The house has fallen silent. The vague doorway remains empty. Nathan sits with his hands on his knees. His shirt hangs open, last touched by Roy. The faintest feather of air along his bare skin is his only true sensation. He has no thoughts for a long time. He sits and breathes. Sketches of past moments return to him, Roy's hands and mouth, the sudden pressure of their bodies, the miracle of reciprocity, and then the abrupt wash of light, the realization that Burke and Randy had found them. Fragments of that sequence recur. Most vivid is when Roy pushes him away. Nathan has stayed frozen in that position ever since. But these are memories. He can escape them. What he cannot escape is the sensation of wind inside him. There is a torn place somewhere in his gut and wind is rushing through it. A sound, like someone humming a sad hymn, resonates through the hollow. After a while he realizes he is really humming, and the hymn is “Near to the Heart of God.”
