Helen pulls the front of her coat shut and throws back the last of the wine.

The Crock-Pot is heavy and hot with the smell of brown sugar and either tofu or the dirty gray sweatpants.

And Mona says, "Oyster!" and she's standing beside us. She takes the clothes and the Crock-Pot from me, saying, "Oyster, this is Mr. Streator." She says, "Everybody, this is my boyfriend, Oyster."

And the kid shakes the hair off his eyes and looks at me. He says, "Mulberry thinks you have a culling poem." His dick tapers to a dribbling pink stalactite of wrinkled foreskin. A silver ring pierces the tip.

And Helen gives me a look, smiling but with her teeth clenched.

This kid, Oyster, grabs the terry-cloth lapels of Mona's bathrobe and says, "Jeez, you have a lot of clothes on." He leans into her and kisses her over the Crock-Pot.

"We do ritual nudity," Mona says, looking at the floor. She blushes and motions with the Crock-Pot, saying, "Oyster? This is Mrs. Boyle, who I work for."

The details about Oyster are his hair, it looks shattered, the way a pine tree looks struck by lightning, splintered blond and standing up in every direction. He's got one of those young bodies. The arms and legs look segmented, big with muscles, then narrow at the joints, the knees and elbows and waist.

Helen holds out her hand, and Oyster takes it, saying, "A peridot ring ..."

Standing there naked and young, he lifts Helen's hand all the way to his face. Standing there all tan and muscled, he looks from her ring, down the length of her arm, to her eyes and says, "A stone this passionate would overpower most people." And he kisses it.

"We do ritual nudity," Mona says, "but you don't have to. I mean you really don't have to." She nods toward the kitchen and says, "Oyster, come help me for a little."

And going, Oyster looks at me and says, "Clothing is dishonesty in its purest form." He smiles with just half his mouth, winks, and says, "Nice tie, Dad."

And I'm counting 1, counting 2, counting 5 ...

After Mona's gone into the kitchen, Helen turns to me and says, "I can't believe you told another person."

She means Nash.

It wasn't as if I had a choice. Besides, no copies of the poem are available. I told him I burned mine, and I've burned every copy I found in print. He doesn't know about Helen Hoover Boyle or Mona Sabbat. There's no way he can use the information.

Okay, so there are still a few dozen copies in public libraries. Maybe we can track them down and eliminate page 27 while we hunt for the original source material.

"The Book of Shadows," Helen says.

The grimoire, as witches call it. The book of spells. All the power in the world.

The doorbell rings, and the next man drops his baggy shorts and peels off his T-shirt and tells us his name is Hedgehog. The details about Hedgehog include the empty skin shaking on his arms and chest and ass. His curly black pubic hair matches the couple of hairs stuck to my palm after we shake hands.

Helen's hands draw up inside the cuffs of her coat sleeves, and she goes to the mantel, takes an orange from the altar, and starts to peel it.

A man named Badger with a real parrot on one shoulder arrives. A woman named Clematis arrives. A Lobelia arrives. A Bluebird ring's the doorbell. Then a Possum. Then someone named Lentils arrives, or someone brings lentils, it's not clear which. Helen drinks another sacrifice. Mona comes out of the kitchen with Oyster, but without her bathrobe.

What's left is a pile of dirty clothes inside the front door, and Helen and I are the only ones still dressed. Deep in the pile a phone rings, and Sparrow digs it out. Wearing just her black-framed glasses, her breasts hanging as she leans over the pile, Sparrow answers the phone, "Dormer, Dingus and Diggs, Attorneys-at-Law ..." She says, "Describe the rash, please."

It takes a minute to recognize Mona from just her head and the pile of chains around her neck. You don't want to get caught looking anywhere else, but her pubic hair is shaved. From straight on, her thighs are two perfect parentheses with her shaved V between them. From the side, her breasts seem to reach out, trying to touch people with her pink nipples. From behind, the small of her back splits into her two solid buttocks, and I'm counting 4, counting 5, counting 6 ...

Oyster's carrying a white deli take-out carton.

A woman named Honeysuckle in just a calico head wrap talks about her past lives.

And Helen says, "Doesn't reincarnation strike you as just another form of procrastination?"

I ask, when do we eat?

And Mona says, "Jeez, you sound just like my father."

I ask Helen how she keeps from killing everybody here.

And she takes another glass of wine off the mantel, saying, "Anybody in this room, and it would be a mercy killing." She drinks half and gives the rest to me.

The incense smells like jasmine, and everything in the room smells like the incense.

Oyster steps to the center of the room and holds the deli carton over his head and says, "Okay, who brought this abortion?"

It's my three-bean salad.

And Mona says, "Please, Oyster, don't."

And holding the deli carton by its little wire handle, the handle pinched between just two fingers, Oyster says, " 'Meat-free' means no meat. Now fess up. Who brought this?" The hair under his raised arm is bright orange. So is his other body hair, down below.

I say, it's just bean salad.

"With?" Oyster says, and jiggles the carton.

With nothing.

The room's so quiet you can hear the Battle of Gettysburg next door. You can hear the folk song guitar of somebody depressed in the apartment upstairs. An actor screams and a lion roars and bombs whistle down from the sky.

"With Worcestershire sauce in the dressing," Oyster says. "That means anchovies. That means meat. That means cruelty and death." He holds the carton in one hand and points at it with his other, saying, "This is going down the toilet where it belongs."

And I'm counting 7, counting 8 ...

Sparrow is giving everyone small round stones out of a basket she carries in one hand. She gives one to me. It's gray and cold, and she says, "Hold on to this, and tune to the vibration of its energy. This will put us all on the same vibration for the ritual."

You hear the toilet flush.

The parrot on Badger's shoulder keeps twisting its head around and yanking out green feathers with its beak. Then the bird tilts its head back and gulps each feather in jerking, whiplash bites. Where the feathers are gone, plucked, the skin looks dimpled and raw. The man, Badger, has a folded towel thrown over his shoulder for the parrot to grip, and the towel is spotted down the back with yellowy bird shit. The bird yanks another feather and eats it.

Sparrow gives a stone to Helen, and she snaps it into her powder-blue handbag.

I take the wineglass from her and sip it. In the newspaper today, it says how the man at the elevator, the man I wished to death, he had three children, all under six years old. The cop I killed was supporting his elderly parents so they wouldn't be placed in a nursing home. He and his wife were foster parents. He coached Little League and soccer. The woman with the walkie-talkie, she was two weeks pregnant.

I drink more of the wine. It tastes like pink lipstick.

In the newspaper today is an ad that says:

Attention Owners of Dorsett Fine China

The ad copy says: "If you feel nauseated or lose bowel control after eating, please call the following number."

To me, Oyster says, "Mulberry thinks you killed Dr. Sara, but I don't think you know jack shit."

Mona reaches up to put another sacrifice on the mantel and Helen lifts the glass out of her fingers.

To me, Oyster says, "The only power of life and death you have is every time you order a hamburger at McDonald's." His face stuck in my face, he says, "You just pay your filthy money, and somewhere else, the ax falls."