It happens like this...

It happens like this. She goes out at 5 a.m., with the regularity of the swiss train master, with game face, with her tail in high spiral, in scorpion attack configuration. Two hours pass. Something at the door. You open and she blows in with the cold. She's got a lamb's leg, with the fur, the hoof, the bone sticking out. It must be a little like coming across the remains of suicide bombers. The leg has a hideous smell. It's the bone sticking out, broken off — the rest of it could be stolen off the wall of a men's club. Get the fuck outta here, I say, and take it with you, but she's already gone. Her gang is outside, circling like bikers. I tell 'em she's nuts.

And then an hour later I hear the story about the therapist at the college. She's a hippy chick past 40 working with victims of panic attack. Two dead husbands, Iranian brothers mind you. She's here from Iowa with three kids. There's a fourth in Thailand. One here is 14, big as the Indian in the Coocoo's Nest. She used to play middle school football back in Sioux City, played tackle both ways and you look at her and you know she could. Maybe 5'10; 200; an immovable object and wears game face every day. She's also a cutter.

You could see that coming. She's always by herself. Wouldn't play volleyball although the girls all begged her. Sits, head down, on the hallway. The other day at Volubilis the teacher wanted to take a picture of the class. She didn't want to be in the picture. I told her, "you know it's not all about you." I shouldn't have said it and I apologized later. But somebody should tell her.

Someone asked her mother about it and her mother says, "It isn't so bad really, you should see her sister in Thailand. She's the real cutter."