Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway.

Passersby ignored the frail, shivering thing, their eyes never dropping, their heads never turning. She might have been a doll in a window, or something someone left behind. She wasn't any of their business.

A little round boy with a little round face in his little grey jacket wrapped around his little round belly poked at the girl with his little round foot.

The girl, who wasn't much older than he, looked up from the protective valley of her arms and smiled at him. The little...

The coat was ragged. No, not ragged - raggedy. Tatterdemalion in some circles. Tatty, to his mother.

Love, to Matilda.

She slept in the pockets, wrapped herself in the arms and nibbled anxiously at the buttons.

Button.

He'd worn this coat for years. Navy blue pea coat from the army surplus store downtown, his first grown-up purchase. He lived alone then. He went to school, paid his book fees and came home to his one-room flat with a lukewarm kettle and a dusty sleeping bag on the floor.

He'd never had a pet. Allergies always did him in.

Then Matilda...

Gene loved the smell of leather. He loved the smell of Heather wearing leather. He loved Heather in leather and the smell and the idea of the smell and the smell of the smell always left him crazed and wanting. He couldn't help himself. He didn't know how.

Heather hated Gene. She hated the idea of Gene and the smell of Gene and the smell of the smell of the leather Gene always wore. She had hated him forever. She always would. She could never forgive him for that one thing, years ago. She couldn't even remember anymore. She knew...