SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT

4 9 R S P E C I A L V I C T I M S U N I T J A M E S R I C H A R D S O N Actually Persephone loved his loving her, dark-browed, so serious: it proved something about her. And for him, gloomy, overwhelmed with himself, her brightness was more beautiful than beauty and he basked in it. But when his turn came to shine back it seemed her feelings were a storm of flowers he could not gather, and the story gets ordinary: he is angry at his heart and hurts her. Demeter gets confused. Did a god steal her daughter, or has she been living all this time in Manhattan with her di≈cult husband, di≈cult job, di≈cult cat and visiting once a year? Her love for what is lost spreads so thinly over the planet it’s not love anymore but weather. She goes to the police: Benson and Stabler find her story dubious. Moreso when they learn she never had a daughter, though she was one, and that her vaunted power over harvests apparently doesn’t extend to her wilting houseplants. As for those Hellish threats on her machine? Phone records show that dark voice was her own. Actually she has bipolar Multiple Personality Disorder, solution to all plot dilemmas. Fair enough, since cop shows can’t say what we’d say: Life is a dream, and we are everyone we dream. When they come to get her, her hands are clawed in the chainlink of the playground. Hades, Demeter, Persephone form in her face of cloud. She’s watching, of course, two girls on swings, one going up while the other goes down. ...