I killed my brother.

I killed her brother.

Adam Branson.

Trevor Hollis.

You can't trust me around anybody's brother with a telephone or a rock.

Fertility puts a hand in her shoulder bag and says, "You want some Red Ropes licorice?"

I hold out my hands covered with dried blood.

She says, "I guess not."

She looks back over her shoulder at the taxi, idling, and she waves. An arm comes out the driver's window and waves back.

To me she says, "Let me put this in a nutshell. Adam and Trevor both pretty much killed themselves."

She tells me, Trevor killed himself because his life had no more surprises, no more adventure. He was terminally ill. He was dying of boredom. The only mystery left was death.

Adam wanted to die because he knew the way he'd been trained, he could never be anything but a Creedish. Adam killed off the surviving Creedish because he knew that an old culture of slaves couldn't found a new culture of free men. Like Moses leading the tribes of Israel around in the desert for a generation, Adam wanted me to survive, but not my slave mind-set.

Fertility says, "You didn't kill my brother."

Fertility says, "And you didn't kill your brother, either. What you did was more like what they call assisted suicide."

Out of her shoulder bag, she takes some flowers, real flowers, a little bunch of fresh roses and carnations. Red roses and white carnations all tied together. "Check it out," she says and crouches down to put them on the magazines where Adam is buried.

"Here's another big symbol," she says, still crouched and looking up at me. "These flowers will be rotten in a couple hours. Birds will crap on them. The smoke here will make them stink, and tomorrow a bulldozer will probably run over them, but for right now they are so beautiful."

She's such a thoughtful and endearing character.

"Yeah," she says, "I know."

Fertility gets to her feet and grabs me on a clean part of my arm, a part not crusted with dried blood, and she starts walking me toward the cab.

"We can be jaded and heartless later, when it's not costing me so much money," she says.

On our way back to the taxi, she says the whole nation is in an uproar over how I wrecked the Super Bowl. No way can we take a plane or bus anywhere. The newspapers are calling me the Antichrist. The Creedish mass murderer. The value of Tender Branson merchandise is through the roof, but for all the wrong reasons. All the world's major religions, the Catholics and Jews and Baptists and whatall, are saying, We told you so.

Before we get to the taxi, I hide my bloody hands in my pockets. The gun sticks to my trigger finger.

Fertility opens a back door of the taxi and gets me inside. Then she goes around and gets in the other side.

She smiles at the driver in the rearview mirror and says, "Back to Grand Island, I guess."

The taxi meter says seven hundred eighty dollars.

The driver looks at me in the rearview mirror and says, "Your mama throw out your favorite jerk-off magazine?" He says, "This place goes on forever. If you lose something, no way are you going to find it here."

Fertility whispers, "Don't let him get to you."

The driver is a chronic drunk, she whispers. She plans to pay with her charge card because he'll be dead two days from now in an accident. He'll never get the chance to send in the charge.

As the sun comes up to noon, the shadow of the concrete pylon is getting smaller by the minute.

I ask, How is my fish doing?

"Oh, geez," she says. "Your fish."

The taxi is bumping and rolling back toward the outside world.

Nothing should hurt by now, but I don't want to hear this.

"Your fish, I'm really sorry," Fertility says. "It just died."

Fish number six hundred and forty-one.

I ask, Did it feel any pain?

Fertility says, "I don't think so."

I ask, Did you forget to feed it?

"No."

I ask, Then what happened?

Fertility says, "I don't know. One day it was just dead."

There was no reason.

It didn't mean anything.

This wasn't any big political gesture.

It just died.

It was just a damn fucking fish is all but it's everything I had. Beloved fish.

And after everything that's happened, this should be easy to hear. Cherished fish.

But sitting there in the back of the cab, the gun in my hand, my hands in my pockets, I start to cry.

In Grand Island, we had a little son crippled with lupus so we could stay a couple days in the Ronald McDonald House there.

After that, we caught a ride in half a Parkwood Mansion headed west. This was nothing but four bedrooms, and we slept apart with two of them empty between us.

In Denver, we had a little girl with polio so we could stay at another Ronald McDonald House and eat and not feel the world going by underneath us while we slept at night. In Ronald McDonald's House, we had to share a room, but it would have two beds.

Out of Denver, we caught a Topsail Estate Manor headed for Cheyenne. We were just drifting. This wasn't costing us any money.

We caught half a Sutton Place Townhome headed for we didn't know where, and we ended up in Billings, Montana.

We started playing house roulette.

We didn't wander into the truck stop diners to ask around about which house was headed where. Fertility and me, we just cut our way inside and sealed the way shut behind us.

We rode three days and nights sealed in half a Flamingo Lodge and only woke up when they were setting it on a foundation in Hamilton, Montana. We stepped out the back door just as the happy family who bought it was coming in the front.

All we had with us was Fertility's tote bag and Adam's gun.

We were lost in the desert.

Out of Missoula, Montana, we caught one-third of a Craftsman Manor going west on Interstate 90.

A sign went by saying, Spokane 300 miles.

Past Spokane, a sign went by saying, Seattle 200 miles.

In Seattle, we had a little boy with a hole in his heart.

In Tacoma, we had a little girl with no feeling in her arms and legs.

We told people the doctors didn't know what was wrong.

People told us to expect a miracle.

People with their real kids dead or dying of cancer told us God was good and kind.

We lived together as if we were married, but we almost never talked.

Headed south on Interstate 5 through Portland, Oregon, we rode inside half a Holly Hills Estate.

Before we feel ready, we're home home, back in the city where we met, standing on a curb. Our last house is just pulling away and we let it.

I still haven't told Fertility that Adam's last wish was she and I would have sex together.

As if she doesn't already know.

She knows. All those night I was passed out, it was all Adam talked to Fertility about. She and I have to have sex. To set me free and give me power. To prove to Fertility that sex could be more than just a wealthy middle-aged marketing consultant squirting his DNA into her.

But now there isn't any place either of us live here, not anymore. Her apartment and my apartment have both been rented out to other people, Fertility knows that.

"I have a place we can stay tonight," she says, "but I have to call ahead."

In the pay phone booth is one of my stickers from a million years before.

Give Yourself, Your Life, Just One More Chance. Call Me for Help. Then my old phone number.

I call, and arecording tells me my number has been disconnected.

Right back at the recording, I say, No kidding.

Fertility calls the place she thinks we can crash. Into the phone she says, "My name is Fertility Hollis, and I was referred to you by Dr. Webster Ambrose."

It's her evil job.

It's the agent's closed loop of history. Fertility's being omniscient is looking pretty easy. Nothing new ever does happen.

"Yes, I have the address," she says. "I'm sorry about the short notice, but this is my first opening I've had. No," she says, "this is not tax-deductible. No," she says, "this is for all night, but there's a separate charge for each attempt. No," she says, "there's no cash discount."

She says, "We can work out the details in person."

Into the phone she says, "No, you don't have to tip me."

She snaps her fingers at me and mouths the word "pen." Then on the sticker for my crisis hotline she writes an address, repeating the number and street into the phone.

"Fine," she says. "Seven o'clock then. Goodbye." In the sky overhead, it's the same sun watching us make the same mistakes over and over. It's the same blue sky after everything we've been through. Nothing new. No surprises here.

The place she's taking me is the house I used to clean. The couple she's breeding for tonight are my speakerphone employers.

The trip to Fertility's bed is lined with streaked windows and peeling paint. Mildewed tile and rust stains. Everywhere along the way are clogged drains and scuff marks. Sagging curtains and snagged upholstery. All the stations of the cross.

This is after the man and woman I worked for were upstairs with Fertility doing God knows what.

This is after I've crawled in through the basement window Fertility knew would be unlocked. This is after I hid out among the fake flowers in the backyard, each of them stolen from a grave, and after Fertility rang the doorbell at seven sharp.

Dust coats everything in the kitchen. China coated with microwave leftovers fills the sink. The inside of the microwave is crusted with exploded food.

Bred and trained and sold little slave that I am, I go right to work cleaning. Just ask me how to get baked crud out of a microwave.

No, really, go ahead.

Ask me.

The secret is boiling a cup of water in the microwave for a few minutes. This loosens the crud so you can wipe it off.

Ask me how to get bloodstains off your hands.

The trick is to forget how fast these things can happen. Suicides. Accidents. Crimes of passion.

Fertility upstairs doing her job.

Just concentrate on the stain until your memory is completely erased. Practice really does make perfect. If you could call it that.

Ignore how it feels when the only real talent you have is for hiding the truth. You have a God-given knack for committing a terrible sin. You have a natural gift for denial. A blessing.

If you could call it that.

All evening I clean, and still I feel dirty.

Fertility told me the procedure would be over before midnight. They'd leave her in the green bedroom with her feet propped up on pillows. After the couple were asleep in their own room it would be safe for me to sneak upstairs.

The microwave clock says eleven-thirty.

I take my chances, and the trip to Fertility's bed is lined with wilted houseplants and tarnished doorknobs, fly specks and fingerprint smudges of newspaper ink. Drink rings and cigarette burns mar all the furniture. Cobwebs drift in every corner.

It's dark inside the green bedroom and out of the shadows Fertility says, "Shouldn't we be having sex now."

I say, I guess.

She says, "I hope you don't mind sloppy seconds."

I don't. I mean, it's what Adam would've wanted.

She says, "Do you have any rubbers?"

I say, I thought she was barren.

"Sure, I'm sterile," she says, "but I've had unprotected sex with a million guys. I could have some terrible fatal disease."

I say that would only be a problem if I wanted to live a lot longer.

Fertility says, "That's how I feel about my giant credit card debt."

So we have sex.

If you could call it that.

After waiting all my life, I get myself in her just half an inch and it's all over.

"Well," Fertility says, and pushes me away, "I hope that was really empowering for you."

She doesn't give me a second shot at making love.

If you could call it that.

A long time after she falls asleep, I watch her and wonder about her dreaming, if she's dreaming up some terrible new murder or suicide or disaster. And if she's dreaming it about me.

The next morning, Fertility is whispering on the telephone to someone. I wake up, and she's dressed and out of bed asking, "Do you have an eight a.m. flight to Sydney?"

She's saying, "One-way, please. A window seat if you have it. Do you take Visa?"

By the time she notices me watching her, she's hung up and putting on her shoes. She starts to put her daily planner into her tote bag but puts it back down on the dresser.

I ask, where is she going?

"Sydney."

But why?

"No reason."

I say, Tell me.

By now she's started lugging the tote bag toward the bedroom door. "Because I got my surprise," she says. "I got the damn surprise I wanted, and damn it, I don't want it. I don't want this!"

What?

"I'm pregnant."

But how does she know?

"I know everything!" she screams at me. "Well, I knew everything. I didn't know this. I didn't know I was going to have to bring a child into this miserable, boring, terrible world. A child who would inherit my gift for seeing the future and living a life of crushing ennui. A child who would never be surprised. I didn't see this coming."

So now what?

"So I'm going to Sydney, Australia."

But why?

"My mother killed herself. My brother killed himself. You figure it out."

But why Australia?

She's out the bedroom door now and dragging her tote toward the top of the stairs. I'd follow her, but I'm naked.

"Think of this," she yells back at me, "as a very radical abortion procedure."

A man steps out of the master-bedroom doorway dressed in a blue suit I've pressed a thousand times. In a voice I've heard on a thousand speakerphone calls, he asks me, "Are you Dr. Ambrose?"

By the time I've jumped into my clothes, Fertility is down the stairs and out the front door. Through the bedroom window, I watch her cross the lawn to a taxi.

Back out in the hallway, a woman wearing a silk blouse I've hand-washed a thousand times steps up to the man in the blue suit. The two of them frozen in the doorway of the master bedroom, the woman I used to work for shouts, "That's him! Remember? He used to work for us! That's the Antichrist!"

I tuck Fertility's daily planner under my arm and make a run for it. Still running, out the front door, down the street toward the bus stop, it takes me another minute to find today's date in the book, and there's the answer.

At 1:25 this afternoon, Flight 2039, nonstop from here to Sydney, will be hijacked by a maniac and crash somewhere in the Australian outback.

Ladies and gentlemen, as the last person aboard Flight 2039, out here above the huge Australian outback, it's my duty to inform you that our last engine has just flamed out.

Please fasten your seat belts as we begin our terminal descent into oblivion.

The airport is full of FBI agents looking for Tender Branson, Mass Murderer. Tender Branson, False Prophet. Tender Branson, Super Bowl Despoiler. Tender Branson, who abandoned his lovely bride at the altar.

Tender Branson, Antichrist.

I catch up with Fertility at the airline ticket counter.