Dark Rivers of the Heart

whispered.
        "Compassion. If you want to understand other people to feel their pain, to really know the anguish of their lives, to love them in spite of their faults, you're overcome by such pity, such intense pity, it's intolerable. It must be relieved. So you tap into the immeasurable, inexhaustible power of compassion. You act to relieve suffering, to ease the world a hairsbreadth closer to perfection."
        "Compassion," she whispered again, as if she had never heard the word before, or as if he had shown her a definition of it that she had never previously appreciated.
        Roy could not look away from her mouth as she repeated the word twice again. Her lips were divine. He couldn't imagine why he had thought that Melissa Wicklun's lips were perfect, for Eve's lips made Melissa's seem less attractive than those of a leprous toad. These were lips beside which the ripest plum would look as withered as a prune, beside which the sweetest strawberry would look sour.
        Playing Henry Higgins to her Eliza Doolittle, he continued her first lesson in moral refinement: "When you're motivated solely by compassion, when no personal gain is involved, then any act is moral, utterly moral, and you owe no explanations to anyone, ever. Acting from compassion, you're freed forever from doubt, and that is a power like no other."
        "Any act," she said, so overcome by the concept that she could barely find enough breath to speak.
        "Any," he assured her.
        She licked her lips.
        Oh, God, her tongue was so delicate, glistened so intriguingly, slipped so sensuously across her lips, was so perfectly tapered that a faint sigh of ecstasy escaped him before he was quite aware of it.
        Perfect lips. Perfect tongue. If only her chin had not been tragically fleshy. Others might think it was the chin of a goddess, but Roy was cursed with a greater sensitivity to imperfection than were other men.
        He was acutely aware of the smidgen of excess fat that lent her chin a barely perceptible puffy look. He would just have to focus on her lips, on her tongue, and not allow his gaze to drift down from there.
        "How many have you done?" she asked.
        "Done? Oh. You mean, like back at the restaurant."
        "Yes. How many?"
        "Well, I don't count them. That would seem… I don't know… it would seem prideful. I don't want praise. No. My satisfaction is just in doing what I know is right. It's a very private satisfaction."
        "How many?" she persisted. "A rough estimate."
        "Oh, I don't know. Over the years… a couple of hundred, a few hundred, something like that."
        She closed her eyes and shivered. "When you do them… just before you do them and they look in your eyes, are they afraid?"
        "Yes, but I wish they weren't. I wish they could see that I know their anguish, that I'm acting from compassion, that it's going to be quick and painless."
        With her own eyes closed, half swooning, she said, "They look into your eyes, and they see the power you have over them, the power of a storm, and they're afraid."
        He released her right hand and pointed his forefinger at the flat section of bone immediately above the root of her perfect nose. It was a nose that made all the other fine noses seem as unformed as the "nose" on a coconut shell. Slowly, he moved his finger toward her face as he said, "You. Have. The. Most. Exquisite. Glabella. I. Have.
        Ever. Seen."
        With the last word, he touched his finger to her glabella, the flat portion of the front skull bone between her unimpeachable left superciliary arch and her unfortunately bony right superciliary arch, directly above her nose.
        Although her eyes were closed, Eve didn't flinch with surprise at his touch. She seemed to have developed such a closeness to him, so quickly, that she was aware of his every intention and slightest movement without the aid of vision-and without relying on any of the other five senses, for that matter.
        He took his finger off her glabella. "Do you believe in fate?"
        "Yes."
        "We are fate."
        She opened her eyes and said, "Let's go back to my place."
        On the trip to her house, she broke traffic laws by the score.
        Roy didn't approve, but he withheld his criticism.
        She lived in a small two-story house in a recently completed tract. It was nearly identical to the other houses on