He nodded and bent to pick up his end.

Mimi plunged through the cave mouth without a moment's hesitation and they set him down just inside the entrance, near a pair of stained cotton Y-fronts.

Alan waited for his heart to stop thudding and the sweat to cool on his brow and then he kicked the underwear away as an afterthought.

"G.o.d," he said. She moved to him, put her arm around his shoulder.

"You're being brave," she said.

"G.o.d," he said again.

"Let it out, you know, if you want to."

But he didn't, he wanted to sit down. He moved to his mother's side and leaned against her.

Mimi sat on her hunkers before him and took his hand and tried to tilt his chin up with one finger, but he resisted her pull and she rose and began to explore the cave. He heard her stop near Marci's skeleton for a long while, then move some more. She circled him and his mother, then opened her lid and stared into her hamper. He wanted to tell her not to touch his mother, but the words sounded ridiculous in his head and he didn't dare find out how stupid they sounded moving through frees.p.a.ce.

And then the washing machine bucked and made a snapping sound and hummed to life.

*The generator's dead,* he thought. *And she's all rusted through.* And still the washing machine moved. He heard the gush of water filling her, a wet and muddy sound.

"What did you do?" he asked. He climbed slowly to his feet, facing away from his mother, not wanting to see her terrible bucking as she wobbled on her broken foot.

"Nothing," Mimi said. "I just looked inside and it started up."

He stared at his mother, enraptured, mesmerized. Mimi stole alongside of him and he noticed that she'd taken off her jacket and the sweatshirt, splaying out her wings around her.

Her hand found his and squeezed. The machine rocked. His mother rocked and gurgled and rushed, and then she found some local point of stability and settled into a soft rocking rhythm.

The rush of water echoed off the cave walls, a white-noise shushing that sounded like skis cutting through powder. It was a beautiful sound, one that transported him to a million mornings spent waiting for the boys'

laundry to finish and be hung on the line.

*All gone.*

He jerked his head up so fast that something in his neck cracked, needling pain up into his temples and forehead. He looked at Mimi, but she gave no sign of having heard the voice, the words, *All gone.*

*All gone.*

Mimi looked at him and c.o.c.ked her head. "What?" she said.

He touched her lips with a finger, forgetting to be mindful of the swelling there, and she flinched away. There was a rustle of wings and clothing.

*My sons, all my sons, gone.*

The voice emerged from that white-noise roar of water humming and sloshing back and forth in her basket. Mimi squeezed his hand so hard he felt the bones grate.

"Mom?" he said softly, his voice cracking. He took half a step toward the washer.

*So tired. I'm worn out. I've been worn out.*

He touched the enamel on the lid of the washer, and felt the vibrations through his fingertips. "I can -- I can take you home," he said. "I'll take care of you, in the city."

*Too late.*

There was a snapping sound and then a front corner of the machine settled heavily. One rusted out foot, broken clean off, rolled across the cave floor.

The water sounds stilled.

Mimi breathed some words, something like Oh my G.o.d, but maybe in another language, or maybe he'd just forgotten his own tongue.

"I need to go," he said.

They stayed in a different motel on their way home from the mountain, and Mimi tried to cuddle him as he lay in the bed, but her wings got in the way, and he edged over to his side until he was almost falling off before she took the hint and curled up on her side. He lay still until he heard her snore softly, then rose and went and sat on the toilet, head in his hands, staring at the moldy grout on the tiled floor in the white light, trying not to think of the bones, the hank of brittle red hair, tied tightly in a shopping bag in the trunk of the rental car.

Sunrise found him pacing the bathroom, waiting for Mimi to stir, and when she padded in and sat on the toilet, she wouldn't meet his eye. He found himself thinking of her standing in the tub, rolled towel between her teeth, as Krishna approached her wings with his knife, and he went back into the room to dress.

"We going to eat breakfast?" she asked in the smallest voice.

He said nothing, couldn't will himself to talk.

"There's still food in the car," she said after some silence had slipped by. "We can eat that."

And without any more words, they climbed into the car and he put the pedal down, all the way to Toronto, stopping only once for gas and cigarettes after he smoked all the ones left in her pack.

When they cleared the city limits and drove under the viaduct at Danforth Avenue, getting into the proper downtown, he eased off the Parkway and into the city traffic, taking the main roads with their high buildings and stoplights and people, people, people.

"We're going home?" she said. The last thing she'd said was, "Are you hungry?" fourteen hours before and he'd only shook his head.

"Yes," he said.

"Oh," she said.

Was Krishna home? She was rooting in her purse now, and he knew that she was looking for her knife.

"You staying with me?" he said.

"Can I?" she said. They were at a red light, so he looked into her eyes. They were shiny and empty as marbles.

"Yes," he said. "Of course. And I will have a word with Krishna."

She looked out the window. "I expect he'll want to have a word with you, too."

Link rang his doorbell one morning while he was hunched over his computer, thinking about the story he was going to write. When he'd moved into the house, he'd felt the shape of that story. All the while that he'd sanded and screwed in bookcases, it had floated just below the surface, its silhouette discernible through the ripples.