"Just like in The Matrix."

I wake up late and find Hydrangea making breakfast for Colin and Serenity in the kitchen, dressed in my boxers, socks, and an Oxford shirt. They seem very pleased to see her here and greet me warmly. Colin’s smiling like an idiot.

They leave for their wedding and we have the house to ourselves. I show her the Secret Chamber and my gym, and then we spend the rest of the day on the couch and in bed.

I have a bunch of questions about the Yungtun-Trogyal case which she patiently answers. I learn the following:

- The phurba I used to kill Albert Meers was just a cheap trinket from Bali, and it’s efficacy was a result not of any inherent magical properties, but rather of my true desire that the phurba work. I in effect made the phurba a magic weapon by willing it to be one. When I saw Hydrangea lying there, and I thought she was dead, there was nothing else in the world I wanted more than to destroy her killer. “I don’t think I’ve ever inspired transcendent homicidal rage in anybody before,” she says. “It’s kind of sweet.”

- Hydrangea engaged in a psychic battle with Yungtun-Trogyal and was overcome. The fiery Tibetan demon was an avatar, a construct created on both the astral and material realms. Once Albert Meers died, the demon no longer existed.

- The spinning vortex thing behind Yungtun-Trogyal was the portal to the Hungry Ghost realm. Again, no evil lama, no spinning vortex thing.

“So how does it work, the magic thing?” I ask.

“Simply put, once one realizes that the world all around us and time itself are constructs, are illusion, then one can manipulate the physical world.”

“Just like in The Matrix.”

I expect her to roll her eyes or say that she’s never seen it, but instead she brightens. “Yes! That’s basically it, minus the evil machine overlords. That’s my favorite movie, you know.” *

“No shit?”

“Really. That and Casablanca.”

I happen to own The Matrix so we curl up on the couch and watch it. Later, as the sun goes down the trick-or-treaters come out and we hand out candy at the door. Heidi takes great pleasure in all the kids in costumes.

We order some Thai food and make sweet sweet love some more.

Sometime during the night she slips away and I wake to an empty bed that still smells like her, like beautiful flowers.

* We both agree that the Matrix sequels suck ass, however. "They should have stopped while they were ahead," she says. Word.