Dark Rivers of the Heart

her away. th… never seen such..
        "Yes."
        "… never such..
        "I know, dear one. I know." it… such power," she said.
        That was not the word he had thought that she was searching for.
        But she had pronounced it with such passion, imbued it with so much erotic energy, he could not be disappointed that she had yet to grasp the full meaning of what he had done.
        "They're just going out for dinner," she said excitedly. She had begun to drive too fast, recklessly. "Just going out to dinner, an ordinary night, nothing special, and-wham!-you whack them! Just like that, Jesus, take them out, and not even to get anything that belongs to them, not even because they crossed you or anything like that. Just for me. just for me, to show me who you really are."
        "Well, yes, for you," he said. "But not only for you, Eve. Don't you see? I removed two imperfect lives from creation, inching the world closer to perfection. And at the same time, I relieved those two sad people of the burden of this cruel life, this imperfect world, where nothing could ever be as they hoped. I gave to the world, and I gave to those poor people, and there were no losers."
        "You're like the wind," she said breathlessly, "like a fantastic storm wind, hurricane, tornado, except there's no weatherman to warn anyone you're coming. You've got the power of the storm, you're a force of nature-sweeping out of nowhere, for no reason. "am!"
        Worried that she was missing the point, Roy said, "Wait, wait a minute, Eve, listen to me."
        She was so excited that she couldn't drive any more. She angled the Honda to the curb, tramped the brakes so hard that Roy would have been Pitched into the windshield if his harness hadn't been buckled.
        Slamming the gearshift into park with nearly enough force to snap it off, she turned to him. "You're an earth uake, just like an earthquake.
        People can be walking along, carefree, sun shining, birds singing-and then the ground opens and just swallows them up."
        She laughed with delight. Hers was a girlish, trilling, musical laugh, so infectious that he had difficulty not laughing with her.
        He took her hands in his. They were elegant, long-fingered, as exquisitely shaped as the hands of Guinevere, and the touch of them was more than any man deserved.
        Unfortunately, the radius and ulna, above the perfectly shaped carpals of her wrist, were not of the supreme caliber of the bones in her hands.
        He was careful not to look at them. Or touch them.
        "Eve, listen. You must understand. It's extremely important that you understand."
        She grew solemn at once, realizing that they had reached a most serious point in their relationship. She was even more beautiful when somber than when laughing.
        He said, "You're right, this is a great power. The greatest of all powers, and that's why you've got to be clear about it."
        Although the only light in the car came from the instrument panel, her green eyes blazed as if with the reflection of summer sun. They were perfect eyes, as flawless and compelling as those of the woman for whom he had been hunting this past year, whose photograph he carried in his wallet.
        Eve's left brow was perfect too. But a slight irregularity marred her right superciliary arch, above her eye socket: It was regrettably too prominent, only fractionally more so than the left, formed with barely half a gram too much bone, but nevertheless out of balance and shy of the perfection on the left.
        That was okay. He could live with that. He would just focus on her angelic eyes below her brow, and on each of her incomparable hands below her knobby radius and ulna. Though flawed, she was the only woman he'd ever seen with more than one perfect feature. Ever, ever, ever. And her treasures weren't limited to her hands and eyes.
        "Unlike other power, Eve, this doesn't flow from anger," he explained, wanting this precious woman to understand his mission and his innermost self. "It doesn't come from hatred, either. It's not the power of rage, envy, bitterness, greed. It's not like the power some people find in courage or honorer that they gain from a belief in God. It transcends those powers, Eve. Do you know what it is?" She was rapt, unable to speak. She only shook her head: no.
        "My power," he said, "is the power of compassion."
        "Compassion," she