I didn't know the inner me was hungry," I said to Art. "That's because it already starved to death.

Already, though, she understood the difference between being a child and being an adult. The difference is when someone says he can keep the bad things away, a child believes him.

I mean, when the world comes for your children, with the knives out, it's your job to stand in the way.

She just knew that even when you had nothing, you still had love.

I will be waiting by candlelight in our tree house of the mind.

What a blessed if painful thing, this business of being alive.

God saves - but not now, and not here. His salvation is on layaway. Like all grifters, He asks you to pay now and take it on faith that you will receive later. Whereas women offer a different sort of salvation, more immediate and fulfilling. They don't put off their love for a distant, ill-defined eternity but make a gift of it in the here and now, frequently to those who deserve it least. So it was in my case. So it is for many. The devil and woman have been allies against God from the beginning.