The little one, to whom I will do very bad things if the opportunity arises, is saying that I have a rare form of dissociative identity disorder. A part of me believes it is someone else—several someones, in fact—and these others have a life inside me that is neurologically real. Constantine Kyriakos actually exists as a separate person in my brain. Athenais, if she could be transplanted into another head, would flourish and grow. Bekele’s talent might be real. The wrinkle, Shorty says, is that I must have done a lot of research, at least about Kyriakos, because there actually was a fellow by that name and nothing they’ve found in my mind has yet proven to be inaccurate, although history does not record the business with the shark obsession, which he says is probably just some kind of Freudian baggage they don’t need to worry about. He posits confidently—this is evidently common in female refusenik psychology—that I’m afraid of my own vagina.