“The other one he loved like a slave, like a madman and like a beggar. Why? Ask the dust on the road and the falling leaves, ask the mysterious God of life; for no one knows such things. She gave him nothing, no nothing did she give him and yet he thanked her. She said: Give me your peace and your reason! And he was only sorry she did not ask for his life.”

“Julita was being spinned like a top by a drop-dead-gorgeous Dominicano. Later she told us that he’d asked for her number and she had given him the wrong one.“Why did you do that?” I asked her.“He smelled married,” she said.”

“She also said she would give him a kiss if he liked, but Peter did not know what she meant, and he held out his hand expectantly.”

“She did not come to him, however. She has never come to me, he tough. She has always waited, letting me come to her. She gives, but I must ask.”

“She asked him if he could teleport. (He could.) She asked him if he had superhuman strength. (He did.)She asked him if he enjoyed the taste of human blood. (He didn’t.) She asked him why he was always being depicted as having the head of a goat in the movies. (He wondered about that, too.)”

“She had loved him. He knew this; he had never doubted it. But she had also asked him to kill her. If you love someone that much, you did not lay that sort of burden on him for the rest of his life.”