One crawled through the window, and another left by taxi. Not immediately, but within half an hour. It took 25 minutes for the cab to arrive, and the older sister, Jessy, stood out in the street waiting, swigging from a bottle of vodka. It was morning. Maybe 9 am. The younger sister, Monica, had called the cab for her. It was the least she could do.

He wasn’t real, and yet all too real in this. A thorn. An aberration. Something of a freak. Looking back over the years, the decades, the sisters could catch up, with a little tension, and agree he was bad, a freak. He wrecked our lives, they affirmed. Wrecked them before they’d really had a chance to get started.