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Abe fell asleep while trying to offer up one last protest. It was a dreamless sleep, very deep, but not terribly long. He felt himself tugging against the restraints, then he sneezed. His head renewed its throbbing. He sneezed again.

“Make it stop!” he pleaded. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand, and he realized he could see.

She was at the other end of a well-appointed mobile home, bending low to reach into a cabinet. He thought to look at his restraints, but he couldn’t take his eyes off her.

With grace, she moved slightly to grasp what she was reaching for, then she stood without effort, long blonde hair falling from her shoulder onto her back. She was wearing nightclothes. They weren’t quite sheer, but they were thin enough that Abe’s imagination went berserk, throwing so much static into his mental processes that his normal self-commenting soliloquy was entirely muted, entirely absent.

Because of the long period of pitch darkness, the dim light filtering into the hut caused his eyes to cast a lovely glow which swaddled her figure. Every movement of her hips and shoulders were at the same time exaggerated, seen as shadow within her being, and also softened, seen without sharpness or definition. Abe’s eye saw, and Abe’s eye caused his heart to desire.

Golden hair framed golden cheekbones. Golden cheekbones framed dark and amber eyes. When those amber eyes glanced over, seeing Abe trying to rise, her entire face lifted up into a smile. “Wait a moment,” she said, almost laughing, almost pitying.

“I have to use the bathroom,” he said, plaintively and slightly embarrassedly.

She approached, moving softly. He saw her feet, that they were bare. He grew very warm. Indeed he was shirtless, but he also remained modestly covered where it counted. His bladder, however, was ringing emergency bells.

With every economy of motion and grace, as before, she unclicked his restraints and gestured toward the rear of the hut.

“Indoor plumbing?” he said, rushing to a real bathroom.

First he stood, and did his business there. Then, considering how warm and comfortable it was, he sat and did his business there, taking his time, even fiddling with the switches on the wall until he found the one for the exhaust fan.

Lap of luxury, but no bidet, Stoic.

“I’ll make do,” said Abe out loud. He laughed to himself like he did as a schoolboy, “Heh. Make do.” He finished his business, then stood to wash. There was a mirror.

A mirror: a real mirror! He saw himself in the mirror, and his breath was taken away. In those several short, horrible days, he had grown a little mustache, partnered with a whisper of a goatee.

Will you look at those eyes, Stoic?

His eyes were swollen and black, like the time when Umezawa had spiked a volleyball into his face by accident.

Not handsome, Stoic. Not handsome at all. Oh well. Get back out there.

He finished washing with warm water from a faucet and took one last glance at himself while patting his face dry with a soft terry-cloth towel.

Oh, Stoic. That hair. You need to do something with that hair. Remember: you’re a stoic by philosophy of mind and word, not by unkempt hair and clothing. Tighten up! Tighten everything up! Is there a comb? Look for a comb!

He looked desperately, finding only brushes made for long blonde hair, along with a few hairpins and barrettes. He tried to flatten his hair with one of those stiff brushes.

No good, Stoic! Too flat! Tussle it up. There you go. Any chance the place is stocked with cologne? No? Essential oils! Yes! Dab a little of the sandalwood behind the ear. Yes! Nice…

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With that, he exited the bathroom, turned back to the living space, and found her in the small kitchen area, facing away from him and leaning over to pick something up off the floor. The swaddling of glowing light did everything as it did when Abe woke up, and it made him grow weak, as if he’d been struck by lightning.

He moaned a bit, then sat himself on the futon.

“Everything okay?” the female asked.

“Everything okay,” Abe said. He stared.

“I’m making you a poached egg to go with some crackers. See if you can hold it down before we try something more substantial.” The aroma of warming soy sauce filled his nostrils.

“Onsen tamago?” Abe said, weakly.

“Not quite,” the female said. “I don’t have nearly enough ingredients, but we do have the time. There. It’s at the right temperature. We’ll eat in twenty minutes. Now let me look at that dressing.”

At first Abe didn’t know what she meant, so that when she walked toward him, in that soft, warm manner of hers, with her face pleasantly uplifted, he was confused, and a little frightened.

Again, she laughed slightly, saying, “The bandage, silly boy. I have to change that bandage on the back of your head.”

“Oh,” he said, reaching his hand to feel for the bandage. Indeed, there was a thick bandage on his head, just out of sight of his mirror image, and it was moist.

You combed your hair, Stoic, and you didn’t notice a gigantic ball of gauze taped to your noggin?

“My,” she said. “Aren’t you an anxious one? Can you relax? I saw you breathing last night. Perhaps some breathing will help you. Don’t be afraid. I mean to help you.”

Abe tried to breathe, but his shoulders went up. “No good,” he said. “Uh…I’m…uh…well, I haven’t used…I haven’t seen…we haven’t had any of…”

“Why don’t you lie down,” the female said, in more a directive than a request.

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Abe caught himself. “Tell me your name, collector.”

“Alayna Harris,” she said without hesitation. “As generic an American name as you want. And what is your name? Is it a generic American name?”

“Ha, no. Generic Japanese, can’t you tell? My name is Abe Morie.”

Alayna closed her eyes. She opened them, fixed directly on his. “Yes,” she said. “Abe Morie. Such a lovely acquaintance to make.”

Abe felt his body grow tense. Alayna smiled, patting the mattress. “Lie down, Abe. Breathe. Let me take care of you. I have to change this bandage. Lie down, Abe. Lie down. There, now.”

Abe let her guide him onto the mattress. He heard the hiss of the propane heater. Without suddenness, so that he was not startled, but without hesitation, so that she did not pause, she lay down beside him.

“Lie on your side away from me,” she said. Abe rolled away from her, and she began to gently probe the bandage with her fingers.

“You could do this standing, while I sat in a chair, or something,” Abe said, trying to catch his breath.

“Yes,” Alayna said, “but I don’t want to.”

Where a warning should have been, and an internal dialog, was the kind of silence brought on by waters rushing over a cataract.

She pressed herself against him, her body so warm upon his that he wasn’t sure if she still had any clothing on herself. He felt her hands come around his torso, one under his hip, which tickled him. When he flinched, he felt her smile spread on his shoulder, followed by her sweet breath making its way down and over his back. Her other hand came around from above, resting on his chest, moving gently to rub the rest of his torso. It felt like butterflies dancing in a summer breeze.

“You’ve had a rough go,” she whispered. “Tell me about your adventure. What happened? What series of events led you to fall off a cliff, here in Idaho, USA, in the middle of February?”

She raised her leg and caressed Abe’s calf with her foot.

“Tell me,” she said. “Maybe I can help.”

“Why…”

“Collecting runaways makes a girl lonely, see?”

Abe closed his eyes and felt tears squeeze out of them. “I like that,” he said. His headache returned, worse than a few minutes ago, but not as bad as when he had awakened in the middle of last night.

He opened his eyes and saw that the wall was decorated with maps and printouts of satellite imagery. Some had thumbtacks in them, connecting map locations to satellite locations. He became somewhat interested in the wall, and what it meant to his condition, but her breath brought him back to the futon and that present predicament.

“I’ll go slower,” Alayna said.

After a pause, Abe said, “Yes, please.”

She put her hand on his hip, resting it there. “Is this okay?”

Abe tried breathing again, and he finally said, in a trembling whisper, “Okay.” The alarms were still wailing throughout his body, both warning of danger and anticipation of pleasure. Every fiber of his being was preparing for one or the other, like drunks rushing toward a fire to extinguish it with booze while firemen tried to turn them away with blasts from the firehose. He kept waiting for his own advisor, but the chaos of his mental processes overwhelmed anything resembling a reasonable internal discourse.

He began to cry.

She took her hand from his hip and very gently caressed his face, using her thumb to wipe away his tears. “You’ve been hurt,” she said. “This business you’ve fallen into: it has hurt you, hasn’t it?”

“Yes!” he said, and he sobbed. “We crashed into the mountain!” His mind took him back to those awful moments, waking up his interlocutor from the past:

I’m sure it was nothing, just a little thermal updraft from the mountains. Seattle will be here any minute. Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up…Salamander? Why not cucumber?... No. This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening… This is bad. This is bad. This is bad. Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up… What is wrong with you? You always say, every time the plane takes off, that if it goes down, you will go down a stoic, silent and sure of your doom. Now act like a stoic. Maybe Sano will mistake you for a man, here, at the end. Together…

As on the airplane, while it was still aloft, here on the futon Abe began to count: One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand… until he reached ten-one-thousand. In so doing, he arrested the outpouring of his fears, and he began to talk.

“We didn’t really fall into this business,” he said. “We crashed into it. Somehow we survived the crash, Sano and I, along with the others you know about, and, since then, it has been about survival. We learned how to survive. Yes.”

“Hm,” said Alayna, and she cuddled closer to him, returning her hand to his hip, running her toes along the bottom of both his feet.

With that, the pleasure alarms overcame the danger alarms, and all the drunks Abe never knew dwelt within him were unleashed from the storehouses of his limbic system.

“Mm…” she said. “You must be very strong, strong in your mind, and…in your body.”

“Yeah…”

“I don’t feel lonely anymore,” Alayna said. “I want to hear more.”

And Abe began to speak.

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