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his back; he resisted her. “Come on. I’ll help you. How do you get them off?” She reached past his neck to find the Velcro, the clasp, the catch, and found the crisp overlapping smoothness of his covert feathers instead. For just a moment she lightly touched before she jerked her hand away as if something had stung her.
    She backed away, off balance, teetering on her high heels, her face spooked, yet uncertain. How could she be frightened without comprehending what it was she feared? Yet she managed it. Humans had always managed these seemingly impossible contradictions. It was quite possible, apparently, for this woman to decide about him without even trying to understand. Watching her, Volos felt all his desire sag into despair, the fire in him turn to a smoldering anger.
    She said, “I think maybe I’m too tired tonight after all.”
    â€œOf course.”
    â€œMaybe some other time.”
    â€œIt is of no importance.” He said this as a matter of ontological truth, though his body, and therefore his mortal being, did not believe it. He picked up his cloak, fastened it on. It would protect him from some of the gawking, some of the foolish questions to which people never believed the answers.
    Seemingly out of nowhere Brett said, “It’s just as well not to be intimate if we have to work together. You’ll be seeing a lot of me, Volos. I’m going to make you a star.” She told him this with the utter certainty of one who has looked destiny in the eye and touched its wide wings.
    Yet she had said none of this before. Volos was bemused. “You are what?”
    â€œI am going to make you big, Volos. Very, very big.”
    â€œBig,” Volos said. “Yes.” For a small while—all too small—she had already done so. He felt the sticky place bigness had left inside his jeans. A few moments later, out on the street, he stepped into an alley and unzipped and used his fingers to smell it.
    All smells were new to him. His first bodily memory of this world was that of the smell of the ocean in the air, salty as his sweat. Since then he had smelled oleander and McDonald’s, vagrants and Brett’s perfume, sun-baked concrete and a wet poodle and the tar pits at La Brea and the reek of perm outside a beauty salon. All smells were exciting to him—but this one, the fetor of his own sexual arousal, raised his neck hairs and shivered down his spine, so brutal was it and so much unlike anything he had ever experienced.
    Dawn air in the city smelled like petroleum, Texas noticed. He discovered this because he hadn’t slept, had given up on sleep and was sitting in his open window, stony lonesome, watching the rockers head home for their lofts pale as if they never saw daylight, wondering what Volos was doing and trying to write a letter to Wyoma: “Dear Wyoma,
    Sorry I haven’t written. It’s been a strange week, and not the way you’re thinking.”
    He was working himself up to tell her about Volos, but how the hell was he supposed to do that? He couldn’t. There was no way on earth she was ever going to understand. When when was the last time he had looked at her and seen understanding? He couldn’t remember. That attempt got crumpled into a ball and tossed. He tried again: “Dear Wyoma,
    Please notice the new address. I am staying at the Y near the bus station and am looking for some kind of job.”
    He tossed that one as well. Too much like a business letter. It was not as if he were writing her to conduct business or out of a sense of duty. The truth was he really wanted to connect with her. But God, he felt farther from her than miles could tell.
    Dear Wy,
    I have not cheated on you or gone drinking or gambled or made a fool of myself much of anyhow since I’ve been here except that I wasted money on a new hat and boots. The hat got ruined already and the boots are scuffed. You are probably wondering what the