She looks spent. The coldness of the light has saturated her skin and her eyes and even her hair. They look dull and flat and hard like the wax rind of a cheese rolled between palm and thumb, so that at first it seems impossible that she would be alive. Even her movements are of a kind you would expect of the weary dead: Quick. Shallow. Impatient to be done. Exactly as you might imagine your own last breath if you have ever imagined such a thing.
She doesn’t notice the beeps or pings or even the people much anymore. If they are in scrubs, she refers them to a son who sits tired and quietly beside himself by her headboard in a chair he had brought himself so they could not take it. He will be gone by seven. If they are a friend or a grandchild she smiles faintly, and pats a head or squeezes a hand as if to say it is fine that they are here, and she will always love them, but for herself, she is already somewhere else. What could they possibly speak of? She would spare them that. And so she does. She is dying, and she knows it and they know it and there is nothing she would do about it, even if she could.
‘Yes dear, that’s fine.’
‘ … That’s fine.’
The whole time, she is somewhere deep behind her eyes with Serenity. Fretting. Going back and forth in her mind like the play of new yarn twisting off the edge of a whorl.
Remembering ...
She had spotted Serenity under a bridge.
The bridge.
She had chosen it for its height and for the raw speed of the rush underneath. The distance from bank to bank. She could not swim.
No mistakes.
She was not sure what was meant by ‘dignity,’ at least not the way she heard people speak of it, but she knew she could never be one of the pathetic wretches that got pulled out, vomiting cold river water over and over on the bankside for the cameras. It had to be clean. The water’s only clammy if you come out, she told herself, and then it’s more of life and one percent worse. Even the screaming in her head shuddered at that, and it blanched at nothing.
DO IT! DO IT! DOITDOITDOIT! NOW! DOITNOW!!
She screwed herself up, trembling, and looked down, the voice growing more and more insistent in her mind, rising, excited, like it could feel the tipping point a’coming, that heartbeat when the leaf folds under the weight of the snow and you can see it, still hanging in the air but falling, falling—one more push and …
There was Serenity, or at least what would become Serenity.
It was almost nothing now, a shivering bag of skin and bone, twitching and jerking its head round on a swivel so she could imagine (from the distance) it might make a soft pop like a spring going off, but she could see from the broad wedge of its face and the set of it shoulders that the dog had been something once, something beautiful.
YOU LITTLE SH—, STOP LOOKING AT THAT F— DOG AND DO IT! NOW! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
The voice felt the catch, growled in irritation, then collected itself, coiled like a snake or a cunningly arched brow. It whispered now, for her ear alone, soft and smooth and secretly scornful as the wicked mother from a fairytale. Another tack.
But aren’t you tired yet? I know you are. I know just how tired we both are. And didn’t I tell you there would always be a distraction, always some branch to hold onto, and then you come out. I told you. You knew. And here we are. Come on ... Why can’t you even get this right?
It smirked, and she tightened her grip on the rail, tensed for a vault. She could feel, deep down, that the voice knew, it just knew it was impossible that she simply walk off the bridge. It would not let her. She could feel its pleasure in it, its ecstasy like it was biting its lip to savor the blood. Then she tasted blood herself and found it was she who was doing the biting. Yet she just stood there, trembling all over like a bird in a net, trembling so violently she feared she might retch over the side, her eyes fixed on the dog where it lay splayed under the bridge, wallowing in misery and neglect and caked in a roughcast of filth and flies and open sores. She could see it was also trembling.
Just like her.
That is what I must look like, she thought to herself.
That is what I’ve become. Broken.
No place to go but under the bridge. No silence except under the water.
She imagined the dog looking up from under the current. Seeing the world, but outside of it, forever without the heat of doing or thinking or hearing. Quiet at last. Well beyond trembling.
It was hard not to think of the dog as Serenity now, in the remembering, but she knows it wasn’t Serenity yet—just a private pain, quivering under a bridge, and she had felt … sad. To look at that dog.
Yes, that was it, sad.
She could feel the cut of it, real and deep and sweet. Even the relief of it. She had to mouth the word to herself under her breath; she had almost forgotten what it meant.
When was it then? How many years since she’d felt it? How long since she had been anything but afraid?
And it just poured over her, over and over again in waves, and she sobbed and sobbed, clutching the rail and staring down.
She knew she had to do something about that dog.
She was that dog, somehow, under her skin. Afraid. Alone. Already under the water and beyond reach.
Just trembling.
Slowly, she stumbled down the far end of the bridge into the shamble of gravel and weeds under the truss, tripping and bawling and guiding herself along with her hands as if the old age she had never figured to see had caught her up in a moment. The voice was screaming again, bludgeoning her, swearing and breaking into the obscene and strident cacophony it reserved as a fallback when it didn’t want her to think. Something not entirely human, but entirely too human to hear without recoil. Another tack. Another tack. Yet another tack. It went back to screaming, then pleading, then threatening, then screaming again. Anything, really.
When she got close enough, she kneeled in front of it like a fractured annunciation, hands apart. The dog laid back its ears and showed her its teeth and the whites of its eyes, but it was almost silent. She had to strain to feel the growl. It must be almost spent. She reached out a hand, tentative, and it snapped at her. She pulled back, then tried again, coaxing this time with a thin, trembling thread of sweet and friendly nonsense. It snapped again. And again.
But it was very weak. Too weak, she found, to give more than a wicked pinch, so she took a deep breath and lunged for its neck, dragging it bodily away to her car, kicking and snarling.
The voice screamed at her again, spitting with rage, but she just shrugged it off and tightened her grip.
WHAT THE H— DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING, YOU DUMBA— B—? LEGGO!
The whole way back to the car she talked and sobbed and talked again—pleading with it, cajoling, tutting, trying to calm it down even after she had shoved it into the back seat—but she could do nothing with it. The dog was clearly insane, curled up in the back with its lip and hackles up, red eyes rolling blind in its head, snarling so she could feel the tremor of it in her chest. It tried to heave itself up to bite her over and over but it couldn’t. Eventually, it gave over and loosed its bowels all over the back seat while she cried into the wheel and apologized and told it she knew what it wanted, she knew—to be left to suffer in peace under the bridge, to die on its own terms—but she just couldn’t. She couldn’t, she had to do something. She put the car into gear and drove home.
All that night it squealed and growled like a thing possessed. She had gotten it food and a leash and collar on the way home, but it wouldn’t eat until after she left the room. When she came back, it started lunging at her again, fangs out, back to the wall. It was stronger now, and it frightened her.
She had to collar it by force and muzzle it, first with a makeshift twist of the leash and then with a proper one, and though she had won out in the end, the dog still raged and twisted and tried to bite even with its mouth lashed shut, and she had had to scrub out and bandage her arms where its teeth had found her wrists in the struggle. She was exhausted; her breath drew ragged and heavy, and she could feel the shape of the punctures in her wrists and forearms aching against the bandages. Still, she kept talking to it, touching it gently, wheedling, offering it treats.
Nothing.
The dog raved harder and longer the more it recovered. She tried everything she could think of: baby talk, shushing, bribery, collaring, threats. Nothing worked. Finally, she screamed.
“Stop it! STOP! I’m trying to help!!”
The dog wouldn’t stop, and the voice laughed and whispered ugly things she ought to do to it behind her ears.
Didn’t I tell, you? Don’t I always tell you?
It had murmured,
After all, when have you ever been able to curb even my anger? When have you ever been able to spare yourself? Only ever by force. And then only a little. Wouldn’t it be better to end it? Easier? Nicer? Who knows, maybe you’ll even be free of me after …
She caught the dog’s face in both hands by the sides of the muzzle and heaved it scant inches from her own. She shook it, and though it growled and pulled she wouldn’t let it go.
‘Stop it! I know this isn’t you. I know you have to be in there somewhere. Stop it!’
And the dog growled at her all the more, pressing its ears to its skull, staring her down, neck working back and forth like a piston. She screamed and shoved it away and screamed again and collapsed in the corner crying while the dog escaped to another room, and the voice laughed and whispered it had told her so, that no one can be saved, and she gave over for a time, huddled in on herself, how long she could not remember. At length, she pulled herself together enough to google canine aggression and found the number for a specialist.
“Have you named it?”
“Yes. Serenity.”
He clucked.
“Hmm ... That’s aspirational.”
“I guess.”
He paused for a second and looked at the dog like maybe this time he’d see something different. The dog growled, low in its chest, its ears back, just as it had been ever since it entered the room, and she sat there strained upright, trying not to blink every time the voice rang her head like a temple gong. It had fallen into repeating every word of the conversation in tandem, word for word, like it was reading a script, but with a snide undertone that seemed to leach itself into the original. He rubbed his hands.
“I’m sorry, but this dog has got to be in the worst shape I have ever seen. You need to get rid of it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Put it down.”
“What?”
“Euthanize it. Trust me, I don’t like it any more than you do.”
“Then don’t.”
“Nice. Normally, I’d agree, say ‘every dog’s a good dog,’ but that isn’t a dog. An animal like this’s been scared so long it doesn’t even know how to be a dog anymore. Sure, it looks like one, but really it’s just a nasty knot of fear and neurosis with teeth on one end. There’s no way to do anything with an animal like that, and if you help it get strong again, it will kill somebody. Guaranteed. Probably you. Where did you say you got it?”
“Under a bridge.”
“Under a bridge. Figures.”
“Please. I have to do this.”
“Have to? No one has to do anything and to be honest, it may not even be possible. I’m not sure even I could, even if I had the time.”
“So maybe you could?”
“No. That’s not what I said.”
“But maybe.”
“Look, I know this isn’t any of my business, but you look like you’ve had pretty a rough time yourself. If I let you go and do this, someone might get hurt. And then that’s on me.”
“I’m fine. I can do it.”
“Really? You’re fine?”
He stared hard at her and she tugged her sleeves over her wrists. The voice swore, told her to KILL THAT LITTLE F—. She squirmed.
“I’m fine.”
“You are fine … and you found it under a bridge … Look at yourself. I can’t help you if you’re just going to lie to me, and I’m telling you, you do this and someone’s going to get hurt.”
“I’m fine.”
She heard the bald defiance in her own voice but let it stay where it was.
“The dog’s just been hard. She didn’t want to be collared.”
He raised his hands and nodded.
“Alright. Alright. No need to get your back up … and that’s exactly what I’m talking about. I’m telling you, put Serenity down. It’s the nicest thing you could do for her.”
“I don’t believe you. The dog’s still here. There’s got to be a way I can reach her, teach her how to be a dog. There has to.”
He covered his eyes with his hand and sighed deeply, didn’t speak for a minute.
“Why do you want to do this, anyway? What does the dog mean to you?”
“I don’t know. I guess I just have to believe there is a heart in there somewhere, and that it’s worth finding, that it’s worth the work and the patience.”
“Hmm … interesting ... Tell me then, is this about you or the dog?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know. Probably better that way.”
He sits there, considering, and all she can hear is the voice ranting in her head and the sound of the dog under her chair, threatening in unison.
“Look, I know I shouldn’t tell you this, but I’m going to. Only, you need to promise me that if you are going to do this, you’re gonna do it all the way.”
“I promise.”
“Swear it.”
“What?”
“I mean it.”
“Yeah, I swear it. Ok?”
“Ok. You have to understand that you have to be with this dog all the time. That’s the commitment. This dog is alive all the time, and she doesn’t know how to do anything right. You’ll have to teach her everything, starting from zero. You can’t let her regress, not even for a second. No matter how tired or bored or fed up you get. You’re going to have to change everything there is about this dog. It took years for her to get this way, and it may take something like that to rehabilitate her. Do you get what I’m telling you?”
“Yes.”
“What am I saying, then?”
“I have to focus on the dog. I have to be patient with her.”
“Wrong. This dog has got to be your life. Your whole life. If you can’t do that, you have got to put her down.”
“I can do it. My whole life.”
He looked at her hard.
“You think you can do that. Now. But you won’t know for sure until it gets tough. Really tough. If you find you can’t, you have to bring her back. Promise?”
“Promise.”
“Okay.”
The first thing, he said, was to control the dog’s environment and remove any stressors. She needed a sense of normalcy, he had said. Something she was used to.
So she did. The first few days, she didn’t interact with Serenity at all, just penned the dog up in one half of a dark mudroom by the door, everything stripped antiseptically down to the baseboards and carpets like a field hospital. Nothing to be afraid of. That was Serenity’s world, and there she stayed, scratching and whining until she got used to things. She made a schedule and a little ceremony for Serenity’s meal times, which, she had learned, must be unalterable: Twice a day, she’d ring a bell to let the dog know the door was going to open, then she’d open the back door from over the fence and walk away. There would be food and water out in the yard, and she would come back and close the door afterthe dog went back in. This went on until the dog stopped growling when she was alone in the house.
That was the cue for the real work to begin.
This, he’d said, is what would tax her ‘unbreakable resolve,’ because everything the dog knew to do was wrong. She could not let Serenity do a solitary thing without her express permission. Not even eat. The dog had to work for her privileges, every time, and if Serenity didn’t comply, well, she didn’t get anything. The dog needed to know what to expect.
And so, she worked out exactly how close Serenity would let her approach before reacting, measured out in inches, and she sat just outside the limit and tossed the dog little pieces of kibble one by one and talked to her. The moment the dog growled or so much as raised a hackle, she would pack away the food with a predetermined vocal cue, back a little further off, then try again, hour after hour, always taking in the dog’s tenor to see where she was in her mind, always adjusting, rewarding, redirecting, slowly culling the growls and retreats down to nothing.
She could see now what the trainer had meant. It took more time than she had imagined; much more. It was weeks before the dog could tolerate even standing next to her, but she persisted. Almost, she fancied, like a voice in the dog’s head, closing the distance in inches, testing the limits, and starting over: talk, treat, growl, wait, talk again, and so forth.
Even so, she could not touch Serenity for another month. Every day she would probe the trammels again, seeking the slightest sensitivity like a leadsman heaving the plummet into the depths, cueing a treat and touching the dog’s flank lightly with a fingertip and then drawing away if she reacted, feeding her again and again from her hand with each new compliance and always talking and cajoling in one long, single and continuous thread like the unraveling in one piece of an infinite sweater, until finally, she could stroke her dog gently anywhere on herbody without a growl.
From that point, she knew it could be done. She was confident now, teaching her dog to eat inside the house, to eat without protecting the bowl, to tolerate a harness and leash, to walk on a lead, to obey commands, and to tolerate visitors and other dogs. Serenity learned, and each time she did, it was a bit easier to ignore the voice screaming at her to stop, to shut up, telling her you can’t do this, and why don’t we all just make our way back to that bridge?
Then, twelve months in, she came home to Serenity waiting for her at the door. Had her dog done that before? She couldn’t remember. Maybe she had. It had been a long while since her ears had stopped following her around the house. She smiled and reached down and stroked her huge, wedge-shaped head, and Serenity began to wag her tail.
That was definitely a first.
She kneeled and pulled Serenity’s face into her own, laughing and talking away just as she had all the past year and her dog didn’t pull away. Serenity looked back almost like she was smiling too, eyes soft and liquid. She began to cry.
“Good girl, Serenity. Good dog! So this is you, isn’t it, Serenity? Pleased to meet you! Aren’t you glad I found you? And weren’t you worth the wait?”
As soon as she’d said it, the voice began to cavil at her, ranting and writhing and crawling around in her head:
No, no, it’s a LIE! The dog’s still the SAME, just afraid of you, can’t you see? OPEN YOUR EYES! Didn’t I tell you how it would happen? Didn’t I? You haven’t done anything, you’ve never done anything, and you never will. You are so naïve. How could you be so naïve?
But she didn’t listen; in fact, she swore she would never listen again, and as she savored that thought, she could feel something change in the voice, like the closing of a door, and the breath caught in her chest, for though the voice raged on as rabid as ever, she could hear that all the words were gone. It wasn’t a voice at all anymore, just the howl of a broken dog dying under a bridge, and in her heart, she knew it always had been. A dog so afraid it didn’t know how to be a dog anymore, who bit harder the more she tried to feed it.
At that moment, she felt her whole world change in a flood, whirling and clicking into place like words and dates spun out on a split-flap board when a train comes in, and she would watch them not for what they said but for what they’d dance and become.
Serenity.
She saw it clearly now. She would name the voice Serenity, just like the dog, and she would watch it close and spin out that long, everlasting thread of talk and laughter just as she had all the past year, and deny it every little thing it screamed for until it had her permission, and it too would learn to be a person. She would tame it to her touch.
The dog mellowed into a sweet, companionable animal, her first real friend. She was glad for it. She often relied on the warmth of Serenity under her palm or the rough insistence of her tongue to brace her as she tackled that other Serenity. The voice was stubborn, ten times as wild and willful as the dog had ever been, but that didn’t bother her now. She already knew what was going to happen. She had proof—she could see it in the dog walking beside her, day by day. After all, the voice didn’t know how to do anything right, and she would have to teach it. It had taken years for that voice to become what it was, and it would take years yet for it to figure itself out.
All that time the other Serenity kicked and bucked and howled, and all the while she would talk to it, sweet and cajoling in one, long unraveling thread in the back of her mind, never taking her eyes off it for a second, backing off when it acted out, but always, always letting it know she was there and thinking of it. Slowly, ever so slowly, like rain fading so you couldn’t really put a finger on when it slacked, Serenity gave up railing and threatening and mostly sat in the back of her mind like a cat, licking and grumbling to itself. And that was that. For the first time in years, she found that she could think out loud and keep friends and hold down a regular job. She was even in contact with family again. And life was good, or at least better than it had been.
She waited for the feeling to break as it always had, for the other foot to fall, but it never did.
The mood persisted for weeks and then on into months, until late one night, as she lay sprawled lazily over the arm of her couch like some languid sketch of an odalisque, enjoying the indulgence of it, slurping up ice cream and scratching luxuriously and nemine contradicente. She was in just a shirt, an oversized one, maybe from her brother, maybe from Goodwill, she couldn’t remember, and she couldn’t help lifting her fingers from time to time to admire her long and bright-polished nails, heady with the freedom of having them at all without fear of picking or cutting and wondering how long this freedom might last, the freedom to simply be, hoping beyond hope it was there to stay.
Serenity had roused itself at the thought and made a listless little foray, but she was too contented to pay it any mind when there was ice cream and a movie to be enjoyed, and in a minute it trailed off and began weeping, gently, out of sight in the back of her head. Serenity felt so sad in that moment—its grief bubbling up from someplace as hidden and unacknowledged as the wellspring of a river—that it pierced her to the quick, like her own first tears for her dog under the bridge. She stopped short a moment, straightened up, and sent pink bubbles across the space between them, spoke reassuringly, wanting to make peace, telling Serenity how sorry she was for all of the things that they had been through together—she knew it had been a lot—and Serenity bawled and spilled its guts like a child caught in fault, pointing a finger at every breast but its own:
Do you really think that I wanted to be this way? But what could I do? You … you were such a coward, you ran away from everything. You were so afraid of everything. We would have died. DIED! We would have fallen to pieces. Someone had to be strong for the both of us. It’s not my fault. You did this to me! You! You!!
And the voice went on, but softly now, in a litany of offenses, real and imagined, like it had them scribed secretly on the palm of its hand, never again to be opened—everything it had held against her, every broken and scandalized feeling of its heart—and she listened as she had grown accustomed to listening to the dog, and thanked it one by one for everything it had taken on for her, for the both of them, because she hadn’t been strong enough at the time. Serenity was too sad for her to feel any anger, whatever she felt about what it said.
It must have been hard, she said, so hard, and I hated you for it all the while. I am sorry. I am so sorry.
And she stroked Serenity with her words until it fell quiet for a good long while. And then finally:
Thank you. Yes, it has been hard.
She blinked.
“Of course. I’m so sorry, Serenity.”
Call Robert. Now.
What did it mean? Robert was a client, of course. There was no other Robert. One she fretted about flying the coop. It was a big account. She didn’t know if she’d keep her job if it closed.
“Call Robert? Why?”
Call Robert. His daughter’s birthday. Remember? He called out last year. He had lost her just a little before. Her name was Kayla. Call Robert. Now.
She paused and looked at the clock. It was late, probably too late for a call. She put the thought to rest. But Serenity kept nudge, nudge, nudging her until she found that she had dialed his number in spite of herself, not even knowing what to say. She was terrified. The gravity of it threatened to choke her:
What was she playing at with this man’s sorrows?
What might it seem like?
She knew what it felt to want to strike a commiserating face. But she didn’t hang up.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Robert. I know, I’m sorry it’s so late, but I was thinking of Kayla, I remembered it was her birthday, and just had to check in. I had to let you know I was thinking of you, of her.”
Then a pause.
“How are you holding up?”
And he just stood on the other end of the line and sobbed, like a levee strained, then finally overwhelmed by the river and its need to follow an older course, and she apologized and he said, no, it was ok, she was the only one who had remembered, that even his business partner had asked why he had wanted to take the day off and so he hadn’t, rather than make a scene. She listened, listened like she always had with her dog and later with Serenity, and let him talk himself out, nodding and crying a little with him when he needed it.
“Thank you.”
“Yeah. I’m sorry … and Robert, I know there isn’t much I can do … just know I’m here for you if you need it, OK?”
I guess you aren’t such a coward, after all. I guess you can do some things. Maybe I can trust you. Maybe …
She hung up the phone and cried and Serenity shushed her, not urgently.
And that was that. She kept the client and the job, and it was Serenity, still snarky, but now often amusing, that got her through the hard days and reminded her of the good. It was Serenity who talked her off the ledge the first time a boy she liked asked her out. It was a thing so far afield of what she’d expected for herself that she had freaked out, both before and again after the date, but there was Serenity, laughing and poking fun and calming her fears, and it was Serenity that did it again and again as she and the boy laughed and fought and made up until he eventually screwed up the courage to ask if they shouldn’t take up housekeeping. It was Serenity who watched and laughed at her favorite shows, the ones she couldn’t get anyone else to watch, who found keys and old recipes she had misplaced, and it was Serenity who whispered the words of a long-forgotten lullaby in her ear as she rocked gently in the dark, nursing a colicky child, and last of all it had been Serenity that had held her hand and cried with her through the long, cold nights after her husband had died.
Serenity was her own little secret, her loose board under the closet where she could guard every treasure no one suspected she could have, and they shared everything, everything, everything, and the thread of their conversation never drew out.
She is crying now, in that tiny bed where she can neither sit up nor lie down. The Doctors keep clicking their tongues and saying she is dying, that she must die, that she should have died last Tuesday, and then again Friday, and she can almost feel them tapping their feet, telling her it is time to go. Even the beep and pings sound impatient now as if to say,
“Well, what are you waiting for? Haven’t you been through enough?”
And yet she still holds on, fiercely, blindly, like she clung to the scruff of that dog’s neck so many years ago, though this time, it’s not on her own account. She is not at all afraid for herself. She had not even been afraid then, standing on that bridge before she spied Serenity. Yet here she is, tossing, fretting herself to hysterics. Thinking, over and over,
But what about Serenity?
She knows what will happen to her when the time comes. She has known it for a long time and does not doubt what she will see and what she will become.
But what of Serenity?
What place will there be for her?
The children will weep for her, and her for them, but they will go on. In her heart, she almost laughs at them, though she would never tell them why. They will always be with her, and even if they aren’t, they will always have themselves.
But who will have Serenity when she is gone? Will there even be a Serenity, or will Serenity simply cease, like the light of a candle left out in a hurricane, or worse yet, like the light of a candle that has never been lit? The anguish of it tears at her: that this voice she wrestled and loved and brought into being more surely than her own children would be lost, lost, or more agonizing still, never have been. She knows it is time, but she cannot let it go like that, with a whimper. She cannot let Serenity go at all, and through her mind runs an endless train of moments, tender and cruel, that they have passed through together, until at the end of line she stands high atop a bridge, looking down on the rushing cataract and at the form of Serenity, broken and brought to life again in the shambles at the far end. And she must go to her. Pain blossoms exquisitely before her eyes as she tries to rise and follow, and she subsides, but she must not let it go.
The room is growing dark and everyone is standing up around her, talking and talking to her all at once, but she cannot hear what they are saying. It is hard to breathe, but it does not hurt like she would have imagined. She can feel something warm, like a hand holding hers, and Serenity is there, talking to her, talking in one long, golden thread like she herself used to talk to her dog in the dark mudroom in that beginning. Sweetly, cajoling, imploring her not to fret almost like a mother holding a damp towel to the head of a sick child and her refusing it, fighting it, yet Serenity goes on all the same, whispering in her ear that she will be fine, they both would be fine and to just let go, just let it happen, that it is time for her to find her own way, and she cries and begs forgiveness that she does not have the strength to carry her back to the car anymore, tells her that she does not want to be on her own after all, pleads that she never, never let go of her hand, and she feels the murmur of a soft laugh and a gentle kiss on her forehead and the thread runs out.
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