“Oh, but I am making sense. Everyone does want to kill me. I'm not being paranoid. My black eye could just as easily have been a bullet hole if my boyfriend had had a gun. And the trigger could have been pulled by fifteen or twenty... let's face it, a million different guys could have pulled the trigger. You probably will pull it.”

"Don't be cryptic," I said. "You're acting just like a

"

woman."

A subtle change came over her face. It was washed by a strange comingling of pain, fear, and resignation.

"That's the hitch," she whispered. "I'm no woman."

"You're a woman. Very much a woman. I'm sitting right here looking at you. You are just disturbed right now. You're facing a tremendous decision here tonight, and you are obviously in no mental state to make it."

“I AM PERFECTLY SANE! I know what I am." She deftly lifted her skirt, moved her girdle to the side, and proved it. "There's my story in a nutshell. Don't look so disgusted. I didn't invite you to this party."

Damn him, I thought. The risk I had tried trying to save this insolent queer. The time I had already wasted...

But something in his eyes stopped my anger dead. That aloof look of simultaneous triumph and defeat. How callous could I be; thinking time spent saving someone's life was wasted? And my look of disgust had probably sealed his fate. He had been here debating, not quite ready to take the final step that would end his life forever. Now he was resolved to kill himself, and there was nothing left on earth to stop him.

I knew I would have to do or say something. If he jumped now I would feel I had murdered him. But what could I say? I would have to think fast, and be right.

I knew, too, the horror of being alone. Alone and facing a world you don't understand. Like the time when I was just a kid; thrown out of my home on Christmas Eve. How alone must

25