Louise turned away when she read “Harold” on the cop’s lips. She wasn’t curious enough about anything to do with Chablis the Dog to chance being made aware of anything more of Harold. Already the night of his accident was renewing itself in her conscious mind.

She turned and leaned against the door and her eyes fell on her nightmare, only lately she had begun to realize it was no nightmare. It was real; it was not going to change. The past was not going to change. Chablis the Dog pitied her; others blamed her and that was all there was to it. And she thought, “How did this happen?” She had thought that a lot in her life. And she knew the answer. She had made a mistake. And the mistake was her being her.

For some reason she herself did not understand, she had felt for so long deep inside that it could not be real. If she railed against this nightmare long enough, it would end. She would gulp in the fresh air of the time before. That would not assure anything would be different, however, but, oh, how she wanted that moment.

The one in front of her was not the beginning of it; she knew this, just as she knew the one before was not the beginning. Neither one could be assigned blame. She figured that if that were the case, she herself, the one before the one before wasn’t really to blame. It had just happened – those things that came together to make her her.

It was fascinating in truth, but the cards are only dealt once. There is no throwing in of a hand, no light-hearted laughter at her momentary bad luck, no luxury of being fascinated.

Harold had realized it a long, long time ago.

She remembered when had bought the boots; she had never thought about them being a danger, of getting caught on something. They had just looked uncomfortable. He made a habit of wearing them; he kept them polished. Once when she was just staring ahead at nothing in a waiting room, she realized she had focused on the heel on one boot; it had distinct markings on it, as if it had been wedged in something, then pulled loose. And then she was seeing the lamp on the table and the rack of magazines and who knows what she thought of next.

But she thought of those boots – of that particular boot, with its particular marking – within an instant of learning of his accident on the tracks. The heel caught; the train was coming. And, then, for Harold it was over.

It was quite a to-do and all the time she really knew. And she never once blamed him. She understood.

How could anyone stand to open the door each day and see a rug woven to look like cockroaches crawling at you? Before that it has been mambas hanging from vines. It was that damn fake guru in college who had started it – told her the was to overcome her fears was to face them. To create them in her mind and embrace them and overcome them.

Only it had all gone wrong; she couldn’t visualize and keep it in her mind, so she hired rug makers to sit at their looms and bring her fears to her. But she couldn’t overcome them, nor could she overcome the need to try.

Then suddenly she noticed something on the cockroaches: it was another broken heel, only this one was from a woman’s shoe. But how? She had no shoes with spike heels this high. It was odd – the only woman she knew who wore bright green very high heels was Chablis. The dog whined in front of her, begging for its newly found plaything back.