Not even much anger anymore, just a kind of vast, cold distance, as though I were looking at her through the wrong end of a telescope.

“Vanessa,” I said, “we were finished the moment I walked through that door.

There’s nothing left to threaten me with.

You should understand that, because it will save us both a great deal of time.”

For the first time since I had known her, she had no answer ready.

The quick tongue, the instant deflection, the practiced injured tone, all of it failed her at once, and she simply stood there in the middle of my living room, and I watched her realize that the tools she had relied on her entire life had stopped working, all together, in the space of ten minutes.

It should perhaps have given me some satisfaction.