When Christina woke again, it was about 7 AM by the sun, and golden light was streaming in through the windows through a haze of dust motes. She slipped off her stocking and carried Levi, who was still fast asleep, to the rickety table in the center of the room. After laying him down atop of it, she walked over to her cupboard and extracted a slim, black vial of some watery substance. Wiping her lips with the back of her hand, she leaned back in her chair, and watched Levi sleep for a few moments. Then she stretched out her left hand, and lightly tapped him in the stomach with her middle finger. He leapt up immediately, and reached nimbly into his breeches for the gun that wasn’t there. Then he saw Christina smiling at him, and remembered.

“I’ve thought over what you proposed, and I don’t like it, Levi. I don’t like it at all.”
“What do you mean?” As he began to regain his consciousness of the past seven hours, and smell the awful stench arising from his clothes, he asked her what alternative she had.
 “Oh, it’s simple, Levi. I know what you want most, and I can press you there. I don’t have to pose a genteel Lucy and dress up for another comedy of errors. Your plan is simple. That’s not my style, Jack.” She poked him softly in the gut.
“I don’t understand.”
“No, you don’t. But I do. You do think your troubles are great, I grant you, and supposing they be great, and supposing you alone shrunk last night or any other night, why, to be reconciled with some no-account lawyer like Charles Och should indeed be high up on your list. But I tell you you’re not alone, and I’ve seen and known of others like you. I could offer you better than that, you little shyster. Don’t you see anything yet? You’ve been poisoned. You’re poisoned, and I alone know of the antidote.”
“Why, then you must hand it to me! My offer stands. I’ll gift you my estate, everything I have!”
 “Yes, yes. But then I ask you what assurance do I have that you'll hand it to me? What guarantee? I say, you must first entrust to me what I want before I hand you the antidote."

Levi’s heart sank and then rose again—a sailboat dashing down an oceanic trough, and then reaching up for the crest of the oncoming wave. “Lydia…”, he whispered. Christina bent down, and heard the name.
“Your wife, yes. I reckon you’ve disappointed her enough, wouldn’t you say? I speak as one with an intimate knowledge of shame, though there are limits even I should never trespass. Consult your longsuffering wife on the matter of Lucy Och, my little friend. See how she responds to the idea of being the wife of an adulterer. The first crime you’ve already accomplished, I see—you are Lucy’s seducer—and I understand you there better than you think. What is that—for a lawyer of your distinction! (she sneered)—compared to showing the public what you've become! A mite! No, Levi. You needed cause to leave, and you snatched out your hand at the first to come, a small disgrace. Being the seducer of a Lucy Och would put you somewhere in the outermost edges of hell, would it not? you are a rake, but at least you're not a shrunken man. Isn't that how it was for you? Isn't that why you sent those letters?”
“Hold, please—stop…”
“Not yet. For a legal man, if that is what you are, you are most above the average: so clever with your makeshift arguments and apologies, your speeches-of-the-moment, and so very off-kilter and inconsistent in your conclusions. I’ve heard your type in the courtroom, Levi, and I know how impressive you sound—until court ends, and the effect wears off. How many speeches I’ve heard in my mind, after court ends, and how much emptier and less reliable they appear! It is magic work you men do, magic. But I won’t be bought—nor will Lucy, and nor will your wife. Lydia was her name?”
“Lydia.”
“She will never agree to this deeper shame. I tell you that. She will not be rumored as the wife of a rakehell, a hooker’s consort. And that is the end of your story. You lose.”

Levi paused, and asked for a drink. He was still besmirched and bespattered with the filth from Christina’s feet, and he wanted to be clean. “Before I decide my fate, at least give me water. Haven’t you tortured me enough?”
 She grinned, “You think you’ve been tortured…” Her lips twisted into a kind of scowl, and she stared at him bleakly, “Yes, yes, let’s get some water.” She poured out a capful of whisky, and broke up a few crumbs of moldy bread from the loaf she kept. He looked disgusted. “The repast of the poor, my friend—you see a woman’s reward for handing out fun, cheaply, to men such as yourself.  The want of money is an evil just as great as the love of it. And as you can see I never loved it enough, or mayhap it never loved me at all. Who knows? But here’s what I think, because I do think: the future belongs to me and such men and women as I am—the future belongs to the desperate of the world who are seeking their vengeance. They will find it, eventually.”
“Very philosophical,” Levi remarked. “I expected a she-demon, but I see I’ve found the Devil herself.”
“Ha! Yes, yes, you’ve found more than that. I’m the Devil incarnate, my little friend. You wonder how this City goes on burning? I keep it burning, kid. I’m the one who heats it up and stokes the flames. You should know me by now, being a lawyer. I have a reputation.”
“Probably, I think you may be mad, Ms. Christina.”
 “Well, I ought to be mad. And I wish I were, perhaps. But I'm sorry to say I’m not. I’m only losing, and I’m ready to start winning again."
“Perhaps you’re too young for such things, yet. Twenty-seven, twenty-eight?”
“Twenty-two,” she muttered, with black eyes aflame. “Twenty-two.”
He paused. “And the bath?”
Christina took a small pitcher of rainwater from the window, and sprinkled a few drops into a table-groove. Levi doused his hands, face, and arms in the clear liquid, and then stood up.

“What do you want me to do?” Levi had finished his bread-soaked whisky, and was ready to move.
“Well, you miserable atom”—Did she smirk? Levi asked himself—“As long as we’re playing this game, we’re going to follow my rules. I know a place on the West Side, where the pigs are slaughtered. Have you been there?”
 “It’s an Irish district, is it not?”
 “Irish, Dutch, Jewish, German, Free Slave—it’s poor indeed. (Perhaps you thought you’d seen the worst here. I tell you it’s not half as bad as the blood-drenched streets of the west.) We’ll go there. In that neck of the city, there’s a door where an Irish woman lives alone. What potions she prepares I don’t know, but we can go to her. I’ve seen others like you, men of the working class whom she disfavored and later kept. When I saw you in at Alonzo’s I reckoned only she could have done such work, and stole you up with her partly in mind.”
“There was more than that, girl. You’ve put me through hell.”
“And I would put you through hell again—believe that if you believe nothing else. But if you want your life again, as much as I want my own, then you must learn to suffer for my pleasure.”
“How is that?”
 “It is my pleasure that you should sign the document, this morning, handing over half of your money to me. It is my pleasure that we walk to the west, and that you become accustomed to your lowly position. You’ll be brought to heel before I return you to your size, I assure you. It will take us an hour’s walk before we arrive, but before then, you may come to appreciate—no, you may come to embrace—your position.”
Levi trembled, and his face grew pale. “I’m afraid of what you say—what can you mean by this?”
“Oh, I don’t expect you to understand, yet. I still have to break you down, make sure we have an understanding, know we’re on the same page. But by the time we arrive, you’ll understand completely, I have no doubt. There will be no games with my life anymore, Levi. I have too much to live for. This day will be mine.”
Christina reached for her knee-high stocking, and wrung it out. “You fell asleep in here once before, Levi. Maybe you’ll fall asleep again. Come here.” She picked him up, and smiled at him. “Try to enjoy this,” she said. “It’s our last hour together, and you’re only paying me half your life for the pleasure. But am I not worth everything?” Levi couldn’t respond to this madness. He froze with terror. She dropped him down, and he fell down to the soiled, smelly toe-region, once again.

“Here I come,” she announced, from above. And her huge, dry, and lightly calloused foot came down and covered him again in its world. He felt her fingers mashing him into place, and then felt one of her fingers pressing lightly against his loins, which—to his horror and shame—responded to the touch. As Christina turned her foot back to the Inferno—to him—of the boot, he was molded back into place at the farthest corner of the toe. Then she stepped down, and with the sudden orgasmic pressure of her foot, he exploded as never before in his life. Some horrible and unforgettable consummation had occurred, unasked and unwelcome. But it was done, even where he lay, in Christina’s shoe, and under the unspeakable stench of her foot. He was outraged and ashamed, but even so, he became aware that Christina’s shoe also smelled like Christina, and that no woman had ever before brought him to such a pass.

 She walked out of the room confidently, and was proud of herself. She couldn’t have planned that more perfectly. And that was only the first step.