Then it's later, and the shitbird is asking how long it's going to take to clean him up. "That woman you cut took 287 stitches and ten pints of blood," Jackie answers. He says it was all her idea, she liked to cut herself: "American women are very adventurous," he says blackly. Picking up his jacket and money clip from the floor, Jackie nods hatefully, keeping it out of her voice. "She probably did it for attention?" He wonders how far to take it. "What do you do for attention?" Like today's not hard enough without getting fucked-up threats from an earless attaché. "I'll be right back," she says.

In the bathroom, she holds the man's ear close to her mouth. "Fuck You," she says clearly and firmly into the ear. Fuck you for cutting up girls and getting away with it, fuck you for coming into my hospital and bending my arms back, fuck you for saying you'd do the same to me. She flushes the ear, disgusted, and the world goes white.

Then it's later, and she's lying in a pew in the chapel, staring up at St. John the Baptist's head -- grown slightly bald -- brought in on Salome's silver platter, chatting with Mo-Mo on the next pew over. "What does one offer for a side dish, with John's head on a silver platter?" She considers it: cole slaw, mac and cheese... "No, potato salad." Mo-Mo purrs. "And rum and cokes!" She grins. "You like rum and cokes with anything!" He purrs again. They lay silently together. "I could have saved that boy. Messenger kid. I knew he had a bleed, I felt it." Mo-Mo doesn't respond; she tells him now's the time to say she did everything she could. He takes her hand. "You want me to say that?" She asks if he would believe it, if he did; she admits she doesn't believe it herself. It's hard. He sits up, changing the subject with a firm hand.

"There would be some definite advantages to dating a man without a torso," he points out, and they list them: you could carry him in your purse, he'd never leave, you could put him in the oven when he talks back. "Or throw his stupid head overboard when you catch him fucking a poolboy on a cruise to celebrate your six month anniversary that you had to pay for because he is such a narcissistic fucking asshole," Mo-Mo says, just for another e.g. Their timing is good, these two. "How is Randy?" she asks, and he props his head on the pew with a sweet smile, falsely bright: "Oh, he's good!"