Watch:  A short girl, hair long and straight and a poorly dyed black, lifts her trailing black skirts--revealing tall boots, laced tight to the knee--to climb the front steps of the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.  The bulk of her messenger bag nearly knocks her off balance at the top step, but she perseveres and stumbles through the doors.
   The halls are labyrinthine and dark this time of night.  The girl walks heavily, the clomping of her hobnailed boots ringing off the walls.  She stares at the floor, pale face hidden behind sunglasses and an ugly brown velvet hat.  She comes to the office of the hospital director; a light under the door unnerves her somewhat, and she tries to walk more quietly as she passes.
   The girl's destination is the basement, where even at this late hour the inmates are not silent.  She breathes in the scents of wet stone walls and cleaners and things she doesn't really want to think about.  Before the red gate, her passage into the oasis of calm that is the final stop before the dungeon cells, the girl stops, and drops her bag, and readjusts her fuzzy black and white striped sweater.  She stands still, feeling the temperature of the corridor.  She breathes in slowly, head down, scenting herself and finding all scents to a minimum.  Good.
   Step now into the light, and wave to the large black man on the other side of the gate.
   "Hi, Barney," says the girl.
   "Hello, Ephraim," says Barney, unlocking the gate.  "Bag on the table, please.  How's the weather tonight?"
   The girl--Ephraim--heaves her messenger bag onto the desk in front of Barney.  "It's cold.  And raining."
   Barney grins, pulling a roll of butcher paper and a soft pencil case from the bag.  "Cold and raining in here, too."  He opens the pencil case and shakes the contents around.  He raises his eyebrows and pulls a sharp white paper stick from among the charcoal.  "What's this?"
   Ephraim blinks.  "It's just a smudge stick."
   Barney drops the stick into Ephraim's bag and hands her the butcher paper and bag of charcoal.  "Just use your fingers."
   Ephraim frowns, and opens her mouth--
   "Skin works better anyway," Barney says, softening his tone.  He presses a button; the sound of the locks grinding open is loud in this small room.  "Go on now, and stay to the middle."
   Ephraim sighs, and moves through the gate.  She clutches her butcher paper and charcoal to her chest and hurries past the unkempt cells of dangerously crazy people, hurries past vile scents and strange sounds.
   The clear air of the cell at the end of the hall is a relief.
   Ephraim moves past this cell, careful not to look in, not to see, not yet.  She struggles to carry a chair from the closet to the front of the cell without scraping it against the floor.
   Ephraim looks up briefly, looks into the cell, sees the occupant lying on his cot, the top of his sleek head visible to her.  She looks down again, arranging her meager art supplies.  When she looks up again, the man in the cell has not moved.  She stands up, steps closer to the glass front.
   The man swings his legs over the side of the cot and stands.  He tilts his head at Ephraim, watching her with eyes that shine in pinpoints of red, and does not smile.
   His every motion is elegant and perfectly timed, perfectly measured.
   "Good evening, Doctor Lecter," Ephraim says, hands politely folded at her waist.  "I want to sketch you again, if you don't mind."
   The man inclines his head briefly, a gesture of assent.
   Ephraim smiles.  "Thank you, Doctor," she says, and sinks to her knees beside the chair and her charcoal.
   The man moves to his own table, to his own cache of pigments.

   Ephraim watches the man steadily for a few minutes.  He glances up at her several times before settling down to more involved sketching.
   Satisfied that she has the shape of the man's head fixed in her mind, Ephraim begins her own work with the charcoals.  She roughly outlines a head, then moves to the outer edges of her paper to sketch the cell itself; rough stone walls, charcoal drawings affixed to the stone with tape strong enough to withstand the dampness.  Her angle leaves out the cot, the toilet, the sink, the mirror.
   In Ephraim's line of sight is also the glass front of the cell, but this she ignores.  She does not trust her skill enough to even attempt to superimpose them on her drawing of the man and his table.
   Ephraim works diligently, looking up at the cell many times.  In her drawing, the man is not bent over his table.  He is looking out at her.  She spends a long time on his eyes, and when she finds that the shape is just right, that the man in the picture is recognizable as the man in the cell, she fishes in her bag of charcoal for a piece of red chalk.
   Time is gone for the two in the dungeon, and neither of them hear the trillings and killings of the asylum around them.
   When the man is tired, when his mind is ready for sleep, he rolls up his drawings and pushes them gently through the food carrier.
   The metallic sound brings Ephraim to the world again, and she stares down at her drawing.  She is nearly pleased with it--the stone of the walls does not look like stone, but the proportions are almost right.  She stands carefully, totters on sleeping legs to the food carrier.  She exchanges the drawings held there for her own, and the man smiles briefly though genuinely at her before lying down on his cot.
   Ephraim nods slowly to herself, stepping back to her chair.  She unrolls the drawings and sees herself staring back, rendered perfectly not only as she he saw her sitting at the chair; there are quick sketches of her sitting in a sidewalk cafe, walking along a line of shops, petting a cat on a fence.  Ephraim draws the second piece of butcher paper from under the man's sketches; it is her own, from the week before.  It is of the man lying on his cot, his legs crossed.  Ephraim was proud of the depth she'd managed in the mirror; it reflected the bars of the cell across the corridor.  There are notes, in blue chalk, advice not only on how to improve her skill and exactly where she made mistakes, but also recommendations for music.  Two Bach concertos Ephraim has never heard of.  She carefully rolls the drawings up into her blank butcher paper, hiding them well.
   The man's breathing is even now.  Ephraim wonders if he is sleeping or just pretending to sleep.  She gathers up her things and moves quietly back toward Barney's office.
   "Hey, girl," Barney says.  "Did he talk to you?"
   "No, Barney," Ephraim says wearily.  "Not tonight."
   "Maybe next time," Barney says, smiling as he hands Ephraim her bag.
   Barney opens the gates for Ephraim, and she begins the journey to the surface.
   It is raining outside, a light rain, and Ephraim shoves the papers under her sweater to keep them dry.
   Ephraim's car rumbles away from the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, trailing through the muddy driveway and back into the world.