Chapter 5
I’m sinking, he thought. Knee-deep in the underworld. And yet, if the prowler was truthful with himself, it was the underworld that had been rising. More fervent as he succumbed, descending into himself. Into his queries.
He stared at a votive candle across from him, burning in a red container caked with wax splashes. How the glow illuminated the attendant gin bottles above, exposing the dust on the shelves.
He’d been trying to hold two things at once, each cancelling the other out, each one wanting him entirely. Each willing to make him their everything. Everything or nothing. It was like being in a small room, as if in a gallery, divided down the middle, forcing the viewer to see two exhibits simultaneously. On one side, innocent young lips, succulent and swollen, wetted in
