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From the outside, the house looked as though it could easily pass the standard assessment. Daniel had, of course, been doing an off-record evaluation of the place since he first stepped through the gate. He noticed everything, even many of the things that others tended to overlook. If a blacklisted material was going to be present then it wouldn’t be present in large amounts, and any breach of regulation was much more likely to be subtle, something easily missed. Nine times out of ten he already knew whether a dwelling was going to pass the examination process before he even reached the front door, which was a good sign for the occupant in this instance, but then, naturally, the vast majority of breaches always occurred within the home.
             He pressed the bell once, and examined the home’s security while he waited. It was adequate. The outer door was reinforced steel mesh, and he ran his hand over it to feel the solidity of it. Some people cheated with cheaper, weaker materials and dressed them up to look genuine. Daniel could generally tell from the feel of it whether the steel ratio and construction were satisfactory, but then it was never certain without proper testing. He was about to press the bell again when she answered and caught him off-guard.
             The woman was young, much younger than he. Probably fresh out of home, a student or a graduate setting out on her own to embark upon her new life. Many of them were, and these types were always the most likely to receive a low grade. It had taken a long time for Daniel to coach himself past the emotional burden of being the one to turf so many of these people out of their own homes, to leave a trail of the shattered dreams of youth behind him, and many of his colleagues still wrestled with the weight of this every day. For Daniel it had become a matter of balancing priorities, of seeing the bigger picture behind his work – his was a life of virtue, saving people, not ruining them. Whatever damage he did in the short term was nothing compared to the good he was doing here. That was why the Department held him in such high regard, more than any of the other agents, Daniel was the most adept in leaving his emotions at home when he stepped outside in this suit. They called him the Headkicker.
             Still, this girl was quite the stunner. High cheekbones, long dark hair and deep blue eyes, and though he would never admit it openly, an attractive young women always presented the biggest challenge to his ability to conduct an unbiased assessment. That was a poison that still ran through every man’s veins despite every effort by science to cure it, and though he prided himself on his impartiality, Daniel almost always reacted to an attractive woman by overcompensating in his evaluation. After all, if a mistake was going to be made, it was better to register too many breaches than too few.
             “Miss Maxine Sanders?”
             “Yes?”
             “I’m Agent Daniel Winston from the Department of Hazard Negation, I’m here to conduct your risk assessment. I’m assuming you’re familiar with how this works?”
             “Yes, please come in.”
             She flipped the locks, only three of them deadlocks, and although this was acceptable it was less than most people settled with these days. He took note of it and brought his black leather briefcase inside.
             “This is a nice home.”
             “Thanks.”
             “Now, my notes indicate that you haven’t been assessed before, so I’ll run through the standard procedure with you briefly.”
             “Okay.”
             “You’ve been allocated one hundred points to begin with, so we’re assuming one hundred percent viability at this juncture. I’m going to assess the property according to certain criteria that is laid out as standard by the Department, and you will have received a manual detailing these criteria upon your purchase of the property, so you should know what I’ll be looking for.”
             “Yep.”
             “Okay, now, I’m going to evaluate your home and in the end I’ll give it a final score. This will be a number between zero and a hundred. What we’re aiming for is to keep you at a hundred, that’s the ideal, but every time I find something that constitutes a breach of the standard criteria of acceptable risk, I have to dock a certain number of points from this score, depending of course on the severity of the breach.”
             “Sure.”
             “You’re aware of course that if your score falls below ninety, the Department of Hazard Negation will be forced to declare this dwelling uninhabitable. You’ll be given a couple of days to locate an alternate place of residence, and vacate these premises.”
             “I hope that won’t be necessary.”
             Daniel looked up at her, trying to read her expression. She hoped? Uncertainty was the first sign of unacceptable risk, and most people would never order an evaluation until they were sure they would pass. The alternative was too dire.
             “Yes… well, me too. So let’s begin.”
             “Would you like anything? Water?”
             “No. Thank you.”
             The lounge was uncarpeted, a polished floor without blemish. Although carpet was not itself a breach, Daniel had never inspected a carpeted dwelling that passed grade. It was simply too difficult to keep it clean. You could dry-clean it again and again, vacuum every day, and still you’d test it and find it rife with dust, bacteria and carcinogens. The Department’s assessment manual declared carpet to be an extremely ill-advised option.
             Daniel opened his briefcase and pulled out a clipboard, a series of documents and a regulation ballpoint which he clicked on his temple. He scribbled a few notes to himself that Miss Sanders tried to read over his shoulder.
             “The information I’ve received about you says that you’ve never registered for swimming lessons,” he said while running two fingers across the surface of a desk.
             “No. No, I hate the water.”
             “You’ll have to get on top of that soon. There’s a public swimming pool that’s just opened a few blocks away, over on Wilkson Road.”
             “I’d never use it. Like I said, I hate to swim.”
             He frowned and looked up at her again. Such unusual and worrying responses to standard statements didn’t bode well. “And if you changed your mind?” he asked, “People do things on impulse, Miss Sanders. If you decided on a whim to take a dip in the local pool and you didn’t know how to swim, you’d drown yourself. It’s always better to be prepared, people are their own worst enemies.” He checked his fingers for dust. “Besides, it’s the law. Live within proximity of a body of water, you’ve got to know how to swim.”
             Observance was a virtue in this line of work; not only observance of actual risk breaches, but observance of a resident’s attitude toward the notion of risk itself. Daniel had trained himself to be sensitive to the way people responded, and reacted. Through the course of normal conversation it was possible to gauge the liability of a person to take chances with their own, or someone else’s, life. Already it was becoming evident that this particular subject was a risk-taker, if not completely maverick. Though he could see this in her attitude, it didn’t seem to correspond with the way she kept her home, which was so far impeccable. There had to be something, of that he was certain. Maxine Sanders didn’t have the temperament to be this careful.
             “How does it look?”
             “Good. Very good, Miss Sanders, top notch.”
             Not a speck of dust, not a flake of debris. Daniel spotted a series of dust absorbers on the wall above him, humming in unison, and he reached up to check the filter.
             “You replace these once a week?”
             “Without fail.”
             The spongy substance of the dust filter was clear. He fitted it back inside and closed the cover. Of course, it wasn’t inconceivable that she had some manner of outside help. A mother, perhaps, or a pedantic elder sibling who ensured that Miss Sanders maintained a safe and secure environment. This wasn’t against protocol, but Daniel had always maintained that each individual should ensure that he or she is independently capable of sustaining an acceptable lifestyle. Not everybody has somebody. He certainly didn’t.
             The loungeroom’s grand centrepiece was a large table that appeared to be made of oak but of course was not – wood inside the home had been illegal for nigh two decades, as not only was the material itself a carrier of disease and vermin, but all forms of varnish had been identified as a fourth-tier carcinogen. Daniel crouched to inspect the item. Tapping it, he determined that it was regulation zoacite, the hard plastic that was used for most furnishings of this type by way of its able emulation of genuine woodgrain.
             “I’m not keen on this,” he said.
             “It’s not wood.”
             “I know. It has some pretty hard corners, though. Dangerous for children.”
             “I don’t have any children.”
             “Not yet. You’re a young woman, you’ll probably want to start a family of your own at some stage. Even if you don’t, we have to accept the possibility that you’ll be entertaining guests who have children.” He tapped the outcropping corner of the table. “If you came stumbling through here in the dark, you’d cork your shin or your knee on this, and that’s bad enough, but if you had children running around in here and they ran into this, they could crack their head open, or have an eye out.”
             “I don’t know anybody who has children. If I did I’d be careful.”
             Daniel shook his head. “Miss Sanders, forty percent of child injuries occur in somebody else’s home. Parents are always careful to secure their own residence but people often don’t prepare enough for unexpected eventualities. That’s why the Department has made it an issue to ensure that every home is free of such hazards, whether there are children present or not. The manual makes this very clear. I’m afraid I’m going to have to take a point off for this.”
             “Please…”
             “I have to follow protocol. It’s okay, I understand it’s easy to overlook. As long as the rest of the house is up to scratch, you’ll still be able to remove this item and apply for a re-evaluation. Let’s move on.”
             The hallway was narrow and undecorated but for a framed poster. It was the black-and-white image of Audrey Hepburn from Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Beside it was a smoke alarm. Daniel scribbled a note to himself and approached the device.
             “Do you have to take a lot of homes in this job?” Miss Sanders asked.
             “Some.”
             “Is that difficult?”
             Daniel opened his briefcase and withdrew what appeared to be a small stick of white plastic, and a lighter. He lit the end of the stick with the flame and held both up to the alarm. The stick gave off a plume of smoke, and the alarm blared a thought-shattering screech. He waved at the air until the noise stopped.
            “I don’t think of it like I’m taking homes. I think that if somebody is living in a dangerous situation, then they’d want to know about it. If they’re in a life-threatening situation then they need to be removed from that situation as quickly as possible.”
             “You find this rewarding? A lot of people end up living in the streets or even Outborder after the Department evicts them.”
             “If I see somebody lying on the tracks and there’s a train coming, then I’m going to drag that person to safety. I don’t care how comfortable they were on the tracks. I don’t care if they abuse me for it. I’d still consider myself to have done a good deed. I won’t tell you that this isn’t thankless work, but I don’t need to hear people thank me. My awareness at having done good doesn’t depend on you realising it.”
             The longer the assessment continued, it seemed, the less capable Maxine Sanders was of masking her animosity toward him and the Department. And the more she spoke out against the assessment process, the more certain Daniel was that she was covering for some kind of major breach that she knew was present. He had encountered this a number of times in his career, as it was often he who the Department entrusted to conduct what were known as speculative investigations – occasional groups of students or young businesspeople set up crash houses, meeting places in which to indulge in illicit contraband, and upon due suspicion of the existence of such places the Department was permitted to force a risk evaluation without forewarning. This was widely known, and it was because of this that crash houses were usually the most impeccable to evaluate, their residents overtly helpful and obliging. But their complacence was a mask, and it was superficial. Daniel could always sense the layer of hostility that dwelled just beneath. And they were never quite so accommodating after he located the stash of contraband that they thought was so carefully concealed.
             It was for these people that Daniel felt the deepest pang of sympathy. Unlike those who unwittingly overlooked harmful details, like a sharp corner on a coffee table, there were some people who were quite literally addicted to self deprecation. These people had a sickness, and the temporary pleasures of the material world ate away at the rational mind to the extent that they could no longer see the dangers inherent to their lifestyle. Stealing glances at this beautiful but uneasy young girl filled Daniel with needlepoint splinters of dread at the growing suspicion that he’d stumbled into a crash house, and that pretty Miss Sanders was teetering on the edge of self-destruction.
             No points were lost in the bathroom. She had a regulation water-saver showerhead installed and none of the linens contained contraband dyes. There was no trace of rust in the basin, nor mould on the curtains or tiles. It was the same story for the bedroom and the office. Room after room he scoured, paying even more attention to detail than he was accustomed to, but Miss Sanders seemed every bit as pedantic as Daniel himself. With every inch of the home he inspected, he was almost certain that he would find something faulty, something dusty, something illicit or substandard. Such was his certainty that his quest became one of desperation as much as precision. If his suspicions were true, if this was a crash house, then he couldn’t allow it to pass grade. It would be unethical. Even if the house came up clean and he took his suspicions to the Department, there was the chance that someone else would fail to read the signs. As he scanned Maxine’s soap for carcinogens he felt the temptation to produce a false reading. It was easy enough to do – with improper protocol there were several ways in which the incoming data could be manipulated so as to appear to identify chemicals which weren’t present – but he suppressed the urge. In ten years as the Department’s resident headkicker he had invalidated hundreds of properties, every time based on actual investigative results. The one thing he had never done was plant contraband or falsify evidence to force an outcome. These things were not uncommon in his line of work, and the Department turned a blind eye to it much of the time, but Daniel’s pride was such that he could never bring himself to cheat in such a way, even if the end would seem to justify the means.
             The evaluation had taken five hours by the time Daniel reached the final port of call, the kitchen, and Maxine Sanders’ evaluation score remained at an only slightly imperfect 99. Still ten points away from a revocation order. Nevertheless this was the kitchen, and ninety percent of all breaches within a typical residence occurred here, in this haven of chemicals and disease and rot. It was rare indeed for anyone to survive a kitchen evaluation without losing a few points here and there. Daniel could only hope that there were enough breaches here to warrant a revocation, or else twenty-four hours from now Maxine Sanders might be having sex on this safe linoleum floor, downing sugarbombs or caffeine drinks or even worse, far out of reach of the protective hands of the Department. For reasons that weren’t entirely clear to him, he looked into the blue eyes of this young beauty and felt a deep revulsion at the thought of her being eaten apart by cancers and venereal disease, her arteries choked with pus, her diabetic pancreas wilting, her liver bloated and her kidneys shrivelled, her teeth rotting out of her skull. She was too beautiful, too delicate to meet the horrid fate of a crash house madam. The world was cruel and unforgiving to the abusers of its costly pleasures, and Daniel was compelled to ensure that such fate would never slide its wormy fingers through her well-constructed physique. It was more than a responsibility, it was a duty.
             But Miss Sanders had done well to keep the law satisfied in her kitchen, as with the rest of her home. The pantry was a minimalist collection of Department-endorsed dehydrated foodstuffs, protein and vitamin supplements, herbal replacements, and flavour enhancers. Everything had the DHN stamp of approval on the packaging, which was a tactic that so many people used to try to impress Department agents, but of course it meant nothing for a cursory inspection. The presence of the logo didn’t invalidate the possibility that the packaging was used to hide something illicit, or that the contents were out of date. Whether the products in the home were Department-endorsed or not, they still had to be scanned, one by one. Daniel set upon this task without hesitation. He set his briefcase down on the bench (a tall bench, with soft rounded corners, to his chagrin) and opened the clasps.
             The agency standard regulation chemical analysis device, or colloquially the scanner, was little more than a long steel probe on a handle, attached by wires to a small handheld computer. The probe was inserted into the material to be analysed, and the computer was able to identify its composition and match the data against the Department’s official substance register via a remote network linkup. It utilised similar technology to what NASA used to analyse soil samples on distant planets and moons, and it was extremely precise. If there was one molecule of contraband in a jar of otherwise approved material, the scanner would find it.
             The dehydrated foodstuffs scanned clean as usual. They were distributed by the Department weekly to all self-sufficient residents of the major cities, and provided all the daily nutritional requirements of the human body. They were also completely tasteless, and those who found it impossible to subsist on a diet of what might as well be sawdust and newspaper sought sustenance through other means. This was where human intuition failed many people and led to the most serious hazard breaches. Daniel rarely alternated from the DHN’s official diet plan – after all, aside from being the safest option, his taxes paid for it.
             Most herbs and spices, and various other unclean substances that could be obtained in the diseased cesspit beyond the borders, were branded illicit by health authorities within their jurisdiction. Despite the cries of naturopaths and corporate quacks, none of whom held an authoritative degree in such matters, the dangers of consuming the leaves and roots of trees and shrubs had been well known to academia since the discovery of the tobacco leaf. Alternative flavour enhancers endorsed by Department health officials were chemical ‘replacement’ substances, some of them extracted from herbal sources, but refined so as to remove the impurities that were rampant in nature. Though they were better than anything you could pick off a tree, they were a minefield of risks. Science was unmasking new hazards every day, and many flavour supplements contained undiscovered dangers.
             As Daniel probed the packages of herbal replacements and waited for the scanner to connect with the Department mainframe, he perused the images emblazoned on the side of each. Below the no frills logo of Sanitarium Artificial Dairy Flavouring Agent was a large full-colour photograph of a man’s face. His eyeballs had burst and the red jelly was running down his rotting cheeks in thick streams. His skin seemed to be literally splitting at unseen seams and peeling back like old paint exposed to the weather.
             The scanner reported the substance was clean. Daniel came close to cursing but stopped himself – that would surely have reinforced Miss Sanders’ conviction that the Department somehow wanted to kick her out of her home. But there wasn’t much room left for analysis, and there was still no sign of the contraband that Daniel’s gut told him must be present. He checked Maxine’s face and saw only calm, almost smug patience. In the days of legalised gambling such an expression had been known as a poker face. She was hiding something, but she was sure he wouldn’t find it. Perhaps there was a secret room, a hole dug in a wall somewhere, maybe behind a painting or a loose brick, but Daniel had carried the industry standard ‘sniffer’ equipment to every room in this house and it hadn’t registered even a molecule of suspect material in the air. Perhaps she had removed anything untoward beforehand, buried it in the yard or stashed it with friends in anticipation of the analysis. She was too smart to leave it here, in the open, mixed in with bags of sweetening agents and potassium-based decarcinogenised flavour enhancement powders. But he would scan them anyway, twice if necessary, for no reason beyond obligation to protocol.
             He was shocked when the scanner, probing a carton of Campbell’s Country Style Soup Alternative, suddenly emitted the shrill squeal of the alarm that registered the presence of a banned substance. His heart raced and his wrist froze. The half-smile on Maxine’s face drooped and her brow hardened. Something she hadn’t expected. A glitch in her plan? Daniel kept his professional composure as best he could manage while he checked the scanner’s data.
             “Hm.”
             “What is that? What does that noise mean?”
             “The substance scan has detected the presence of a carcinogen. Steramidopropyl Dimethylaymine.”
             “It’s wrong. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
             He flipped the carton and read the back of it. “It’s listed in the ingredients.”
             “The Department recommends that brand. I buy it based on your recommendations.”
             “It’s your responsibility to check the nightly reports.”
             “I do! That stereomidi-whatever-the-fuck is not listed on any report.”
             “There’s no reason for harsh language, Miss Sanders. The information I’ve received is that this particular substance was added to last night’s carcinogen list. It may have been deemed safe when you bought it, but we have since learned otherwise.”
             “Last night? I haven’t had time to go around checking everything I own against last night’s carcinogen list. I’ve been preparing for this damn evaluation.”
             “Forgive me for saying so, Miss Sanders, but if you’ve nothing to hide from me then there’s no reason that preparing for an evaluation should take very much time at all.” He looked into her eyes, diluted with fear, and it softened him. He didn’t want to argue. Her argument should not have been with him or the Department but with the horrid beast that humanity had labeled cancer, the crab, that which scurried into the lives and bodies of the innocent and unsuspecting. This enemy had no face, and for the need to give it one, most people unwittingly shifted the blame to their greatest ally, the Department. It was a pitiful shame, and Daniel lamented often, for it was a sad indictment on society that they should pitch venom at the institution whose only crime is to warn them if the all-devouring crab has infested their lives.
             “Hey,” he said, “I’m on your side, here. I don’t want to blacklist your home if it’s not absolutely necessary. A first offence, minor substance breach is worth nine points. You’re still in the black, so long as the rest of this place is up to scratch, and I have a feeling that it is. You keep an impeccable home, Miss Sanders. I don’t do much better than this, myself.”
             Maxine nodded. “You’re a kind man, Mr… I’m sorry, what was it?”
             “Winston,” he replied. “Daniel.”
             “Daniel, then. I can see you’re a good guy. I don’t get any vibe of… malice from you.”
             “Why would I be malicious?”
             “If you don’t mind me saying so, you work for a horrid department. I’ve met a lot of DHN people and they seem to get a lot of enjoyment out of nailing people for their unhealthy lifestyles. It’s like a sport to them, like we’re all just a bunch of animals, squirming and rooting in a pit of our own stupidity.”
             “I think that’s a misnomer. We get a bad rap, but nobody intends to be patronising.”
             “You’d be surprised.”
             “It’s hard for people today to understand just what an improvement the Department has made on the Australian way of life. People can live to be a hundred nowerdays, that’s longer than they ever did before the twenty-first century. The only way to wipe out these horrific diseases is to stamp out the substances that cause them. This was all new when I was a kid, and attitudes were a lot different back then. I lived through the bird flu pandemic, the obesity crisis… I watched the collapse of the United States, and that was a massive wake-up call for people. Everyone was crying out for this. It’s not that we think you’re stupid. Ignorant, maybe. We’re all ignorant. Every one of us. Humans. Oh… we’re done.”
             “Done?”
             Daniel counted off the items in the pantry again, each of them clean apart from the solitary one that had scanned red. He’d been through the refrigerator and found nothing untoward. The residence was admissible. Imperfect, but ninety points was still a pass. He frowned and scratched his head as he glanced about the room, searched for anything that might constitute even a minor breach. Something he may have missed before. Just one more point. One more point and he could justify a revocation order. Just one.
             “So I’ve passed the inspection?”
             He looked at her, hope glowing in her eyes, and he wanted to lay his cards down right here. Just come out with it while he still had the chance. I know you’re running a crash house, Miss Sanders, the game is up and if you admit to it right now I can argue for a minimal sentence. What was stopping him? What caught the words in his throat? He opened and closed his mouth soundlessly like a goldfish gulping water. What good were accusations at this late hour? He’d conducted his investigation and he’d found nothing that would condemn this woman. Wasn’t it possible that he was wrong about her? Maybe there was no contraband, no crash house. Just an average, healthy young Sydneysider who happened to possess the kind of cynicism that could only be healthy for a woman of this age. If there was anything illicit happening here under cloak of darkness then Daniel was the man most qualified to root it out, and he hadn’t.
             But that’s not what his gut was telling him. Not by a long shot. Achingly, he realised that his emotions and sympathies, so carefully shelved, were seeping through the cracks, affecting his decisions. And for some reason he was powerless to stop it.
             “Yes,” he said, “I’m happy to report that you’ve got a score of 90. It’s not great, but it’s a pass.”
             Look, Daniel, look. You’re missing something here. Something you overlooked while you were taken in by her eyes. Just one last look…
             “Thank you so much,” she said, and she chewed a little on her lower lip. “Thank you, Daniel.”
             “Don’t thank me, thank yourself. You’re living very well. You keep a lovely home and-”
             Then he saw it. Not a big thing, nothing that shouted from the rooftops, but something that he should have noticed before, if only because he was good at noticing things. He would have caught it under any other circumstances, but somehow he felt that perhaps he hadn’t wanted to see it.
             Lying atop the kitchen counter, near the shadow of his open briefcase, a tiny spot. Just a single grain of something, a clear miniscule crystal. It stood out against the red counter surface when the light caught it in just a certain way. Daniel reached out and put his finger atop it, a hard little stone, and touched it to the tip of his tongue.
             “What is it?” Maxine asked, an expression of concern that wrinkled the top of her nose.
             “…salt.”
             “It’s what?”
             Daniel screwed up his face as the crystal melted on his tongue with a tiny sharp prickle of flavour. There was no mistaking what that flavour was, and as he washed it around his mouth he began to search the counter for further evidence. There didn’t seem to be any more, that had been carefully seen to, but it was enough. More than enough.
             “Miss Sanders, there’s salt on your bench.”
             “That’s not true, I don’t eat salt.”
             “Well it’s certainly not confetti. Are you keeping any more of this in the house?” He checked the readouts for his airborne detectors again, but they read negative.
             “No! Look, you’ve been through the house, you’ve checked everything. Just because you found a grain of something on the counter, it could have been anything. Check again if you want.”
             “This is very serious, Miss Sanders. I don’t think you understand just how serious. We’re not just talking about losing the house. Salt is a fourth-tier carcinogen, if you’re in possession of over twenty grams then you’re looking at a prison sentence. You need to tell me right now if you’re keeping any of this stuff because I’m telling you now, things are going to get a lot worse for you if I bring a team in here and they find you’ve been hoarding this kind of contraband.”
             Betrayal. The fury of it welled up in his gut like a rising tide. She was trembling. So was he. He’d let himself feel for this woman and she’d exploited that and lied through her teeth. But when her tears came, he took two deep breaths and forced back the anguish. No, it wasn’t her treachery. Never her. Always the drugs. Always the disease. It ate away at her, formed a lens of madness over the eyes. She needed help, not punishment.
             “Please,” she wept, “Please don’t…”
             “I know… I-” He took another breath. “Look. I know that this is a crash house. I knew it when I walked in here. Sending you to prison is not something I’d be happy to do. But Miss Sanders, I have a duty to you and to whoever else is suffering under this roof. I have to tell the Department what I’ve found, and they will decide what-”
             “I don’t have anywhere to go.”
             “Well… I understand that, but you’re an educated woman and you know the dangers inherent in this kind of lifestyle. You’ve taken a risk, and it’s an unacceptable risk. You can’t live like this.”
             Maxine sat down at the dining table and put her head in her hands. “I stand by what I said about you,” she said softly. “I know I’m not wrong. About you being a good man.”
             “You’re not wrong.”
             “Then have water with me. Tomorrow. Before you fill in your report.”
             “I can’t do that.”
             “Please. Just one time. Just sit down with me, talk this over. I’ll admit to everything, but I just need a day, just to figure out what I’m going to do. Just one day. Just one conversation.”
             Daniel tried to read her expression. Addiction did strange things to people, it skewed their perception, and if Maxine’s mind was rotting away with salt then she would do anything, say anything, to continue on her path of self-destruction. He’d seen it all before, so many times. So what was different now? Why did he feel so dirty, so obscene?
             “Have water with me,” she pleaded, and with a tremor of conflict he complied. One day, one conversation. He could help her, talk some sense into her, wrench the demons from her body. They would have water, and then he would perform his civic duty in full.

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