Her free hand crept up to her face and I heard the thickness in her voice; I knew she was crying.

"Everything you wanted is gone," she continued, her shoulders losing their poise and falling forwards once more as she relinquished her attempts at control.  "And then there’s nothing left to lose," she said, so quietly that I had to strain my ears to hear her.  She shook her head as the speaker on the other end of the line obviously tried to console her, meeting their protestations with another hard exhalation of impatience.

"I’ve already lost it," she said slowly, her voice querulous in admittance.  "I’ve lost everything, don’t you understand that?"

Sighing, she stood up, her tall slender body naked and Amazonian in the daylight, and padded across the room to pick up an errant piece of clothing.  Tossing it behind her onto the bed, she stopped, letting out a sound of irritation at the caller’s clear misinterpretation of her words.

"It was a mistake," her voice was lowering to a note I knew.  That same note she used with clients or dealers when she would brook no discussion or dissent on the matter.  "I made a mistake and I was lost.  Now I’m the loser; dont you get it?  I’m sorry if I misled you into believing that there was anything between us, but there can’t be."  She paused, listening intently, before shaking her head again.  "No.  No!  Listen to me, please, Candace."

There was a brief pause as she visibly attempted to control herself and return to that sonorous tone that was Bette Porter at her best.  In charge.  Indomitable.  In my heart.  "I didn’t realize how much I loved her until she wasn’t there anymore.  I’m sorry if it hurts you, but it kills me that I never knew what I have – " her voice broke, cracking over the present, tense and taut in every word she spoke.  "What I had," she qualified, "what I threw away the moment I kissed you."

She let out a ragged sigh as Candace spoke to her, the tinny pitch reaching even my distant ears.  I burned with hatred.  Hatred for a woman I didn’t even know, who had been deceived, in turn, like myself.  I should have pitied her; should have scrutinized in her audible distress a mirror image of myself.  But all I could do was hate.  The rage of the woman scorned.