What happens when she's not my memory anymore? What happens when she's not around to tell me about his belt leaving scars across my two-year-old brother's face or when he whacked her so hard that she lost her hearing for a week? Who'll be my memory?" Santangelo doesn't miss a beat. "I will. Ring me." "Same," Raffy says. I look at him. I can't even speak because if I do I know I'll cry but I smile and he knows what I'm thinking.

Sometimes Thomas Mackee will stick an earphone into my ear and ask me to listen to a song. When I get over the revulsion of putting something in my ear that's been in his, I sit back and let the music take over, and for a half hour there's something comforting about someone's heart beating at the same rhythm as mine.

In a kinder world," he whispered, "one I promise you I've seen, men and women flirt and dance and love with only the fear of what it would mean without the other in their lives.

Men don't rape women because their women are ugly," cousin Jostien said, but there was a protest at his words. "That's what my fa said! He says that inside their hearts and spirits they are nothing but little men who need to feel powerful.

I'm sorry," he says, "for that time I kissed you at that party and for that time at the wedding and more than anything for the thousand times that I wanted to and didn't have the guts to.

Left alone with the dial tone...excuse me, operator, why is no one listening?

And then their voices stopped and their souls stood still and they ceased being who they had been. Because who they were had always been determined by him.