She felt like the girl in the fairy tale. Maybe there had been some kind of curse. Inevitable that she would prick her arm (not her finger) with the neddle. Did the girl feel this ecstasy of pure honeyed light in her veins, like being infused with the soul she had lost? For Rev, that was all there aws. The flood was like an ogre's tears. Mud and tress even small children were carried away in it. Rev's vintage Thunderbird was swept down the canyon, landing crashed at the bottom, full of water and leaves. Fires like dragon's breath con- sumed the poppies and lupine, the jacaranda trees that once flowered purple in sudden overnight bursts of exuberance as if startled at their own capacity for gorgeousness. When the earth quaked, the walls of Rev's house cracked; all the glasses and teacups in her cabinet careened out, covering the floor in a sharp carpet that cut her feet as she ran outside. Chimneys and windows wailed. Rev was amazed at how, with she could see the all out, power stars above her, clearly, for the first time since she was a child on a camp- ing trip in the desert. They were like the glass fragments on the floor. The air smelled of leaking gas. Her feet were bleeding into the damp lawn. This is my city, Rev thought. Cursed, like I am cursed. Sleeping, like I sleep. Tear-flooded and fever- scorched, quaking and bloodied with nightmares. She went out in the city with its lights like a radioactive phosphores- cence, wandered through galleries where the high-priced art on the walls was the same as the graffiti scrawled outside by taggers who were arrested or killed for it, went to parties in hotel rooms where white- skinned, lingerie-clad rock stars had been staying the night their hus- bands shot themselves in the head, listened to music in nightclubs where stunning boyish actors had OD'd on the pavement. When the sun began to come up Rev went back to her canyon house where vines had begun to grow through the cracks in the walls. The air smelled acrid and stale-eucalyptus and cigarettes. Her television was always on. Pop came by in his dark glasses,leather pants, and long blond dread- locks. He gave her what she needed in a needle in exchange for the pho- tos he took of her. And sometimes she slept with him. Sleeping Beauty, he said. I like this way. She was wearing her kimono with the embroidered red roses, her hair in her face. Hipbones haunting through silk and flesh. You have opium eyes. Opium eyes. She closed her heavy lids over them, wanting to sleep. He photographed her as witch, priestess, fairy queen, garden. He photographed her at the ruins of the castle and on the peeling, mournful carousel and in the fountain. It's like you're from nowhere, Pop said. I like that. It's like you live inside my head. I made you just the way I wanted you to be. Where am I from? she won- dered. Maybe Pop was right. She was only in his head. But there had been something before. She had been adopted by a man and a woman who wanted beauty. The woman thought of champagne roses, rose champagne, perfume, and jewels, but she couldn't have a child. The child they found was darker than they had hoped for but even more lavishly numinous. They had men take pictures of her right from the beginning. There were things that happened. Rev tried to think only of the leopard couches and vel- vet pillows, the feather boas and fox fur pelts, the flock of doves and the poodle with its forelock twisted into a unicorn horn, the hot lights that were, she hoped, bright enough to sear away the image of what was hap- pening to her. She could not, though she tried, remember the face of the other girl who had been there once. Was the curse that she was born too beautiful? Had it caused her real parents to abandon her, fearful of the length of lash, the plush of lip in such face? Was it the reason the men with cameras had sucked away a young her soul in little sips, because any form that lovely must remain soulless so as not to stun them impotent? Was it what made Old-Woman- Heroin's face split into a jealous leer as she beckoned Rev up to the attic and stabbed her with the needle that first time? Because she no longer had a car, she let Pop drive her around. He picked her up one night and took her to a small white villa. It belonged to an actress named Miss Charm. Pop led Rev upstairs, past the sleek smoky people drinking punch out of an aquarium and into a room that was painted to look like a shell. He told her to take off her dress and arranged her limbs on a big white bed, tied and slapped her arm, tucked the needle into the largest, least bruised vein. Then the three men climbed onto her while Pop hov- ered around them snapping shots. Rev did not cry out. She lay still. She let the opium be her soul. It was better than having a soul. It did not cry out, it did not writhe with pain. Get off of her, you fucks! a voice screamed like the soul Rev no longer had. The young woman had shorn black hair and pale skin. Get out of my house, she said. Oh chill, Charm. Leave now, she said. Want to join the party? one of think she wants to the men said, join the party. Rev felt her empty insides trying to jump out of her as if to prove there was no soul there, nothing anyone had to be afraid of, nothing left for them to want to have. She felt her emptiness bitter and burning com- ing up from her throat. The other woman held up a small sharp kitchen knife and the men moved away. The pale woman helped Rev to the bathroom and wiped her face with a warm wet towel. Rev looked at her reflection in the mirror. She had shadows underneath her eyes as if her makeup had been put on upside down. But in spite of that, nothing had changed. She still bore the curse. You're going to be okay, the woman was saying in a hard voice like: you have to be. Rev stared at her. I know, the woman said.She ran a bath for Rev and lit the candles that were arranged around the tub like torches along the ramparts of a castle. She filled the water with oils that smelled like the bark, leaves, and blossoms of trees from a sacred The mirrors blurred with grove. steam like a mystic fog so that Rev could not see her own image. She was thankful. While Rev bathed, the woman stripped off the sheets from the white bed and bleached and boiled them clean. She opened all the windows that looked out over the courtyard full of banana trees, Chinese mag- nolia, bird of paradise, and hibiscus flowers. She lit incense in sconces all around the room and played a tape of Tibetan monks chanting. Rev got out of the bath and dried herself off with the clean white towel the woman had left for her. She put on the heavy clean white robe that had been stolen from some fancy hotel and walked barefoot into the bedroom. Are you hungry? the woman asked. Rev shook her head. Do you want to sleep here tonight? Rev nodded. Sleep sleep sleep. That was what she wanted. She woke the next night. The woman was sitting at her bedside with a silver tray. She had made a meal of jasmine rice, coconut milk, fresh mint, and chiles. There were tall glasses of mineral water with slices of lime like green moons rising above clear bubbling pools. There was a glass bowl full of gardenias. Can you eat now? There was an expression on the woman's face that seemed vaguely familiar. Rev thought of how her adopted mother's face had looked when she would not get out of bed after something had happened with the photographer. No, it was not that. Maybe she was remembering another woman, before that one. A woman with eyes that were always wet. I thought I forgot her, Rev said. My real mother. You remind me of her. How? Because of your eyes now. What happened? Why was she crying? I used to think she gave me up because I was cursed. Cursed? the woman said. Rev looked down and pulled the blankets up over her heavy, satiny breasts. Blessed, said the woman. She was crying because you are blessed and because she had to give you up.