“It’s the right thing to do,” she said. “It’s not fair to you to stay.”
“You want to have your wings cut,” Alan said. “That’s why you want to go back to him.”
She shied back as though he’d slapped her. “No—”
“You do. But what Billy didn’t tell you is that Krishna’s out there with other women, I saw him today. With a girl. Young. Pretty. Normal. If he takes you back, it will be as a toy, not as a lover. He can’t love.”
“Christ,” she said. “Why are you saying this?”
“Because I don’t want to watch you self-destruct, Mimi. Stay here. We’ll sort out Krishna together. And my brother. Billy’s here now, that means they can’t sneak up on us.”
“And these?” she said, flapping her wings, one great heave that sent currents of air across the room, that blew the loose frontispiece from Alice in Wonderland toward the fireplace grate. “You’ll sort these out, too?”
“What do you want from me, Mimi?” He was angry now. She hadn’t spoken a word to him in weeks, and now—
“Cut them off, Alan. Make me into someone who can go out again, who can be seen. Do it. I have the knife.”
Adam squeezed his eyes shut. “No,” he said.