Aulden was still sitting at the bar when Janice got off work. She asked him, "Want to go for a walk?" Three blocks from the bar they came to the brick building where Janice had an apartment on the second floor.

She said along the way, "I don't date the customers," but when she unlocked the door she invited him inside. Then she excused herself, saying, "Just a minute while I put on something warmer." "Something warmer?" Aulden wondered, and he sat on the couch.

He had to push a stack of books out of his way to make room before he sat. The name of the book on the top was titled The Amplified Life. He picked it up, and underneath, the second book was The Mark of Truth. "You read a lot?" Aulden called to her. Janice answered from the other room, "Yes, kind of," and she returned wearing a jacket, "I'm ready."

"A jacket?" Aulden asked her. She said, "I thought we were going for a walk." He said, "I guess we could take a walk." She sat next to him on the couch, leaning her left shoulder against his right arm.

They didn't speak for a long, long time. It must have been two minutes they didn't speak, and she turned her body until she was facing him and she draped her right leg over his right leg. Warmth poured into Aulden's body, through the top of his head, and filled him, and he responded by reaching out and gently pushing her away, saying, "We should take a walk, maybe."

Janice sat up and straightened her clothing and she turned on him, responding, "This is why I don't date the customers, because they're all just like you and you don't know how to love."

Sirens - police sirens - howled outside the window, and Aulden tried to explain, "The thing is, I don't want to hurt anyone - to hurt you - by reaching out too soon." Janice's eyes narrowed and almost in a whisper she hissed, "That is twisted."

The sirens outside became louder and he could hear screaming and shooting. Aulden ran to the window and saw, on the sidewalk below, soldiers firing at something down the street. Aulden leaned out the window and he saw this, walking toward the soldiers: a giant praying mantis. Its head and mandibles towered higher than the second-story window from where Aulden watched.

He pulled his head back inside and blurted out to Janice, "It's a praying mantis!" Janice was unafraid. She was unconcerned. She was genuinely angry. She told him, "It isn't a praying mantis! It's a distraction!"

Aulden couldn't speak, even though his mouth hung open. Janice continued, "Don't you have monsters where you come from? We have monsters here, and this kind is called a distraction."

Aulden managed to tell her, "The thing is two stories tall!"

Janice agreed, "It's a really big distraction. Sometimes they're smaller. They can be as little as a cell phone, and I don't like it if you let a distraction interrupt a conversation with me!"

Aulden was in a state of shock, partly because a giant praying mantis was outside the window, and partly because Janice was upset that it interrupted their conversation. Janice explained, "Look, a distraction always comes when something is said that's really important. They don't want people to learn and grow. There are people in this world who don't want you to change."

This made Aulden stop and gather his thoughts, trying to remember what they were talking about. He reflected, "The big distraction came right after you said I don't know how to love."