She hunts best at night, in the wee hours, when the world sleeps or is otherwise occupied with daytime employment. And as I stand here I think of all those people with nine-to-five lives, how they animate during sunshine times while quotidian divorcés like myself haunt the beam of a glow lamp to fuck the cue ball—

For so long I was, outside just like her.

 I break and despite my hiatus, the action is strong and clean. The balls roll to their destinations and I observe the emergent spider web weave of paths: six-ball to the corner, bank shot to the five.

Milady slows to find just the right spot, to sojourn in the welcome sweet sun of my full attention. She’s willing, she’s ready to take me back. She’s right there, just stroke her with a touch of English and off she’ll go.

She’s a hard solid orb of phenolic resin. She obeys the laws of physics: When I nudge her round surface, when the cue stick forms a tangent, it knocks her on a path of lines described by angles and equations.

 She is beautiful, she is a thing.

 I look to see Paul, his hair mussed as always, and he watches her, too.

Paul will be here until the day he dies. He hustled, he never stopped. He’s Milady’s prisoner, he is prisoner of the Snow Queen.