Deity

On the train home from her therapist’s office, the woman made of water tries, desperately, not to slosh onto the teenage girl sitting next to her. Outside, it’s winter in Michigan and has been for several years, but in the train it’s warm, too warm, and as they curl around a bend in the icy Huron River, she foams and spills over into the girl’s lap, her navy slacks and crisp white shirt.

“I’m so, so sorry,” apologizes the woman made of water.

The girl doesn’t say a word.

The woman made of water is translucent, swimmy with the color of objects seen through her. Having lived a million years or so, drenching a teenage girl’s business casuals shouldn’t feel like such a big deal, but it does, the woman made of water feels so stupid and clumsy she cries, a little. Leo, her therapist, says she’s too hard on herself.

But the real problem is the winter. A few months ago—she remembers this clearly—she was verdant and hungry and laughed easily with strangers in the park, but as the first autumn chill hit the great lakes, she felt a change come over her, the same change as every year. Every year, she loses the ability to have normal conversations at parties. When the talk lulls she panics and brings up subjects that are too heavy—refugees, the distinct possibility of an earthkilling solar flare—or gets going on a three-hundred-year-old story nobody understands. In autumn people drop off her friends lists at an alarming rate, but because of the change she doesn’t care. Well she does and she doesn’t.

Now it’s February, the worst, most ferocious stretch of winter. The nights are long and the days blink painfully by, and the woman made of water has become convinced that the season will never end, that the world will plod along in this grey, coldlocked funk forever. This makes her angry. February is the month she becomes angry, when acting with consideration toward others feels like something she used to know how to do. They still tell the story about how, driving a friend to the hospital for blood poisoning on Valentines Day, she stopped for a burger. And there was the time with Nali’s Egyptian hairless and the bread oven.

One February, in 1876, the woman made of water got into an argument with a drunk cattle driver in a saloon and filled his lungs with her right arm, which made him dead, then alive again, then dead for good. She has done other things in February, not necessarily in anger. Often it’s loneliness, because the woman made of water gets lonely in the winter, and if she is not responsible in the way she reaches out to others it can cause harm, violence. She does have a power. This is why the woman of water has upped her appointments with Leo to once a week, why she’s on the train on a Tuesday, why she was here to soak this poor girl sitting beside her to the bone. She just needs a little extra help to make it to the thaw, when her urge to lash out will subside and everything will be right again.

The woman made of water hurries home from the station so she doesn’t freeze. The process of freezing is uncomfortable for her, though not fatal. She discovered this a few decades ago, back when she was serious about trying to kill herself.

Inside her apartment, she peels off her layers, exchanging them for a space blanket. She owns three. The space blanket, in her opinion, is the best and most beautiful invention humankind has to its name. It’s the one subject she’s ever had the urge to write a poem about, and she’s witnessed the slow births of red canyons. On the kitchen counter lies a wrinkled notepad with a few blurry lines she’s jotted down: the sheen of sarcophagi / but light as your soufflé.

She goes straight for her computer. Keeping busy is the trick to surviving these long winter nights, to keep from giving in to certain habits. Due to the humidity the woman made of water naturally exudes, her computers last six to eight months and then she buys a new one.

She starts by browsing Twitter, Reddit, Youtube. She never posts, just lurks and looks. She watches a video of a father catching a cake as it slides off a tabletop. She learns giraffes are dying out, selects a new desktop wallpaper, and finds out where certain child actors are now. The tightening digital spiral of nothing listicles and videos gets her to about ten p.m. Then, because she’s cozy and little bored because it already feels like she’s seen the entire internet, she spends a few hours in anonymous chat rooms talking to strangers because, in the winter, it’s better than nothing. These days the rooms are mostly overrun with bots, but eventually she connects with 25/M/Denver, who seems human, and is a whitewater rafting guide.

She enjoys the conversation until 25/M/Denver asks her what she’s wearing. The woman made of water has her space blanket, but in her experience people don’t appreciate it like she does. She considers making up string underwear or something. She’s done that before, typed out fantasies with strangers in chatrooms. The woman made of water has had sex in person, but on screens can be easier, and there’s an unspoken comradeship in it that she likes. They are two people on the faceless internet, which means they are at least partly willing to be lied to, which means they share something from the start. Online, the woman made of water pretends to be a normal woman, with skin and hair, not because she’s ashamed but because it would take a wall of text to get the basic idea across, and then the other person would just log off.

No, not tonight; the thought of masturbation depresses her. She doesn’t say goodbye or sorry, not in the mood. No one does that. She just logs off. Her chat is replaced with a big button asking her if she’d like to start another. 15,863 people are online.

Here, the woman made of water should find another video, or look for jobs, or write another line of the poem, motions to keep her mind at bay. Instead, she accidently does the worst thing and turns away from her screen, where she’s confronted by her dark apartment, her dark things. Not only will this winter never end, the woman made of water thinks, this night will never end. The universe is a cold disk that expands. She knows this.

She thinks about 25/M/Denver. Right now, he’s probably showering or loading another chat. Afterward he will sleep. In the walls of his apartment complex run the pipes, and through those flow dangerous gasses tenuously converted to his side. Everyone in his building could go together at any moment in a communal pile of carbon monoxide victims; as a crowd in the same slow, black shuttle. The woman made of water is different. She isn’t allowed on the shuttle.

This thought spikes her with envy, and she can’t help herself: she goes to the website she knows she shouldn’t. She’s been visiting it far too often this winter. She stops. She walks into the den, but across her studio apartment her screen’s glow still beckons. To combat this she closes her eyes, only she can see through her thin, lapping eyelids.

Some nights, she gets on Facebook, or Instagram, and sees the images of a party she wasn’t invited to, people laughing in a crowded, filthy kitchen. To not be invited stings, but on the other hand, thank god. The saga of the woman made of water is: she’s so lonely she bites the jambs of her doors but also, whenever a get-together is cancelled, her relief is thick.

It’s just the winter, she thinks. In the winter, she simply lacks the language to connect, to get over the everyday humiliation of asking someone to ask for your company. People cannot get over her strangeness and it’s her fault. At parties, she has witnessed people arrive to a general cry of joy. They hug down the line of guests but do not hug the woman made of water. They ask her, instead, how she is doing. About these people, the woman made of water thinks such harsh thoughts as: they probably aren’t capable of lasting, authentic love.

But this is a hypocritical position. Leo would say she’s letting her own stakes get too high again. The woman made of water practices her breathing exercises, which make her calm enough to realize the night will end after all, but there are many hours to go. She approaches her computer slowly and sits down. She’ll take one little look.

She discovered the website earlier that year, a fan site dedicated to her. Well, fan site is the wrong term. Its homepage looks like it was last updated in 1998. Across the top, in bold underline on a tan background, reads: the church of the pure chalice. Beneath the heading is a photo of the woman made of water at a bus stop. She’s wearing a big hiking backpack.

Religions constantly start around the woman made of water. It’s always been like this. People see her and make certain assumptions about truths she must hold. Finding the site was an accident; she immediately wiped her browser history. There are violent incidents on the record involving religions she has been a part of. It’s best to stay far away, especially in the winter.

But tonight she needs something to tide her over. It just feels so good to know there are people out there thinking about her.

She clicks to the forums—pretty dead. The only active threads are a fanart contest with her as the subject, and a discussion by one user claiming to have discovered a description of the woman made of water in an ancient Sumerian text. There are six hundred pages of arguments and amateur translation efforts. The woman made of water knows it’s dangerous to feel touched but she feels touched.

On a page labeled CREED, a paragraph designates the woman made of water as the Pure Chalice, a manifestation of the heartwaters of Mother Earth herself. A mystic embodiment of the highest ideals of purity, of cosmic oneness, the Pure Chalice deserves veneration, protection, and love, and these are hereby named the duties of the Church and its members.

That doesn’t sound so bad, thinks the woman made of water.

Under CONTACT INFORMATION, she finds the phone number of the Church’s high priestess, a woman named Sharon Macintosh. But she stops herself from calling. The woman made of water knows the power she can crackle down a phone line, if she wants to. If she called this priestess, it would make the woman’s life. She’d end up on the next flight to Michigan. She wouldn’t be able to help herself. Sharon Macintosh would chant prayers the whole way to her doom.

The woman made of water closes the tab. It isn’t a church it’s a cult and cults go bad. People go bad too and she hates them. She shuts off her computer and huddles until morning.

At Leo’s office the next week, the woman made of water falls heavily into her chair to let him know it’s going to be a bad one and reports her failure to carry out the homework. She was supposed to invite one person to drinks. The therapist rubs his bald head and looks at her dolefully over the decorative basket of pinecones on his office table. Leo has diagnosed her with social inability and latent anger.

“I told you I don’t like to drink,” she tells him. It’s true; she doesn’t. She hates the way it makes her look. A few beers and she goes from spring clear to an awful urine tint. Wine is okay; a decent red gives her a sort of blush, though creeps hitting on her ask if it’s that time of the month.

Of course, if she really binges, the woman made of water can take on breathtaking hues. She’s been mistaken for a creature of blood, of oil. She has a photograph of herself dancing on a roof, the sun coming through her in lances the deep gold of pilfered honey. The person who took it, an old roommate from New York, had killed herself, in part because of a bone-deep and wrongheaded love.

“As we discussed, it didn’t have to be drinks,” says Leo. “I mentioned drinks as a placeholder for any activity you chose.” Leo is normally sunny. He believes that the woman made of water has the same chance as anyone for meaningful connection, even in the winter, even though she is endless. Today, however, the woman made of water detects the bite of impatience in his expression. “You could have gone to a museum, or seen a movie, a play. Don’t let technicalities get in the way of your fulfillment.”

“I think I’ve been your patient for too long,” says the woman made of water. “I’m starting to recognize your catchphrases.”

Leo sighs.

“How about we just sit. You know, in companionable silence. Just sit with me. Please.”

“You know, your aversion to therapy is probably indicative of how voluntary your anxiety actually is,” Leo says, gently. “You’re in the middle of a process of self-defeat.”

“Then shouldn’t that process be, like, over already?”

Leo runs a hand down his spade beard. “Okay, fine. We can try a little silence.”

The woman made of water sits back, relieved. Leo is good at taking her out of a certain, frightening place in her head, which is why she’s here, but when he starts speaking to her in dictionary definitions she just wants to go home. She looks idly around the mostly barren office. Leo probably shares the space with a few other private practices to save on rent. On the wall hangs a clock in a porcelain housing shaped like a sleeping cat. It is just the kind of thrift store thing Sharon Macintosh might buy, to keep time as her and her congregation ruminates and sways. The fear, the passion.

Eventually Leo can’t stand the quiet and starts talking about a TV show he’s watching about two Russian spies who pretend to be a married couple in America. Then there are only fifteen minutes left in the session, and the woman made of water keeps Leo at bay by telling him one of the stories she’s stocked up about things people have done to her during bad droughts. He perks right up. Smoke comes off his notepad. It’s funny how easy it is to misdirect him. Lately, Leo’s introduced the word trauma into their discussions. Trauma’s the wrong word, but he hasn’t figured that out yet. The old days of being kept in basements, of being led in pitch of night to ashen lakebeds, were in some ways, a lot of ways, preferable to the current days. Once, a young woman famous for swimming the English Channel held her at gunpoint and tried to wear her like a suit. Another time she caused an entire orchard to bloom and fruit and rot over the course of sixteen hours. Though warned, the field hands ate of the fruit.

When his timer finally goes off, Leo sits back. He looks at her seriously. “Are you feeling hopeful about making it to Spring?” he asks.

“It’s been a hard winter,” says the woman made of water, measuredly.

“How are the anger levels? Are you feeling any ill will toward people? Specifically or in general?” Leo is convinced that her winter outbursts are the result of a deep and specific bitterness, born of the trauma he keeps talking about. He’s also convinced this will be the winter without an outburst, but he says that every year. Outbursts is his word for what happens, though the thing she can do to people is in reality slow and silent and devastating.

“Not ill will,” clarifies the woman made of water.

As they pull on coats to leave, she catches Leo smiling at his phone. On the screen is a picture of an infant, asleep and bulbous in a white knit hat. The resemblance is clear, and she bristles with that same sudden, lockjaw envy she had that night a week ago. When Leo catches her looking, he sleeps his phone. He shudders.

Once, the woman made of water saved the life of a hibachi cook. He’d caught fire lighting his grill for a hooting bachelorette party, and she saw the flash of him ignite across the restaurant. She’d extinguished him by running straight through him, and he was so, so grateful. His sister worked at the restaurant too, and she’d cried she was so thankful.

Only, sometime afterward, the cook went crazy. He somehow got the woman made of water’s address and paced the sidewalk in front of her building, retching and sobbing and calling to her window about waves, the deep ocean he could not stop hearing. It was in him, he cried, the crash and the drip drip drip. It was in him mercilessly. He cried well into the night until someone got fed up and called the cops, who drove the cook away in a cruiser with smoked windows.

This is the episode the woman made of water reminds herself of so she doesn’t do anything stupid, like call the number listed on the Church of the Pure Chalice’s website. She just has to stave off the despair one week until her next session.

The temperature outside stalls below zero, so she doesn’t leave her apartment. To fill the time, she listens to conversations through the walls and checks her mailbox three times a day. She also manages her email inbox, bursting with spam. She gets one non-spam email from a subsidiary of Heckler & Koch, the firearms manufacturer. They have a unique part-time opportunity for her.

Leo has been telling her to get a job for years. It’s a chance to get out of the house, to meet people. Coworkers are just friends waiting to happen, he liked to say. He liked to say, sharing a goal in a workplace can incubate a wonderful intimacy. For a moment the woman made of water is interested, but then she remembers she’ll have to fill out forms, that she’ll soak through copy after copy, the secretary clicking her pen and rolling her eyes.

The sun creeps into her apartment, crawls across the floor in a glowing radiation square, and leaves again. Her popcorn ceiling reverberates with the deep vowels of Russian TV, and she listens to the long stillnesses between when the very old man watching gets up and canes to the bathroom or to the fridge for a PBR, or the tinny ring of him throwing an empty to the floor. Getting her mail, the sorority girls and graduate students she meets don’t look at her but also don’t look away. They stare straight ahead, hats dusted with snow.

One night, she manages to not visit the church website by typing the address into her browser and staring at it. The next, however, she creates a dummy account for the forums.

In the street, the trees the city has planted to keep summer scorches in check are dead and black against the painted bricks of the restaurants across the way. When the wind is right, ice shucks off the branches in perfect, transparent tubes. The woman made of water sits at the window, studying the people eating together. That’s what she’s doing, she tells herself, she’s studying. She’s trying to learn. Leo has told her tons of people feel lonely, that there are many outside factors that may be contributing to her loneliness. And yet the woman made of water knows that the only real factor is herself, has had long enough to prove otherwise. What is it about the winter? she wonders. There is a certain chasm between a person knowing you and them reaching out to you unprompted. In the cold, when you need body heat, that chasm should shrink, the requirements for closeness should be less, shouldn’t they?

She sends Leo an email describing this chasm. I think I just need to know what to say to people, she writes. It is possible I knew what to say a very, very long time ago, before any of you vapid little animals were even around. It’s all your fault. Please let me know if you have any early slots open up during the weekend, she adds.

There was another time, very long ago. The worst time, possibly. She was in Italy, fleeing an inquisition or maybe just caught out in a dry Tuscan summer. Hard to say. Things get fuzzy after so long. This was back when she wandered, which she’d done for a very long time. She discovered a stone abbey baking in the sun. The monks there had taken her in.

They asked her to water their little fields. Yes, she remembers now. It was drought. The tired abbot showed her their dead well, their husked garden. The woman made of water was only too happy to fill a few buckets for them, to give their vegetable beds a good soak.

But they were so nice, and it was so hot, and she stayed too long. Dark arguments began. The monks ate their humble meals in two cadres muttering about the other across the little kitchen. Then one night, a struggle. The monks who remained in the morning built her a throne in the chapel. They bedecked her in beautiful red clothes and called her fountain of life, fountain of life. In the night time, as the monks hummed chants in a room that was all candles, the woman made of water let the new abbot take the tiniest of thimbles, fill it with her, and drink.

Soon the bad thing happened. The soldiers who came wore no uniform. With them, a priest. They yanked the monks from their tidy little cells and executed them in her throne room for such heresy. They also tried to execute the woman made of water. One young novice tried running for it. A soldier whacked his legs with a sword. The little monk flipped like an acrobat, legs bent athletically in the air but in the wrong direction.

Leo doesn’t email her back. The weekend, for some reason, is particularly bad. She isn’t lonely at this point, she doesn’t think. It’s something else. Every so often a feeling passes through her that makes her clutch. She’s grown a surface film and the feeling cracks it with deep, three-dimensional fissures. She turns up the thermostat.

On the church’s discussion forums, the woman made of water has accidently browsed back through three years of threads about her. She started with one a night, as a sort of reward for making it through another day, but now she reads until dawn. They are so funny, and so sweet. One morning she finds that, at some point, she has added the high priestess into her phone’s contacts.

Right then, looking at the name, the woman made of water knows she is about to call. If she calls, Sharon will flock to her, they all will, and the word between this moment and the violence that will be committed will go from if to when.

She shuts her phone in the refrigerator. She has to get out of the apartment. “I’m going to check my mailbox,” she says out loud. “And if one person talks to me, I won’t call.”

Outside a false spring has started, a day when everyone in Michigan goes barefoot in the grass and suddenly owns a hula hoop. The woman made of water descends the stairs behind two girls with rolled foam yoga mats under their arms. They are high ponytailed and smell like soap.

“Um, excuse me,” one of them says, seeing the woman made of water turn into the alcove with the mailboxes. “I was wondering: have you been getting your mail recently?”

The woman made of water droops with relief.

“I’ve had a few packages not show up this week.” The girl shrugs. “I’m wondering if it’s just me, or if the post office is messing up, or.”

The woman made of water hasn’t been getting mail, but it’s a nice thought: that there is mail for her, that she has not been forgotten, that there has simply been a bureaucratic mistake.

“You know, I haven’t,” she says.

“Told you,” the girl says to her friend.

“Someone might be stealing them,” the woman made of water says, trying to be helpful. “We could set up down here, keep a lookout. If someone comes for your packages we could get him. I could bring snacks. We could watch Netflix.”

The two girls shift. “No, that’s okay,” says one. “I’ll probably just talk to the super. Thanks though!” And then they flee into the day, the sun warm on the door glass.

The woman made of water climbs the stairs, still relieved but feeling vaguely embarrassed. She shouldn’t have suggested Netflix. Sitting at her computer, she finds an email from Leo, but it isn’t about an appointment. The email says that he’s sorry: due to a family emergency, he is moving and can no longer serve as her mental health professional.

The woman made of water knows this is a lie. She can feel it like she feels the falseness of the warm day. She imagines Leo’s utter relief. His friends and loved ones must have told him again and again to rid himself of such an ancient, hopeless responsibility. An old despair rises in the woman made of water, but mostly she’s afraid. She doesn’t wait the lonely weeks it would take to make her go berserk, she doesn’t have to. She knows she’s not going to make it to spring alone. Leo will have told the other therapists in town about her, so she doesn’t call any of them. She calls Heckler & and Koch. The phone rings three times and a big-voiced woman answers.

Her name is Patricia, and she gives an address the woman made of water Ubers to the next morning. It’s a strip mall, frozen bergs of filthy ice bulldozed into massive piles at each end of the parking lot. The correct door doesn’t have a sign over it, and the woman made of water has to call to make sure she’s at the right place.

Patricia, blonde, wearing turquoise running shoes and a pencil skirt, comes to the door and holds it open. “Come in, come in!” she says. “It’s freezing out there!” The woman made of water steps into a stark lobby: desk, rubber plant, and a hive of black scuffs on the tile floor. Patricia’s voice echoes, and instantly her empty apartment instantly feels far away, which is exactly why she’d come. She’s thankful: usually people are silently taken aback at her—Leo was—but Patricia doesn’t seem taken aback.

“Thank you, ma’am,” says the woman made of water.

“Oh sweetheart, just Patricia,” says Patricia. She’s middle age, but in her teeth flash big, banded braces. She asks the woman made of water if she wants coffee or tea, then leads her down a hall that opens into a long garage. There, two technicians and a man in a bulletproof vest drink coffee behind folding tables stacked with black guns and white computers.

Patricia introduces her all around, and the man in the vest explains that today they’ll be testing the destructive capabilities of various H&K firearms. To do that, he says, she’ll need to undress.

“We’re all professionals, here,” the man assures her.

The woman made of water agrees, and Patricia folds her soaked clothes with care. In their monogrammed lab coats, the technicians gently insert sensors into her armpits, asking her if she’s too warm, too cold. “I’m fine!” says the woman made of water, and she is. She likes how polite they are. They walk her to the end of the range.

For the next few hours, the technicians shoot the woman made of water with rifles secured firmly with table clamps, measuring the waves each bullet produces in her.

One of them explains how it works during a break. The waves, their frequency and force, describe how straight the guns are shooting, the bullets’ speed and stopping power. He scratches his tattooed arms and peers into the data, eyes shining. “The stuff you’re giving us is way, way more detailed than ballistic gel,” he says. “The guys back home are gonna freak.”

“Seriously, you rock,” says the other technician.

“It’s really no problem,” the woman made of water replies. She beams.

Each bullet they fire is a zipper of static through her. The bullets are screaming hot and the woman made of water steams. She feels turbulent and giggly, and when quitting time comes she offers to keep going. They work for six more hours. The man in the vest keeps asking her if she wants to stop, come back another day, but she assures him it’s no problem. He takes off his yellow-tinted shooting glasses. “You are a machine,” he says.

They only stop when one of the technicians opens the back door for a smoke and they realize it’s already dark.

The woman made of water helps clean up. Packing assault rifles into cases, Patricia mentions that she misses riding her bike to work. “I’ve never ridden a bike,” admits the woman made of water.

“Oh sweetheart! We’ll have to go sometime!” says Patricia.

The woman made of water is stunned. She hasn’t been invited anywhere in she doesn’t know how long. Leo was right. Workplace intimacy has been incubated.

The man in the vest tells a joke about a nun riding a bicycle. They all laugh.

The woman made of water isn’t stupid. She understands that there is a difference between professional courtesy and actual warmth. She also understands that these people are the warmongers of humankind, the gas-powered, telescopic sight breed she has known for centuries, and that the fact she’s getting along so well with them probably says something about her. And yet, here she is in a room, listening and being listened to.

“Excuse me a second,” she tells them. “I need to make a call.”

She steps outside into the chill. Detroit’s pollution glow scorches the eastern sky. She finds the high priestess’ number and calls. The woman made of water knows she shouldn’t be doing this, this was going to be the winter she didn’t do this, but she is buzzing. It’s funny, she thinks as the phone rings: it was not the despair that put her over the edge, but this one good day.

“Church of the Pure Chalice,” Sharon Macintosh answers. She sounds tired but resolute, like the last bastion of misunderstood good intentions. The woman made of water hears the creak of a chair through the speaker, and she can picture Sharon sitting alone in her cluttered home office in Washington state, behind on her mortgage but hopeful and thus the most vulnerable of creatures. She doesn’t speak, but Sharon must sense something, must hear a certain quality in the breath coming over the line, because she whispers, “Chalice?”

“Sharon,” answers the woman made of water.

On the phone, Sharon begins to cry. She also tries, simultaneously, to stop crying, gulping huge breaths into the receiver. The sound makes the woman made of water shiver. She can hear how badly Sharon has wanted this call, for years, how many times she has imagined it.

“Your good work has not gone unnoticed, child,” says the woman made of water. She has decided to call Sharon her child. Sharon cries harder. “I have watched you from afar. I felt your spirit in the heartwaters of the earth.”

The woman made of water hasn’t talked like this in a while. She hugs herself in the cold, speaking low into her phone. By the shuffling on the other end of the line, she can tell that Sharon is nodding frantically.

“I dream about you every night,” Sharon finally says, gasping. “I saw you on the news when I was a little girl. You sing Mother Nature’s song into my heart. Right now, you’re singing it.”

“That’s really nice of you to say,” says the woman made of water.

Unprompted, Sharon starts to tell her about the church, their members. Her voice shakes. The woman made of water drinks in every word. She knows what Leo would say: that she is abusing Sharon’s natural inclination to worship her in order to construct a relationship the woman made of water won’t feel insecure about, as she will be the one with the authority. But the woman made of water has decided she is tired of waiting to be happy. She can’t believe she forgot how good it feels to be talked to like this.

“Sharon,” she says. “I have a task for you.”

On the other end of the line, Sharon goes cat-still to listen, and all at once the woman made of water sees how easy it will be, how soon and effortlessly it will happen. They will gather, from everywhere, to hear her prayers. In Washington state, jealous games will be played for the favor of the woman made of water. Her chosen will squabble and suffer, will hate and love her. She’s seen it before. She trembles at the thought of the frenzy she will inspire. And when it finally boils over, and it will, they will have investigations, SWAT team raids, they will have international coverage. The caskets will go out in the beds of muddy white pickups driving in a line, and the ones who survive will be left with nothing. The woman made of water will leave them come summer because that’s what she does. Sharon, if she lives, will go mute due to abandonment. The woman made of water knows the type.

She tells Sharon of a cool, dark place beneath pines, a place of ocean rocks under white spray, a place she has foreseen. To raise the stakes, she tells her that the earth is in pain, which is technically true. “We are at the end of an age,” she whispers in the frozen parking lot of the strip mall. “Now is the time to gather around me, and to listen well.” Sharon is writing. “I’m talking big numbers, Sharon,” she tells her. “Big numbers.”

Inside, the Heckler & Koch employees are still waiting for her. With such dark, shimmering energy humming through her head, the woman made of water misses something Patricia asks.

“What?”

“I asked if you’re sure you’re okay, darling.”

“Yes, I’m okay.”

“Not one of those bullets hurt, even a little?”

“Not at all,” says the woman made of water. “Nothing can really hurt me.”

“Wait? Nothing?” asks one of the technicians.

The man in the vest stops typing on his Blackberry to listen.

“What about, like, fire?” asks the other.

They seem so interested that, still hopped up on Sharon’s raw desire, she tells them about the year she spent trying to commit suicide. She lies and says it was more curiosity than anything. Lots of things hadn’t killed her over the years; she wanted to see if anything could.

She relates jumping into Flaming Gorge, Utah, only to bob up in the reservoir at the bottom whole and hale. She tells them about plastic bags over her head, and triple doses of lethal paralytics. In Bangkok she touched a downed electrical wire. She tried burning herself at the stake, which she jokes about. No one tells you how much work it is to burn yourself at the stake! So much rope! They laugh.

She almost tells them, but does not, about diving into the Indian Ocean from the stern of a cruise ship, which she did not do in a bid to drown, but to implode under the immense pressure of the depths. She senses it wouldn’t be appropriate to explain the particular extent of the blackness, or the gargantuan, eyeless presences she felt yaw unhurriedly past her in the pitch.

“Wow,” says one of the technicians. “I would have put my money on fire working.”

“Why didn’t you evaporate?” asks the other.

“I don’t know,” the woman made of water admits.

“What if you froze yourself?” suggests the man in the vest.

“Tried that,” she tells him. “I just melt back after a while.”

“Okay, but what if you had someone with you,” puts in Patricia, brow furrowed. They turn to her. “And when you froze, that person shattered you and put all your pieces into separate, I don’t know, crates? Watertight things.”

The woman made of water, taken aback, considers this. “Hmm,” she says. She has a strange urge, which feels new but is actually ancient, to test herself in such a manner, to see how much of a force she is when pressed to extremes. It is not entirely alien from the urge to kill oneself.

“That’s the only thing I can really think of,” Patricia says. “Other than outer space. Though I guess that’s freezing too.” And then she gasps and covers her mouth, as if suddenly aware of the nature of the problem they are attempting to solve.