone.

  “Fine, fine, just fine, Mom.” A rote reply. Lie and lie and lie again. Feel the lie setde in, bone deep.

  “That’s good, Katt. Your separation’s rough, I know. I was against it from the beginning. But it’s almost over and soon you’ll be a family again. What’s it now? Just a week more?”

  “Ten days. They arrive on the fourteenth.”

  “Yes. Just a week more and they’ll be in your bosom, where they belong. You’ve got to stay together, like Bill and me have. We were brought up together. He doesn’t say much but he doesn’t have to. When you find the right man, Katt, if you’re smart you cleave to him.”

  Mom was into her drone. Katt uh-huh’d automatically, a habit she’d developed over decades.

  A hatred of divorce had forged a solemn bond between Katt’s mother and the woman who had adopted her back when Grandma Jasper’d gone mad. Mom had been bad enough. But when Granny Hunt dropped by, the pair of them hunched and cowled in the parlor like slit-eyed vultures, cups of tea clinked through their day-long recitals of that obsessive theme. Hunts never do the D-thing, oh no we stick by our men. We see it through, we compromise like good folks’re supposed to. The D-thing’s for the morally lax. Life is no picnic even if, on your wedding day, the
basket’s made up and the blanket’s folded and it seems like that’s your destination. Cuz you gotta work at it. You ’re two. Not one. And you’re sure to fly apart unless you struggle to stay together. Nonsense, Katt thought; natural marriages didn’t need work. But it played deep in her head, played from as far back as she could recall, so that it withered her will whenever the urge to talk about separation came. She just let the sadness grow, took long walks, and slept it off.

  “You hear me, Katt?” her mother droned.

  “Uh-huh,” Katt said.

  “Because the D-thing’ll haul up and bite you, yes it will, if you let your vigilance drop for an instant.”

  Katt’s head told her her mother’s ravings were absurd and even comical. But her heart spoke differently. She’d been cribbed in that parlor, heard the dark mahogany clink of teacup on saucer in her bones, imbibed their mutterings with her formula. Though she could remember no specifics, the D-thing had been ever on their lips back then.

  “Granny Hunt pointed with pride to her family line, a hardy stock who believed in working on their problems, not running from them. Work produces grit; running away makes for mush-brained ninnies. And you’re no ninny, Katt, but a true Hunt woman. I know you are.”

  “You’re right, Mom.”

  They’d drawn her into their mumblings, addressing her first in the crib, like one might talk to a pet. And when she started babbling, they brought her in in earnest, that topic rooting her solidly in their love. When she went to school, she soon learned to put away her D-thing talk; but at home, for years, it won her way into her mother’s heart like nothing else could. As for her father—as for Bill—he came home from work, and sat in his study, and suffered her sitting on his lap, until she caught on that he didn’t want her there. Dad seldom spoke. He looked at Katt even less often. He seemed in remembrance blasted, like a tree trunk scored by lightning.

  She couldn’t divorce Marcus. It would kill her mom’s love for her. It would drive her over the

  edge. She’d be the first Hunt woman to do it. Whenever she got near that notion in her head, it threatened to shred her soul.