Sweetheart," Bill said formally, "I have always loved you, and I will be proud to die in your service. When I'm gone, say a prayer for me in a real church.

I love him," I said, but even to my own ears I didn't sound happy about it.

In the world I lived in, the world of human people, there were ties and debts and consequences and good deeds. That was what bound people to society; maybe that was what constituted society. And I tried to live in my little niche in it the best way I could.

But there's a juicy artery in your groin," he said after a pause to regroup, his voice as slithery as a snake on a slide. "Don't you talk dirty," I told him. "I won't listen to that.

My favorite fantasy? You come down into my daytime resting place stark naked," he said, and I could see the gleam of his teeth as he smiled. "Oh, wait," Bill said. "That's already happened.

If it's easy to be friendly she will be. If the wind blows the other way her friendship will be gone. And I'm thinking the wind is blowing the other way. She has found some other way to be an important person in her own right by hating others.

I'm a middle-class former housewife who goes to my daughter's softball games.