She's just as domineering as Bruce thinks she is, and for that, he's comfortable - he should have felt more guilty leaving Seoraj (and for this), but after a month solid the sensation of escape outweighs it. Not that he was unhappy (the opposite), but like delicate things made of glass, these people who the universe has tricked him into caring for need to go back up in their locked cabinets where he can't break them. Vanessza, by virtue of one thing or the other, is a woman who won't be impacted by so much as a fingerprint. It's safer this way.

"There's a priest in the countryside," he says, and maybe it's from nowhere and maybe it's in response to something she said - you'll never know, says the narrative directive, "who likens this to an episode of a children's serial. A great distraction, and in the next chapter, we'll all be back to normal, having forgotten whatever it is we were worried about before."