The girl was standing in front of racks and racks of candy when the great fluorescent lights in the grocery store suddenly flickered and went out. A collective "Oh!" swept up to the ceiling from all the shoppers before the generator hummed and a dimmer, yellower light filled the store. But that lasted only a second and then the store was dark again.

The girl heard voices up near the registers. She had never been in such total darkness. It made her feel a little frightened but it also sent a thin stream of pleasure through her body. She wondered if someone would touch her in the dark. She held her breath for a fraction of a second. She couldn't even see her hand in front of her face. She'd been holding a pound bag of M&M's in each hand, one plain, one peanut, trying to decide. In the black cavernous dark she put one bag into each of her enormous coat pockets.

When the power surged and the lights blinked back on in all their white glare, the girl walked down the aisle of candy and out of the automatic doors. She felt someone's eyes on her but she was beautiful and she knew it and simply tossed her head ever so slightly.

Roger loved Tina passionately even on the night she left him, taking with her his video camera, his Sony Walkman, a carton of Camel Lights and numerous other things he noticed missing much later. He was still at work while she packed her few belongings and many of his and took the elevator to the ground floor. She probably got a cab.

He had no idea where to look for her. He left messages for her on his answering machine. He had been sleeping with her for seven weeks and went through something like withdrawal. It was awful. He even threw up twice.

Roger was a big, handsome, blond man. Tina was small, fine-boned, with very dark red hair and pale silky skin, the thought of which made Roger a little bit crazy. From the moment he first saw her he knew he'd never get enough of her. She was like an exquisite, exotic food that melted in his mouth and made him senselessly, irrationally hungry afterward.

Roger was a smart man but Tina was smarter than Roger. She read more, she watched television, she caught onto things with lightning speed. This unnerved Roger somewhat, causing anxiety to stir up in him when they were in social situations, eating dinner out with his friends for instance. She'd be so flip and sweet and witty and then do something like feed Roger a spoonful of her potato chowder and look at him the way she did at home in bed, and he'd feel lust and irritation crash against each other inside his body. It felt so outrageous and wonderful and out of control that they'd no sooner get inside his apartment and he'd be stripping off her clothes.

It wasn't long after they'd met when Roger knew Tina was a thief and a liar. She took money out of his wallet, she used his credit cards, she wore his best jackets, his Eau de Savage cologne, drank his finest liquor, even the fifteen-year-old Jameson's Irish whiskey, which she denied when he asked her point blank. It was infuriating and alarming but he put it aside so that he could devour her wild feline body night after night. He already knew it couldn't last, it was only a matter of time.

He liked to shop late at night when it was easy to park just outside the grocery store. It was a cold night with an icy wind and it pissed him off to find she'd taken his leather jacket, the one he'd spent half a thousand for, that fit his big frame with an animal perfection. He picked up a wheel of Brie cheese at the deli and a loaf of french bread and then he spotted her standing in front of the candy shelves, his huge jacket hitting her mid-thigh. He began to move toward her when the lights made a sizzling sound and went out.

It was pitch black in the store. He thought he could almost hear her quick breath but knew he wasn't close enough. He wanted the lights to stay off so he could stalk her quietly, find her taut, slim body beneath the dark leather and consume it, piece by piece as a lion pulls a gazelle down to the ground and tears into it and has its fill, and sleeps.

But the lights snapped on and she was already walking away from him. He stood and watched her go out the door on her swift, elegant legs and he let the hunger drive deep into his being and go out, finally, like a last small burning flame.