"Is she hurt, Alex?"

"I don't think so. She came runningdown the road, and then she tried to run away again. She put up quite a battlewhen I tried to stop her."

As if to demonstrate her prowess as abattler, she freed her hands and beat at his chest. There was blood on herhands. It left red dabs on his shirt-front.

"Let me go," she pleaded. "I want todie. I deserve to."

"She's bleeding, Alex."

He shook his head. "It's somebody else's blood. Afriend of hers was killed."

"And it's all my fault," she said in a flatvoice.

He caught her wrists and held her. I could see manhoodbiting into his face. "Be quiet, Dolly. You're talking nonsense."

"Am I? She's lying in her blood, and I'm the onewho put her there."

"Who is she talking about?" I said to Alex.

"Somebody called Helen. I've never heard ofher."

I had.

The girl began to talk in her wispymonotone, so rapidly and imprecisely that I could hardly follow. She was adevil and so was her father before her and so was Helen's father and they hadthe bond of murder between them which made them blood sisters and she hadbetrayed her blood sister and done her in.

"What did you do to Helen?"

"I should have kept away from her. They die whenI go near them."

"That's crazy talk," Alex said softly."You never hurt anybody."

"What do you know about me?"

"All I need to. I'm in love with you."

"Don't say that. It only makes mewant to kill myself." Sitting upright in the circle of his arms, shelooked at her bloody hands and cried some more of her terrible dry tears."I'm a criminal."

Alex looked up at me, his eyes blue-black. "Canyou make any sense of it?"

"Not much."

"You can't really think she killedthis Helen person?" We were talking past Dolly as if she was deaf or outof her head, and she accepted this status.

"We don't even know that anybody'sbeen killed," I said. "Your wife is loaded with some kind of guilt,but it may belong to somebody else. I found out a little tonight about herbackground, or I think I did." I sat on the shabby brown studio bed besidethem and said to Dolly: "What's your father's name?"

She didn't seem to hear me.

"Thomas McGee?"

She nodded abruptly, as if she'd been struck frombehind. "He's a lying monster. He made me into a monster."

"How did he do that?"

The question triggered another nonstopsentence. "He shot her," she said with her chin on her shoulder,"and left her lying in her blood but I told Aunt Alice and the policemenand the court took care of him but now he's done it again."

"To Helen?"

"Yes, and I'm responsible. I caused it tohappen."

She seemed to take a weird pleasure inacknowledging her guilt. Her gray and jaded looks, her tearless crying, herbreathless run-on talking and her silences, were signs of an explosive emotionalcrisis. Under the raw melodrama of her self-accusations, I had the sense ofsomething valuable and fragile in danger of being permanently broken.

"We'd better not try to question herany more," I said. "I doubt right now she can tell the difference betweentrue and false."

"Can't I?" she said malignly."Everything I remember is true and I can remember everything from yearone, the quarrels and the beatings, and then he finally shot her in herblood—"

I cut in: "Shut up, Dolly, or changethe record. You need a doctor. Do you have one in town here?"

"No. I don't need a doctor. Call thepolice. I want to make a confession."

She was playing a game with us and her ownmind, I thought, performing dangerous stunts on the cliff edge of reality,daring the long cloudy fall.

"You want to confess that you're a monster,"I said.

It didn't work. She answered matter-of-factly: "Iam a monster."

The worst of it was, it was happeningphysically before my eyes. The chaotic pressures in her were changing the shapeof her mouth and jaw. She peered at me dully through a fringe of hair. I'dhardly have recognized her as the girl I talked to on the library steps thatday.

I turned to Alex. "Do you know anydoctors in town?"

He shook his head. His short hair stood upstraight as if live electricity was running through him from his contact withhis wife. He never let go of her.

"I could call Dad in Long Beach."

"That might be a good idea, later."

© Alexander Sviyash, 2009