"Is it my fault if most of these people don't cultivate their wounds, if they grow sickly and twisted and ill-smelling plants from them instead of the lovely and colorful and sweet flower that grows in me?"
She seized my shoulders, said, "Look me in the eye! Can you see what you and you alone, did? Is it disgusting, gangrenous? Or is it beautiful? And if it does turn poisonous, whose fault is it? Who refused to heal me?"
Her eloquence was overwhelming. I trembled. I wasn't affected when I overheard other wounded addressing their potential healers thus. But when I was talked to in such a manner, I shook, and I remembered the early days when my first wife and I had tended each other's injuries.
"Sorry," I mumbled, abashed before this raging yet tender mortal. "I must be going."
"No you don't!" she said firmly. She stopped and lifted the lid from the paper box. I saw it was crammed with those damned 3-D glasses.
"After I tailed you here," she said, "I returned to that theater and bought a hundred tickets and with them got these. Now, if you don't come with me where we can at least talk, I'll pass them out and everybody will see you for what you are. And don't think for a moment that those who've suffered because of you won't tear you limb from limb and string you up to the highest chandelier!"
"Nonsense," I mumbled.
I felt suddenly shaky. And so unnerved was I that I rushed away from her and out into the hall. All I wanted to do was to get into the elevator, alone and unobserved, and speed away with the speed of light, half way around the world.
Do you know, I think that that clever young wench had planned that very move? She knew I'd be so upset, I'd forget my violin case. For, as I stood fretting before the elevator door, she stepped into the hall and called, "Lover!"
I turned—then I screamed, "No! No!" I backed away, my hands spread despairingly before me.