"I hate you. I hate you more than you will ever know."

Her voice was wilted, that of a tortured soul. I owned no pity for her.

The jingling faded. The front door opened and closed, the momentary sound of wind and rain.

Karl was gone. He had left Jewell Stewark in my home, on my bed, her sundress pulled up over her ass, his liquid anger evaporating on her lips. Her own voluptuous orgasm running down her legs. She was not happy, but she was no longer crying. I was angry. I was insane. Everything about my body felt wrong, too bright, too numb, as if my brain was in a state of hypermetabolism.

I looked toward her. She too looked as if she had suffered significant insult to the body, her insult happening long before today. Her eyes were closed. But she wasn't sleeping. She was hiding.

She was longing.

She wasn't desiring her husband. But wanting her brother-in-law to come back.

She had come here because of him. She had come here to do battle, because him breaking down gave her control. Riling him, getting him aroused, getting him to penetrate her was winning the battle. I'd bet that was what she had hoped. But he had walked out on her. Despite all of her beauty, she had been abandoned. Left sprawled out on my bed, her insides ripped apart like the Scarecrow when the monkeys had torn it to shreds.

He had left both of us. He had been overwhelmed and walked out, left drama behind.

I wondered what I was becoming...what I had become.

This was not me. This was not Nia Simone Bijou. This was not the daughter of Trinidad.

This was the animal that lived inside her.

I couldn't focus.

I had to get up. I had to kick this evilness out of my bed, grab her by her hair, and drag her down the carpeted stairs, open the front door, then drag her down the concrete stairs and throw her out on the streets. It was my right to beat her like a slave. I was going to beat her until I became the lead story on the news. I would beat her so bad that Atlanta would forget about Juanita Bynum and Michael Vick.

After I had a little more rest.

Endorphins flooded my bedroom, created a faux sense of well-being. It had been a long, intense workout. Felt like my muscles had used up their stored glycogen, were functioning with only oxygen.

I was floating through the land of the surreal, body heavy, like I was walking through the deadly poppy field, breathing becoming thick, body becoming heavy, despite my mind screaming to not rest.

It was a brief session of unconsciousness.

With the enemy resting inside my gates, that was too long.

I tried to sit up, struggling to become fully awake, but the weight kept me down on the bed.

I couldn't breathe. It felt as if I was suffocating, my lungs unable to inhale any oxygen. As if I was struggling to free myself from a wicked nightmare. I expected to wake up in Karl's bed, or wake up in the bed alone, with Karl in the shower, smiling and waiting for me to join him, expected everything that had happened at Starbucks and after to be false, just my own guilt manufacturing bizarre nightmares.

I opened my eyes. What I saw made my heart race.

Jewell Stewark's eyes were inches from mine.

The eyes of a goddess. The eyes of a tempest.

Her blond hair was wild, hanging and framing her glowering face. The look of beauty gone mad.

The weight I felt was the heaviness of insanity. Jewell Stewark was on top of me, her sundress pulled back, her rotund butt flattening my breasts, knees on both sides of my neck, her yoni at my mouth.

She had my mother's long-bladed knife in her hand, as if the hostility of the Carib Indians was alive in her blood, as if war was her primary goal, as if she wanted to raid my village, torture me with her presence and kill me, slaughter her enemy, her intention being to cannibalize the last of the Arawaks.

This was the end of my opera.

This was my death.

FORTY.

Candlelight illuminating the agony in her features, death looked both insane and stunning.

Its striking face forever the amalgamation of two beautiful songstresses, her body with strength born in Portland Parish, long hair dyed the hue of a warrior from Scandinavia, that combination of beauty and strength wrapped in the vilest of angers. Atlanta's pride, The Jewell of the South was poised to take my life. As she held the long-bladed knife, my heartbeat was inside my throat, my breathing non ex is tent, my eyes wide and on her wide-eyed glower as I waited, as I watched her consider her options.

I watched her internal struggle manifest itself in her lips, in her breathing, in the way she opened and closed her eyes, it poured from her body in each of her tears, her agony raining on my terrified flesh.

She considered freedom or jail. She deliberated heaven or hell.

Her eyes told me the verdict was hell.

In a moment cold metal would slice my flesh. In a moment I would feel the warmth of my blood.

I waited for the beginning of my end.

She held her eyes open, no longer blinking, no more butterflies, took a few breaths.

She moved the knife. She lifted the blade, moved it away from my flesh. But she didn't move, she remained on me, a question-and-answer session still going on inside her head.

The Jewell of the South shifted, moved away from me, allowed me to breathe.

I panted, my eyes wide, my hands going to my throat, thinking I felt my own blood, discovering that sticky dampness was my sweat. I inhaled a thousand times, smelled her over and over.

Her scent was on my chest, on my breasts, permeating my skin.

As my scent was on her face, her mouth, had mixed with the flavors on her tongue.

We smelled of anger, reeked of madness, disbelief, all of that spiced with temporary insanity.

I could only hope her fury was waning.

I could only hope.

Jewell Stewark stood up, then she wobbled, staggered, leaned against the foot of my bed, tugged at her wrinkled clothing, pulled her sundress down, then struggled to slip her sandals back on, shoes that she had lost during her battle with Karl, shoes that had been kicked away as she took lingam on my bed.

I coughed and struggled to get up, legs heavy, body sluggish, my eyes on her every move.

Her face owned six shades of redness, her hair mangled, some stuck against her dank skin. She looked as if a battle was continuing inside her, as if she was two people, one of light, the other of darkness. She held the end of my bed with one hand, her posture that of a woman who had no energy, of an ultramarathoner who had given up in the middle of a hundred-mile race. She made sounds, soft sounds that no longer reminded me of the opera, sounds that echoed like the mixture of angst and sacrifice.

She stood before me, her hands going to her hair, her hands pulling her hair, wrestling with herself, as if she was fighting with the voices inside her head, a woman haunted by memories and desires. A woman haunted by emotions stirred by Karl, imprisoned by feelings she had for Mark.

She balanced herself against my dresser, attempted to stand up straight.

She asked, "Are you sleeping with both of them?"

"Yes."

She tried to look at me, but she couldn't hold eye contact. Her eyes were swollen, so heavy she couldn't hold her head up straight. I stared at her because she couldn't stare at me. My chest was still rising and falling, lungs unable to fill with air, as if she was still sitting on my chest, but I stared at her, her face the mirror of my emotions, a mixture of anger, fear, and disbelief.

There was no room for flight, if she came back toward me there would be a fight.

But she didn't move in my direction. She didn't move at all.

She asked, "At the same time?"

"Yes."

"You sleep with them..."

"Yes."

"...both..."

"Yes."

"...at the same time?"

"Yes."

She swallowed like she was about to break down.

Her voice fractured. "For how long?"

I told her.

She stood before me raw, the real person who was behind the curtain, the woman who pretended to be The Jewell of the South, it was her lie, her shield, the same way the wizard was not really a wizard at all, just a man behind a curtain. The Jewell of the South was just a woman with a good job.

Billboards had made her larger than life, each advert magnifying the deception.

This was her naked. This was her raw. This was her with her demons unleashed.

Her fractured voice splintered one hundred ways as she asked, "Who do you prefer?"

"Sometimes Mark."

"Sometimes."

My voice cracked. "Sometimes Karl."

"Sometimes."

"Most of the time both."

Her voice thickened, each syllable broken. "All of you...together...at the same time."

"Yes."

"Every time?"

"Not every time."

"How many times?"

"Ask them."

Her controlled tone vanished, became an abrupt cry. A hard cry.

She vanished for a moment. Jewell vanished and I saw myself in her place, breaking down crying. The kind of cry that owned no sound, that kind that etched so many lines of pain and sorrow in your flesh, the cry that stole all of your breath and left you nothing to make sound, the kind of cry that suffocated you. I saw me crying, I saw me in pain, I saw me devastated when plea sure was gone.

She said, "They share you."

"We share each other."

"Did you share each other last night?"

"Yes."

"While I was at home, and Mark went to Karl's home, you shared each other."

I didn't answer. Her words seemed rhetorical, the repetition and redundancy that came with shock and disbelief. With denial. She nodded, chuckled, wiped her eyes with the back of her hands.

She said, "Karl walked out on me. Left me here. He made a fool of me and walked out the door."

"Where is your husband?"

"I don't care where he is."

I let a moment pass, enough time for the echo from her voice to wane. "You love Karl."

Immediately and with conviction she said, "Yes."

"You love Mark."